Monday, July 04, 2011
Colonizing Libya by Military, Financial, Political and Propaganda Terrorism
Colonizing Libya by Military, Financial, Political and Propaganda Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
After three and a half terror bombing months and counting, destroying Libya for wealth and power continues, each imperial nation playing its part in this sinister dirty game, masquerading as liberation.
France finally admitted what's already known, that it's been supplying mercenary cutthroats with automatic weapons, rocket launchers, assault rifles, anti-tank missiles, and who knows what else. So have Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, perhaps other US imperial allies, and the Pentagon itself. In mid-April, The New York Times said Benghazi-based rebels got weapons from abroad without naming names.
For months, US and UK special forces provided training, The Times saying "professional training centers" were used to do it. In fact, recruiting, funding, and arming rebels began well before bombing began. America's war was planned many months, perhaps years earlier. Obama picked his moment to launch it.
Even the International Criminal Court (ICC) is complicit, functioning as an imperial tool, not a legitimate tribunal. Its chief prosecutor Jose Luis Moren-Ocampo, in fact, targets victims, not criminal Washington, London and Paris conspirators, attacking a nonbelligerent country. It's been standard US practice since WW II.
In May, Ocampo sought arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law intelligence chief, Abdullah Al-Sanousi, on "charges of orchestrating systematic attacks against civilians (amounting) to crimes against humanity," with no evidence whatever to prove it.
Then end of June he issued arrest warrants against all three on alleged crimes against humanity, saying reasonable grounds exist to believe they're "criminally responsible as indirect perpetrators of civilian killings and repression" - again with no corroborating evidence or authority. Libya, in fact, isn't an ICC member, nor are America, China, Russia and India, some nations, openly critical of how it operates with good reason.
On June 28 in Tripoli, Franklin Lamb reported about Libyan Ministry of Health (MOH) "Current Statistics of Civilian Victims of NATO Bombardments on Libya (3/19/11 - 6/27/11" he obtained. Libya's Red Crescent Society, neighborhood civil defense workers, and Tripoli's Nassar University researchers confirmed them.
They include:
-- 6,121 killed or injured;
-- among them were 3,093 men injured, another 668 killed; 1,318 women injured, another 260 killed; and 641 children injured, another 141 killed; and
-- among those seriously hurt, 655 are still hospitalized, another 4,397 released for outpatient care.
Except for one major incident killing 15 men, women and children, NATO claims only military targets are struck, even though many are schools, a university, commercial sites, hospitals, ports, airports, and residential neighborhoods unrelated to military necessity.
On July 1, up to one million pro-Gaddafi Tripoli residents massed in Green Square to hear him speak by telephone. Western media, including The New York Times, called it "defiant," threatening to attack Europe if NATO bombing didn't stop.
The Times misquoted him, claiming he said he'd take the battle "to Europe, target your homes, offices, families, which have become legitimate military targets, like you have targeted our homes."
In fact, writer Kareen Fahim lied as part of a systematic anti-Gaddafi propaganda campaign. Al- Jazeera was just as duplicitous, repeating the above fabrications instead of reporting what he said.
In part, he challenged "Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama to switch on their TVs and watch the crowds, (so) they will find out that they are delusional because they entered a war which they (can) never win."
He didn't threaten to retaliate but said "we can (because) Europe is not far away, but (he added) lets not do this and watch the crowds, kids and women. They are not here because I ordered them to (come. It's their) free will. In this war you are not facing me, you are facing these crowds. I am nothing. If you want peace with Libyans, it is up to the crowds. If you want anything, negotiate with (them)."
"The regime is not a Gaddafi regime. It is a Libyan (one). Is it a democracy to bomb the civilians? We don't want a democracy which comes with bombs."
"The socialist Jamahyria will win, the real democracy which serves the people....The Libyans said their words. They marched. Their tribes made it clear that the future is for Libyans. The oil is for Libya. Libya is ours. You are delusional, a group of traitors convinced (that) Libya is easy to get....You Libyan people are the only one(s) who can finish this war with a victory."
"If they want to negotiate we welcome that. Otherwise we are continuing and they are definitely losing no matter how many weapons they drop (to) rebels. We will not betray our history nor our children and their future. The glory is for you brave Libyans. The struggle will continue."
Growing numbers of Libyans support him the longer NATO terror bombings continue, mostly killing civilian men, women and children, NATO and major media denials notwithstanding.
Months into Obama's war, Der Spiegel's June 28 Matthias Gebauer article headlined, "Berlin Willing to Supply Weapons for Libya war because munitions running out," saying:
Germany offered to help "despite its fundamental opposition to the war. (Its) defense minister (Thomas de Maiziere) has already approved (the) request" to supply bomb components, missiles, sensitive guidance technology, and more on request, making Germany openly complicit in terror bombing crimes.
Britain said it can't continue its campaign much longer without help, facing shortages of air-to-ground missiles and perhaps other weapons and/or munitions. Back home, however, it's not short of ways to force feed austerity on millions of Brits to wage global terror wars for power, privilege and plunder.
Merkel's government wants its share. Germany's Federal Security Council approval isn't needed for her to act. However, the Bundestag (its parliament) wasn't told about weapon shipments. Although Germany isn't directly engaged in combat, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle "promised the rebels massive civilian aid after the possible toppling of Gaddafi's regime." Berlin also offered to help train post-Gaddafi era security forces. Clearly, Germany is complicit up to its ears in NATO terror. Direct or indirect hardly matters.
Like all US wars, Orwellian doublespeak defines the campaign, including "humanitarian intervention," liberation, "Operation Unified Protector," and NATO's "Partnership for Peace" program to create trust among non-member states.
NATO, of course, is code language for the Pentagon. Trusting it is like befriending a rattlesnake or shark, concerned only with devouring their next meal. NATO does it globally from 30,000 feet and ancillary tentacles everywhere, reigning "liberal interventionism" death and destruction to "protect civilians" by murdering them.
Through July 1, NATO's Allied Command Operations site (http://www.aco.nato.int/page424201235.aspx) mentions 13,460 sorties since March, including 5,047 "strike" ones "to protect civilians and civilian-population areas under attack or threat of attack" by "shock and awe" killing and destruction.
What do you call a war not called war? In mid-June, Obama did in 38 doublespeak pages sent Congress, using duplicitous reasoning to do what he damn pleases, law or no law, and whether or not congressional and/or popular approval backs him.
Russia's NATO representative Dmitry Rogozin believes "we are witnessing the preparation stage of a ground operation which NATO, or at least some of its members (are) preparing to begin."
In fact, plans have been in place for months, involving US (and very likely) other NATO forces, though whether or not it will be implemented isn't known. On June 15, Infowar contributor Aaron Dykes claimed that:
"alarming reports from within the ranks of military stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas (confirm) plans to initiate a full-scale US-led ground invasion in Libya and deploy troops by October."
Access his full article through the following link:
http://www.infowars.com/u-s-invasion-of-libya-set-for-october/
Ahead of it he said additional Special Forces are coming in advance this month. Overall, about 30,000 troops are involved, suggesting a major operation if true.
He also said "numerous calls and e-mails from other military personnel" confirm it, perhaps with a large contingent by September. "Among these supporting sources is a British SAS (special forces) officer confirming that US Army Rangers are already in Libya."
Moreover, someone in USCENTCOM called "Specialist H....revealed that there have already been American casualties inside Libya. He confirmed that at least 2 soldiers and 3 civilians have died from combat bullet wounds" - what Obama, the Pentagon or America's media won't admit or discuss.
In fact, Obama assured Congress and the public that no US forces will be deployed. He lied. Special Forces and perhaps others have been there for months, providing training, support, and perhaps actual combat against Gaddafi.
It's another reason why he should be impeached, removed, and tried for crimes of war and against humanity, as if more are needed with a litany already known.
Stay tuned. America's Libya war and five others show no signs of ending. In fact, they're intensifying. Obama, the peace candidate, is even more belligerent than his predecessor.
A Final Comment
Israel, Washington and complicit allies have waged propaganda, intimidation, sabotage, and other ways to prevent Freedom Flotilla II from reaching Gaza with humanitarian aid.
Two vessels were disabled, at least one unable to continue. Eight others are illegally prevented from departing Greek ports, its government Israel's latest pro-siege ally, complicit in its slow-motion genocidal campaign.
Quartet members representing America, Russia, the EU and UN issued a July 3 anti-Flotilla statement, saying:
"Israel has legitimate security concerns that must continue to be safeguarded," when, in fact, none exist against the region's most powerful military and haven't since 1973.
Nonetheless, "(m)embers of the Quartet are committed to working with Israel (a lawless rogue state), Egypt (its complicit ally), and the international community to prevent 'illicit' trafficking of arms and ammunition into Gaza...." In other words, Gazans have no right to self-defense against an illegal occupier attacking them regularly.
At the same time, a coalition of Israeli and Palestinian organizations expressed strong Flotilla support, saying:
Palestinians and Jews "declare our support for the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla and its declared goals: to break the Israeli siege on Gaza - both on the sea and land - which represents part of the ongoing Israeli occupation. We denounce (Israel's) slanderous campaign against (it and) call on (its) government and security forces to permit the ships to enter Gaza and unload their humanitarian cargo in peace....We (also) call on the government of Israel to immediately end the siege of Gaza."
The endorsing organizations include:
Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Coalition of Women for Peace
Combatants for Peace
Gush Shalom
Hithabrut-Tarabut
Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
New Profile
Ta'ayush
Yesh Gvul
On Independence Day eve, US Boat to Gaza/Audacity of Hope participants Medea Benjamin, Ken Mayers, Paki Wieland, Kathy Kelly, Ray McGovern, Helaine Meisler, Nic Abramson, and Carol Murry began an open-ended fast in front of America's Athens embassy, after delivering an urgent letter to officials inside that they "plan to sleep overnight outside (its) gates," defying Washington's complicity with Israel.
Following orders from Washington, however, Greek authorities detained, then released them. Greece, of course, is now colonized by predatory Western bankers, defying international law and rights of their people to serve them. Moreover, when they, America and Israel make demands, the thuggish Papandreou government salutes and obeys.
Nonetheless, at 7PM Athens time (noon US EDT), along with Greek activists, a march was held supporting the Flotilla. It demanded freeing the US ship captain imprisoned unjustly since Friday and letting all Flotilla ships sail.
"This July 4, it's time for our government to declare independence from Israel and start supporting its own citizens." Doing less adds shamefully to America's legacy of disgrace.
On July 3, Haaretz writer (and Flotilla participant) Amira Hass headlined, "Gaza flotilla to set sail Monday (July 4) despite numerous setbacks," saying:
Participating vessels are ready to leave, "following several days of deliberations on the subject, and the exact number (participating still not known). In contrast to recent reports, most (on board) are still" committed to pursue a just cause despite risking their safety.
In fact, they protested Greek government actions, prohibiting their departure indefinitely, accusing the Papandreou government "of caving in to Israeli pressure."
Whether or not they'll, in fact, be able to depart isn't known. Pressure to deter them remains strong, notably from Obama officials backing its rogue Israeli partner.
Further updates will cover new developments. Despite delays, intimidation and sabotage, participants are determined to press on.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:09 AM
Monday, July 04, 2011
Sunday, July 03, 2011
From The Veterans For Peace Website- Veterans For Peace Supports the Audacity of Hope, Condemns Israeli Naval Blockade
June 30, 2011
Veterans For Peace Supports the Audacity of Hope, Condemns Israeli Naval Blockade
This week, five members of Veterans For Peace are joining 40 other American citizens in a peaceful attempt to break Israel's illegal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The U.S. ship Audacity of Hope will be part of a flotilla expected to consist of 10 boats carrying human rights advocates from around the world and humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.
VFP members, retired Colonel Ann Wright; former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern; retired Marine Corps Major, Ken Mayers; Nic Abramson and Hedy Epstein, an Honorary VFP member and 87 year-old Holocaust survivor. Other U.S. passengers include Alice Walker, and two time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kathy Kelly. About 25% of the passengers are Jewish.
The U.S. ship will bring over 3,000 letters of support to a population suffering its fifth continuous decade of de facto occupation, now in the form of a military blockade controlling Gaza's sea and sky, punctuated by frequent deadly military incursions, that has starved Gaza's economy and people.
Although the Audacity of Hope will be sailing unarmed and has no intention of entering Israel or Israeli waters, the U.S. State Department has issued an unusually specific and blunt travel advisory, warning Americans against traveling to Gaza. Without giving any details, State Department officials also suggested that Americans taking part in the flotilla might be violating U.S. law.
HILLARY CLINTON GIVES GREEN LIGHT FOR ISRAELI ASSAULT ON FLOTILLA
The next day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused flotilla organizers of trying to "provoke actions," claiming erroneously that they were going to enter Israeli waters. Clinton said that "the Israelis have the right to defend themselves," implying they can violently attack the boats with U.S. government permission. This is inexcusable and a total betrayal of her duty to protect law abiding American citizens.
Last year the international flotilla to Gaza was brutally attacked by Israeli commandos, murdering nine Turkish activists, one of whom was also an U.S. citizen. Flotilla passengers were also attacked with water cannons, taser guns, stink bombs, sound bombs, stun guns, tear gas, and pepper spray, before being taken to Israel, jailed and deported.
Israel Defense Forces are reportedly training for a fierce assault intended to "secure" each boat in the Freedom Flotilla 2. U.S. organizer Kathy Kelly believes that passengers on the U.S. boat may be spared the most violent responses. But with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton giving Israel the green light for an assault, Kelly said, "We are preparing ourselves not to panic and to practice disciplined nonviolence whatever scenario Israel decides to enact."
The slogan of the flotilla is "Stay Human," advice which Kelly says, "exposure to violence, real or imagined, always tempts us to forget."
The Audacity of Hope was inspected by Greek officials on Monday, June 27 after a complaint was lodged by an Israeli group that the vessel was not seaworthy. Organizers of the Gaza flotilla accused Israel of pressuring Greece to halt the ships' departure.
Colonel Ann Wright told a news conference that Israel is mounting a "tremendous diplomatic offensive" to prevent the flotilla from setting sail. Organizers urged the Greek government not to "become complicit in Israel's illegal actions by succumbing to this pressure."
ISRAEL AND U.S. RATCHET UP PRESSURE
According to Kate Wickman at Raw Story, Israeli officials have threatened to punish activists who plan to set sail from Greece to Gaza, with the aim of breaking the Israeli embargo on the Palestinian territory. Journalists, the Israeli officials say, will also be punished if they choose to cover the activists' mission, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
Journalists who cover the flotilla's attempt to reach the Gaza strip will be denied entry to the country for 10 year, The National reported. The government press office released a statement that called the pro-Palestinian activists' actions "a dangerous provocation" and an "international violation of Israeli law."
Israel's Foreign Press Association, however, issued a statement calling the government threats "a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel's commitment to freedom of the press".
Flotilla organizers now say that two of their ships have been intentionally damaged by unknown saboteurs.
Ratcheting up the pressure, Israeli defense officials have claimed that flotilla members are armed with chemical weapons (bags of sulphur) to use against Israeli soldiers. But other Israeli military sources have disputed this claim, dismissing it as "spin."
"This is truly a shameful and desperate tactic on the part of the Israeli government. They know full well that the passengers have no intention of being anything but peaceful," said passenger Paki Wieland.
In the latest outrage, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., says the United States should "make available all necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk."
Clearly, the 40 brave representatives of the U.S. people on the Audacity of Hope are up against huge opposition from powerful, dark forces. They very much need and deserve the support of all who believe in peace and justice.
VETERANS FOR PEACE IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THE AUDACITY OF HOPE.
We call upon the U.S. government to take the necessary steps to guarantee the safety of all the activists on the Free Gaza Flotilla. We call upon all VFP chapters and members to act now to ensure the safety of our fellow activists and members, and to help them to successfully complete their mission to bring comfort to the people of Gaza and to end the illegal Israeli blockade. See the list of suggested actions, below.
THE ISRAELI BLOCKADE OF GAZA IS ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Four years ago Israel imposed a draconian blockade on Gaza, effecting a paralysis of commerce and severe shortages of basic foods. The result has been deprivation and death to innocent people. This blockade was imposed, in the words of Israel's leaders, to "put Gaza on a diet" as a punitive action for Palestinian's electing Hamas to power.
Foreign Policy Magazine compiled a large volume of information from reports issued by the United Nations and various NGOs working in Gaza. Just a few highlights:
Electricity: In 2006, Israel carried out an attack on Gaza's only power plant and never permitted the rebuilding to its pre-attack capacity.... The majority of houses have power cuts at least eight hours per day. Some have no electricity for long as 12 hours a day. The lack of electricity has led to reliance on generators, many of which have exploded from overwork, killing and maiming civilians.
Water: Israel has not permitted supplies into the Gaza Strip to rebuild the sewage system. Amnesty International reports that 90-95 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for consumption.
Health: According to UN OCHA, infrastructure for 15 of 27 of Gaza's hospitals, 43 of 110 of its primary care facilities, and 29 of its 148 ambulances were damaged or destroyed during the war. Without rebuilding materials like cement and glass due to Israeli restrictions, the vast majority of the destroyed health infrastructure has not been rebuilt.
Food: A 2010 World Health Organization report stated that "chronic malnutrition in the Gaza Strip has risen over the past few years and has now reached 10.2%. ... According to UN OCHA: "Over 60 percent of households are now food insecure ...
Industry: A World Health Organization report from this year states: "In the Gaza Strip, private enterprise is practically at a standstill as a consequence of the blockade. Almost all (98%) industrial operations have been shut down.
A blockade that restricts the local population's access to vital goods violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifies that an occupying force has a legally binding duty to protect an occupied population. Moreover, collective punishment is specifically barred under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Veterans for Peace condemns this inhumane blockade of Gaza and demands that the U.S. government end its support for Israel's illegal assault on Palestinian human rights and self-determination.
U.S. WEAPONS WERE USED IN ISRAELI COMMANDO ASSAULT ON FIRST FREE GAZA FLOTILLA
U.S. weapons provided with U.S. taxpayer money were used in the Israeli commando attack, which violates our Arms Export Control Act prohibiting use of American weapons against civilians. These included boats, helicopters and probable murder weapons used, made by ten U.S. companies:
The Sa'ar 5-class corvette warship built by Northrup Grumman, armed with Honeywell torpedoes and surface-to- surface missiles made by McDonnell Douglas
Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters that dropped the commandoes
Morena Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boats made by U.S.M.I. Louisiana with Caterpillar 3126 turbocharged diesel engines
US M4 Carbine Rifles, a magazine-fed, selective fire, shoulder-fired weapon made by Colt
Hellfire SSM laser-guided missiles made by Boeing
Raytheon radar systems
MK13 Stun Grenades made by American Rheinmetall
AS AMERICAN CITIZENS AND U.S. MILITARY VETERANS, WE REPUDIATE U.S. COMPLICITY IN THESE CRIMES.
WE DEMAND AN END TO U.S. MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL.
WE DEMAND AN END TO ISRAEL'S ILLEGAL BLOCKADE OF GAZA.
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.
WE DEMAND SAFE PASSAGE FOR THE FREE GAZA FLOTILLA
Veterans For Peace Supports the Audacity of Hope, Condemns Israeli Naval Blockade
This week, five members of Veterans For Peace are joining 40 other American citizens in a peaceful attempt to break Israel's illegal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. The U.S. ship Audacity of Hope will be part of a flotilla expected to consist of 10 boats carrying human rights advocates from around the world and humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.
VFP members, retired Colonel Ann Wright; former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern; retired Marine Corps Major, Ken Mayers; Nic Abramson and Hedy Epstein, an Honorary VFP member and 87 year-old Holocaust survivor. Other U.S. passengers include Alice Walker, and two time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kathy Kelly. About 25% of the passengers are Jewish.
The U.S. ship will bring over 3,000 letters of support to a population suffering its fifth continuous decade of de facto occupation, now in the form of a military blockade controlling Gaza's sea and sky, punctuated by frequent deadly military incursions, that has starved Gaza's economy and people.
Although the Audacity of Hope will be sailing unarmed and has no intention of entering Israel or Israeli waters, the U.S. State Department has issued an unusually specific and blunt travel advisory, warning Americans against traveling to Gaza. Without giving any details, State Department officials also suggested that Americans taking part in the flotilla might be violating U.S. law.
HILLARY CLINTON GIVES GREEN LIGHT FOR ISRAELI ASSAULT ON FLOTILLA
The next day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused flotilla organizers of trying to "provoke actions," claiming erroneously that they were going to enter Israeli waters. Clinton said that "the Israelis have the right to defend themselves," implying they can violently attack the boats with U.S. government permission. This is inexcusable and a total betrayal of her duty to protect law abiding American citizens.
Last year the international flotilla to Gaza was brutally attacked by Israeli commandos, murdering nine Turkish activists, one of whom was also an U.S. citizen. Flotilla passengers were also attacked with water cannons, taser guns, stink bombs, sound bombs, stun guns, tear gas, and pepper spray, before being taken to Israel, jailed and deported.
Israel Defense Forces are reportedly training for a fierce assault intended to "secure" each boat in the Freedom Flotilla 2. U.S. organizer Kathy Kelly believes that passengers on the U.S. boat may be spared the most violent responses. But with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton giving Israel the green light for an assault, Kelly said, "We are preparing ourselves not to panic and to practice disciplined nonviolence whatever scenario Israel decides to enact."
The slogan of the flotilla is "Stay Human," advice which Kelly says, "exposure to violence, real or imagined, always tempts us to forget."
The Audacity of Hope was inspected by Greek officials on Monday, June 27 after a complaint was lodged by an Israeli group that the vessel was not seaworthy. Organizers of the Gaza flotilla accused Israel of pressuring Greece to halt the ships' departure.
Colonel Ann Wright told a news conference that Israel is mounting a "tremendous diplomatic offensive" to prevent the flotilla from setting sail. Organizers urged the Greek government not to "become complicit in Israel's illegal actions by succumbing to this pressure."
ISRAEL AND U.S. RATCHET UP PRESSURE
According to Kate Wickman at Raw Story, Israeli officials have threatened to punish activists who plan to set sail from Greece to Gaza, with the aim of breaking the Israeli embargo on the Palestinian territory. Journalists, the Israeli officials say, will also be punished if they choose to cover the activists' mission, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
Journalists who cover the flotilla's attempt to reach the Gaza strip will be denied entry to the country for 10 year, The National reported. The government press office released a statement that called the pro-Palestinian activists' actions "a dangerous provocation" and an "international violation of Israeli law."
Israel's Foreign Press Association, however, issued a statement calling the government threats "a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel's commitment to freedom of the press".
Flotilla organizers now say that two of their ships have been intentionally damaged by unknown saboteurs.
Ratcheting up the pressure, Israeli defense officials have claimed that flotilla members are armed with chemical weapons (bags of sulphur) to use against Israeli soldiers. But other Israeli military sources have disputed this claim, dismissing it as "spin."
"This is truly a shameful and desperate tactic on the part of the Israeli government. They know full well that the passengers have no intention of being anything but peaceful," said passenger Paki Wieland.
In the latest outrage, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., says the United States should "make available all necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk."
Clearly, the 40 brave representatives of the U.S. people on the Audacity of Hope are up against huge opposition from powerful, dark forces. They very much need and deserve the support of all who believe in peace and justice.
VETERANS FOR PEACE IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THE AUDACITY OF HOPE.
We call upon the U.S. government to take the necessary steps to guarantee the safety of all the activists on the Free Gaza Flotilla. We call upon all VFP chapters and members to act now to ensure the safety of our fellow activists and members, and to help them to successfully complete their mission to bring comfort to the people of Gaza and to end the illegal Israeli blockade. See the list of suggested actions, below.
THE ISRAELI BLOCKADE OF GAZA IS ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Four years ago Israel imposed a draconian blockade on Gaza, effecting a paralysis of commerce and severe shortages of basic foods. The result has been deprivation and death to innocent people. This blockade was imposed, in the words of Israel's leaders, to "put Gaza on a diet" as a punitive action for Palestinian's electing Hamas to power.
Foreign Policy Magazine compiled a large volume of information from reports issued by the United Nations and various NGOs working in Gaza. Just a few highlights:
Electricity: In 2006, Israel carried out an attack on Gaza's only power plant and never permitted the rebuilding to its pre-attack capacity.... The majority of houses have power cuts at least eight hours per day. Some have no electricity for long as 12 hours a day. The lack of electricity has led to reliance on generators, many of which have exploded from overwork, killing and maiming civilians.
Water: Israel has not permitted supplies into the Gaza Strip to rebuild the sewage system. Amnesty International reports that 90-95 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for consumption.
Health: According to UN OCHA, infrastructure for 15 of 27 of Gaza's hospitals, 43 of 110 of its primary care facilities, and 29 of its 148 ambulances were damaged or destroyed during the war. Without rebuilding materials like cement and glass due to Israeli restrictions, the vast majority of the destroyed health infrastructure has not been rebuilt.
Food: A 2010 World Health Organization report stated that "chronic malnutrition in the Gaza Strip has risen over the past few years and has now reached 10.2%. ... According to UN OCHA: "Over 60 percent of households are now food insecure ...
Industry: A World Health Organization report from this year states: "In the Gaza Strip, private enterprise is practically at a standstill as a consequence of the blockade. Almost all (98%) industrial operations have been shut down.
A blockade that restricts the local population's access to vital goods violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifies that an occupying force has a legally binding duty to protect an occupied population. Moreover, collective punishment is specifically barred under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Veterans for Peace condemns this inhumane blockade of Gaza and demands that the U.S. government end its support for Israel's illegal assault on Palestinian human rights and self-determination.
U.S. WEAPONS WERE USED IN ISRAELI COMMANDO ASSAULT ON FIRST FREE GAZA FLOTILLA
U.S. weapons provided with U.S. taxpayer money were used in the Israeli commando attack, which violates our Arms Export Control Act prohibiting use of American weapons against civilians. These included boats, helicopters and probable murder weapons used, made by ten U.S. companies:
The Sa'ar 5-class corvette warship built by Northrup Grumman, armed with Honeywell torpedoes and surface-to- surface missiles made by McDonnell Douglas
Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters that dropped the commandoes
Morena Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boats made by U.S.M.I. Louisiana with Caterpillar 3126 turbocharged diesel engines
US M4 Carbine Rifles, a magazine-fed, selective fire, shoulder-fired weapon made by Colt
Hellfire SSM laser-guided missiles made by Boeing
Raytheon radar systems
MK13 Stun Grenades made by American Rheinmetall
AS AMERICAN CITIZENS AND U.S. MILITARY VETERANS, WE REPUDIATE U.S. COMPLICITY IN THESE CRIMES.
WE DEMAND AN END TO U.S. MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL.
WE DEMAND AN END TO ISRAEL'S ILLEGAL BLOCKADE OF GAZA.
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.
WE DEMAND SAFE PASSAGE FOR THE FREE GAZA FLOTILLA
From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Update 6/30/11: Bradley’s lawyer on his new treatment conditions
Update 6/30/11: Bradley’s lawyer on his new treatment conditions
Bradley Manning’s lawyer, David E. Coombs, issued a statement two nights ago about Bradley’s current treatment and condition. He states,
“Since being moved to the JRCF, PFC Manning’s overall mood and demeanor has greatly improved. PFC Manning is able to maintain regular contact with his defense team. He receives weekly written updates, phone calls and visits from defense counsel. In addition, he receives regular visits from family. Finally, PFC Manning also receives hundreds of letters from supporters every week. He wishes to extend his sincere appreciation to those who have taken the time to send along their thoughts and well-wishes.”
Let’s keep Bradley’s mood up as he approaches a pre-trial hearing this summer by continuing to send him letters of support. Mr. Coombs’ blog has more information regarding the rules around mail and Bradley’s address.
Bradley Manning’s lawyer, David E. Coombs, issued a statement two nights ago about Bradley’s current treatment and condition. He states,
“Since being moved to the JRCF, PFC Manning’s overall mood and demeanor has greatly improved. PFC Manning is able to maintain regular contact with his defense team. He receives weekly written updates, phone calls and visits from defense counsel. In addition, he receives regular visits from family. Finally, PFC Manning also receives hundreds of letters from supporters every week. He wishes to extend his sincere appreciation to those who have taken the time to send along their thoughts and well-wishes.”
Let’s keep Bradley’s mood up as he approaches a pre-trial hearing this summer by continuing to send him letters of support. Mr. Coombs’ blog has more information regarding the rules around mail and Bradley’s address.
From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-David House’s statement on the WikiLeaks Grand Jury-Hands Off David House!
David House’s statement on the WikiLeaks Grand Jury
David House is a founding member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. He was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury today in Alexandria, VA. House is among several Boston area residents who have been ordered to testify before the grand jury, which is investigating WikiLeaks.
House and his lawyer entered the courthouse this morning at approximately 10:00am ET, amidst a gathering of supporters who held signs with messages of support for House. The rally also called for government transparency and protection for whistle-blowers — and for freedom for accused WikiLeaks source PFC Bradley Manning.
The prosecution initially attempted to prevent David House from taking notes. This was the reason for the recess and reconvening at 4:00pm ET. There was no legal basis for this order, and House was ultimately permitted to take notes.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
House was questioned for approximately one hour, beginning at 4:00pm ET. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent. He read from the below statement at 5:00pm ET in the plaza outside of the United States District Court at 401 Courthouse Square in Alexandria, VA.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) is attempting to codify a task it started over 40 years ago: the political regulation of journalism. The same climate of intimidation that surrounded the Pentagon Papers trial persists to this day as the DoJ seeks to limit the freedoms of the Fourth Estate, using the pretense of alleged violations of the Espionage Act.
The show trial that is now underway in Alexandria VA has the potential to set a dangerous precedent for regulating the media. Using Nixonian fear tactics that were honed during the Pentagon Papers investigation, the DoJ is attempting to dismantle a major media organization—WikiLeaks—and indict its editor, Julian Assange. The DoJ’s ever-widening net has now come to encompass academics, students, and journalists in the Cambridge area. The Administration’s goal is to force these individuals to testify against this media organization in an attempt to cast its publications and those of its media partners — the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pais — as acts of espionage. The government has also violated my Fourth Amendment rights by executing a warrantless seizure on my laptop in an attempt to identify, target and ensnare Cambridge-based supporters of WikiLeaks.
It is my conviction that the American people must call for a cessation of the Department of Justice’s politically motivated harassment.
David House is a founding member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. He was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury today in Alexandria, VA. House is among several Boston area residents who have been ordered to testify before the grand jury, which is investigating WikiLeaks.
House and his lawyer entered the courthouse this morning at approximately 10:00am ET, amidst a gathering of supporters who held signs with messages of support for House. The rally also called for government transparency and protection for whistle-blowers — and for freedom for accused WikiLeaks source PFC Bradley Manning.
The prosecution initially attempted to prevent David House from taking notes. This was the reason for the recess and reconvening at 4:00pm ET. There was no legal basis for this order, and House was ultimately permitted to take notes.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
House was questioned for approximately one hour, beginning at 4:00pm ET. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent. He read from the below statement at 5:00pm ET in the plaza outside of the United States District Court at 401 Courthouse Square in Alexandria, VA.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) is attempting to codify a task it started over 40 years ago: the political regulation of journalism. The same climate of intimidation that surrounded the Pentagon Papers trial persists to this day as the DoJ seeks to limit the freedoms of the Fourth Estate, using the pretense of alleged violations of the Espionage Act.
The show trial that is now underway in Alexandria VA has the potential to set a dangerous precedent for regulating the media. Using Nixonian fear tactics that were honed during the Pentagon Papers investigation, the DoJ is attempting to dismantle a major media organization—WikiLeaks—and indict its editor, Julian Assange. The DoJ’s ever-widening net has now come to encompass academics, students, and journalists in the Cambridge area. The Administration’s goal is to force these individuals to testify against this media organization in an attempt to cast its publications and those of its media partners — the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pais — as acts of espionage. The government has also violated my Fourth Amendment rights by executing a warrantless seizure on my laptop in an attempt to identify, target and ensnare Cambridge-based supporters of WikiLeaks.
It is my conviction that the American people must call for a cessation of the Department of Justice’s politically motivated harassment.
From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Help us rent billboards for Bradley in Kansas City
Help us rent billboards for Bradley in Kansas City
June 17, 2011, by the Bradley Manning Support Network.
View the billboards, donate to make it happen, and help choose the design at:
http://epicstep.com/campaign/280/support-bradley
Private First Class Bradley Manning will soon have his own billboards in the Kansas City area, a short distance from where he is held in pre-trial confinement at Fort Leavenworth. PFC Manning is accused of releasing classified government information to WikiLeaks and to the public. His supporters are launching a campaign to rent two billboards, at a total cost of $7,000, to bolster regional support for the accused whistle-blower.
This campaign begins on the heels of a successful effort to rent high-profile ad space in the Washington DC metro area. That effort, funded by 326 supporters, will result in a billboard that will coincide with Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing. That hearing date is expected to be announced soon, and is expected to be held at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
“Americans deserve to know the truth. We want to make sure the truth is visible during Bradley’s pre-trial hearing,” explained Bradley Manning Support Network organizer Jeff Paterson. “The information Bradley Manning is accused of releasing should have been in the public domain. Whoever revealed it is an American hero.”
The revelations include the videotaped massacre of Reuters journalists. WikiLeaks was the recipient of the classified information.
Supporters who donate to fund the billboard can cast votes for three different designs. One option features a picture of PFC Manning and reads, “Bradley Manning | Whistle-Blowers Protect Democracy.” Another option reads like a dictionary definition: “Whis•tle-Blow•er: noun. a person who tells the people what the government doesn’t want us to know. See also hero, patriot, Bradley Manning.”
The three designs can be viewed at: http://epicstep.com/campaign/239/support-bradley
PFC Manning will be flown to Washington DC for all military court proceedings. The billboard will be up for at least 30 days. If successful, supporters anticipate also purchasing DC Metro and bus ads for June and July.
Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, 23-years-old, was arrested in Iraq one year ago on May 26, 2010. He still awaits his first public court hearing, now expected to begin in June. Over 4,300 individuals have contributed $333,000 towards PFC Manning’s legal fees and related public education efforts. The Bradley Manning Support Network is dedicated to securing due process and a public trial for PFC Manning — and to eventually winning his freedom.
“Never before has a person been charged with ‘aiding the enemy through indirect means’ by making information public,” noted Emma Cape of Courage to Resist. “The outcome of Bradley’s trial will set precedent for the future of whistle-blowing and government transparency.”
June 17, 2011, by the Bradley Manning Support Network.
View the billboards, donate to make it happen, and help choose the design at:
http://epicstep.com/campaign/280/support-bradley
Private First Class Bradley Manning will soon have his own billboards in the Kansas City area, a short distance from where he is held in pre-trial confinement at Fort Leavenworth. PFC Manning is accused of releasing classified government information to WikiLeaks and to the public. His supporters are launching a campaign to rent two billboards, at a total cost of $7,000, to bolster regional support for the accused whistle-blower.
This campaign begins on the heels of a successful effort to rent high-profile ad space in the Washington DC metro area. That effort, funded by 326 supporters, will result in a billboard that will coincide with Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing. That hearing date is expected to be announced soon, and is expected to be held at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
“Americans deserve to know the truth. We want to make sure the truth is visible during Bradley’s pre-trial hearing,” explained Bradley Manning Support Network organizer Jeff Paterson. “The information Bradley Manning is accused of releasing should have been in the public domain. Whoever revealed it is an American hero.”
The revelations include the videotaped massacre of Reuters journalists. WikiLeaks was the recipient of the classified information.
Supporters who donate to fund the billboard can cast votes for three different designs. One option features a picture of PFC Manning and reads, “Bradley Manning | Whistle-Blowers Protect Democracy.” Another option reads like a dictionary definition: “Whis•tle-Blow•er: noun. a person who tells the people what the government doesn’t want us to know. See also hero, patriot, Bradley Manning.”
The three designs can be viewed at: http://epicstep.com/campaign/239/support-bradley
PFC Manning will be flown to Washington DC for all military court proceedings. The billboard will be up for at least 30 days. If successful, supporters anticipate also purchasing DC Metro and bus ads for June and July.
Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, 23-years-old, was arrested in Iraq one year ago on May 26, 2010. He still awaits his first public court hearing, now expected to begin in June. Over 4,300 individuals have contributed $333,000 towards PFC Manning’s legal fees and related public education efforts. The Bradley Manning Support Network is dedicated to securing due process and a public trial for PFC Manning — and to eventually winning his freedom.
“Never before has a person been charged with ‘aiding the enemy through indirect means’ by making information public,” noted Emma Cape of Courage to Resist. “The outcome of Bradley’s trial will set precedent for the future of whistle-blowing and government transparency.”
From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network- Support For Bradley At Gay Pride Events- The Struggle Continues!
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network website to read about and watch Private Bradley Manning Support efforts at various Gay Pride events in late June.
From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network- Hillary’s shocking comments about Bradley Manning-By: Logan Price
Hillary’s shocking comments about Bradley Manning-By: Logan Price
Thursday June 30, 2011 3:07 pm
For those who don’t believe that Bradley’s personal life and sexuality may be used against him by officials or media critics, this gem of information was presented in a recent Vanity Fair article about Hillary Clinton, while on tour in the Middle East:
“Hillary told staff that she could not fathom how an army private, Bradley Manning, with psychological problems and a drag-queen boyfriend could single-handedly cause the United States unprecedented embarrassment just by labeling massive downloads as Lady Gaga songs.”
Were those comments verbatim, or just the ill-chosen words of the author? We probably won’t know, but one thing is for sure: they were published in a major pop-culture outlet, so there is no taking them back.
Here, is a good take-down of the allegation that Manning had “psychological problems.” As for the comments about Bradley’s sexuality, you can be the judge of that.
If Hillary did indeed say anything of the sort, it is yet another reminder of the Obama administration’s willingness, almost as retaliation for their own embarrassment, to disregard public outcry about Bradley Manning’s charges and detainment and the fact that he has not yet been convicted of any crime.
At a fundraiser in San Francisco in April, Obama told me that Bradley Manning “broke the law,” a legally irresponsible and inappropriate statement that could constitute the ‘unlawful command influence’ of any military judge or jury that may preside over Bradley’s case.
Should the President and commander-in-chief –or the Secretary of State for that matter– really be saying such things about a high profile prisoner like Bradley Manning who has not yet been to trial?
The release of the Diplomatic Cables may have been embarrassing for the Obama Administration, but the life (not political career) of the most important whistleblower of my generation hangs in the balance.
It seems unlikely that we will hear any response from Hillary about this. This administration seems content to say one thing and mean another. Remember the sad irony felt when former white-house briefer Ray McGovern was rather brutally arrested last January for standing up in silent protest during Hillary Clinton’s lecture about free speech at George Washington University?
Not to mention Obama’s unexpected persecution of more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than any previous administration, while giving this speech about the Arab Spring,
“Through our efforts we must support those basic rights to speak your mind and access information. We will support open access to the Internet, and the right of journalists to be heard – whether it’s a big news organization or a blogger. In the 21st century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens. Such open discourse is important even if what is said does not square with our worldview.”
Ironically, that sounds a lot like Bradley’s alleged chat logs, which are being held by the Pentagon as evidence that Bradley was ‘aiding the enemy.’
“I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are… because without the truth you can’t make informed decisions as a public.”
Doubly ironic is that the cables Manning is alleged to have leaked have been hailed as a catalyst of the growing democracy in the Arab world.
The triple irony is that the greatest charge against him is that of ’aiding the enemy.’ Despite campaign promises our leaders act at home as if democracy is only good for us on their terms — in fact it just might be ‘the enemy.’ Or we are. Same thing, really.
Democracy, as the Arab world is showing us, is a do-it-yourself skill that requires courage, humility, and commitment to the truth– no matter the stakes. If Bradley Manning is indeed guilty, it is of these “psychological problems.” He is our Egyptian.
Logan Price is a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. You can follow him on twitter @kstrel.
Thursday June 30, 2011 3:07 pm
For those who don’t believe that Bradley’s personal life and sexuality may be used against him by officials or media critics, this gem of information was presented in a recent Vanity Fair article about Hillary Clinton, while on tour in the Middle East:
“Hillary told staff that she could not fathom how an army private, Bradley Manning, with psychological problems and a drag-queen boyfriend could single-handedly cause the United States unprecedented embarrassment just by labeling massive downloads as Lady Gaga songs.”
Were those comments verbatim, or just the ill-chosen words of the author? We probably won’t know, but one thing is for sure: they were published in a major pop-culture outlet, so there is no taking them back.
Here, is a good take-down of the allegation that Manning had “psychological problems.” As for the comments about Bradley’s sexuality, you can be the judge of that.
If Hillary did indeed say anything of the sort, it is yet another reminder of the Obama administration’s willingness, almost as retaliation for their own embarrassment, to disregard public outcry about Bradley Manning’s charges and detainment and the fact that he has not yet been convicted of any crime.
At a fundraiser in San Francisco in April, Obama told me that Bradley Manning “broke the law,” a legally irresponsible and inappropriate statement that could constitute the ‘unlawful command influence’ of any military judge or jury that may preside over Bradley’s case.
Should the President and commander-in-chief –or the Secretary of State for that matter– really be saying such things about a high profile prisoner like Bradley Manning who has not yet been to trial?
The release of the Diplomatic Cables may have been embarrassing for the Obama Administration, but the life (not political career) of the most important whistleblower of my generation hangs in the balance.
It seems unlikely that we will hear any response from Hillary about this. This administration seems content to say one thing and mean another. Remember the sad irony felt when former white-house briefer Ray McGovern was rather brutally arrested last January for standing up in silent protest during Hillary Clinton’s lecture about free speech at George Washington University?
Not to mention Obama’s unexpected persecution of more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than any previous administration, while giving this speech about the Arab Spring,
“Through our efforts we must support those basic rights to speak your mind and access information. We will support open access to the Internet, and the right of journalists to be heard – whether it’s a big news organization or a blogger. In the 21st century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens. Such open discourse is important even if what is said does not square with our worldview.”
Ironically, that sounds a lot like Bradley’s alleged chat logs, which are being held by the Pentagon as evidence that Bradley was ‘aiding the enemy.’
“I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are… because without the truth you can’t make informed decisions as a public.”
Doubly ironic is that the cables Manning is alleged to have leaked have been hailed as a catalyst of the growing democracy in the Arab world.
The triple irony is that the greatest charge against him is that of ’aiding the enemy.’ Despite campaign promises our leaders act at home as if democracy is only good for us on their terms — in fact it just might be ‘the enemy.’ Or we are. Same thing, really.
Democracy, as the Arab world is showing us, is a do-it-yourself skill that requires courage, humility, and commitment to the truth– no matter the stakes. If Bradley Manning is indeed guilty, it is of these “psychological problems.” He is our Egyptian.
Logan Price is a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. You can follow him on twitter @kstrel.
From The United National Anti-War Committee- Statement In Support Of The Gaza Flotilla
The United National Antiwar Committee calls for the resignation of Secretary of State Clinton because of her statement saying that Israel could use violence against a humanitarian flotilla of boats, including one U.S. flagged ship that is trying to reach the GazaStrip. Also, a report from UNAC steering committee member, Kathy Kelly, who will be on the boat, follows the UNAC statement.
Secretary of State Clinton stated that in response to the humanitarian and totally peaceful mission of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla II, “the Israelis have the right to defend themselves”, implying they can violently attack the boats with U.S. government permission. She has given approval for an attack by a foreign power on a U.S. flagged boat carrying nearly40 Americans who are on a completely legal and admirable mission. This is inexcusable and a total betrayal of her duty to protect law abiding American citizens.
The United National Antiwar Committee, which is a coalition whose last convention had nearly 800 participants, condemns Clinton’s statement, and calls for her resignation as Secretary of State. We call for a clear statement by the Obama Administration that it will not tolerate any Israeli interference in the Freedom Flotilla voyage to the Gaza Strip.
Washington has also threatened to use "material support to terrorism" laws against boat participants-- the same laws which have been used to criminalize the totally legal and peaceful antiwar, solidarity and humanitarian activities of the 23 FBI/grand jury targets in the Midwest, and hundreds of others, mostly Muslim/Arab/South Asian."
At a recent meeting of the UNAC leadership, the organization voted unanimously to support the Freedom Flotilla and called for major demonstrations in the event the boat was attacked.
The U.S. Boat to Gaza website is www.ustogaza.org
END THE SIEGE OF GAZA!
NO US AID TO ISRAEL!
END THE OCCUPATION! SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF RETURN!
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIANS
Secretary of State Clinton stated that in response to the humanitarian and totally peaceful mission of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla II, “the Israelis have the right to defend themselves”, implying they can violently attack the boats with U.S. government permission. She has given approval for an attack by a foreign power on a U.S. flagged boat carrying nearly40 Americans who are on a completely legal and admirable mission. This is inexcusable and a total betrayal of her duty to protect law abiding American citizens.
The United National Antiwar Committee, which is a coalition whose last convention had nearly 800 participants, condemns Clinton’s statement, and calls for her resignation as Secretary of State. We call for a clear statement by the Obama Administration that it will not tolerate any Israeli interference in the Freedom Flotilla voyage to the Gaza Strip.
Washington has also threatened to use "material support to terrorism" laws against boat participants-- the same laws which have been used to criminalize the totally legal and peaceful antiwar, solidarity and humanitarian activities of the 23 FBI/grand jury targets in the Midwest, and hundreds of others, mostly Muslim/Arab/South Asian."
At a recent meeting of the UNAC leadership, the organization voted unanimously to support the Freedom Flotilla and called for major demonstrations in the event the boat was attacked.
The U.S. Boat to Gaza website is www.ustogaza.org
END THE SIEGE OF GAZA!
NO US AID TO ISRAEL!
END THE OCCUPATION! SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF RETURN!
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIANS
*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Austin, 1969)
Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist
Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
********
Markin comment on this issue:
I have noted elsewhere (in the commentaries to the GI Voice archival documents, see archives May 11-18 2011) that I would have given much gold, or at least saved myself some very anxious political wilderness years, if I had run into the writer of this Campus Spartacist polemic in 1969 (or 1970) when I made a dramatic shift left-ward in my political understandings of the world.
Not that I would have adhered to, or even agreed with, what she was saying at the time. Far from it. I had only half-broken form bourgeois society and politics but I was learning, learning fast. I was, frankly, still only “toying around with” Marxist concepts at that time, but I would, as is my wont and had always been my way, made a mental note of who she was, and what political organization she represented. And it was not the CP, SWP, or even PL that even then left me cold.
Although her letter to a friend (a nice touch, a well-honored way to make political points, and a form used by all the revolutionary politicians in the old days when they wanted to ‘talk” serious without evoking their organizational affiliations) is not “high Trotskyism” by any means she has the traditional Stalinist/Maoist analysis down pretty well for someone who probably was fairly new to the world of high Trostkyism. And in the end when you think about it if there could have been fifty or one hundred more like her, not fully formed “Trots” but ardent, a lot of the inner turmoil of the 1969 SDS fight could have been directed toward the main historic (and real) fight in the international working class, Stalinism vs. Trotskyism. A flat-out, no holds barred fight for the heart and soul of those thousands, and maybe tens of thousands, of student and youth radicals who knew the CP, the SWP, and to a lesser extent PL were not the road to revolution. Or, as here, later pretenders like the RU (and the October League).
*********
Campus Spartacist
Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
********
Markin comment on this issue:
I have noted elsewhere (in the commentaries to the GI Voice archival documents, see archives May 11-18 2011) that I would have given much gold, or at least saved myself some very anxious political wilderness years, if I had run into the writer of this Campus Spartacist polemic in 1969 (or 1970) when I made a dramatic shift left-ward in my political understandings of the world.
Not that I would have adhered to, or even agreed with, what she was saying at the time. Far from it. I had only half-broken form bourgeois society and politics but I was learning, learning fast. I was, frankly, still only “toying around with” Marxist concepts at that time, but I would, as is my wont and had always been my way, made a mental note of who she was, and what political organization she represented. And it was not the CP, SWP, or even PL that even then left me cold.
Although her letter to a friend (a nice touch, a well-honored way to make political points, and a form used by all the revolutionary politicians in the old days when they wanted to ‘talk” serious without evoking their organizational affiliations) is not “high Trotskyism” by any means she has the traditional Stalinist/Maoist analysis down pretty well for someone who probably was fairly new to the world of high Trostkyism. And in the end when you think about it if there could have been fifty or one hundred more like her, not fully formed “Trots” but ardent, a lot of the inner turmoil of the 1969 SDS fight could have been directed toward the main historic (and real) fight in the international working class, Stalinism vs. Trotskyism. A flat-out, no holds barred fight for the heart and soul of those thousands, and maybe tens of thousands, of student and youth radicals who knew the CP, the SWP, and to a lesser extent PL were not the road to revolution. Or, as here, later pretenders like the RU (and the October League).
From The National Defend The Cuban Five Committee-Help place an ad about the Cuban Five in the Washington Post-Let's Tell Obama: Free the Cuban Five Now!!
Click on the headline to link to the National Committee To Free The Cuban Five website.
Help place an ad about the Cuban Five in the Washington Post-Let's Tell Obama: Free the Cuban Five Now!!
Donate Now
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five announces the launching of a campaign to place a full-page ad in the Washington Post, the most prominent newspaper in the nation's capital. The Post is read daily by everyone in the U.S. political establishment and all international media outlets.
We think the time is now to put the demands for freedom of the Cuban Five as publicly -- and directly -- as possible, to President Obama and the U.S. government, and say:
Free the Cuban Five Now!
Grant visas immediately to Adriana and Olga!
Support actions for the Cuban Five in the United States and around the world are building exciting momentum in the struggle to free Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René. At the same time, this summer the news was filled with headlines in the U.S. press about prisoner swaps and releases:
The 10 people accused of being Russian agents, who were sent home within weeks of their arrest by the U.S. government
Jimmy Carter traveling to North Korea to get the release of a U.S. citizen
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson going to Cuba to advocate for the release of suspected spy Alan Gross.
The obvious question to Washington is: What about the Cuban Five?
The New York Times ad on March 3, 2004 had a major impact
We ask all supporters of the Five Cuban Heroes to join with us in placing a full-page ad in the Washington Post, to call for the unconditional and immediate release of the Cuban Five, who have endured 12 years of harsh and unjust imprisonment at the hands of the U.S. government, simply because they were defending their people from terrorism.
Please Help with a Generous Donation to Get The Washington Post Ad Published
The cost of a full-page ad is $62,000. Through your donation and that of many other organizations and individuals, together we can help make the Cuban Five's freedom struggle a public debate in Washington, as we did with the New York Times full-page ad (shown at right) in March 2004. Already, our European friends in Germany, Italy, France, as well as organizations in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Canada, have pledged contributions.
Help place an ad about the Cuban Five in the Washington Post-Let's Tell Obama: Free the Cuban Five Now!!
Donate Now
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five announces the launching of a campaign to place a full-page ad in the Washington Post, the most prominent newspaper in the nation's capital. The Post is read daily by everyone in the U.S. political establishment and all international media outlets.
We think the time is now to put the demands for freedom of the Cuban Five as publicly -- and directly -- as possible, to President Obama and the U.S. government, and say:
Free the Cuban Five Now!
Grant visas immediately to Adriana and Olga!
Support actions for the Cuban Five in the United States and around the world are building exciting momentum in the struggle to free Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René. At the same time, this summer the news was filled with headlines in the U.S. press about prisoner swaps and releases:
The 10 people accused of being Russian agents, who were sent home within weeks of their arrest by the U.S. government
Jimmy Carter traveling to North Korea to get the release of a U.S. citizen
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson going to Cuba to advocate for the release of suspected spy Alan Gross.
The obvious question to Washington is: What about the Cuban Five?
The New York Times ad on March 3, 2004 had a major impact
We ask all supporters of the Five Cuban Heroes to join with us in placing a full-page ad in the Washington Post, to call for the unconditional and immediate release of the Cuban Five, who have endured 12 years of harsh and unjust imprisonment at the hands of the U.S. government, simply because they were defending their people from terrorism.
Please Help with a Generous Donation to Get The Washington Post Ad Published
The cost of a full-page ad is $62,000. Through your donation and that of many other organizations and individuals, together we can help make the Cuban Five's freedom struggle a public debate in Washington, as we did with the New York Times full-page ad (shown at right) in March 2004. Already, our European friends in Germany, Italy, France, as well as organizations in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Canada, have pledged contributions.
From The "Cindy Sheehan Soapbox"- Interview with Angela Davis on Latin America
Click on the headline to link to a Cindy Sheehan Soapbox entry, an interview with Angela Davis on Latin American and the so-called Bolivarian revolution. Of course we all called for her defense in the old days when she was under the gun of the American imperialist state around the Black Panthers, George Jackson and Ruchell McGee stuff but, apparently, her Stalinist two-stage theory of socialist revolution from her American Communist Party days, including here in the heartland, is still deeply ingrained in her political psyche-Markin.
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night- Hey Guys, Crime Doesn’t Pay- John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” - A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for John Huston's, The Asphalt Jungle.
DVD Review
The Asphalt Jungle, starring Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, James Whitimore, (and a small, but striking, role by a very young Marilyn Monroe) directed by John Huston, M-G-M Pictures, 1950
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) I have even tried to salvage some noir efforts by touting their plot lines, and others by their use of shadowy black and white cinematography to overcome plot problems. Like The Third Man (and, in that case, the edgy musical score, with more zither than you probably ever thought possible, as well). That brings us this film under review, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, starring Sam Jaffee as the wizened, harden old con trying for one last chance at “easy street” with a big caper, and Sterling Hayden as, well, the “hooligan,” the “muscle”, the guy who has to clean up after, but also is looking for his own version of that easy street.
From the headline to this review you can tell that I have kind of telegraphed the problem here; crime doesn’t pay, okay. But that “wisdom” has not stopped a million "from hunger" guys (and not a few dames) from taking the quick plunge to easy street since way back, way back in phaoroah’s times probably. And it has not stopped Hollywood directors and producers from using that theme as the plot line for their cinematic efforts, some good, some bad, here very good. But in this film the beauty of the thing, despite the familiarity of the plot line and the predictable ending, is that the acting carries the day, especially by Jaffee and Hayden.
Doc (the role played by Sam Jaffee), old time con that he is, just released from stir for some previous big plan crime, had plenty of time on his hands up at the pen to work through his latest plan for easy street. A big plan involving knocking over a big jewelry store, having the merchandise “fenced,” and then off he goes to sun and senoritas, young senoritas by the way, the dirty old man, down in Mexico. Mexico before the drug cartels.
Such an effort need up front cash, and some major backing, to procure the master safe cracker, the expert wheelman and, just in case things get rough, the hooligan,(here Bix, played by Sterling Hayden), the guy who takes all the pot-shots for short money and also to secure a conduit to fence this high roller stuff after the heist. And that is where things start to go awry.
See, one of reasons that crime doesn’t pay, pay in the long or short haul, is that not everybody is on the level. Sure the safe cracker, the wheel man, and the hooligan, the “proles” are on the level. Especially farm boy Bix turned loose in the ugly, asphalt jungle city just looking for a stake to get back home to Kentucky and out of the city soils. Problem is the up-front dough guys, one way or the other, are not on the level. One has no dough (although it was easy to see why that was so since he was, well let’s just call it “keeping time” with a young honey, played by Marilyn Monroe, and even I could see where keeping her "happy”, and gladly, would eat up a guy’s wallet), and the other will wilt under the slightest pressure, police pressure. A few slap arounds and he will sing like a bird, the rat. But who had time to check with the Better Business Bureau when you are in the rackets to check the “fence’s” references (and bank book). Needless to say that while the jewel heist is pulled off, although not without complications, deadly complications in the end, the rest of the story is one where everyone in the theater gets the very painful message already telegraphed above.
Director Huston, however, is aiming at more, as he mentions in the introduction to the film, he wants to investigate that thin line between the bad guys and the good guys, and the good guys are not always the cops and respectable folks. Doc, for instance, is cool customer, and although he makes a few serious mistakes of judgment in whom to, and who not, trust he is a likeable crook. Bix, ditto, because he is a stand-up guy, gives one hundred per cent, for what he is paid to do, and does not leave his buddies in the lurch.
There is no real femme fatale here driving the male action forward to their oblivions but there is Doll, and Doll, Doll has got it bad for Bix, ya, real bad, and so the tensions between them help round out this film. Doll though never figured out the ABCs-that hanging around wrong gees, even stand-up gees, was anything but heartbreak hotel. But sometimes that is the way dames are, thankfully.
Note: I have on previous occasions needed to act the scold in regard to certain actions of the characters in crime noir films. Here I have to take Brother Hayden to task for not learning that crime does not pay. Hayden played Johnny in the 1953 crime noir The Killing, also a caper involving big dough, big dough from a racetrack handle and another perfect plan gone awry. The Asphalt Jungle precedes The Killing, so Brother Hayden shouldn’t you have learned by 1953 that these perfect plans, cinematically at least, are bound to go awry. Smarten up.
DVD Review
The Asphalt Jungle, starring Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, James Whitimore, (and a small, but striking, role by a very young Marilyn Monroe) directed by John Huston, M-G-M Pictures, 1950
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) I have even tried to salvage some noir efforts by touting their plot lines, and others by their use of shadowy black and white cinematography to overcome plot problems. Like The Third Man (and, in that case, the edgy musical score, with more zither than you probably ever thought possible, as well). That brings us this film under review, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, starring Sam Jaffee as the wizened, harden old con trying for one last chance at “easy street” with a big caper, and Sterling Hayden as, well, the “hooligan,” the “muscle”, the guy who has to clean up after, but also is looking for his own version of that easy street.
From the headline to this review you can tell that I have kind of telegraphed the problem here; crime doesn’t pay, okay. But that “wisdom” has not stopped a million "from hunger" guys (and not a few dames) from taking the quick plunge to easy street since way back, way back in phaoroah’s times probably. And it has not stopped Hollywood directors and producers from using that theme as the plot line for their cinematic efforts, some good, some bad, here very good. But in this film the beauty of the thing, despite the familiarity of the plot line and the predictable ending, is that the acting carries the day, especially by Jaffee and Hayden.
Doc (the role played by Sam Jaffee), old time con that he is, just released from stir for some previous big plan crime, had plenty of time on his hands up at the pen to work through his latest plan for easy street. A big plan involving knocking over a big jewelry store, having the merchandise “fenced,” and then off he goes to sun and senoritas, young senoritas by the way, the dirty old man, down in Mexico. Mexico before the drug cartels.
Such an effort need up front cash, and some major backing, to procure the master safe cracker, the expert wheelman and, just in case things get rough, the hooligan,(here Bix, played by Sterling Hayden), the guy who takes all the pot-shots for short money and also to secure a conduit to fence this high roller stuff after the heist. And that is where things start to go awry.
See, one of reasons that crime doesn’t pay, pay in the long or short haul, is that not everybody is on the level. Sure the safe cracker, the wheel man, and the hooligan, the “proles” are on the level. Especially farm boy Bix turned loose in the ugly, asphalt jungle city just looking for a stake to get back home to Kentucky and out of the city soils. Problem is the up-front dough guys, one way or the other, are not on the level. One has no dough (although it was easy to see why that was so since he was, well let’s just call it “keeping time” with a young honey, played by Marilyn Monroe, and even I could see where keeping her "happy”, and gladly, would eat up a guy’s wallet), and the other will wilt under the slightest pressure, police pressure. A few slap arounds and he will sing like a bird, the rat. But who had time to check with the Better Business Bureau when you are in the rackets to check the “fence’s” references (and bank book). Needless to say that while the jewel heist is pulled off, although not without complications, deadly complications in the end, the rest of the story is one where everyone in the theater gets the very painful message already telegraphed above.
Director Huston, however, is aiming at more, as he mentions in the introduction to the film, he wants to investigate that thin line between the bad guys and the good guys, and the good guys are not always the cops and respectable folks. Doc, for instance, is cool customer, and although he makes a few serious mistakes of judgment in whom to, and who not, trust he is a likeable crook. Bix, ditto, because he is a stand-up guy, gives one hundred per cent, for what he is paid to do, and does not leave his buddies in the lurch.
There is no real femme fatale here driving the male action forward to their oblivions but there is Doll, and Doll, Doll has got it bad for Bix, ya, real bad, and so the tensions between them help round out this film. Doll though never figured out the ABCs-that hanging around wrong gees, even stand-up gees, was anything but heartbreak hotel. But sometimes that is the way dames are, thankfully.
Note: I have on previous occasions needed to act the scold in regard to certain actions of the characters in crime noir films. Here I have to take Brother Hayden to task for not learning that crime does not pay. Hayden played Johnny in the 1953 crime noir The Killing, also a caper involving big dough, big dough from a racetrack handle and another perfect plan gone awry. The Asphalt Jungle precedes The Killing, so Brother Hayden shouldn’t you have learned by 1953 that these perfect plans, cinematically at least, are bound to go awry. Smarten up.
From The "Renegade Eye" Blog-China: the anger beneath the surface -Written by Alan Woods
China: the anger beneath the surface -Written by Alan Woods
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
During the revolutionary events in Egypt, the Chinese authorities displayed extreme nervousness, increasing the police presence on the streets and clamping down on the Internet, where references to the Egyptian Revolution were banned. Why should the rulers of China be so worried about events taking place in distant countries?
The media is full of glowing reports about China’s economic growth, which is supposed to have shrugged off the world economic crisis, averaging annual growth of over 10 per cent. But these figures do not tell us anything about the effects of this economic growth on the mass of the population. It tells us nothing about the gross inequality and the growing gulf between rich and poor. It tells us nothing about the 150 million unemployed, or the plight of millions of Chinese peasants who are forced to migrate to overcrowded cities in order to earn a living in factories where they suffer extreme exploitation and conditions resembling industrial England of the times of Charles Dickens.
Unlike Russia, the capitalist counterrevolution in China has been carried out in a controlled manner, under the iron rule of the bureaucracy and the so-called Communist Party, which now admits capitalists into its ranks and is seen as a vehicle for careerists and social climbers. Workers have few rights and the role of the official trade unions is to police them, not to fight for their interests.
China resembles a gigantic pressure cooker with the safety valve clamped shut. It can explode at any time, without warning. This was shown recently by events in Xintang, in the industrialised Guangdong province of southern China where for three days workers rioted against intolerable conditions, burning police vehicles and fighting with the police. Broadcasters in Hong Kong reported that armed police fired teargas to disperse the crowd.
Poverty and affluence
The city of Xintang is around an hour's drive from Guangzhou, the affluent capital of far southern Guangdong province, which lies near the border with Hong Kong and produces about a third of the country's exports. About 150 million workers have moved from the countryside to the cities in search of a better standard of living.
The clashes on Friday 10 June began after police attacked a pregnant woman street vendor, Wang Lianmei, during a crackdown on street stalls. The state news agency Xinhua claimed that she fell during the dispute, while other accounts said that the chengguan – low-level law enforcement officers – had shoved her. Whatever version is correct, there is no doubt what the mass of the people believed.
Migrant workers from her province, Sichuan, gathered immediately. The police have a reputation for thuggish behaviour, and when police vehicles were called to the scene, they were met with a shower of bottles, bricks and stones. Most of the protesters were migrant workers like the woman who suffered police aggression.
The protesters wrecked the government office in the city's Dadun suburb, setting alight at least six vehicles. Parts of iron gates and spiked fencing lay twisted and broken. The crowd began hurling bricks, rocks and bottles at local officials and police, as well as vandalising ATMs and police posts. As rumours spread that police had killed Wang's husband, Tang Xuecai, and that she had been seriously injured another crowd gathered the next day.
Local media said Tang had appeared at a press conference on Sunday to say that his wife and their baby were “fine” and that he was “happy with the government's handling of the case”. But these soothing words cannot conceal the burning anger that is seething just below the surface of Chinese society.
Many locals were too afraid to speak about the incident, and those that did refused to give their name for fear of reprisals. “The atmosphere is tense and we all feel a bit nervous. We are not supposed to talk about it,” said You, a 42-year-old garment worker who, like others, refused to give her full name.
“We’re angry,” a migrant worker from Sichuan told Reuters. The man was too nervous to reveal his name, given the massive deployment of riot police in his neighbourhood. “I feel the rule of law here doesn't seem to exist... the local officials can do what they want.”
Chao, a 27-year-old owner of a denim shop in Xintang told The Bangkok Post (15 June): “It was very scary – the scariest thing I have encountered since I was born.” Chao said at one point in the melee, there were a “few thousand rioters” facing off against a massive police force, adding: “They burnt down one of the buildings.” And, “Together they flipped police cars and set them on fire. A few hundred policemen then came. They started beating people indiscriminately with metal batons”.
“Just an ordinary clash”
Local officials naturally tried to play down what had happened. “The case was just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people but was used by a handful of people who wanted to cause trouble,” said Ye Niuping, the local mayor, urging residents not to spread “concocted rumours”.
The mayor’s words are interesting, and he said more than he intended. He regards this as “just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people”. That means that such clashes are not exceptional but regular occurrences. Only this time, the accumulated anger and resentment of the people boiled over. This bears a striking resemblance to the explosion that shook Tunisia after the suicide of a young street vendor, following police brutality.
“There were many people out on the streets late last night, shouting and trying to create chaos. Some of them even smashed police vehicles,” said a worker from the nearby Fengcai clothing factory, adding that bosses barred employees from leaving the plant. An employee at a hotel in the area said police had told them to stay indoors.
The report of factory bosses preventing the workers from leaving the factory is also interesting. It shows they feared that their workers would join in the protests. State news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that officials had sent work groups to villages, factories and residential communities “to set the record straight”. But Guangdong police headquarters declined to comment and calls to the local police station rang unanswered, said The Guardian in its report of Monday 13 June.
More than 1,000 police officers were drafted into Xintang after the disturbances. By Wednesday an uneasy calm had settled on Xintang, according to an AFP reporter, but many shops and restaurants remained closed, while police armed with batons and shields and armoured vehicles carried out regular patrols, creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. But as many as 1,000 later gathered despite the heavy police presence.
“All around the village you can see burn marks on the ground because of the fires. I have been stopped five times by policemen asking what I was doing here,” a 59-year-old motorcycle taxi driver surnamed Chen told The Bangkok Post. “On the first day of the riot, the fighting continued from 11:00 pm to 6:00 am the next day – it was very bad. You can see today it’s much quieter but authorities are still out in full force,” he added.
Explosive situation
Chi Chio Choi on FlickrThese events must cause a shudder of fear in the ruling echelons. They highlight the growing frustrations in Chinese society. A recent spate of incidents underlines the explosive situation that lies beneath the surface of China’s economic growth. In each case the cause of the unrest seems very different, yet the underlying causes are the same: savage exploitation, low wages, extreme inequality, a complete lack of rights and police brutality.
What happened in Xintang is not an isolated case. In the first week of June hundreds of workers clashed with police in Guangdong, following a dispute over unpaid wages. In Lichuan, Hubei, as many as 2,000 protesters attacked government headquarters recently after a local politician who had complained about official corruption died in police custody.
Other clashes have erupted in southern China in recent weeks, including in Chaozhou, where hundreds of migrant workers demanding payment of wages at a ceramics factory attacked government buildings and set vehicles ablaze. Two officials were detained in central China after 1,500 protesters clashed with riot squads following the death in police custody of a local legislator.
Following the latest protests, a state think-tank has warned that China's tens of millions of workers pouring into the cities from the countryside would become a serious threat to stability unless they were treated more fairly. These are millions of low paid workers who have migrated to the cities of China's manufacturing heartland in search of work.
In an attempt to head off trouble, wages have improved, but there is huge inequality between rich and poor and the gap between migrant workers and local residents, which has fomented resentment and made many feel like second class citizens:
“There are many towns in Guangdong which are still very much [divided between] locals and outsiders. Migrant workers are still doing the lowest paid, dirtiest jobs and suffer discrimination on a daily basis. That’s going to cause resentment and anger to build up” said Geoff Crothall of Hong Kong's China Labour Bulletin. But he added: “There is a lot of pent up anger and frustration among ordinary people – not just migrant workers”.
Although data is hard to come by, social unrest in China is thought to have become increasingly frequent. There are tens of thousands of strikes, peasant protests and other public disturbances reported each year, often linked to anger over official corruption, government abuses and the illegal seizure of land for development. Such incidents have been increasing in recent weeks.
Inner Mongolia in north China witnessed the biggest street protests for 20 years when a Mongolian herder was killed for trying to stop coal trucks trespassing on grasslands. Ethnic Mongols protested for days against the encroachment of grasslands by mining concerns. And in late May a disgruntled man killed four people including himself in revenge bombings over property confiscation in the south of the country.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has estimated that there were more than 90,000 “mass incidents” in 2006, with further increases in the following two years. The panicky response of the authorities indicates that they are well aware of the danger that these widespread grievances will eventually burst out in an explosion like that which swept away the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
The ruling circles are more nervous than at any time since the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. They are preparing for unrest on a far bigger scale. China has increased its domestic security budget by 13.8% this year, to 624.4bn yuan (£59bn). This means that for the first time China is now spending more on internal security than on defence.
China’s rapid economic growth and industrialization has enormously strengthened the working class, which is no longer prepared to tolerate low wages and slave-like conditions in the factories. .Social explosions are being prepared, which can occur suddenly, when nobody expects them. To paraphrase the words of Napoleon: “The Chinese working class is a sleeping giant, when it wakes it will shake the world.”
London, 29 June, 2011
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
During the revolutionary events in Egypt, the Chinese authorities displayed extreme nervousness, increasing the police presence on the streets and clamping down on the Internet, where references to the Egyptian Revolution were banned. Why should the rulers of China be so worried about events taking place in distant countries?
The media is full of glowing reports about China’s economic growth, which is supposed to have shrugged off the world economic crisis, averaging annual growth of over 10 per cent. But these figures do not tell us anything about the effects of this economic growth on the mass of the population. It tells us nothing about the gross inequality and the growing gulf between rich and poor. It tells us nothing about the 150 million unemployed, or the plight of millions of Chinese peasants who are forced to migrate to overcrowded cities in order to earn a living in factories where they suffer extreme exploitation and conditions resembling industrial England of the times of Charles Dickens.
Unlike Russia, the capitalist counterrevolution in China has been carried out in a controlled manner, under the iron rule of the bureaucracy and the so-called Communist Party, which now admits capitalists into its ranks and is seen as a vehicle for careerists and social climbers. Workers have few rights and the role of the official trade unions is to police them, not to fight for their interests.
China resembles a gigantic pressure cooker with the safety valve clamped shut. It can explode at any time, without warning. This was shown recently by events in Xintang, in the industrialised Guangdong province of southern China where for three days workers rioted against intolerable conditions, burning police vehicles and fighting with the police. Broadcasters in Hong Kong reported that armed police fired teargas to disperse the crowd.
Poverty and affluence
The city of Xintang is around an hour's drive from Guangzhou, the affluent capital of far southern Guangdong province, which lies near the border with Hong Kong and produces about a third of the country's exports. About 150 million workers have moved from the countryside to the cities in search of a better standard of living.
The clashes on Friday 10 June began after police attacked a pregnant woman street vendor, Wang Lianmei, during a crackdown on street stalls. The state news agency Xinhua claimed that she fell during the dispute, while other accounts said that the chengguan – low-level law enforcement officers – had shoved her. Whatever version is correct, there is no doubt what the mass of the people believed.
Migrant workers from her province, Sichuan, gathered immediately. The police have a reputation for thuggish behaviour, and when police vehicles were called to the scene, they were met with a shower of bottles, bricks and stones. Most of the protesters were migrant workers like the woman who suffered police aggression.
The protesters wrecked the government office in the city's Dadun suburb, setting alight at least six vehicles. Parts of iron gates and spiked fencing lay twisted and broken. The crowd began hurling bricks, rocks and bottles at local officials and police, as well as vandalising ATMs and police posts. As rumours spread that police had killed Wang's husband, Tang Xuecai, and that she had been seriously injured another crowd gathered the next day.
Local media said Tang had appeared at a press conference on Sunday to say that his wife and their baby were “fine” and that he was “happy with the government's handling of the case”. But these soothing words cannot conceal the burning anger that is seething just below the surface of Chinese society.
Many locals were too afraid to speak about the incident, and those that did refused to give their name for fear of reprisals. “The atmosphere is tense and we all feel a bit nervous. We are not supposed to talk about it,” said You, a 42-year-old garment worker who, like others, refused to give her full name.
“We’re angry,” a migrant worker from Sichuan told Reuters. The man was too nervous to reveal his name, given the massive deployment of riot police in his neighbourhood. “I feel the rule of law here doesn't seem to exist... the local officials can do what they want.”
Chao, a 27-year-old owner of a denim shop in Xintang told The Bangkok Post (15 June): “It was very scary – the scariest thing I have encountered since I was born.” Chao said at one point in the melee, there were a “few thousand rioters” facing off against a massive police force, adding: “They burnt down one of the buildings.” And, “Together they flipped police cars and set them on fire. A few hundred policemen then came. They started beating people indiscriminately with metal batons”.
“Just an ordinary clash”
Local officials naturally tried to play down what had happened. “The case was just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people but was used by a handful of people who wanted to cause trouble,” said Ye Niuping, the local mayor, urging residents not to spread “concocted rumours”.
The mayor’s words are interesting, and he said more than he intended. He regards this as “just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people”. That means that such clashes are not exceptional but regular occurrences. Only this time, the accumulated anger and resentment of the people boiled over. This bears a striking resemblance to the explosion that shook Tunisia after the suicide of a young street vendor, following police brutality.
“There were many people out on the streets late last night, shouting and trying to create chaos. Some of them even smashed police vehicles,” said a worker from the nearby Fengcai clothing factory, adding that bosses barred employees from leaving the plant. An employee at a hotel in the area said police had told them to stay indoors.
The report of factory bosses preventing the workers from leaving the factory is also interesting. It shows they feared that their workers would join in the protests. State news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that officials had sent work groups to villages, factories and residential communities “to set the record straight”. But Guangdong police headquarters declined to comment and calls to the local police station rang unanswered, said The Guardian in its report of Monday 13 June.
More than 1,000 police officers were drafted into Xintang after the disturbances. By Wednesday an uneasy calm had settled on Xintang, according to an AFP reporter, but many shops and restaurants remained closed, while police armed with batons and shields and armoured vehicles carried out regular patrols, creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. But as many as 1,000 later gathered despite the heavy police presence.
“All around the village you can see burn marks on the ground because of the fires. I have been stopped five times by policemen asking what I was doing here,” a 59-year-old motorcycle taxi driver surnamed Chen told The Bangkok Post. “On the first day of the riot, the fighting continued from 11:00 pm to 6:00 am the next day – it was very bad. You can see today it’s much quieter but authorities are still out in full force,” he added.
Explosive situation
Chi Chio Choi on FlickrThese events must cause a shudder of fear in the ruling echelons. They highlight the growing frustrations in Chinese society. A recent spate of incidents underlines the explosive situation that lies beneath the surface of China’s economic growth. In each case the cause of the unrest seems very different, yet the underlying causes are the same: savage exploitation, low wages, extreme inequality, a complete lack of rights and police brutality.
What happened in Xintang is not an isolated case. In the first week of June hundreds of workers clashed with police in Guangdong, following a dispute over unpaid wages. In Lichuan, Hubei, as many as 2,000 protesters attacked government headquarters recently after a local politician who had complained about official corruption died in police custody.
Other clashes have erupted in southern China in recent weeks, including in Chaozhou, where hundreds of migrant workers demanding payment of wages at a ceramics factory attacked government buildings and set vehicles ablaze. Two officials were detained in central China after 1,500 protesters clashed with riot squads following the death in police custody of a local legislator.
Following the latest protests, a state think-tank has warned that China's tens of millions of workers pouring into the cities from the countryside would become a serious threat to stability unless they were treated more fairly. These are millions of low paid workers who have migrated to the cities of China's manufacturing heartland in search of work.
In an attempt to head off trouble, wages have improved, but there is huge inequality between rich and poor and the gap between migrant workers and local residents, which has fomented resentment and made many feel like second class citizens:
“There are many towns in Guangdong which are still very much [divided between] locals and outsiders. Migrant workers are still doing the lowest paid, dirtiest jobs and suffer discrimination on a daily basis. That’s going to cause resentment and anger to build up” said Geoff Crothall of Hong Kong's China Labour Bulletin. But he added: “There is a lot of pent up anger and frustration among ordinary people – not just migrant workers”.
Although data is hard to come by, social unrest in China is thought to have become increasingly frequent. There are tens of thousands of strikes, peasant protests and other public disturbances reported each year, often linked to anger over official corruption, government abuses and the illegal seizure of land for development. Such incidents have been increasing in recent weeks.
Inner Mongolia in north China witnessed the biggest street protests for 20 years when a Mongolian herder was killed for trying to stop coal trucks trespassing on grasslands. Ethnic Mongols protested for days against the encroachment of grasslands by mining concerns. And in late May a disgruntled man killed four people including himself in revenge bombings over property confiscation in the south of the country.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has estimated that there were more than 90,000 “mass incidents” in 2006, with further increases in the following two years. The panicky response of the authorities indicates that they are well aware of the danger that these widespread grievances will eventually burst out in an explosion like that which swept away the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
The ruling circles are more nervous than at any time since the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. They are preparing for unrest on a far bigger scale. China has increased its domestic security budget by 13.8% this year, to 624.4bn yuan (£59bn). This means that for the first time China is now spending more on internal security than on defence.
China’s rapid economic growth and industrialization has enormously strengthened the working class, which is no longer prepared to tolerate low wages and slave-like conditions in the factories. .Social explosions are being prepared, which can occur suddenly, when nobody expects them. To paraphrase the words of Napoleon: “The Chinese working class is a sleeping giant, when it wakes it will shake the world.”
London, 29 June, 2011
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
Daily, Israel keeps proving its lawless rogue credentials, notably by blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a result, it finds new ways to show contempt for human rights, rule of law standards, civility, fundamental Judaic tenets, and its very legitimacy as a nation state, established by mass slaughter and displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.
Today, its war against humanity dirty tricks/state terrorism arsenal includes propaganda, intimidating lawsuits, pressure on other governments, sabotage, subversion, cold-blodded murder, and whatever else it takes to ruthlessly commit slow-motion genocide against nearly 1.7 million Gazans, besides daily crimes against others in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
No wonder growing numbers of fed up Jews are leaving, voting with their feet, including studies showing half or more there actively consider it, and why not.
Israel is an armed camp, a warrior state, a modern-day Sparta, institutionalizing militarism as a way of life. Young children are taught this ideology in school, including to hate, not respect non-Jews, especially Muslims as violent enemies and human rights activists supporting them.
Freedom Flotilla II participants are among them - vilified, sabotaged, delayed, and now blocked from departing by Greece's complicit rogue government, after agreeing to surrender its sovereignty to Western bankers despite mass street protests against it.
In fact, Greece's Washington embassy published an "Announcement on the Flotilla," accessed through the following link:
http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/AuthoritiesAbroad/North+America/USA/EmbassyWashington/Articles/en-US/Announcement+on+the+Flotilla.htm
In part it says:
"Prohibition of the departure of ships with Greek and foreign flags from Greek ports to the maritime area of Gaza today."
In other words, Gaza-bound ships in Greek ports are prohibited from sailing because Israel and Washington demand it - a clear international law violation.
Moreover, "all appropriate measures are taken for the implementation of the said decision....Furthermore, the broader maritime area of eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating in such campaign."
On July 1, the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) headlined, "Greek cabinet votes to stop Flotilla as US Boat to Gaza forced back to port," saying:
Its planned departure already delayed over a week, "the US Boat to Gaza decided Friday to challenge" Greece's government by leaving Athens without permission. However, before reaching international waters, Greek Coast Guard vessels forced it back to port and arrested its captain for leaving port without permission, disturbing sea traffic, and endangering the lives of his passengers. In other words, when no legitimate charges exist, rogue authorities invent them.
Moreover, Greek officials told Canadian boat participants that "the Office of the President has demanded the seizure of their boat." At the same time, Greece's cabinet voted to keep participating boats from leaving, succumbing to Washington and Israeli pressure to block them.
Free Gaza Movement (FGM) founder Greta Berlin issued a statement, saying: "Israel is doing its very, very best to make sure we don't get out of port," stooping to any depth to do it with help from its Washington paymaster partner, equally contemptuous of human rights and rule of law standards.
In fact, Obama provides daily proof of his out-of-control lawlessness, showing perhaps he's America's worst ever president, a hard-earned distinction given challenging competition for top honors.
Regularly, however, he's outdistancing the pack, including his rogue predecessor, multiplying his wars by three, continuing his criminal policies, and adding new ones of his own.
Possible US/Israeli Sabotage
Suspicions are that US Navy Seals and/or Israeli Syayetet 13 commandos sabotaged one boat for Greek, Norwegian and Swedish passengers by cutting off its propeller shaft, and disabled an Irish one altogether in Gocek, Turkey (MV Saoirse), forcing it to abandon its mission but not its determination to try again.
Why not despite Senator Mark Kirk's (R. IL) early June statement saying America should:
"should make available all necessary special operation and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk."
In a free democratic country, those remarks would minimally get him censured, vilified and disgraced. in fact, he should be banned from government service and prosecuted for supporting sabotage and harm to humanitarian passengers, punishing him for supporting crimes against humanity and perhaps war.
However, he's not alone. Besides Obama, Clinton and other administration rogues, as well as legions of them in Congress, Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked Attorney General Eric Holder to take legal steps to stop US participants and prosecute them if they refuse. Perry, in fact, is a right-wing extremist with presidential ambitions, hoping to do to America what he's done to Texas, governing it like George Bush.
IMEMC also headlined another July 1 article, "Free Flotilla activists: 'Gaza blockade has been extended to Greece,' " saying:
Two boats were sabotaged, one disabled, another forced back to port after sailing, and Greek police boarded the Canadian vessel (the Tahrir), blocking its departure, making Greece complicit in Israeli/Washington crimes against humanity, what their street brutality does daily against angry citizen activism.
At first, "port authorities (tried) to take the Tahrir's official transit logs (required for sailing)." However, passengers balked, demanding an explanation why. "When authorities (got) photocopies," they lost interest in the originals. According to organizing committee member Irene McInnes:
"The government of Israel, shamefully with the tacit support of (Canada's) Harper government (a willing co-conspirator), is doing everything in its power to maintain the blockade. Yet we will persevere in our attempts," no matter what rogue governments do.
"We have a legal and moral obligation to challenge the blockade, given the failure of the international community to act," said committee member Dylan Penner. "This is why we must continue our attempts to sail to Gaza: to challenge the illegal and immoral blockade," and Canada's criminal support along with America's and Israel's.
They may win the battle. They've already lost the war, creating a worldwide cause celebre, shaming them for denying humanitarian justice. If Flotilla II vessels reach Gaza, it'll be a bonus, what criminal governments are too blind to see.
According to Reuters on July 1, Flotilla vessels will sail next week, "a spokeswoman said on Friday," adding:
"We want to move the boats by July 5 to get to our rendezvous point no later than July 6 or 7....We will go with what we have," hoping to defeat dirty tricks trying to stop them, including by suing to be allowed to sail.
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials call the mission "provocative." They lied, an Israeli specialty, disgracefully replicated by Washington, Canada, Greece, and other complicit governments, shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
In spite of determined efforts to stop them, activists hope to sail anyway. Perhaps Greece's Coast Guard will use "gunboat diplomacy" or worse to stop them, violating international law brazenly like rogue pirates, complicit with Israel and Washington ready to deploy commando killers against unarmed humanitarian activists.
US Boat/Audacity of Hope lead organizer Col. Ann Wright (a former State Department official who protested the Iraq war by resigning) said:
"We could see the handwriting on the wall, that they were going to try to shut down all the ports across the Mediterranean." As for Greece, she added: "It's not surprising (they) succumbed to the pressure," but lost what's left from its soul in the process, destroying its remaining credentials as democracy's birthplace.
After more a week blocked in Greek ports, every ship still can't sail, showing how far its government will violate international law for Israeli and Washington criminals.
On June 30, Netanyahu thanked Prime Minister Papandreou and other world leaders for acting "against the provocation flotilla."
On July 1, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich claimed Tarek Hamud, son-in-law of Khaled Mashal (Hamas' Damascus-based head) was a leading Flotilla organizer when, in fact, participants say they never heard of him.
Nonetheless, an agitprop Israeli press release said:
"According to Israeli military intelligence, the terrorist organization Hamas and several organizations behind the 2011 Gaza flotilla have similar funding sources. Three Islamic charity funds from the Hamas-affiliated Charity Coalition directly fund Hamas and some of the organizations connected to the 2011 Gaza flotilla."
With no corroborating evidence whatever, the statement is a bald faced lie, common Israeli/Washington fabrications to support their terror tactics.
In fact, Hamas spokesman Izzat al-Risheq emphatically said Hamud "has nothing to do with the flotilla in any way. He is in his house right now in Damascus. This is a lie by the Israeli Army aimed at getting people to oppose this humane mission."
The Flotilla, of course, has nothing to do with Hamas. Like earlier missions and others to come, it's about breaching Gaza's siege as a first step to ending it and liberating Palestine altogether. Because of growing support worldwide, sooner or later it's coming.
A Final Comment
At the same time Israel suffocates Gazans and blocks vital humanitarian aid, Obama's war on terror lawlessness persecutes innocent Muslims at home, prosecuting them for crimes they never conceived or committed.
An earlier article discussed entrapping innocent Muslims, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/entrapping-innocent-muslims.html
Another discussed the Newburgh 4, accessed through the link below:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-letup-in-political-witch-hunts-under.html
Every case involves manufacturing homegrown threats to incite fear as justification to wage global wars against nonbelligerent countries, posing no threat to America or their neighbors.
On May 20, 2009, four New York men were bogusly charged with planning to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center, as well as implausibly shoot down Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles. Prosecutions and convictions followed.
Then on June 29, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said three of the four got 25 year sentences even though there was no plot or crime. The fourth defendant will be sentenced later.
At issue was lawless entrapment, involving an FBI sting against unwitting victims - in this case, four poor black Newburgh, New York men who converted to Islam, two while in prison for unrelated minor offenses.
A Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain (aka Malik) was a paid FBI informant, facing prison and/or deportation on dozens of fraud counts. In return for leniency, he was enlisted to cooperate and well paid for his efforts.
He's the same man used earlier for four separate stings, Yassin Aref among them, another innocent man, entrapped and victimized, now serving a 15 year prison term unjustly.
In post-9/11 America, they're among many Muslim victims of police state justice. They've been targeted, persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, kept in isolation, denied bail, tried on secret evidence on trumped-up charges, convicted by juries too intimidated to acquit, and sentenced to long prison terms for being Muslims in America at the wrong time.
Others were targeted for their environmental and/or animal rights activism. Washington calls them "ecoterrorists." It went on under Bush and now Obama. He's also waging six global wars simultaneously, as well as funding, arming and supporting Israeli terror against nonviolent Palestinian civilians for being Muslims, not Jews.
A web of lies and international complicity sustain this, harming millions of victims globally, including in America and Israel, paying for their governments' crimes.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:00 AM
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
Daily, Israel keeps proving its lawless rogue credentials, notably by blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a result, it finds new ways to show contempt for human rights, rule of law standards, civility, fundamental Judaic tenets, and its very legitimacy as a nation state, established by mass slaughter and displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.
Today, its war against humanity dirty tricks/state terrorism arsenal includes propaganda, intimidating lawsuits, pressure on other governments, sabotage, subversion, cold-blodded murder, and whatever else it takes to ruthlessly commit slow-motion genocide against nearly 1.7 million Gazans, besides daily crimes against others in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
No wonder growing numbers of fed up Jews are leaving, voting with their feet, including studies showing half or more there actively consider it, and why not.
Israel is an armed camp, a warrior state, a modern-day Sparta, institutionalizing militarism as a way of life. Young children are taught this ideology in school, including to hate, not respect non-Jews, especially Muslims as violent enemies and human rights activists supporting them.
Freedom Flotilla II participants are among them - vilified, sabotaged, delayed, and now blocked from departing by Greece's complicit rogue government, after agreeing to surrender its sovereignty to Western bankers despite mass street protests against it.
In fact, Greece's Washington embassy published an "Announcement on the Flotilla," accessed through the following link:
http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/AuthoritiesAbroad/North+America/USA/EmbassyWashington/Articles/en-US/Announcement+on+the+Flotilla.htm
In part it says:
"Prohibition of the departure of ships with Greek and foreign flags from Greek ports to the maritime area of Gaza today."
In other words, Gaza-bound ships in Greek ports are prohibited from sailing because Israel and Washington demand it - a clear international law violation.
Moreover, "all appropriate measures are taken for the implementation of the said decision....Furthermore, the broader maritime area of eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating in such campaign."
On July 1, the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) headlined, "Greek cabinet votes to stop Flotilla as US Boat to Gaza forced back to port," saying:
Its planned departure already delayed over a week, "the US Boat to Gaza decided Friday to challenge" Greece's government by leaving Athens without permission. However, before reaching international waters, Greek Coast Guard vessels forced it back to port and arrested its captain for leaving port without permission, disturbing sea traffic, and endangering the lives of his passengers. In other words, when no legitimate charges exist, rogue authorities invent them.
Moreover, Greek officials told Canadian boat participants that "the Office of the President has demanded the seizure of their boat." At the same time, Greece's cabinet voted to keep participating boats from leaving, succumbing to Washington and Israeli pressure to block them.
Free Gaza Movement (FGM) founder Greta Berlin issued a statement, saying: "Israel is doing its very, very best to make sure we don't get out of port," stooping to any depth to do it with help from its Washington paymaster partner, equally contemptuous of human rights and rule of law standards.
In fact, Obama provides daily proof of his out-of-control lawlessness, showing perhaps he's America's worst ever president, a hard-earned distinction given challenging competition for top honors.
Regularly, however, he's outdistancing the pack, including his rogue predecessor, multiplying his wars by three, continuing his criminal policies, and adding new ones of his own.
Possible US/Israeli Sabotage
Suspicions are that US Navy Seals and/or Israeli Syayetet 13 commandos sabotaged one boat for Greek, Norwegian and Swedish passengers by cutting off its propeller shaft, and disabled an Irish one altogether in Gocek, Turkey (MV Saoirse), forcing it to abandon its mission but not its determination to try again.
Why not despite Senator Mark Kirk's (R. IL) early June statement saying America should:
"should make available all necessary special operation and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk."
In a free democratic country, those remarks would minimally get him censured, vilified and disgraced. in fact, he should be banned from government service and prosecuted for supporting sabotage and harm to humanitarian passengers, punishing him for supporting crimes against humanity and perhaps war.
However, he's not alone. Besides Obama, Clinton and other administration rogues, as well as legions of them in Congress, Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked Attorney General Eric Holder to take legal steps to stop US participants and prosecute them if they refuse. Perry, in fact, is a right-wing extremist with presidential ambitions, hoping to do to America what he's done to Texas, governing it like George Bush.
IMEMC also headlined another July 1 article, "Free Flotilla activists: 'Gaza blockade has been extended to Greece,' " saying:
Two boats were sabotaged, one disabled, another forced back to port after sailing, and Greek police boarded the Canadian vessel (the Tahrir), blocking its departure, making Greece complicit in Israeli/Washington crimes against humanity, what their street brutality does daily against angry citizen activism.
At first, "port authorities (tried) to take the Tahrir's official transit logs (required for sailing)." However, passengers balked, demanding an explanation why. "When authorities (got) photocopies," they lost interest in the originals. According to organizing committee member Irene McInnes:
"The government of Israel, shamefully with the tacit support of (Canada's) Harper government (a willing co-conspirator), is doing everything in its power to maintain the blockade. Yet we will persevere in our attempts," no matter what rogue governments do.
"We have a legal and moral obligation to challenge the blockade, given the failure of the international community to act," said committee member Dylan Penner. "This is why we must continue our attempts to sail to Gaza: to challenge the illegal and immoral blockade," and Canada's criminal support along with America's and Israel's.
They may win the battle. They've already lost the war, creating a worldwide cause celebre, shaming them for denying humanitarian justice. If Flotilla II vessels reach Gaza, it'll be a bonus, what criminal governments are too blind to see.
According to Reuters on July 1, Flotilla vessels will sail next week, "a spokeswoman said on Friday," adding:
"We want to move the boats by July 5 to get to our rendezvous point no later than July 6 or 7....We will go with what we have," hoping to defeat dirty tricks trying to stop them, including by suing to be allowed to sail.
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials call the mission "provocative." They lied, an Israeli specialty, disgracefully replicated by Washington, Canada, Greece, and other complicit governments, shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
In spite of determined efforts to stop them, activists hope to sail anyway. Perhaps Greece's Coast Guard will use "gunboat diplomacy" or worse to stop them, violating international law brazenly like rogue pirates, complicit with Israel and Washington ready to deploy commando killers against unarmed humanitarian activists.
US Boat/Audacity of Hope lead organizer Col. Ann Wright (a former State Department official who protested the Iraq war by resigning) said:
"We could see the handwriting on the wall, that they were going to try to shut down all the ports across the Mediterranean." As for Greece, she added: "It's not surprising (they) succumbed to the pressure," but lost what's left from its soul in the process, destroying its remaining credentials as democracy's birthplace.
After more a week blocked in Greek ports, every ship still can't sail, showing how far its government will violate international law for Israeli and Washington criminals.
On June 30, Netanyahu thanked Prime Minister Papandreou and other world leaders for acting "against the provocation flotilla."
On July 1, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich claimed Tarek Hamud, son-in-law of Khaled Mashal (Hamas' Damascus-based head) was a leading Flotilla organizer when, in fact, participants say they never heard of him.
Nonetheless, an agitprop Israeli press release said:
"According to Israeli military intelligence, the terrorist organization Hamas and several organizations behind the 2011 Gaza flotilla have similar funding sources. Three Islamic charity funds from the Hamas-affiliated Charity Coalition directly fund Hamas and some of the organizations connected to the 2011 Gaza flotilla."
With no corroborating evidence whatever, the statement is a bald faced lie, common Israeli/Washington fabrications to support their terror tactics.
In fact, Hamas spokesman Izzat al-Risheq emphatically said Hamud "has nothing to do with the flotilla in any way. He is in his house right now in Damascus. This is a lie by the Israeli Army aimed at getting people to oppose this humane mission."
The Flotilla, of course, has nothing to do with Hamas. Like earlier missions and others to come, it's about breaching Gaza's siege as a first step to ending it and liberating Palestine altogether. Because of growing support worldwide, sooner or later it's coming.
A Final Comment
At the same time Israel suffocates Gazans and blocks vital humanitarian aid, Obama's war on terror lawlessness persecutes innocent Muslims at home, prosecuting them for crimes they never conceived or committed.
An earlier article discussed entrapping innocent Muslims, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/entrapping-innocent-muslims.html
Another discussed the Newburgh 4, accessed through the link below:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-letup-in-political-witch-hunts-under.html
Every case involves manufacturing homegrown threats to incite fear as justification to wage global wars against nonbelligerent countries, posing no threat to America or their neighbors.
On May 20, 2009, four New York men were bogusly charged with planning to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center, as well as implausibly shoot down Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles. Prosecutions and convictions followed.
Then on June 29, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said three of the four got 25 year sentences even though there was no plot or crime. The fourth defendant will be sentenced later.
At issue was lawless entrapment, involving an FBI sting against unwitting victims - in this case, four poor black Newburgh, New York men who converted to Islam, two while in prison for unrelated minor offenses.
A Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain (aka Malik) was a paid FBI informant, facing prison and/or deportation on dozens of fraud counts. In return for leniency, he was enlisted to cooperate and well paid for his efforts.
He's the same man used earlier for four separate stings, Yassin Aref among them, another innocent man, entrapped and victimized, now serving a 15 year prison term unjustly.
In post-9/11 America, they're among many Muslim victims of police state justice. They've been targeted, persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, kept in isolation, denied bail, tried on secret evidence on trumped-up charges, convicted by juries too intimidated to acquit, and sentenced to long prison terms for being Muslims in America at the wrong time.
Others were targeted for their environmental and/or animal rights activism. Washington calls them "ecoterrorists." It went on under Bush and now Obama. He's also waging six global wars simultaneously, as well as funding, arming and supporting Israeli terror against nonviolent Palestinian civilians for being Muslims, not Jews.
A web of lies and international complicity sustain this, harming millions of victims globally, including in America and Israel, paying for their governments' crimes.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:00 AM
From "The Rag Blog"- Alice Walker-Why I'm joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
Why I'm joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
Pulitzer prize-winning American writer Alice Walker is on board an international flotilla of boats sailing to Gaza to challenge the Israeli blockade. Here she tells why.
By Alice Walker / The Guardian (U.K) / June 27, 2011
See 'After the excitement of the Arab Spring, has the Palestine issue slipped out of view?' by Emine Saner, Below.
Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: what else would I do? I am in my 67th year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?
Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?
There is a scene in the movie Gandhi that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.
Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is, for me, an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the American South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help -- our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protesters -- and came to stand with us.
They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ol' boys'" of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Chaney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.
And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our president's latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the prime minister of Israel?
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.
As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child, etc, is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behavior that makes children everywhere feel afraid.
I once asked my best friend and husband during the era of segregation, who was as staunch a defender of black people's human rights as anyone I'd ever met: how did you find your way to us, to black people, who so needed you? What force shaped your response to the great injustice facing people of color of that time?
I thought he might say it was the speeches, the marches, the example of Martin Luther King Jr, or of others in the movement who exhibited impactful courage and grace. But no. Thinking back, he recounted an episode from his childhood that had led him, inevitably, to our struggle.
He was a little boy on his way home from yeshiva, the Jewish school he attended after regular school let out. His mother, a bookkeeper, was still at work; he was alone. He was frequently harassed by older boys from regular school, and one day two of these boys snatched his yarmulke (skull cap), and, taunting him, ran off with it, eventually throwing it over a fence.
Two black boys appeared, saw his tears, assessed the situation, and took off after the boys who had taken his yarmulke. Chasing the boys down and catching them, they made them climb the fence, retrieve and dust off the yarmulke, and place it respectfully back on his head.
It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put -- without delay, and with tenderness -- back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.
That is why I sail.
[Alice Malsenior Walker is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, anthologist, teacher, editor, publisher, womanist, and activist. The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir by Alice Walker was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Walker won the 2010 Lennon/Ono Grant for Peace. This article was originally published in the British daily, The Guardian. A longer version appears on Alice Walker's blog, alicewalkersgarden.com/blog.]
Activists involved of the new Gaza flotilla called "Freedom Flotilla Two" at press conference on Feb. 7, 2011, in Madrid. (At left, Cindy Sheehan.) Photo by Dominique Faget / AFP / Getty Images.
After the excitement of the Arab Spring,
has the Palestine issue slipped out of view?
Just over a year ago, in the middle of the night, Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship in international waters just off the coast of Israel, opened fire and killed nine activists. The Mavi Marmara was one of six ships in the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and the actions of Israel's military brought widespread international condemnation.
This time, as Freedom Flotilla II sets sail over the next week, with 10 ships carrying many of the same activists who traveled last year, including Swedish writer Henning Mankell, American human rights campaigner Hedy Epstein, and writer and academic Alice Walker, the Israeli government's response will be closely watched.
This week Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UN, wrote a letter saying: "Israel calls on the international community to do everything in their ability in order to prevent the flotilla and warn citizens... of the risks of participating in this type of provocation." The purpose of the flotilla, he said, is "to provoke and aid a radical political agenda." He later added: "We are very determined to defend ourselves and to assert our right to a naval blockade on Gaza."
"The threats of violence won't deter us," says Huwaida Arraf, one of the flotilla organizers. "Nobody is going in to this lightly, but we feel it has to be done. Israel has to realize its violence against us is not going to stop our growing civilian effort to challenge its illegal policies. The size of this flotilla, the number of people involved in organizing it, even after Israel killed nine of our colleagues last year, is testament to that."
She says half a million people applied for the few hundred places: depending on how many of the 10 boats are seaworthy in time, there should be around 400 people on the flotilla.
The campaign began in August 2008, when 44 activists on two small fishing boats set off from Cyprus and managed to reach Gaza. Later that year, the Free Gaza Movement, as it became known, organized several other voyages, usually sending single boats containing small but symbolic supplies such as medicine and toys, and volunteers, including doctors, lawyers, and politicians.
Amid allegations of violence and hostility from Israel's naval forces at sea, the activists decided they would need to send a flotilla, and after months of fundraising and negotiating with NGOs from other countries, particularly Turkey, several ships met in the Mediterranean sea in May last year with the intention of reaching Gaza.
"We didn't make it to Gaza and we lost a lot of colleagues," says Arraf, "but one of the things that was achieved was that people realized what Israel's policies meant, and the violence Israel was using to maintain them. We think our action will put pressure on Israel to end its blockade on Gaza, and we hope the respective governments of all the people participating will take action and do what they should be doing, instead of having their nationals putting their lives at risk like this."
There is a danger, says Chris Doyle, director of the council for Arab-British understanding, of the Palestinian issue being overlooked -- in the west at least -- as focus shifts to countries going through the extraordinary changes in the Arab Spring. "There is a danger that people forget how important this issue is, and that it is boiling. It is still an unresolved issue. At a time when international politicians -- Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, and others-- are concentrating so much on other areas of the region, the issue of Palestine has not gone away."
"Everyone has been so amazed and shocked at the beauty of the Arab revolutions, seeing these incredibly brave and wonderful citizens, that it quite naturally seizes the attention, but at the heart of the Arab revolutions is Palestine," says Karma Nabulsi, an academic and expert on the Middle East. "I would say it hasn't been properly covered in the west, but Palestine is central to what people -- the Arab media, the people who are participating in the Arab revolutions -- talk about all the time."
So where does Palestine fit into the Arab spring? Doyle says: "A Palestinian spring is more than possible. Many senior people within Fatah and the Palestinian authorities have been saying this is the way to go because the negotiations are not seen as credible, and they will have to adopt different tactics. I think that, on the one hand, those tactics could be against the Israeli occupation, but also it represents a threat to the Palestinian authority itself, both to Fatah and Hamas."
The flotilla "gives people heart and encouragement, that the struggle for freedom has friends and supporters," says Nabulsi. "What the flotilla did last year, these plucky little boats, was bring the entire world to look at what [the Israeli government] were doing. Not just because of the brutality of the response of the military, but it shows how simple gestures get to the heart of the issue -- breaking through the silence and the siege, and all the things that seem so big and impossible to do. They did it and they're going to do it again, and that's what is so remarkably brave."
-- Emine Saner / The Guardian (U.K.)
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 3:08 PM
Pulitzer prize-winning American writer Alice Walker is on board an international flotilla of boats sailing to Gaza to challenge the Israeli blockade. Here she tells why.
By Alice Walker / The Guardian (U.K) / June 27, 2011
See 'After the excitement of the Arab Spring, has the Palestine issue slipped out of view?' by Emine Saner, Below.
Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: what else would I do? I am in my 67th year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?
Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?
There is a scene in the movie Gandhi that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.
Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is, for me, an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the American South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help -- our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protesters -- and came to stand with us.
They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ol' boys'" of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Chaney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.
And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our president's latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the prime minister of Israel?
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.
As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child, etc, is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behavior that makes children everywhere feel afraid.
I once asked my best friend and husband during the era of segregation, who was as staunch a defender of black people's human rights as anyone I'd ever met: how did you find your way to us, to black people, who so needed you? What force shaped your response to the great injustice facing people of color of that time?
I thought he might say it was the speeches, the marches, the example of Martin Luther King Jr, or of others in the movement who exhibited impactful courage and grace. But no. Thinking back, he recounted an episode from his childhood that had led him, inevitably, to our struggle.
He was a little boy on his way home from yeshiva, the Jewish school he attended after regular school let out. His mother, a bookkeeper, was still at work; he was alone. He was frequently harassed by older boys from regular school, and one day two of these boys snatched his yarmulke (skull cap), and, taunting him, ran off with it, eventually throwing it over a fence.
Two black boys appeared, saw his tears, assessed the situation, and took off after the boys who had taken his yarmulke. Chasing the boys down and catching them, they made them climb the fence, retrieve and dust off the yarmulke, and place it respectfully back on his head.
It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put -- without delay, and with tenderness -- back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.
That is why I sail.
[Alice Malsenior Walker is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, anthologist, teacher, editor, publisher, womanist, and activist. The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir by Alice Walker was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Walker won the 2010 Lennon/Ono Grant for Peace. This article was originally published in the British daily, The Guardian. A longer version appears on Alice Walker's blog, alicewalkersgarden.com/blog.]
Activists involved of the new Gaza flotilla called "Freedom Flotilla Two" at press conference on Feb. 7, 2011, in Madrid. (At left, Cindy Sheehan.) Photo by Dominique Faget / AFP / Getty Images.
After the excitement of the Arab Spring,
has the Palestine issue slipped out of view?
Just over a year ago, in the middle of the night, Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship in international waters just off the coast of Israel, opened fire and killed nine activists. The Mavi Marmara was one of six ships in the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and the actions of Israel's military brought widespread international condemnation.
This time, as Freedom Flotilla II sets sail over the next week, with 10 ships carrying many of the same activists who traveled last year, including Swedish writer Henning Mankell, American human rights campaigner Hedy Epstein, and writer and academic Alice Walker, the Israeli government's response will be closely watched.
This week Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UN, wrote a letter saying: "Israel calls on the international community to do everything in their ability in order to prevent the flotilla and warn citizens... of the risks of participating in this type of provocation." The purpose of the flotilla, he said, is "to provoke and aid a radical political agenda." He later added: "We are very determined to defend ourselves and to assert our right to a naval blockade on Gaza."
"The threats of violence won't deter us," says Huwaida Arraf, one of the flotilla organizers. "Nobody is going in to this lightly, but we feel it has to be done. Israel has to realize its violence against us is not going to stop our growing civilian effort to challenge its illegal policies. The size of this flotilla, the number of people involved in organizing it, even after Israel killed nine of our colleagues last year, is testament to that."
She says half a million people applied for the few hundred places: depending on how many of the 10 boats are seaworthy in time, there should be around 400 people on the flotilla.
The campaign began in August 2008, when 44 activists on two small fishing boats set off from Cyprus and managed to reach Gaza. Later that year, the Free Gaza Movement, as it became known, organized several other voyages, usually sending single boats containing small but symbolic supplies such as medicine and toys, and volunteers, including doctors, lawyers, and politicians.
Amid allegations of violence and hostility from Israel's naval forces at sea, the activists decided they would need to send a flotilla, and after months of fundraising and negotiating with NGOs from other countries, particularly Turkey, several ships met in the Mediterranean sea in May last year with the intention of reaching Gaza.
"We didn't make it to Gaza and we lost a lot of colleagues," says Arraf, "but one of the things that was achieved was that people realized what Israel's policies meant, and the violence Israel was using to maintain them. We think our action will put pressure on Israel to end its blockade on Gaza, and we hope the respective governments of all the people participating will take action and do what they should be doing, instead of having their nationals putting their lives at risk like this."
There is a danger, says Chris Doyle, director of the council for Arab-British understanding, of the Palestinian issue being overlooked -- in the west at least -- as focus shifts to countries going through the extraordinary changes in the Arab Spring. "There is a danger that people forget how important this issue is, and that it is boiling. It is still an unresolved issue. At a time when international politicians -- Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, and others-- are concentrating so much on other areas of the region, the issue of Palestine has not gone away."
"Everyone has been so amazed and shocked at the beauty of the Arab revolutions, seeing these incredibly brave and wonderful citizens, that it quite naturally seizes the attention, but at the heart of the Arab revolutions is Palestine," says Karma Nabulsi, an academic and expert on the Middle East. "I would say it hasn't been properly covered in the west, but Palestine is central to what people -- the Arab media, the people who are participating in the Arab revolutions -- talk about all the time."
So where does Palestine fit into the Arab spring? Doyle says: "A Palestinian spring is more than possible. Many senior people within Fatah and the Palestinian authorities have been saying this is the way to go because the negotiations are not seen as credible, and they will have to adopt different tactics. I think that, on the one hand, those tactics could be against the Israeli occupation, but also it represents a threat to the Palestinian authority itself, both to Fatah and Hamas."
The flotilla "gives people heart and encouragement, that the struggle for freedom has friends and supporters," says Nabulsi. "What the flotilla did last year, these plucky little boats, was bring the entire world to look at what [the Israeli government] were doing. Not just because of the brutality of the response of the military, but it shows how simple gestures get to the heart of the issue -- breaking through the silence and the siege, and all the things that seem so big and impossible to do. They did it and they're going to do it again, and that's what is so remarkably brave."
-- Emine Saner / The Guardian (U.K.)
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 3:08 PM
Saturday, July 02, 2011
*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-"Campus Spartacist" (NYC, November 1965)
Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist
Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
The following is a commentary taken from one of the G.I. Voice series of archival articles. Since the key historical youth article in htis issue centers on the question of "We won't go" as a civilian respond to the drums of war the points made there on the military side apply here as well:
"On Bolshevik Work In The Military- A Short Note
In the last of a recent series of posts in this blog entitled From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs (see archives, dated May11-18, 2011) I noted that in late 1969 and early 1970 there was desperate need for Bolsheviks in the American military, especially among the ground troops (“grunts” for those who know military terminology then, and now) in Vietnam who, according to estimates by the knowledgeable and un-ostrich-like sectors of the Army brass, were “unreliable”. Unreliable for the brass meaning that the troops could no longer automatically be counted on to pack up their gear at a minute’s notice, go out on patrol, blow away some forsaken village in conjunction with eight billion tons of airborne bombs raining down all around them, and then come back to barracks, or more usually, some ill-defined base camp, kick back, have a few beers (or a couple of joints, ya, it was like that at the end of the 1960s), and forget about it. Unreliable for a Bolshevik of course meaning something different, that the rebellious mass of troops who were sticking it to the brass in their own ill-defined way needed some political direction if the whole thing was not to just blow up in a huge increase of stockade numbers, or worst, just the endless quagmire of drink, drugs, and isolated officer fraggings.
Of course Bolsheviks were as scarce as hen’s teeth on the military ground in Vietnam, and here in America, for that matter. My point, and I included myself as a target of that 1969 point, was that there were real possibilities for serious Bolshevik inroads among the troops just then, and from there who knows. And that is where the real heart of my comment was directed. The mainline policy of the left, organized and unorganized, in regard to anti-war GIs (to the extent that some elements even saw that as a fruitful area of work, except as the “vanguard” of the eight million “mass marches” in such frontline “hot spots” as New York City, San Francisco and Washington, but certainly not Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon) was directed, if anything, at providing, in essence, social services to get individual GIs out anyway they could, or to provide a platform for free speech, free class-war prisoners-type legal defense efforts once the brass started to seriously pull down the hammer on GI anti-war activities (notably in places like Fort Hood Texas, and Fort Jackson, South Carolina) .
Needless to say this comment evoked a certain degree of incomprehension and misunderstanding among some of the younger comrades that I work with in a local anti-imperialist, anti-war committee. The thrust of one comrade’s argument is what has prompted this short note. His argument/question was basically what was wrong with Bolsheviks (or leftists in general since the questioner does not consider himself a Bolshevik devotee), acting in their role as “tribunes of the people” (my shorthand phrase for what he was getting at) in trying to get individuals soldiers out of the military, and out of harm’s way. Of course my short answer to that was “nothing, nothing at all.” In a mass struggle situation with a workers party representative in some bourgeois legislative body, or better, as a commissar in some incipient workers’ council of course such “constituency services” are part of the job. In the direct military context a union for enlisted service personnel would perform such tasks as part of their work, just like a trade union does for its members. Of course that begs the long answer.
The long answer really defines the different in approach and, frankly, outlook between those very large forces who were committed to a moral opposition to war, perhaps any war, and those who actually wanted to end an unjust war, and Vietnam as an unjust war qualified for that designation in triplicate. As I also noted in that last post comment mentioned above when active duty GIs started to emerge looking for civilian support the bulk of the anti-war movement embraced that sector in the same way that it related to the military draft of that day-“hell no, we won’t go.” And that slogan really gets to the crux of the matter. Since we live in not military draft times I will quickly outline the Bolshevik position on military service. We did not then, or do not now, volunteer for the imperial military services. But then, if drafted, you go. No shilly-shallying about it. And if ordered to Vietnam (or wherever) you go, even if that means the possibility of shooting at comrades on the other side, and even if you wish to high heaven for the victory of the other side, like the DNV-NLF in Vietnam. Today, obviously, with a formally all-volunteer military service corps, some of the above does not apply but if we run into a radicalized soldier, and in turn recruit him or her, then they go. No shilly-shallying now either.
That said, most of the other points in that last post can be placed here to buttress my argument above:
“Individual action vs., collective action? Most of the time, while I respect individual heroic efforts (or just great individual achievement), collective action turns the tides of history, and for lots of people not just a few. As far as my own military service time, which included heavy, heavy for the military, anti-war work one of my great regrets is that I did not spend more time arguing against those politicized and radicalized soldiers that I ran into by the handfuls on the issue of staying in and fighting the brass. No re-ups, christ no, but just finishing their tours of duty. More importantly, to stay in and raise anti-war hell (oops!), I mean “serve” in Vietnam if that is where the fates took them. A few more radicals over there and who knows what could have been done especially in the very late 1960s and very early 1970s when the American Army even by important elements of its own brass was declared “unreliable.” That “unreliable” mass needed us to help figure things out. And to act on that figuring out.
Alas I was not Bolshevik then, although I was working my way, blindly, fitfully, and haphazardly to that understanding of the struggle. Moreover, I had not access to those who were arguing for a Bolshevik position on anti-war GI work, although I did have a few vicarious links to the U.S. Socialist Workers Party that organization was not strongly committed to keeping anti-war soldiers in to fight the brass but rather was more interested in having such GIs stand at the head of their eternal, infernal, paternal “mass marches.” My thinking, and that of those around me civilian and military, in any case, was dictated more by the “hell no, we won’t go” strategy of the anti-draft movement extended intact to the military theater than any well thought out notion of “turning the guns the other way.”
And that last phrase, my friends, is what separates the Bolsheviks from everybody else, always."
*********
Campus Spartacist
Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
The following is a commentary taken from one of the G.I. Voice series of archival articles. Since the key historical youth article in htis issue centers on the question of "We won't go" as a civilian respond to the drums of war the points made there on the military side apply here as well:
"On Bolshevik Work In The Military- A Short Note
In the last of a recent series of posts in this blog entitled From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs (see archives, dated May11-18, 2011) I noted that in late 1969 and early 1970 there was desperate need for Bolsheviks in the American military, especially among the ground troops (“grunts” for those who know military terminology then, and now) in Vietnam who, according to estimates by the knowledgeable and un-ostrich-like sectors of the Army brass, were “unreliable”. Unreliable for the brass meaning that the troops could no longer automatically be counted on to pack up their gear at a minute’s notice, go out on patrol, blow away some forsaken village in conjunction with eight billion tons of airborne bombs raining down all around them, and then come back to barracks, or more usually, some ill-defined base camp, kick back, have a few beers (or a couple of joints, ya, it was like that at the end of the 1960s), and forget about it. Unreliable for a Bolshevik of course meaning something different, that the rebellious mass of troops who were sticking it to the brass in their own ill-defined way needed some political direction if the whole thing was not to just blow up in a huge increase of stockade numbers, or worst, just the endless quagmire of drink, drugs, and isolated officer fraggings.
Of course Bolsheviks were as scarce as hen’s teeth on the military ground in Vietnam, and here in America, for that matter. My point, and I included myself as a target of that 1969 point, was that there were real possibilities for serious Bolshevik inroads among the troops just then, and from there who knows. And that is where the real heart of my comment was directed. The mainline policy of the left, organized and unorganized, in regard to anti-war GIs (to the extent that some elements even saw that as a fruitful area of work, except as the “vanguard” of the eight million “mass marches” in such frontline “hot spots” as New York City, San Francisco and Washington, but certainly not Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon) was directed, if anything, at providing, in essence, social services to get individual GIs out anyway they could, or to provide a platform for free speech, free class-war prisoners-type legal defense efforts once the brass started to seriously pull down the hammer on GI anti-war activities (notably in places like Fort Hood Texas, and Fort Jackson, South Carolina) .
Needless to say this comment evoked a certain degree of incomprehension and misunderstanding among some of the younger comrades that I work with in a local anti-imperialist, anti-war committee. The thrust of one comrade’s argument is what has prompted this short note. His argument/question was basically what was wrong with Bolsheviks (or leftists in general since the questioner does not consider himself a Bolshevik devotee), acting in their role as “tribunes of the people” (my shorthand phrase for what he was getting at) in trying to get individuals soldiers out of the military, and out of harm’s way. Of course my short answer to that was “nothing, nothing at all.” In a mass struggle situation with a workers party representative in some bourgeois legislative body, or better, as a commissar in some incipient workers’ council of course such “constituency services” are part of the job. In the direct military context a union for enlisted service personnel would perform such tasks as part of their work, just like a trade union does for its members. Of course that begs the long answer.
The long answer really defines the different in approach and, frankly, outlook between those very large forces who were committed to a moral opposition to war, perhaps any war, and those who actually wanted to end an unjust war, and Vietnam as an unjust war qualified for that designation in triplicate. As I also noted in that last post comment mentioned above when active duty GIs started to emerge looking for civilian support the bulk of the anti-war movement embraced that sector in the same way that it related to the military draft of that day-“hell no, we won’t go.” And that slogan really gets to the crux of the matter. Since we live in not military draft times I will quickly outline the Bolshevik position on military service. We did not then, or do not now, volunteer for the imperial military services. But then, if drafted, you go. No shilly-shallying about it. And if ordered to Vietnam (or wherever) you go, even if that means the possibility of shooting at comrades on the other side, and even if you wish to high heaven for the victory of the other side, like the DNV-NLF in Vietnam. Today, obviously, with a formally all-volunteer military service corps, some of the above does not apply but if we run into a radicalized soldier, and in turn recruit him or her, then they go. No shilly-shallying now either.
That said, most of the other points in that last post can be placed here to buttress my argument above:
“Individual action vs., collective action? Most of the time, while I respect individual heroic efforts (or just great individual achievement), collective action turns the tides of history, and for lots of people not just a few. As far as my own military service time, which included heavy, heavy for the military, anti-war work one of my great regrets is that I did not spend more time arguing against those politicized and radicalized soldiers that I ran into by the handfuls on the issue of staying in and fighting the brass. No re-ups, christ no, but just finishing their tours of duty. More importantly, to stay in and raise anti-war hell (oops!), I mean “serve” in Vietnam if that is where the fates took them. A few more radicals over there and who knows what could have been done especially in the very late 1960s and very early 1970s when the American Army even by important elements of its own brass was declared “unreliable.” That “unreliable” mass needed us to help figure things out. And to act on that figuring out.
Alas I was not Bolshevik then, although I was working my way, blindly, fitfully, and haphazardly to that understanding of the struggle. Moreover, I had not access to those who were arguing for a Bolshevik position on anti-war GI work, although I did have a few vicarious links to the U.S. Socialist Workers Party that organization was not strongly committed to keeping anti-war soldiers in to fight the brass but rather was more interested in having such GIs stand at the head of their eternal, infernal, paternal “mass marches.” My thinking, and that of those around me civilian and military, in any case, was dictated more by the “hell no, we won’t go” strategy of the anti-draft movement extended intact to the military theater than any well thought out notion of “turning the guns the other way.”
And that last phrase, my friends, is what separates the Bolsheviks from everybody else, always."
Out In The Be-Bop Doo Wop Night- When Lady Bop Doo Wopped
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Charts performing Deserie.
CD Review
25 Vocal Groups Sing About “The Great Ladies Of Doo Wop”, various artists, Collectibles Records Corp., 2002
Jack Fitzgerald thought about it for a while, a long while, before he approached the other guys, the other corner boy guys, junior varsity division, but not in that division when it came to singing, singing harmonic rock stuff, yes, doo wop stuff. They were ready to turn big time, well, local big time anyway. And here is where Jack’s thinking was headed, but wait a minute, maybe some things should be mentioned first. Well, first when the word corner boy comes on the horizon most people think about young male teenage boys, white or black, hell, Hispanic too if you lived in the cities, the big melting-pot cities not cities like Clintondale, a strictly white-bread city, mainly Irish like Jack, with a mix of Italians, or as Lenny, Lenny Smith, one of Jack’s corner boys liked to say Eye-talians. All very much Catholic, very high-roller Roman Catholic, not those off-shoot Orthodox guys who split early on from the real church and got crazy with their ritual stuff. Maybe a few protestant white-breads too left over from the days when Clintondale produced presidents, ran revolutions, and caused holy hell for old mother, England.
But whatever the ethnic identity code, teenage boys clad in white tee-shirts (no vee-necks need apply those are for old grandpa guys, old grandpa railroad guys maybe), blue jeans, work boots, but they better be black engineer boots, with buckles, at least they had better be if you want to be a corner boy in Clintondale, and yes, hanging watch fob chain (no, not to tell the time, what is time to a corner boy, but just in case, just in case something comes up and a chain could come in very handy) and yes, for those who could afford such things (or had the guts to “clip” them), a tight waist-sized leather jack, black, against the New England colds, and the offshore winds that blew up, blew up out of nowhere. And Jack, Lenny and Jack’s other corner boys, Benny, Bobby, Billly, Sean, and Larry were, like Jack thought, junior varsity division copies, minus the singing, of that Clintondale corner boy world.
Oh ya, except they, Jack’s they, didn’t have a corner. See, there was no mom and pop variety store, no bowl-a-whirl bowling alley, no Bop’s pool hall, no Bijou movie house, no Doc’s drugstore; you name it no, in all of the Acre section of Clintondale. So boys, corner boys or not, being inventive, or trying to be “squatted’, squatted out in the back section, the section down by the old-time sailors’ graveyard, of the old Clintondale North Elementary School where they had all just graduated from the sixth grade(called locally, in the neighborhood, the Acre school and everybody knew what school you were talking about). And nobody, no Jimmy’s Smith’s corner boys (Lenny’s older brother), no Acre Low-Riders, the motorcycle-riding corner boys, better come near, or else. Yes, or else, although Jack sometimes worked up a sweat thinking what kind of hell would occur if those older guys decided they wanted to stake a claim to that back section. And definitely no girls, no stick girls, no stick twelve-year old girls unless of course, Jack and The Guys (the name of their budding doo wop group, junior division looking to go big time if you didn’t know) were harmonizing and the girls, the shy and bossy alike, started coming around like lemmings from the sea when the boys started their thing. And that was where the problem was.
No, not what you’d think, as Jack continued thinking about his dilemma. Girls were starting to be okay, very okay, mostly, even when the boys were not doo wopping, if you could believe that, because in fifth grade, just a year ago, generic girls were barred, barred no questions asked, from hell’s little back acre. No, what was on Jack’s mind was break-out. Breaking out of the Acre. And even twelve-year old Jack, twelve-year old corner boy Jack, knew that the only way he, and Lenny and the others, were going to break out was by riding the doo wop wave. And the only way that he could see to ride that wave, was one, by getting a girl singer to give a better balance to the now getting too harsh voice-changing age harmonics. But a girl, one girl, meant trouble and Jack knew deep in his young bones that there would be trouble because the only one who qualified, voice-qualified, looks-qualified, and well, just wanted-her-around qualified, was Lonnie Callahan, Sean’s year older sister. But a bunch of boys, corner boys and one looker spelled trouble, watch-fob chain trouble.
And two, maybe worst trouble, the guys needed an original song, and just then an original song with a girl’s name in it like that longing for Deserie stuff by the Charts, My Juanita by the Crests, Aurelia by the Pelicans, Marlena by the Concords, Linda by the Empires, and Barbara by the The Temptations or some other good girl name song that girls couldn’t get enough of and were buying doo wop 45s of like crazy. See all the names The Guys thought of were girls who they were, individually, looking to make points with and so some girls were going to get the short end of the stick. And short end of the stick meant they would not be coming like lemmings to the sea to listen to Jack and The Guys do doo wop in the Acre be-bop night. So you can see Jack’s problem. Right?
CD Review
25 Vocal Groups Sing About “The Great Ladies Of Doo Wop”, various artists, Collectibles Records Corp., 2002
Jack Fitzgerald thought about it for a while, a long while, before he approached the other guys, the other corner boy guys, junior varsity division, but not in that division when it came to singing, singing harmonic rock stuff, yes, doo wop stuff. They were ready to turn big time, well, local big time anyway. And here is where Jack’s thinking was headed, but wait a minute, maybe some things should be mentioned first. Well, first when the word corner boy comes on the horizon most people think about young male teenage boys, white or black, hell, Hispanic too if you lived in the cities, the big melting-pot cities not cities like Clintondale, a strictly white-bread city, mainly Irish like Jack, with a mix of Italians, or as Lenny, Lenny Smith, one of Jack’s corner boys liked to say Eye-talians. All very much Catholic, very high-roller Roman Catholic, not those off-shoot Orthodox guys who split early on from the real church and got crazy with their ritual stuff. Maybe a few protestant white-breads too left over from the days when Clintondale produced presidents, ran revolutions, and caused holy hell for old mother, England.
But whatever the ethnic identity code, teenage boys clad in white tee-shirts (no vee-necks need apply those are for old grandpa guys, old grandpa railroad guys maybe), blue jeans, work boots, but they better be black engineer boots, with buckles, at least they had better be if you want to be a corner boy in Clintondale, and yes, hanging watch fob chain (no, not to tell the time, what is time to a corner boy, but just in case, just in case something comes up and a chain could come in very handy) and yes, for those who could afford such things (or had the guts to “clip” them), a tight waist-sized leather jack, black, against the New England colds, and the offshore winds that blew up, blew up out of nowhere. And Jack, Lenny and Jack’s other corner boys, Benny, Bobby, Billly, Sean, and Larry were, like Jack thought, junior varsity division copies, minus the singing, of that Clintondale corner boy world.
Oh ya, except they, Jack’s they, didn’t have a corner. See, there was no mom and pop variety store, no bowl-a-whirl bowling alley, no Bop’s pool hall, no Bijou movie house, no Doc’s drugstore; you name it no, in all of the Acre section of Clintondale. So boys, corner boys or not, being inventive, or trying to be “squatted’, squatted out in the back section, the section down by the old-time sailors’ graveyard, of the old Clintondale North Elementary School where they had all just graduated from the sixth grade(called locally, in the neighborhood, the Acre school and everybody knew what school you were talking about). And nobody, no Jimmy’s Smith’s corner boys (Lenny’s older brother), no Acre Low-Riders, the motorcycle-riding corner boys, better come near, or else. Yes, or else, although Jack sometimes worked up a sweat thinking what kind of hell would occur if those older guys decided they wanted to stake a claim to that back section. And definitely no girls, no stick girls, no stick twelve-year old girls unless of course, Jack and The Guys (the name of their budding doo wop group, junior division looking to go big time if you didn’t know) were harmonizing and the girls, the shy and bossy alike, started coming around like lemmings from the sea when the boys started their thing. And that was where the problem was.
No, not what you’d think, as Jack continued thinking about his dilemma. Girls were starting to be okay, very okay, mostly, even when the boys were not doo wopping, if you could believe that, because in fifth grade, just a year ago, generic girls were barred, barred no questions asked, from hell’s little back acre. No, what was on Jack’s mind was break-out. Breaking out of the Acre. And even twelve-year old Jack, twelve-year old corner boy Jack, knew that the only way he, and Lenny and the others, were going to break out was by riding the doo wop wave. And the only way that he could see to ride that wave, was one, by getting a girl singer to give a better balance to the now getting too harsh voice-changing age harmonics. But a girl, one girl, meant trouble and Jack knew deep in his young bones that there would be trouble because the only one who qualified, voice-qualified, looks-qualified, and well, just wanted-her-around qualified, was Lonnie Callahan, Sean’s year older sister. But a bunch of boys, corner boys and one looker spelled trouble, watch-fob chain trouble.
And two, maybe worst trouble, the guys needed an original song, and just then an original song with a girl’s name in it like that longing for Deserie stuff by the Charts, My Juanita by the Crests, Aurelia by the Pelicans, Marlena by the Concords, Linda by the Empires, and Barbara by the The Temptations or some other good girl name song that girls couldn’t get enough of and were buying doo wop 45s of like crazy. See all the names The Guys thought of were girls who they were, individually, looking to make points with and so some girls were going to get the short end of the stick. And short end of the stick meant they would not be coming like lemmings to the sea to listen to Jack and The Guys do doo wop in the Acre be-bop night. So you can see Jack’s problem. Right?
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