New York Times Support for US Imperial Wars
by Stephen Lendman
New York Times Support for Imperial Wars - by Stephen Lendman
The Times never met a US imperial war it didn't endorse or designated enemy it didn't vilify. Nor are concerns ever raised about constitutional and international law issues, crimes of war and against humanity, or mass slaughter and destruction.
Only supporting the home team and winning matters, not right or wrong, or cost in terms of dollars and human lives. It's as true about Libya as US wars against Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, others ongoing directly or through proxies, as well as earlier ones, at least in their earlier stages.
The Times strayed far from June 13, 1971 when it was the first broadsheet to begin publishing the top secret Pentagon Papers under Neil Sheehan's byline. At the time, its publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said, "What was revealed, had to be revealed....people had the right to know."
In fact, in a 1996 article, The Times (belatedly) said:
The Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public, but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance."
Did misreporting about alleged Iraq WMDs matter less?Functioning as a de facto Pentagon press agent, Judith Miller's manipulative agitprop bears huge responsibity for America's 2003 war, lying in daily front page bylines.
Times editors were cooperatively complicit, as they've been for all US presidents in their direct and/or proxy wars, notably:
-- Nixon before the Pentagon Papers and Watergate;
-- Reagan in Central America and elsewhere;
-- GHW Bush in Panama, Haiti and Iraq;
-- Clinton on Rwanda, Iraq sanctions, the Balkan wars, and especially for attacking Serbia/Kosovo in 1999;
-- GW Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan;
-- Obama in six direct wars and other proxy ones; as well as
-- every president since Johnson on Israel/Palestine.
The Times backed them all as it now endorses Obama's Libya war, no matter its lawlessness to colonize and plunder another country, adding one more imperial trophy to America's collection.
In feature articles, op-eds, and editorials, The Times cheerleads war, practically glorifying mass slaughter and destruction, besides suppressing vital truths by providing one-sided distorted coverage.
On February 28, 2011, shortly after strife began, op-ed contributors Irwin Cotler and Jared Genser headlined, "Libya and the Responsibility to Protect," saying:
The Security Council "imposed an arms embargo on Libya, targeted sanctions and travel bans against Qaddafi, his family members and senior regime officials, (and) included a critical reference to Libya's responsibility to protect (RtoP) its own citizens from mass atrocities."
The General Assembly's 2005 World Summit Outcome Document adopted RtoP. Paragraph 138 states each nation must "protect (its) population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity."
Paragraph 139 delegates responsibility to the UN "to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from" these crimes.
However, as Professor Marjorie Cohn, former President of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), explains:
"The UN Charter does not permit the use of military force for humanitarian interventions."
As a result, justifying them under RtoP is illegal. It amounts to committing genocide, as well as crimes of war and against humanity to prevent them.
The UN Charter's Chapter VI calls for peaceful conflict dispute resolutions. If they fail, Chapter VII authorizes the Security Council to impose boycotts, embargoes, blockades and severance of diplomatic ties - not war.
Nonetheless, Cotler and Genser said "much more needs to be done....to end (Gaddafi's mass atrocities)" when, in fact, none were committed then or after NATO bombing began.
With no justification, they also said Gaddafi no longer "can legally be described" as Libya's leader. The "nascent provisional government" should be recognized, despite no legitimacy to do so.
In addition, the Security Council needs to do more, they said, including perhaps authorizing "the rapid deployment of an African Union-European Union force to the country," calling it "a test case for the Security Council and its implementation of the RtoP doctrine."
Doing so, of course, effectively endorses war through an illegal invading force, protected by aggressive air support. In other words, bombing - committing crimes on the pretext of preventing them.
Cohn, however, explains that RtoP "violates the basic premise of the UN Charter," calling for peaceful conflict resolutions, not war or other hostile interventions.
The New York Times disagrees, cheerleading war, other forms of violence and imperial dominance, falsifying reports as justification.
On February 28, its editorial headlined, "Qaddafi's Crimes and Fantasies," saying:
His "crimes continue to mount." Citing unverified reports, it said "Libyan Air Force warplanes bombed rebel-controlled areas in the eastern part of the country. Libyan special forces mounted ground assaults on two breakaway cities near the capital. (Finally), the United States (EU and UN want) Qaddafi and his cronies to go (and) called on the International Criminal Court to investigate potential war crimes."
In other words, when no evidence exists, Times correspondents, opinion contributors and editorial writers invent it, reporting it like fact, betraying their readers in the process by lying.
A March 21 editorial headlined, "At War in Libya," saying:
Gaddafi "has long been a thug and a murderer who has never paid for his many crimes, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103."
Of course, neither he or falsely convicted Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi had anything to do with it, what Times writers won't explain. In fact, Scottish judges knew Megrahi was innocent, saying so in their final opinion. In addition, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's investigation called his conviction a gross miscarriage of justice, saying no credible evidence of his involvement exists. Nor Gaddafi's.
In fact, he never admitted fault, saying only Libya would accept responsibility to have international sanctions lifted. Nonetheless, to this day, he stands falsely accused, including by The New York Times.
Its editorial called UN Resolution 1973, instituting a no-fly zone, "an extraordinary moment," even though Pentagon commanders admitted beforehand that passing it meant bombing Gaddafi's command and control capabilities.
Once it began, The Times endorsed it, admitting "no perfect formula for military intervention." It then falsely accused Gaddafi of "gather(ing) women and children as human shields at his compound," calling him "erratic, widely reviled (despite his popularity), armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism."
Endorsing military intervention to remove him, The Times claimed if US recruited, armed and funded paramilitaries were "crush(ed), it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world."
In fact, like Washington and its NATO coalition partners, The Times deplores democracy, peaceful resolution, and rule of law principles, opting instead for lawless intervention for imperial dominance.
On June 16, its editorial headlined, "Libya and the War Powers Act," saying:
"It would be hugely costly - for this country's credibility, for the future of NATO and for the people of Libya - if Congress were to force (Obama) to abandon military operations over Libya."
The editorial came during duplicitous congressional posturing on Libya, avoiding its responsibility to stop funding Obama's war. Instead, debate focused on whether or not he had War Powers Resolution authority to wage it, not that under international and constitutional law it's illegal - a consideration airbrushed from The Times' editorial and other reports.
As a result, it said "Congress....needs to authorize continued American support for NATO's air campaign over Libya," failing to explain that NATO is code language for the Pentagon, running all its operations under its supreme US commander.
After rebel forces assassinated commander Abdul Fatah Younis, Times writers downplayed it, saying details about it were "in dispute," when it was clear what happened.
On August 6, in a straight propaganda piece right out of Judith Miller's playbook, Times writer David Kirkpatrick headlined, "In Libya's Capital, Straight Talk From Christians," quoting Protestant minister Rev. Hamdy Daoud saying:
"When NATO bombs at night, I hear my neighbors clap and cheer 'bravo'....People are very, very down, and they are depending entirely on NATO," in a city where near unanimity condemns its atrocities, besides rallying en masse for Gaddafi.
Never once did a Times writer report it or how daily bombings target civilians, factories, schools, hospitals, vital infrastructure, residential neighborhoods and other nonmilitary sites, slaughtering hundreds of innocent people.
Instead, they falsify reports about anti-Gaddafi sentiment and rebel advances, leaving unexplained how Washington and its NATO partners stand to gain if he's ousted, at the expense of all Libyans, except a Western-installed puppet regime as in Iraq and Afghanistan, complicit in violence and immiserating their people.
On August 8, Times writer Kareem Fahim headlined "Libyan Rebels Dissolve Cabinet Amid Discord," saying only that it was "for improper administrative procedures," and that Younis "was killed more than a week ago in murky circumstances."
Omitted entirely was explaining the Transitional National Council's illegitimacy, that it's teetering close to collapse, and that disparate rebel elements are in disarray.
A Final Comment
Like all US major media journalism, The Times substitutes managed news for truth, based on facts, not insults to its readers by distorting and/or omitting it.
In their landmark book, "Manufacturing Consent," Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained their "propaganda model." It controls the public message by 'filter(ing)" disturbing truths, "leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print" or air.
It's why America's media, including The Times, risk a free and open society by controlling the news for powerful interests they support, at the same time betraying their readers, viewers and listeners.
As a result, a truth emergency exists when it's so badly needed. It's also why supporting independent sources is vital.
Where else can you get what America's media won't report, notably by New York Times correspondents, op-ed contributors, and editorial writers, straying far afield from honest journalism and opinions. Getting them, of course, means shunning them.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Economic End Times - by Stephen Lendman
Economic End Times
by Stephen Lendman
Economic End Times - by Stephen Lendman
Despite a deepening global depression, establishment economists are in denial. On June 9, the Wall Street Journal said those surveyed expected slow, steady growth through 2011, despite high US unemployment, a housing depression, European sovereign debt in crisis, and the unreported insolvency of major French and other banks.
On June 8, testifying before the House Budget Committee, Fed chairman Bernanke fantasized about 3.5% US growth through 2011, stopping just short of ruling out the possibility of recession he called "unlikely."
And in 2007, when equity and housing bubbles peaked, neither he or Greenspan expressed alarm, destroying their credibility in the process.
Based on an early August survey, establishment (in bed with Wall Street) economists now put the chance of "another" downturn at 30%, compared to 15% in May, expecting 2.5% growth over the next year.
Some, in fact were sanguine, calling America's economy strong, attributing negative views to a crisis of confidence, not hard reality, signaled by the August 4 shot across the bow market rout.
Despite a predictable rebound, it signified much worse to come because conditions are dire getting worse. Even manipulated data show enough to sound alarms, highlighted by economists like David Rosenberg.
On August 15, he expressed surprise about so "little reaction to the shocking US consumer sentiment data that were released on Friday - the worst since the tail end of the Jimmy Carter recession era in 1980."
Moreover, consumer spending is weak even with suspect upward revisions. In addition, "(n)ew mortgage and refinancing loan volumes fell 19% in Q2 to" a three-year low. Further, auto buying plans declined to a decade low, likely headed much lower as economic conditions deteriorate. Other big ticket buying plans also dropped to 2008-09 depths when the economy falling off a cliff seemed possible.
In fact, growth indicators overall are rapidly heading south at a time they're already woefully weak. There's no end to decline in sight. Remarkably, negative household assessments of government policy hit record lows, surpassing the depths of the early 1980s recession and Watergate.
As a result, Rosenberg called the US economy "recession-bound, expecting" even manipulated data to show negative Q 3 growth, followed by greater contraction in Q 4 and 2012 Q 1.
"(P)ractically every major variable is" negative. "We are past the point of no return....I can understand the innate need to be hopeful," he said, but it's impossible to dispute reality.
Weakness and imbalances are extreme. American and European sovereign debt are overextended and troubled. "Anyone who thinks this gets contained (especially in Europe) slept through the last financial crisis after Lehman failed."
And when weak economies beg for stimulus, austerity is force-fed, assuring far greater economic pain. It's coming, will deepen and persist because policy measures are opposite of what's needed.
Commenting on the August 4 market rout, Rosenberg said nearly always it signals downturns. Western economies are fundamentally weak. Unlike earlier times when the Fed could cut interest rates, it now relies on "untested methods to underpin investor confidence and the economy."
And if America's economy plunges, so do others even deeper. Hunker down believes Rosenberg and independent economists believing the worst is yet to come.
Other Respected Views
Economist Michael Hudson is unequivocal explaining a debt deflation caused Depression. The game is over. The global ponzi scheme ran its course. Papering over conditions only works so long before hitting a wall. Tunnel vision assures trouble. Wrecking economies to save banks is lunacy, and forced austerity when stimulus is needed guarantees disaster. It's not a matter of if, just when, how deep and protracted.
Economist Paul Craig Roberts, trends analyst Gerald Celente, and others worry whether Washington will choose greater war to distract public attention from economic distress. In 2009, in fact, Celente warned about the oldest trick in the book, saying:
"Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war."
In 2011, he called it a worrisome wild card, perhaps preceded by a major 9/11 type false flag to enlist public support.
Bet on it, in fact, if conditions become bad enough, public anger grows, and Obama's approval rating crashes ahead of the 2012 election. War based on heightened fear is how to raise it perhaps high enough to win.
Highly respect analyst Jeremy Grantham began his August letter to investors headlined, "Danger: Children at Play" with a "Stop Press Addendum," saying:
"My worst fears about the potential loss of confidence in our leaders, institutions, and 'capitalism itself' are being realized. We have been digging this hole for a long time. We really must be serious in our attempts to resuscitate the 'average (number of) hour(s) worked' and the fortunes of the average worker."
"Walking across the Boston Common this morning, I came to realize that the unpalatable (to me) option of some debt forgiveness on mortgages looks increasingly to be necessary as well as tax changes" he discussed in his report.
"To go further, if we mean to prosper long term, I am sure we need to act to make debt less attractive to everybody: it really is a snare and a delusion" to think otherwise.
Calling America's Congress "dysfunctional," he said it has to decide between two bad choices:
-- austerity to kill demand when the economy is on its knees; or
-- do nothing, risk default, compromise the integrity of the dollar and send "a powerful signal to the world that the US, at least for now," is past its prime.
In fact, growing numbers acknowledge that reality. "Come to think of it," said Grantham, "the choice was between a technical default and looking like a Banana Republic (or) technical blackmail and looking" like the same thing. "Just different bananas perhaps."
Overall he sees hard times, "lean years." Any pretense otherwise "is beyond wishful thinking or weak math skills. It is either childish or gross and cynical politics: that is to say, even worse politics than usual."
With balanced budgets mathematically impossible without major politically unpalatable policy changes, the alternative is "kicking an enormous can down the road" for even greater predictable disaster.
It's the equivalent of not dealing with a metastasizing cancer until the patient dies or is too far gone to save.
Adding his own grim assessment, Grantham said if we keep "drift(ing) around rudderless, if we don't develop some real (nowhere in sight) leadership soon, then seven lean years may be the least of" America's woes.
Commenting on the August 4 market rout, he added that it "always (has a) disturbing habit of ignoring the obvious and ignoring it some more, until, in the blink of an eye, it doesn't."
On August 4, it blinked, making "risk avoidance....a good idea," Grantham believes that may be his polite way of saying watch out! I warned you! There's no visible light at the end of this tunnel, getting increasingly darker. Watch out indeed.
In fact, a deepening global Depression just began. It'll last years before ending, and cause grave harm to billions worldwide, not responsible for their leaders' malfeasance, especially those domiciled on Wall Street, complicit with political puppets in Washington they own.
Moreover, the greater pain caused, the more they benefit like their Western counterparts, wrecking their economies for personal gain.
No wonder astute analysts like Grantham expressed lack of confidence in America's leaders, disgust with a "dysfunctional Congress," and questioned "capitalism itself," perhaps self-destructing as he wrote.
For billions of global victims, it can't happen a moment too soon, if it isn't already too late to help.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
by Stephen Lendman
Economic End Times - by Stephen Lendman
Despite a deepening global depression, establishment economists are in denial. On June 9, the Wall Street Journal said those surveyed expected slow, steady growth through 2011, despite high US unemployment, a housing depression, European sovereign debt in crisis, and the unreported insolvency of major French and other banks.
On June 8, testifying before the House Budget Committee, Fed chairman Bernanke fantasized about 3.5% US growth through 2011, stopping just short of ruling out the possibility of recession he called "unlikely."
And in 2007, when equity and housing bubbles peaked, neither he or Greenspan expressed alarm, destroying their credibility in the process.
Based on an early August survey, establishment (in bed with Wall Street) economists now put the chance of "another" downturn at 30%, compared to 15% in May, expecting 2.5% growth over the next year.
Some, in fact were sanguine, calling America's economy strong, attributing negative views to a crisis of confidence, not hard reality, signaled by the August 4 shot across the bow market rout.
Despite a predictable rebound, it signified much worse to come because conditions are dire getting worse. Even manipulated data show enough to sound alarms, highlighted by economists like David Rosenberg.
On August 15, he expressed surprise about so "little reaction to the shocking US consumer sentiment data that were released on Friday - the worst since the tail end of the Jimmy Carter recession era in 1980."
Moreover, consumer spending is weak even with suspect upward revisions. In addition, "(n)ew mortgage and refinancing loan volumes fell 19% in Q2 to" a three-year low. Further, auto buying plans declined to a decade low, likely headed much lower as economic conditions deteriorate. Other big ticket buying plans also dropped to 2008-09 depths when the economy falling off a cliff seemed possible.
In fact, growth indicators overall are rapidly heading south at a time they're already woefully weak. There's no end to decline in sight. Remarkably, negative household assessments of government policy hit record lows, surpassing the depths of the early 1980s recession and Watergate.
As a result, Rosenberg called the US economy "recession-bound, expecting" even manipulated data to show negative Q 3 growth, followed by greater contraction in Q 4 and 2012 Q 1.
"(P)ractically every major variable is" negative. "We are past the point of no return....I can understand the innate need to be hopeful," he said, but it's impossible to dispute reality.
Weakness and imbalances are extreme. American and European sovereign debt are overextended and troubled. "Anyone who thinks this gets contained (especially in Europe) slept through the last financial crisis after Lehman failed."
And when weak economies beg for stimulus, austerity is force-fed, assuring far greater economic pain. It's coming, will deepen and persist because policy measures are opposite of what's needed.
Commenting on the August 4 market rout, Rosenberg said nearly always it signals downturns. Western economies are fundamentally weak. Unlike earlier times when the Fed could cut interest rates, it now relies on "untested methods to underpin investor confidence and the economy."
And if America's economy plunges, so do others even deeper. Hunker down believes Rosenberg and independent economists believing the worst is yet to come.
Other Respected Views
Economist Michael Hudson is unequivocal explaining a debt deflation caused Depression. The game is over. The global ponzi scheme ran its course. Papering over conditions only works so long before hitting a wall. Tunnel vision assures trouble. Wrecking economies to save banks is lunacy, and forced austerity when stimulus is needed guarantees disaster. It's not a matter of if, just when, how deep and protracted.
Economist Paul Craig Roberts, trends analyst Gerald Celente, and others worry whether Washington will choose greater war to distract public attention from economic distress. In 2009, in fact, Celente warned about the oldest trick in the book, saying:
"Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war."
In 2011, he called it a worrisome wild card, perhaps preceded by a major 9/11 type false flag to enlist public support.
Bet on it, in fact, if conditions become bad enough, public anger grows, and Obama's approval rating crashes ahead of the 2012 election. War based on heightened fear is how to raise it perhaps high enough to win.
Highly respect analyst Jeremy Grantham began his August letter to investors headlined, "Danger: Children at Play" with a "Stop Press Addendum," saying:
"My worst fears about the potential loss of confidence in our leaders, institutions, and 'capitalism itself' are being realized. We have been digging this hole for a long time. We really must be serious in our attempts to resuscitate the 'average (number of) hour(s) worked' and the fortunes of the average worker."
"Walking across the Boston Common this morning, I came to realize that the unpalatable (to me) option of some debt forgiveness on mortgages looks increasingly to be necessary as well as tax changes" he discussed in his report.
"To go further, if we mean to prosper long term, I am sure we need to act to make debt less attractive to everybody: it really is a snare and a delusion" to think otherwise.
Calling America's Congress "dysfunctional," he said it has to decide between two bad choices:
-- austerity to kill demand when the economy is on its knees; or
-- do nothing, risk default, compromise the integrity of the dollar and send "a powerful signal to the world that the US, at least for now," is past its prime.
In fact, growing numbers acknowledge that reality. "Come to think of it," said Grantham, "the choice was between a technical default and looking like a Banana Republic (or) technical blackmail and looking" like the same thing. "Just different bananas perhaps."
Overall he sees hard times, "lean years." Any pretense otherwise "is beyond wishful thinking or weak math skills. It is either childish or gross and cynical politics: that is to say, even worse politics than usual."
With balanced budgets mathematically impossible without major politically unpalatable policy changes, the alternative is "kicking an enormous can down the road" for even greater predictable disaster.
It's the equivalent of not dealing with a metastasizing cancer until the patient dies or is too far gone to save.
Adding his own grim assessment, Grantham said if we keep "drift(ing) around rudderless, if we don't develop some real (nowhere in sight) leadership soon, then seven lean years may be the least of" America's woes.
Commenting on the August 4 market rout, he added that it "always (has a) disturbing habit of ignoring the obvious and ignoring it some more, until, in the blink of an eye, it doesn't."
On August 4, it blinked, making "risk avoidance....a good idea," Grantham believes that may be his polite way of saying watch out! I warned you! There's no visible light at the end of this tunnel, getting increasingly darker. Watch out indeed.
In fact, a deepening global Depression just began. It'll last years before ending, and cause grave harm to billions worldwide, not responsible for their leaders' malfeasance, especially those domiciled on Wall Street, complicit with political puppets in Washington they own.
Moreover, the greater pain caused, the more they benefit like their Western counterparts, wrecking their economies for personal gain.
No wonder astute analysts like Grantham expressed lack of confidence in America's leaders, disgust with a "dysfunctional Congress," and questioned "capitalism itself," perhaps self-destructing as he wrote.
For billions of global victims, it can't happen a moment too soon, if it isn't already too late to help.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
RIP: America's Anti-War Movement - by Stephen Lendman (Sad But True)
RIP: America's Anti-War Movement
by Stephen Lendman
RIP: America's Anti-War Movement - by Stephen Lendman
On August 8, the libertarian Reason Foundation (RF) asked about the absence of anti-war sentiment in America, saying:
"The Obama administration is on pace to have more American soldiers killed in" Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did in his first term.
Besides the shocking number of injuries, permanent impairments, physical trauma, and record number of suicides because of lengthy repeated deployments, iCasualties.org listed 630 Afghan deaths from 2001 through 2008 under Bush.
Since Obama took office, it's 1,112 (plus another unconfirmed two dozen or more on August 18) and counting. Deaths also mount in Iraq, though smaller numbers. Most get scant, if any media attention. As a result, RF asked:
"First, where are the antiwar protests? And second, where is the press?"
According to United for Peace and Justice's (UFPJ) Michael McPhearson, it's partly partisan politics. Many anti-war protesters were Democrats. "Once Obama got into office, they kind of demobilized themselves," and America's major media provided no momentum to reinvigorate them.
"Because he's a Democrat," said McPhearson, "they don't want to oppose him in the same way as they opposed Bush. The politics of it allows him more breathing room when it comes to the wars."
Of course, UFPJ also has been less anti-war active under Obama than Bush, not quiescent, but much less resonant than through 2008.
UFPJ "calls for an immediate withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan with a negotiated just settlement involving international parties, including regional neighbors" when condemnation is essential.
Moreover, it says nothing about war and occupation of Iraq, not enough about Afghanistan, the lawlessness of all US wars, why they're waged, other illegal wars against Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, support for Israeli belligerence against Palestinians, as well as denouncing them all as Washington-sponsored imperial aggression.
Failure to do so betrays the trust of its member groups and followers. All US wars are illegal. America is responsible for daily crimes of war and against humanity in every theater. Exposing and denouncing them is the first crucial step to arousing public anger enough to stop them.
Supporting justice and peace means doing it actively every day. It's why UFPJ was founded, but it strayed from its original mission. It's not treating Obama like Bush, despite his more extremist belligerent record. Who can know if it's not exposed, explained, and condemned.
Instead, RP called the approaching 9/11 10th anniversary "a sober time to weigh these issues" for anyone foolish enough to support imperial wars, adding:
"Mr. Obama can make the case here, as he does with the economy, that he is merely cleaning up and winding down the bad situation he was left by his predecessor."
Astonishingly, RP doesn't get it, so how can most Americans. Obama made the bad situation he inherited infinitely worse, tripling down Bush on wars, letting criminal bankers loot the treasury, and force-feeding austerity on working Americans when massive stimulus is needed.
At the same time, he, complicit Democrats and Republicans continue doling favors on Wall Street and other corporate favorites, letting them steal all public wealth until there's none.
The article's writer, Ira Stoll, edits the "Future of Capitalism" web site. Short of reforming years of predatory malfeasance, it has none. Perhaps wars as well one day if they end up destroying planet earth, freeing it for whatever lower life survives.
Though war is never the answer, so far, however, it's resilient, little challenged by popular outrage in America or across Europe.
In their August 16 article titled, "Who Will Save Libya From Its Western Saviours," Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone lament about "no popular movement in Europe capable of stopping or even slowing the NATO onslaught."
Shamefully, the comatose "European left has missed its opportunity to come back to life by opposing one of the most blatantly inexcusable wars in history," adding that "Europe itself will suffer from this moral bankruptcy."
So will Americans, failing to denounce the corrupt Obama administration for its multiple wars, including Libya, especially when waging them diverts essential resources away from vital homeland needs.
Even though a new Rasmussen poll shows 80% oppose waging war on Libya (a new low), it's not evident in street or other protests, so Obama is unopposed waging it and other wars.
Last October, Justin Raimondo told a University of Michigan audience:
"What happened to the antiwar movement? Remember all those marches, all those placards, those giant puppets and displays of moral outrage? (They're) vanished! Gone! Evaporated like morning mist!"
Though Bush is also gone, another uber-hawk replaced him "a new Caesar," less of an easy target, quoting Code Pink's Medea Benjamin saying:
"....it's hard to mobilize people under Obama. We have the same anti-war movement (but) not the same passion," though it's hard believing its comatose state resembles impressive past efforts.
Yet it's critical for that passion to be revived and sustained until America's addiction to war ends. Freedom and planet earth's fate depend on it.
America's Vietnam Era Anti-War Spirit
On April 22, 1971, a young John Kerry offered a glimpse of war's dark side never shown or discussed by America's media.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), he said, in part, that he came to discuss an investigation involving "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans," who admitted committing Southeast Asian war crimes, explaining:
"stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, bl(ew) up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages (like) Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
Calling it a "Winter Soldier Investigation," he said "there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America." Linking America's involvement "to the preservation of freedom....is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy...."
"We saw firsthand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime....We rationalized destroying villages....to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very cooly a My Lai," and many others like it. "We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals."
"We have come here....because we believe this body can be responsive to the will of the people (saying) we should be out of Vietnam now...."
In disgust, he told Washington's WRC-TV that "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals," protesting against America's Vietnam War involvement.
Like millions of angry Americans then, he wanted no more of what he hoped would end. That spirit's sadly lacking today.
In contrast, various interests and groups united in the 1960s and 70s against war, including students, workers, middle class households, academics, and others.
Gaining prominence in 1965, anti-war spirit peaked in 1968, strong enough for Lyndon Johnson to tell Americans in a nationally televised March 31 address that:
"I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."
How could he with a 36% approval rating and only 26% pleased with his handling of the war. In fact, once Bobby Kennedy joined the race after the March New Hampshire primary (less than three months before his state-sponsored June assassination to remove him), he had no chance of winning, despite his Great Society accomplishments.
By early 1965, anti-war activism gained momentum when America began bombing North Vietnam. In February and March, protest marches rallied at the Oakland Army Terminal, the departure point for many troops to Southeast Asia.
In late March, University of Michigan faculty members held "teach-ins" to educate students about the immorality and political foundation of America's involvement. It spread to other campuses across the country, followed by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) escalating dissent nationally, including an April 17, 1965 Washington rally, drawing up to 25,000.
Numerous events followed, drawing thousands against war. In October 1967, a two-day march on the Pentagon attracted national media attention (practically impossible today), while resistance leaders urged young men to burn their draft cards.
Today, of course, America's military is all-volunteer, a major difference between now and then. In the 1960s, anti-war fervor erupted on army bases. In 1966, the "Fort Hood 3" gained prominence for refusing to serve in Vietnam.
Underground networks helped draft resisters leave the country. In addition, churches offered sanctuary. Anti-war activism among civil rights leaders provided more impetus, including Martin Luther King. In January 1967, his Chicago Defender article opposed the war on moral grounds.
On April 4, a year to the day before his assassination, he delivered his famous New York Riverside Church anti-war speech, unmentioned by America's media in annual Martin Luther King Day commemorations.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the anti-war movement gained more strength, especially after the January 1968 Tet Offensive and June 1971 Pentagon Papers release, showing the Johnson administration lied to the public and Congress.
Of course, it's true of all wars, but when American and other media are silent, administrations get away with murder, including Obama in six wars, besides proxy ones and supporting decades of Israeli crimes against Palestine.
Johnson and Nixon's lies were exposed, at least enough to matter. Ahead of Pentagon Papers revelations, an estimated 500,000 rallied in Washington in November 1969, fed up with war and its cost. The February 1970 My Lai massacre ignited more outrage.
Then on May 4, Ohio National Guard troops killing four, wounding another 16 Kent State University protesters ratcheted up anti-war fervor further, enough for Nobel laureates, former State Department officials, the ACLU, and other groups to demand withdrawal.
Anti-war activism became institutionalized, enough for Nixon, in January 1973, to announce ending America's involvement. In June, Congress followed with the Church-Case amendment, stopping all funding after August 15.
On April 30, 1975, Washington ended its involvement entirely with a humiliating Saigon embassy rooftop pullout. Those old enough to remember won't ever forget it.
It took sustained anti-war spirit, including in the military, to achieve what's absent today - a virulent disgust with war waged for wealth and power, never for liberation or humanitarian concerns.
It forced America out of Southeast Asia, what's critically needed today to end all US wars, denouncing them with enough fervor to prevent their resumption.
Short of that, Obama's imperial wars, permanent ones, will destroy another generation of America's youths, besides ravaging attacked countries entirely. They're also heading the nation toward tyranny and ruin because popular sentiment isn't outraged enough to stop them.
Besides issues of lawlessness and immorality, what better reasons for ending them, not later - now.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
by Stephen Lendman
RIP: America's Anti-War Movement - by Stephen Lendman
On August 8, the libertarian Reason Foundation (RF) asked about the absence of anti-war sentiment in America, saying:
"The Obama administration is on pace to have more American soldiers killed in" Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did in his first term.
Besides the shocking number of injuries, permanent impairments, physical trauma, and record number of suicides because of lengthy repeated deployments, iCasualties.org listed 630 Afghan deaths from 2001 through 2008 under Bush.
Since Obama took office, it's 1,112 (plus another unconfirmed two dozen or more on August 18) and counting. Deaths also mount in Iraq, though smaller numbers. Most get scant, if any media attention. As a result, RF asked:
"First, where are the antiwar protests? And second, where is the press?"
According to United for Peace and Justice's (UFPJ) Michael McPhearson, it's partly partisan politics. Many anti-war protesters were Democrats. "Once Obama got into office, they kind of demobilized themselves," and America's major media provided no momentum to reinvigorate them.
"Because he's a Democrat," said McPhearson, "they don't want to oppose him in the same way as they opposed Bush. The politics of it allows him more breathing room when it comes to the wars."
Of course, UFPJ also has been less anti-war active under Obama than Bush, not quiescent, but much less resonant than through 2008.
UFPJ "calls for an immediate withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan with a negotiated just settlement involving international parties, including regional neighbors" when condemnation is essential.
Moreover, it says nothing about war and occupation of Iraq, not enough about Afghanistan, the lawlessness of all US wars, why they're waged, other illegal wars against Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, support for Israeli belligerence against Palestinians, as well as denouncing them all as Washington-sponsored imperial aggression.
Failure to do so betrays the trust of its member groups and followers. All US wars are illegal. America is responsible for daily crimes of war and against humanity in every theater. Exposing and denouncing them is the first crucial step to arousing public anger enough to stop them.
Supporting justice and peace means doing it actively every day. It's why UFPJ was founded, but it strayed from its original mission. It's not treating Obama like Bush, despite his more extremist belligerent record. Who can know if it's not exposed, explained, and condemned.
Instead, RP called the approaching 9/11 10th anniversary "a sober time to weigh these issues" for anyone foolish enough to support imperial wars, adding:
"Mr. Obama can make the case here, as he does with the economy, that he is merely cleaning up and winding down the bad situation he was left by his predecessor."
Astonishingly, RP doesn't get it, so how can most Americans. Obama made the bad situation he inherited infinitely worse, tripling down Bush on wars, letting criminal bankers loot the treasury, and force-feeding austerity on working Americans when massive stimulus is needed.
At the same time, he, complicit Democrats and Republicans continue doling favors on Wall Street and other corporate favorites, letting them steal all public wealth until there's none.
The article's writer, Ira Stoll, edits the "Future of Capitalism" web site. Short of reforming years of predatory malfeasance, it has none. Perhaps wars as well one day if they end up destroying planet earth, freeing it for whatever lower life survives.
Though war is never the answer, so far, however, it's resilient, little challenged by popular outrage in America or across Europe.
In their August 16 article titled, "Who Will Save Libya From Its Western Saviours," Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone lament about "no popular movement in Europe capable of stopping or even slowing the NATO onslaught."
Shamefully, the comatose "European left has missed its opportunity to come back to life by opposing one of the most blatantly inexcusable wars in history," adding that "Europe itself will suffer from this moral bankruptcy."
So will Americans, failing to denounce the corrupt Obama administration for its multiple wars, including Libya, especially when waging them diverts essential resources away from vital homeland needs.
Even though a new Rasmussen poll shows 80% oppose waging war on Libya (a new low), it's not evident in street or other protests, so Obama is unopposed waging it and other wars.
Last October, Justin Raimondo told a University of Michigan audience:
"What happened to the antiwar movement? Remember all those marches, all those placards, those giant puppets and displays of moral outrage? (They're) vanished! Gone! Evaporated like morning mist!"
Though Bush is also gone, another uber-hawk replaced him "a new Caesar," less of an easy target, quoting Code Pink's Medea Benjamin saying:
"....it's hard to mobilize people under Obama. We have the same anti-war movement (but) not the same passion," though it's hard believing its comatose state resembles impressive past efforts.
Yet it's critical for that passion to be revived and sustained until America's addiction to war ends. Freedom and planet earth's fate depend on it.
America's Vietnam Era Anti-War Spirit
On April 22, 1971, a young John Kerry offered a glimpse of war's dark side never shown or discussed by America's media.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), he said, in part, that he came to discuss an investigation involving "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans," who admitted committing Southeast Asian war crimes, explaining:
"stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, bl(ew) up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages (like) Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
Calling it a "Winter Soldier Investigation," he said "there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America." Linking America's involvement "to the preservation of freedom....is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy...."
"We saw firsthand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime....We rationalized destroying villages....to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very cooly a My Lai," and many others like it. "We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals."
"We have come here....because we believe this body can be responsive to the will of the people (saying) we should be out of Vietnam now...."
In disgust, he told Washington's WRC-TV that "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals," protesting against America's Vietnam War involvement.
Like millions of angry Americans then, he wanted no more of what he hoped would end. That spirit's sadly lacking today.
In contrast, various interests and groups united in the 1960s and 70s against war, including students, workers, middle class households, academics, and others.
Gaining prominence in 1965, anti-war spirit peaked in 1968, strong enough for Lyndon Johnson to tell Americans in a nationally televised March 31 address that:
"I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."
How could he with a 36% approval rating and only 26% pleased with his handling of the war. In fact, once Bobby Kennedy joined the race after the March New Hampshire primary (less than three months before his state-sponsored June assassination to remove him), he had no chance of winning, despite his Great Society accomplishments.
By early 1965, anti-war activism gained momentum when America began bombing North Vietnam. In February and March, protest marches rallied at the Oakland Army Terminal, the departure point for many troops to Southeast Asia.
In late March, University of Michigan faculty members held "teach-ins" to educate students about the immorality and political foundation of America's involvement. It spread to other campuses across the country, followed by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) escalating dissent nationally, including an April 17, 1965 Washington rally, drawing up to 25,000.
Numerous events followed, drawing thousands against war. In October 1967, a two-day march on the Pentagon attracted national media attention (practically impossible today), while resistance leaders urged young men to burn their draft cards.
Today, of course, America's military is all-volunteer, a major difference between now and then. In the 1960s, anti-war fervor erupted on army bases. In 1966, the "Fort Hood 3" gained prominence for refusing to serve in Vietnam.
Underground networks helped draft resisters leave the country. In addition, churches offered sanctuary. Anti-war activism among civil rights leaders provided more impetus, including Martin Luther King. In January 1967, his Chicago Defender article opposed the war on moral grounds.
On April 4, a year to the day before his assassination, he delivered his famous New York Riverside Church anti-war speech, unmentioned by America's media in annual Martin Luther King Day commemorations.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the anti-war movement gained more strength, especially after the January 1968 Tet Offensive and June 1971 Pentagon Papers release, showing the Johnson administration lied to the public and Congress.
Of course, it's true of all wars, but when American and other media are silent, administrations get away with murder, including Obama in six wars, besides proxy ones and supporting decades of Israeli crimes against Palestine.
Johnson and Nixon's lies were exposed, at least enough to matter. Ahead of Pentagon Papers revelations, an estimated 500,000 rallied in Washington in November 1969, fed up with war and its cost. The February 1970 My Lai massacre ignited more outrage.
Then on May 4, Ohio National Guard troops killing four, wounding another 16 Kent State University protesters ratcheted up anti-war fervor further, enough for Nobel laureates, former State Department officials, the ACLU, and other groups to demand withdrawal.
Anti-war activism became institutionalized, enough for Nixon, in January 1973, to announce ending America's involvement. In June, Congress followed with the Church-Case amendment, stopping all funding after August 15.
On April 30, 1975, Washington ended its involvement entirely with a humiliating Saigon embassy rooftop pullout. Those old enough to remember won't ever forget it.
It took sustained anti-war spirit, including in the military, to achieve what's absent today - a virulent disgust with war waged for wealth and power, never for liberation or humanitarian concerns.
It forced America out of Southeast Asia, what's critically needed today to end all US wars, denouncing them with enough fervor to prevent their resumption.
Short of that, Obama's imperial wars, permanent ones, will destroy another generation of America's youths, besides ravaging attacked countries entirely. They're also heading the nation toward tyranny and ruin because popular sentiment isn't outraged enough to stop them.
Besides issues of lawlessness and immorality, what better reasons for ending them, not later - now.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
Follow-Up Comments on Palestinian Statehood Vote (In UN)- by Stephen Lendman
Follow-Up Comments on Palestinian Statehood Vote
by Stephen Lendman
Follow-Up Comments on Palestinian Statehood Vote - by Stephen Lendman
A previous article discussed the upcoming September UN General Assembly vote, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/08/general-assembly-palestinian-state
Explaining the legal issues, it said delaying what's long overdue is neither wise nor right for all Palestinians who deserve it.
Their supporters agree, including Law Professor Francis Boyle, former PLO legal advisor in drafting its 1988 Declaration of Independence.
In September, the General Assembly will vote on granting full statehood recognition and de jure UN membership, what only it can grant, not the Security Council. The above linked article explained.
However, Oxford University Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill prepared an opinion, claiming granting it will result in the PLO losing its status. In addition, he said, diaspora refugees will be disenfranchised, left unrepresented by the PLO through the Palestinian National Council (PNC).
His opinion titled, "The Palestine Liberation Organization, the future State of Palestine, and the question of popular representation" can be accessed through the following link:
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238962-final-pdf-plo-statehood-op
Boyle discounted his concerns, saying he built explicit safeguards into the 1988 Declaration of Independence he drafted "to make sure that his doomsday scenario does not materialize."
Having carefully read Goodwin-Gill's opinion, Boyle emailed the following comments:
My Dear Palestinian Friends:
Goodwin-Gill's analysis "is based upon most erroneous assumptions. But in a nutshell, in the 15 November 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence that was approved by the PNC representing all Palestinians all over the world, the Executive Committee of the PLO was set up as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice.
In addition, the Declaration of Independence also provides that all Palestinians living around the world automatically become citizens of the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice.
So the Executive Committee of the PLO in its capacity as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine will continue to represent the interests of all Palestinians around the world when Palestine becomes a UN Member State.
Hence all your rights will be preserved: for all Palestinians and for the PLO. No one will be disenfranchised. The PLO will not lose its status. This legal arrangement does not violate the Palestinian Charter, but was approved already by the PNC.
Unfortunately, this professor is not aware of all the legal and constitutional technicalities that were originally built into the Palestinian Declaration of Independence to make sure that his doomsday scenario does not materialize--at my advice.
All of your rights have been protected and will be protected by Palestine becoming a Member State of the United Nations, including the Right of Return.
Indeed, in the Memo I originally did for President Arafat and the PLO back in 1988, I explained how we could obtain UN Membership. All of the advice that I gave to President Arafat and the PLO in 1987 to 1989 was originally premised on the assumption that someday we would apply for UN Membership.
That day has come. Please move forward. I have been working for this Day since I first proposed UN Membership for Palestine along the lines of Namibia at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in June of 1987.
Palestine’s Application for UN Membership was my idea. When my Client and Dear Friend - the late, great Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi, Chair of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Negotiations instructed me to draft the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement, he most solemnly told me: “Professor Boyle, we have decided to ask you to draft this Interim Peace Agreement for us. Do whatever you want! But do not sell out our right to our State!”
And I responded to Dr. Haidar: “Do not worry, Dr. Abdul Shaffi. As you know, I was the one who first called for the creation of the Palestinian State back at United Nations Headquarters in June of 1987, and then served as the Legal Adviser to the PLO on its creation. I will do nothing to harm it!”
As I promised Dr. Haidar, I (did) nothing to harm Palestine and the Palestinians."
As a result, if the General Assembly grants statehood and full de jure UN membership in September, the rights of all Palestinians worldwide will be preserved. Claiming otherwise is entirely false.
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Legal Advisor to the PLO and H.E. Yasser Arafat on the Palestinian Declaration of Independence.
Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle Peace Negotiations (1991-1993) and H.E. Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi
Author, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law (2003) and The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law (2011)
A Final Comment
On August 26, London Guardian writer Harriet Sherwood headlined, "Palestinian state could leave millions of refugees with no voice at UN," saying:
According to Law Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, "(m)illions of Palestinian refugees outside the West Bank and Gaza could lose their representation at the UN if the Palestinian Authority succeeds in winning recognition of its state at the world body...."
Fact check
As the above article, the previous one linked, and Law Professor Francis Boyle's comments explain, Goodwin-Gill's analysis is entirely misguided and false. In fact, Boyle asserts:
"Guy's 'Opinion' is a shoddy disgrace. How much was he paid for this hit-job on Palestine? He should go back to his 'Chambers'!"
Very likely it's an underhanded effort to derail Palestinian statehood and full de jure UN membership in September. If so, Goodwin-Gill acted disreputably, losing all credibility in the process.
"The Palestinians bid to be accepted as a member state of the UN requires security council approval."
Fact check
False. Only the General Assembly can grant statehood and full de jure membership. If Washington uses its Security Council veto as threatened, the GA can circumvent it under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution.
Someone perhaps paid Goodwin-Gill to produce misguided analysis to derail Palestinian statehood and full UN membership in September.
Guardian writer Sherwood regurgitated his opinion, omitting others able to refute him. Professor Boyle does it admirably. It deserves front page featuring in the Guardian, other leading broadsheets, and web sites supporting Palestinian rights.
This writer, Boyle, and many others forthrightly and honorably back them. So should everyone, including Guardian writers and Oxford law professors.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
by Stephen Lendman
Follow-Up Comments on Palestinian Statehood Vote - by Stephen Lendman
A previous article discussed the upcoming September UN General Assembly vote, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/08/general-assembly-palestinian-state
Explaining the legal issues, it said delaying what's long overdue is neither wise nor right for all Palestinians who deserve it.
Their supporters agree, including Law Professor Francis Boyle, former PLO legal advisor in drafting its 1988 Declaration of Independence.
In September, the General Assembly will vote on granting full statehood recognition and de jure UN membership, what only it can grant, not the Security Council. The above linked article explained.
However, Oxford University Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill prepared an opinion, claiming granting it will result in the PLO losing its status. In addition, he said, diaspora refugees will be disenfranchised, left unrepresented by the PLO through the Palestinian National Council (PNC).
His opinion titled, "The Palestine Liberation Organization, the future State of Palestine, and the question of popular representation" can be accessed through the following link:
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238962-final-pdf-plo-statehood-op
Boyle discounted his concerns, saying he built explicit safeguards into the 1988 Declaration of Independence he drafted "to make sure that his doomsday scenario does not materialize."
Having carefully read Goodwin-Gill's opinion, Boyle emailed the following comments:
My Dear Palestinian Friends:
Goodwin-Gill's analysis "is based upon most erroneous assumptions. But in a nutshell, in the 15 November 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence that was approved by the PNC representing all Palestinians all over the world, the Executive Committee of the PLO was set up as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice.
In addition, the Declaration of Independence also provides that all Palestinians living around the world automatically become citizens of the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice.
So the Executive Committee of the PLO in its capacity as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine will continue to represent the interests of all Palestinians around the world when Palestine becomes a UN Member State.
Hence all your rights will be preserved: for all Palestinians and for the PLO. No one will be disenfranchised. The PLO will not lose its status. This legal arrangement does not violate the Palestinian Charter, but was approved already by the PNC.
Unfortunately, this professor is not aware of all the legal and constitutional technicalities that were originally built into the Palestinian Declaration of Independence to make sure that his doomsday scenario does not materialize--at my advice.
All of your rights have been protected and will be protected by Palestine becoming a Member State of the United Nations, including the Right of Return.
Indeed, in the Memo I originally did for President Arafat and the PLO back in 1988, I explained how we could obtain UN Membership. All of the advice that I gave to President Arafat and the PLO in 1987 to 1989 was originally premised on the assumption that someday we would apply for UN Membership.
That day has come. Please move forward. I have been working for this Day since I first proposed UN Membership for Palestine along the lines of Namibia at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in June of 1987.
Palestine’s Application for UN Membership was my idea. When my Client and Dear Friend - the late, great Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi, Chair of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Negotiations instructed me to draft the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement, he most solemnly told me: “Professor Boyle, we have decided to ask you to draft this Interim Peace Agreement for us. Do whatever you want! But do not sell out our right to our State!”
And I responded to Dr. Haidar: “Do not worry, Dr. Abdul Shaffi. As you know, I was the one who first called for the creation of the Palestinian State back at United Nations Headquarters in June of 1987, and then served as the Legal Adviser to the PLO on its creation. I will do nothing to harm it!”
As I promised Dr. Haidar, I (did) nothing to harm Palestine and the Palestinians."
As a result, if the General Assembly grants statehood and full de jure UN membership in September, the rights of all Palestinians worldwide will be preserved. Claiming otherwise is entirely false.
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Legal Advisor to the PLO and H.E. Yasser Arafat on the Palestinian Declaration of Independence.
Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle Peace Negotiations (1991-1993) and H.E. Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi
Author, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law (2003) and The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law (2011)
A Final Comment
On August 26, London Guardian writer Harriet Sherwood headlined, "Palestinian state could leave millions of refugees with no voice at UN," saying:
According to Law Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, "(m)illions of Palestinian refugees outside the West Bank and Gaza could lose their representation at the UN if the Palestinian Authority succeeds in winning recognition of its state at the world body...."
Fact check
As the above article, the previous one linked, and Law Professor Francis Boyle's comments explain, Goodwin-Gill's analysis is entirely misguided and false. In fact, Boyle asserts:
"Guy's 'Opinion' is a shoddy disgrace. How much was he paid for this hit-job on Palestine? He should go back to his 'Chambers'!"
Very likely it's an underhanded effort to derail Palestinian statehood and full de jure UN membership in September. If so, Goodwin-Gill acted disreputably, losing all credibility in the process.
"The Palestinians bid to be accepted as a member state of the UN requires security council approval."
Fact check
False. Only the General Assembly can grant statehood and full de jure membership. If Washington uses its Security Council veto as threatened, the GA can circumvent it under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution.
Someone perhaps paid Goodwin-Gill to produce misguided analysis to derail Palestinian statehood and full UN membership in September.
Guardian writer Sherwood regurgitated his opinion, omitting others able to refute him. Professor Boyle does it admirably. It deserves front page featuring in the Guardian, other leading broadsheets, and web sites supporting Palestinian rights.
This writer, Boyle, and many others forthrightly and honorably back them. So should everyone, including Guardian writers and Oxford law professors.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
NATO's Libya War: A Nuremberg Level Crime - Stephen Lendman
NATO's Libya War: A Nuremberg Level Crime
by Stephen Lendman
NATO's Libya War: A Nuremberg Level Crime - Stephen Lendman
The US/UK/French-led war on Libya will be remembered as one of history's greatest crimes. It violates the letter and spirit of international law and America's Constitution.
The Nuremberg Tribunal's Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a US Supreme Court Justice) called Nazi war crimes "the supreme international crime against peace."
His November 21, 1945 opening remarks said:
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."
He called aggressive war "the greatest menace of our times."
International law defines crimes against peace as "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing."
All US post-WW II wars fall under this definition.
Since then, America waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide, killing millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as Central and South America.
Arguably they exceed the worst of Nazi and imperial Japanese crimes combined, including genocide, torture mass destruction of nonmilitary related sites, colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation.
Third Reich criminals were hanged for their crimes. America's remained free to commit greater ones, notably today against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, and the ongoing Libya atrocity - a scandalous "supreme international crime against peace," demanding justice not forthcoming.
In fact, US war criminals are considered hostis humani generis - enemies of mankind. War crimes are against the jus gentium - the law of nations. Established international law addressed them, including the UN Charter. It's unequivocal explaining under what conditions violence and coercion (by one state against another) are justified.
Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use. And Article 51 allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."
In other words, justifiable self-defense is permissible. However, Charter Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral threat or use of force not:
-- specifically allowed under Article 51;
-- authorized by the Security Council; or
-- permitted by the US Constitution only amendments ratified by three-fourths of the states can change.
In addition, three General Assembly resolutions also prohibit non-consensual belligerent intervention, including:
-- the 1965 Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty;
-- the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; and
-- the 1974 Definition of Aggression.
Moreover, various post-WW II Conventions, including the four Geneva ones and their Common Article 1 obligate all High Contracting Parties to "respect and ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances;" namely, to apply its principles universally, requiring High Contracting Parties "search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."
At Nuremberg, the concepts of individual and command criminal responsibility were addressed, the Tribunal Principles holding that "(a)ny person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment....(c)rimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit (them) can the provisions of international law be enforced."
The Rome Statute's Article 25 of the International Criminal Court (ICC) codified this principle, affirming the culpability of persons committing crimes of war and against humanity.
In addition, commanders and their superiors are specifically culpable if they "either knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes, (and) failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecutions."
Moreover, Nuremberg established that immunity is null and void, including for heads of state, other top officials, and top commanders. Further, genocide, crimes of war and against humanity are so grave that statute of limitation provisions don't apply.
As a result, every living past and present US president, top and subordinate officials, and Pentagon commanders involved in war(s) should be prosecuted for their crimes before a special Nuremberg-type tribunal, holding them fully accountable.
Genocide, other forms of mass murder, targeted and indiscriminate destruction, and other crimes of war and against humanity are too intolerable to go unpunished.
Nonetheless, America and its conspiratorial allies commit them - today, horrifically against Libya, a small nonbelligerent country being terrorized, destroyed, and plundered lawlessly in the name of "liberation."
America is the lead offender, committing what its 1996 War Crimes Act calls "grave breaches," defined as "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological (or other illegal) experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."
As a result, Libya is an ongoing atrocity, a Nuremberg level crime, one of history's greatest.
Yet on August 22, Obama had the audacity to say America, its "allies and partners in the international community (are committed) to protect the people of Libya, and to support a peaceful transition to democracy."
In fact, unspeakable war crimes are being committed to "protect the people of Libya." Included are civilians being terror bombed daily, to break their morale, cause panic, weaken their will to resist, and inflict mass casualties and punishment.
However, Geneva and other international laws forbid the targeting of civilians. The Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention) states:
-- Article 25: "The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited."
-- Article 26: "The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities."
Article 27: "In sieges and bombardments, all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes."
The besieged should visibly indicate these buildings or places and notify an adversary beforehand. Given today's intelligence and high-tech capabilities, belligerents can easily identify civilian and military targets.
Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians in time of war. It prohibits violence of any type against them and requires treatment for the sick and wounded.
In September 1938, a League of Nations unanimous resolution prohibited the:
"bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings not in the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces....In cases where (legitimate targets) are so situated, (aircraft) must abstain from bombardment" if this action indiscriminately affects civilians.
Long ago Washington trashed international and constitutional laws, planning for Libya what's ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan - conquest, colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation, excluding any form of democracy it reviles, including at home.
Major Media Scoundrels Lead Role in America's Wars
When America goes to war, its media are key, reporting disinformation, propaganda, managed news, and straight Pentagon handouts instead of real information, commentaries and analysis people deserve.
In the lead, The New York Times operates as the equivalent of an official information and propaganda ministry, posing as independent journalism.
August 24 was no exception, writers David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell headlining, "Qaddafi Defiant After Rebel Takeover," saying:
"Rebel fighters scoured Tripoli on Wednesday in their continued search for an elusive and defiant" (Gaddafi) after NATO landed them on Tripoli's shores with orders to terrorize and loot. They've taken full advantage, what Kirkpatrick and Cowell didn't explain.
Instead they gloated about a "rebel victory" very much not won, especially because nothing from Times or other major media reports is credible. Repeatedly they've been caught lying.
Other same day Times reports headlined:
"Libyans Rejoice in a Castle Filled With Guns and the Trappings of Power," referring to Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound they reportedly stormed with no verification of precisely what's going on.
"Waves of Disinformation and Confusion Swamp the Truth in Libya," referring mainly to what it calls "a republic of lies," not its own shameless daily propaganda, making everything it reports suspect, unreliable, or falsified.
"Airstrikes More Difficult as War Moves to Tripoli," ignoring NATO's ongoing terror bombing, including Apache helicopter gunships machine-gunning civilians on Tripoli streets, making it unsafe to be out when they're flying.
"After the Revolution, Hurdles in Reviving the Oil Sector," leaving unexplained Western plans for Libya's oil, excluding rivals China and Russia, as well as falsely calling Washington's insurgency a "revolution."
It's standard New York Times policy to represent wealth and power interests, betraying readers in the process who deserve better.
Fabricating Celebratory Tripoli Street Euphoria
On August 23, Metro Gael's Global Research.ca's article headlined, "The Libya Media Hoax: Fabricating Scenes of Jubilation and Euphoria on Green Square," providing another example of media lies, saying:
It "will surely go down in history as one of the most cynical hoaxes committed by corporate media since the manipulated pictures of Iraqis toppling Saddam Hussein's statue" after America's 2003 invasion.
Shamefully, Al Jazeera committed the latest fraud, airing fake live Green Square celebrations, its reporter, Zeina Khodr declaring, "Libya is in the hands of the opposition."
She lied and knew it. In fact, Al Jazeera's footage was "an elaborate and criminal hoax. The report had been prefabricated in a" Doha, Qatar studio.
Qatar is a NATO coalition member, its troops on the ground aiding insurgents along with US and UK special forces.
Libyan intelligence knew about the fake footage in advance, warning about it ahead of its release on "Rayysse state television."
The idea is old and familiar - to create an illusion of non-existant mass support for NATO and insurgents Libyans revile. It's done to diffuse popular resistance against them.
The full article can be read through the following link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26155
It explains a classic PsyOps deception, this time aired by an alleged trusted source, showing it's as corrupted as the rest, lying instead of reporting accurately.
A Final Comment
Mahdi Nazemroaya is a friend, a Middle East/Central Asian analyst, a Center for Research on Globalization (CRG) research associate, and a regular Progressive Radio News Hour contributor.
Providing accurate reports from Tripoli, he got death threats. Two other friends - Lizzie Phelan and Franklin Lamb, as well as other independent journalists also faced recriminations for doing what corporate media scoundrels don't - their job.
In an email, Mahdi said: "I am afraid I will be executed in cold blood."
That's been the NATO-wrought danger in Libya, notably in Tripoli, being carpet bombed and strafed by helicopter gunships, machine-gunning civilians in cold blood.
On August 24, CRG Director Michel Chossudovsky wrote about Mahdi, saying:
In Libya for over two months, he was dedicated to "honest factual reporting, with a concern for human life, in solidarity with those Libyan men, women and children who lost their lives in bombing raids on residential areas, schools and hospitals."
He literally risked his life doing it, telling this writer he had to stay supportively for the people he so much cares about. That commitment goes way beyond good journalism and analysis. It's an expression of character too few others have.
Mahdi has it, so do Lizzie, Franklin, and other honest journalists who went to a war zone to report truths - fully, accurately, and courageously, "challeng(ing) the lies of the mainstream media," said Chossudovsky.
In so doing, they "threaten the NATO-media consensus," in the process jeopardizing their own safety.
NATO wants to make Libya an Orwellian society in which "War is peace. Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength." Orwell also said: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
It's also a courageous one when done at great personal risk. Mahdi, Lizzie, Franklin, and others reporting accurately are true heros, supporting Libyans and free people everywhere while putting themselves in harm's way.
It doesn't get any more heroic than that!
Note:
On August 24 at 4PM Tripoli time, the International Red Cross rescued (or negotiated the release of) over 30 journalists trapped inside the city's Rixos Hotel. A ship heading to Tripoli's seacoast will take them out of the country.
Reports from the London Guardian, CNN, and other corporate media sources falsely claimed Gaddafi loyalists held them hostage, when, in fact, they were threatened by insurgent hooligans.
Hopefully they're now safe, but won't fully be until heading home out of harm's way.
An overnight email from Mahdi said:
"In Corinthia now (peripheral Greek territory). Will head to Malta then home via Europe."
Further updates will follow.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
by Stephen Lendman
NATO's Libya War: A Nuremberg Level Crime - Stephen Lendman
The US/UK/French-led war on Libya will be remembered as one of history's greatest crimes. It violates the letter and spirit of international law and America's Constitution.
The Nuremberg Tribunal's Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a US Supreme Court Justice) called Nazi war crimes "the supreme international crime against peace."
His November 21, 1945 opening remarks said:
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."
He called aggressive war "the greatest menace of our times."
International law defines crimes against peace as "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing."
All US post-WW II wars fall under this definition.
Since then, America waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide, killing millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as Central and South America.
Arguably they exceed the worst of Nazi and imperial Japanese crimes combined, including genocide, torture mass destruction of nonmilitary related sites, colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation.
Third Reich criminals were hanged for their crimes. America's remained free to commit greater ones, notably today against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, and the ongoing Libya atrocity - a scandalous "supreme international crime against peace," demanding justice not forthcoming.
In fact, US war criminals are considered hostis humani generis - enemies of mankind. War crimes are against the jus gentium - the law of nations. Established international law addressed them, including the UN Charter. It's unequivocal explaining under what conditions violence and coercion (by one state against another) are justified.
Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use. And Article 51 allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."
In other words, justifiable self-defense is permissible. However, Charter Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral threat or use of force not:
-- specifically allowed under Article 51;
-- authorized by the Security Council; or
-- permitted by the US Constitution only amendments ratified by three-fourths of the states can change.
In addition, three General Assembly resolutions also prohibit non-consensual belligerent intervention, including:
-- the 1965 Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty;
-- the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; and
-- the 1974 Definition of Aggression.
Moreover, various post-WW II Conventions, including the four Geneva ones and their Common Article 1 obligate all High Contracting Parties to "respect and ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances;" namely, to apply its principles universally, requiring High Contracting Parties "search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."
At Nuremberg, the concepts of individual and command criminal responsibility were addressed, the Tribunal Principles holding that "(a)ny person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment....(c)rimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit (them) can the provisions of international law be enforced."
The Rome Statute's Article 25 of the International Criminal Court (ICC) codified this principle, affirming the culpability of persons committing crimes of war and against humanity.
In addition, commanders and their superiors are specifically culpable if they "either knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes, (and) failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecutions."
Moreover, Nuremberg established that immunity is null and void, including for heads of state, other top officials, and top commanders. Further, genocide, crimes of war and against humanity are so grave that statute of limitation provisions don't apply.
As a result, every living past and present US president, top and subordinate officials, and Pentagon commanders involved in war(s) should be prosecuted for their crimes before a special Nuremberg-type tribunal, holding them fully accountable.
Genocide, other forms of mass murder, targeted and indiscriminate destruction, and other crimes of war and against humanity are too intolerable to go unpunished.
Nonetheless, America and its conspiratorial allies commit them - today, horrifically against Libya, a small nonbelligerent country being terrorized, destroyed, and plundered lawlessly in the name of "liberation."
America is the lead offender, committing what its 1996 War Crimes Act calls "grave breaches," defined as "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological (or other illegal) experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."
As a result, Libya is an ongoing atrocity, a Nuremberg level crime, one of history's greatest.
Yet on August 22, Obama had the audacity to say America, its "allies and partners in the international community (are committed) to protect the people of Libya, and to support a peaceful transition to democracy."
In fact, unspeakable war crimes are being committed to "protect the people of Libya." Included are civilians being terror bombed daily, to break their morale, cause panic, weaken their will to resist, and inflict mass casualties and punishment.
However, Geneva and other international laws forbid the targeting of civilians. The Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention) states:
-- Article 25: "The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited."
-- Article 26: "The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities."
Article 27: "In sieges and bombardments, all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes."
The besieged should visibly indicate these buildings or places and notify an adversary beforehand. Given today's intelligence and high-tech capabilities, belligerents can easily identify civilian and military targets.
Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians in time of war. It prohibits violence of any type against them and requires treatment for the sick and wounded.
In September 1938, a League of Nations unanimous resolution prohibited the:
"bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings not in the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces....In cases where (legitimate targets) are so situated, (aircraft) must abstain from bombardment" if this action indiscriminately affects civilians.
Long ago Washington trashed international and constitutional laws, planning for Libya what's ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan - conquest, colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation, excluding any form of democracy it reviles, including at home.
Major Media Scoundrels Lead Role in America's Wars
When America goes to war, its media are key, reporting disinformation, propaganda, managed news, and straight Pentagon handouts instead of real information, commentaries and analysis people deserve.
In the lead, The New York Times operates as the equivalent of an official information and propaganda ministry, posing as independent journalism.
August 24 was no exception, writers David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell headlining, "Qaddafi Defiant After Rebel Takeover," saying:
"Rebel fighters scoured Tripoli on Wednesday in their continued search for an elusive and defiant" (Gaddafi) after NATO landed them on Tripoli's shores with orders to terrorize and loot. They've taken full advantage, what Kirkpatrick and Cowell didn't explain.
Instead they gloated about a "rebel victory" very much not won, especially because nothing from Times or other major media reports is credible. Repeatedly they've been caught lying.
Other same day Times reports headlined:
"Libyans Rejoice in a Castle Filled With Guns and the Trappings of Power," referring to Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound they reportedly stormed with no verification of precisely what's going on.
"Waves of Disinformation and Confusion Swamp the Truth in Libya," referring mainly to what it calls "a republic of lies," not its own shameless daily propaganda, making everything it reports suspect, unreliable, or falsified.
"Airstrikes More Difficult as War Moves to Tripoli," ignoring NATO's ongoing terror bombing, including Apache helicopter gunships machine-gunning civilians on Tripoli streets, making it unsafe to be out when they're flying.
"After the Revolution, Hurdles in Reviving the Oil Sector," leaving unexplained Western plans for Libya's oil, excluding rivals China and Russia, as well as falsely calling Washington's insurgency a "revolution."
It's standard New York Times policy to represent wealth and power interests, betraying readers in the process who deserve better.
Fabricating Celebratory Tripoli Street Euphoria
On August 23, Metro Gael's Global Research.ca's article headlined, "The Libya Media Hoax: Fabricating Scenes of Jubilation and Euphoria on Green Square," providing another example of media lies, saying:
It "will surely go down in history as one of the most cynical hoaxes committed by corporate media since the manipulated pictures of Iraqis toppling Saddam Hussein's statue" after America's 2003 invasion.
Shamefully, Al Jazeera committed the latest fraud, airing fake live Green Square celebrations, its reporter, Zeina Khodr declaring, "Libya is in the hands of the opposition."
She lied and knew it. In fact, Al Jazeera's footage was "an elaborate and criminal hoax. The report had been prefabricated in a" Doha, Qatar studio.
Qatar is a NATO coalition member, its troops on the ground aiding insurgents along with US and UK special forces.
Libyan intelligence knew about the fake footage in advance, warning about it ahead of its release on "Rayysse state television."
The idea is old and familiar - to create an illusion of non-existant mass support for NATO and insurgents Libyans revile. It's done to diffuse popular resistance against them.
The full article can be read through the following link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26155
It explains a classic PsyOps deception, this time aired by an alleged trusted source, showing it's as corrupted as the rest, lying instead of reporting accurately.
A Final Comment
Mahdi Nazemroaya is a friend, a Middle East/Central Asian analyst, a Center for Research on Globalization (CRG) research associate, and a regular Progressive Radio News Hour contributor.
Providing accurate reports from Tripoli, he got death threats. Two other friends - Lizzie Phelan and Franklin Lamb, as well as other independent journalists also faced recriminations for doing what corporate media scoundrels don't - their job.
In an email, Mahdi said: "I am afraid I will be executed in cold blood."
That's been the NATO-wrought danger in Libya, notably in Tripoli, being carpet bombed and strafed by helicopter gunships, machine-gunning civilians in cold blood.
On August 24, CRG Director Michel Chossudovsky wrote about Mahdi, saying:
In Libya for over two months, he was dedicated to "honest factual reporting, with a concern for human life, in solidarity with those Libyan men, women and children who lost their lives in bombing raids on residential areas, schools and hospitals."
He literally risked his life doing it, telling this writer he had to stay supportively for the people he so much cares about. That commitment goes way beyond good journalism and analysis. It's an expression of character too few others have.
Mahdi has it, so do Lizzie, Franklin, and other honest journalists who went to a war zone to report truths - fully, accurately, and courageously, "challeng(ing) the lies of the mainstream media," said Chossudovsky.
In so doing, they "threaten the NATO-media consensus," in the process jeopardizing their own safety.
NATO wants to make Libya an Orwellian society in which "War is peace. Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength." Orwell also said: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
It's also a courageous one when done at great personal risk. Mahdi, Lizzie, Franklin, and others reporting accurately are true heros, supporting Libyans and free people everywhere while putting themselves in harm's way.
It doesn't get any more heroic than that!
Note:
On August 24 at 4PM Tripoli time, the International Red Cross rescued (or negotiated the release of) over 30 journalists trapped inside the city's Rixos Hotel. A ship heading to Tripoli's seacoast will take them out of the country.
Reports from the London Guardian, CNN, and other corporate media sources falsely claimed Gaddafi loyalists held them hostage, when, in fact, they were threatened by insurgent hooligans.
Hopefully they're now safe, but won't fully be until heading home out of harm's way.
An overnight email from Mahdi said:
"In Corinthia now (peripheral Greek territory). Will head to Malta then home via Europe."
Further updates will follow.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) 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/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
Never Forgive, Never Forget - by Stephen Lendman-On Libya
Never Forgive, Never Forget
by Stephen Lendman
Never Forgive, Never Forget - by Stephen Lendman
After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes.
Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.
NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.
As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.
When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.
NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.
Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.
Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.
None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.
It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.
Leading America's Pack Journalistic Lying
The New York Times is America's lead propaganda instrument, its reports getting enough global coverage to make a difference.
From the start, it cheerled war with Libya. It played the same role in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all previous US wars, deceiving its readers by dishonest journalism, commentaries, and editorials.
August 26 was no different. Two articles among others stand out. David Kirkpatrick wrote one headlined, "As Qaddafi Forces Retreat, a Newly Freed Imam Encourages Forgiveness," saying:
Pro-NATO Sheik Abdul Ghani Aboughreis helped incite last winter's uprising "with a fiery Friday sermon at the Mourad Agha mosque. His words sent thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets. (His) mosque and neighborhood became a center of revolt and resistance...."
After six months of shamelessly supporting death and destruction against his own people, he now encourages "forgiv(ing) each other, to make sure to leave it to the law and not take revenge on each other."
As in all his Libya war articles, Kirkpatrick left unexplained months of crimes of war and against humanity, committed by NATO and paramilitary killers.
Instead, he highlighted alleged evidence of ongoing Gaddafi loyalist crimes.
In times of war, both sides commit them, but whatever government forces did pale compared to NATO's savagery and its hired assassins. Kirkpatrick and other Times writers failed to notice.
Anthony Shadid and Kareem Hahim were no better headlining, "Grim Evidence of Fighting's Toll Becomes Clearer in Libya," saying:
"As the fighting died down in Tripoli on Friday, the scope and savagery of the violence during the nearly weeklong battle for control of the capital began to come into sharper focus."
Evidence he cites is a shameful Amnesty International report (based on freed Al Qaeda and other paramilitary prisoners), saying:
AI "uncovered evidence that forces loyal to (Gaddafi) have killed numerous detainees held at two military camps in Tripoli on 23 and 24 August."
Perhaps so if other insurgents freed them, attacked Gaddafi forces in the process, and they fought back.
Instead, AI said:
"Loyalist forces in Libya must immediately stop such killings of captives, and both sides must commit to ensuring no harm comes to prisoners in their custody."
Like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, AI tries to have it both ways, ruining everything it gets right by reports like this - equating horrendous NATO crimes with lesser ones committed by Gaddafi forces, perhaps many less than imagined. The fog of war makes it hard to know precisely.
Instead, Shadid and Hahim's article was shamelessly one sided. While citing clear evidence of rebel-committed atrocities, their article claimed:
-- Tripoli violence is now subsiding when, in fact, it rages;
-- rebels say Gaddafi loyalists killed their own, an absurdity on its face;
-- it's hard "to ascertain the fate of....dead men" in hospitals, as well as chaos committed inside; AP and Reuters reported it resulted from rebel-committed terror;
-- Gaddafi's "cloak of secrecy (and) mercurial rule" are being revealed, leaving unexplained why Washington and its NATO partners wage all wars;
-- slogans are being displayed, saying "Libya is free" and "Misurata is steadfast," though still Gaddafi controlled, it's believed, what Shadid and Hahim ignored, as well as not debunking claims of Libya's freedom; and
-- documents in Gaddafi's compound "seemed to show that (his) adopted daughter Hana, who was supposedly killed at age 4 in (1986), was alive (and) working as a doctor;" the key words "seemed to show" both Times writers implied were proof, adding that Tripoli Central Hospital workers claimed "a spacious and well-appointed office" there was hers.
Throughout the conflict, Times articles, op-eds and editorials backed it. Their unstated message is war is good, the more the better when America wages them.
Sadly, that's the state of managed Western news and opinion. It's a shocking indictment of its support for wealth and power, no matter how lawless and harmful to billions exploited ruthlessly, shameless, and repeatedly.
Final Comments
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports continued fighting in Tripoli, inflicting many casualties.
Moreover, many injured can't be treated because of ongoing violence, inadequate staff, and enough supplies and capacity at local hospitals.
In addition, "numerous arrests" were made, "including foreign nationals." Their welfare is very much at risk, especially those singled out for revenge.
Fierce fighting also continues around Misrata and elsewhere. The end of conflict is nowhere in sight. Brega "look(s) like a ghost town."
In different areas, people are endangered by unexploded ordinance, as well as shortages of food, clean water, drugs, other medical supplies, and spotty or no electricity.
Washington-led NATO turned Libya into a hellish inferno - step one before occupying and exploiting its resources and people. Months ago its wealth was stolen. Ahead will be its future if Libyans don't struggle and win their freedom.
On August 26 on Russia Today (RT.com), journalist Pepe Escobar said Abdelhakim Belhadj, a former Al-Qaeda insurgent/now CIA asset commands rebel forces in Tripoli.
He explained that he was trained in Afghanistan by a "very hardcore Islamist Libyan group." Earlier he was captured in Malaysia, detained and tortured in Bangkok, then transferred back to Libya and imprisoned.
In 2009, he made a deal for freedom, in return for serving Western interests, Escobar saying:
"I can say almost for sure with 95% certainty that this is the guy" heading insurgents in Tripoli.
It shows how Washington both demonizes and uses Al Qaeda advantageously, including bin Laden. He was a longtime CIA asset until his death in December 2001 - not from Obama's staged raid.
Notably, Al Qaeda was a 1980s CIA creation during the Soviet-Afghan war. Moreover, Washington both supports international terrorism covertly and battles it by imperial wars and persecuting Muslims for their faith.
It's part of the fog to scare people enough to believe waging wars remove threats that, in fact, don't exist. So they have to be invented to enlist public support, unaware of the harm caused abroad and at home.
Only war profiteers benefit, not taxpayers they steal from or victims they attack. At the same time, corrosive militarism, financial wars, and other destructive policies destroyed America's soul. Its future as a free country is next.
So focused on bread and circus distractions, most people don't notice. How else can Washington get away with murder!
Finally, the fate of independent journalists trapped in Tripoli's Corinthia Hotel remains unclear. They're still in harm's way because a chartered ship for their safe passage out either hasn't arrived or it's too unsafe to reach it.
Further updates will follow.
In conclusion, Law Professor Francis Boyle's morning email said the following:
"After Six Months of fighting by the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world, Ghadafy has now become the Greatest African Warrior since Hannibal against the Romans - predecessors to the Americans."
"Generations from now, people will sing songs, write poems, and compose odes to Ghadafy all over Africa, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and the Third World long after Obama is dead and disparaged and discredited."
Sic transit Gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)!"
Keep Libya's freedom flame alive no matter how imperial monsters try to destroy it!
We're all Libyans now! Their struggle is ours!
It's high time we matched their courageous spirit against the world's most pernicious/destructive force.
Bowed perhaps, they're not broken! Isn't that enough to raise our consciousness enough to support them!
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/Never
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
by Stephen Lendman
Never Forgive, Never Forget - by Stephen Lendman
After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes.
Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.
NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.
As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.
When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.
NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.
Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.
Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.
None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.
It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.
Leading America's Pack Journalistic Lying
The New York Times is America's lead propaganda instrument, its reports getting enough global coverage to make a difference.
From the start, it cheerled war with Libya. It played the same role in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all previous US wars, deceiving its readers by dishonest journalism, commentaries, and editorials.
August 26 was no different. Two articles among others stand out. David Kirkpatrick wrote one headlined, "As Qaddafi Forces Retreat, a Newly Freed Imam Encourages Forgiveness," saying:
Pro-NATO Sheik Abdul Ghani Aboughreis helped incite last winter's uprising "with a fiery Friday sermon at the Mourad Agha mosque. His words sent thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets. (His) mosque and neighborhood became a center of revolt and resistance...."
After six months of shamelessly supporting death and destruction against his own people, he now encourages "forgiv(ing) each other, to make sure to leave it to the law and not take revenge on each other."
As in all his Libya war articles, Kirkpatrick left unexplained months of crimes of war and against humanity, committed by NATO and paramilitary killers.
Instead, he highlighted alleged evidence of ongoing Gaddafi loyalist crimes.
In times of war, both sides commit them, but whatever government forces did pale compared to NATO's savagery and its hired assassins. Kirkpatrick and other Times writers failed to notice.
Anthony Shadid and Kareem Hahim were no better headlining, "Grim Evidence of Fighting's Toll Becomes Clearer in Libya," saying:
"As the fighting died down in Tripoli on Friday, the scope and savagery of the violence during the nearly weeklong battle for control of the capital began to come into sharper focus."
Evidence he cites is a shameful Amnesty International report (based on freed Al Qaeda and other paramilitary prisoners), saying:
AI "uncovered evidence that forces loyal to (Gaddafi) have killed numerous detainees held at two military camps in Tripoli on 23 and 24 August."
Perhaps so if other insurgents freed them, attacked Gaddafi forces in the process, and they fought back.
Instead, AI said:
"Loyalist forces in Libya must immediately stop such killings of captives, and both sides must commit to ensuring no harm comes to prisoners in their custody."
Like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, AI tries to have it both ways, ruining everything it gets right by reports like this - equating horrendous NATO crimes with lesser ones committed by Gaddafi forces, perhaps many less than imagined. The fog of war makes it hard to know precisely.
Instead, Shadid and Hahim's article was shamelessly one sided. While citing clear evidence of rebel-committed atrocities, their article claimed:
-- Tripoli violence is now subsiding when, in fact, it rages;
-- rebels say Gaddafi loyalists killed their own, an absurdity on its face;
-- it's hard "to ascertain the fate of....dead men" in hospitals, as well as chaos committed inside; AP and Reuters reported it resulted from rebel-committed terror;
-- Gaddafi's "cloak of secrecy (and) mercurial rule" are being revealed, leaving unexplained why Washington and its NATO partners wage all wars;
-- slogans are being displayed, saying "Libya is free" and "Misurata is steadfast," though still Gaddafi controlled, it's believed, what Shadid and Hahim ignored, as well as not debunking claims of Libya's freedom; and
-- documents in Gaddafi's compound "seemed to show that (his) adopted daughter Hana, who was supposedly killed at age 4 in (1986), was alive (and) working as a doctor;" the key words "seemed to show" both Times writers implied were proof, adding that Tripoli Central Hospital workers claimed "a spacious and well-appointed office" there was hers.
Throughout the conflict, Times articles, op-eds and editorials backed it. Their unstated message is war is good, the more the better when America wages them.
Sadly, that's the state of managed Western news and opinion. It's a shocking indictment of its support for wealth and power, no matter how lawless and harmful to billions exploited ruthlessly, shameless, and repeatedly.
Final Comments
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports continued fighting in Tripoli, inflicting many casualties.
Moreover, many injured can't be treated because of ongoing violence, inadequate staff, and enough supplies and capacity at local hospitals.
In addition, "numerous arrests" were made, "including foreign nationals." Their welfare is very much at risk, especially those singled out for revenge.
Fierce fighting also continues around Misrata and elsewhere. The end of conflict is nowhere in sight. Brega "look(s) like a ghost town."
In different areas, people are endangered by unexploded ordinance, as well as shortages of food, clean water, drugs, other medical supplies, and spotty or no electricity.
Washington-led NATO turned Libya into a hellish inferno - step one before occupying and exploiting its resources and people. Months ago its wealth was stolen. Ahead will be its future if Libyans don't struggle and win their freedom.
On August 26 on Russia Today (RT.com), journalist Pepe Escobar said Abdelhakim Belhadj, a former Al-Qaeda insurgent/now CIA asset commands rebel forces in Tripoli.
He explained that he was trained in Afghanistan by a "very hardcore Islamist Libyan group." Earlier he was captured in Malaysia, detained and tortured in Bangkok, then transferred back to Libya and imprisoned.
In 2009, he made a deal for freedom, in return for serving Western interests, Escobar saying:
"I can say almost for sure with 95% certainty that this is the guy" heading insurgents in Tripoli.
It shows how Washington both demonizes and uses Al Qaeda advantageously, including bin Laden. He was a longtime CIA asset until his death in December 2001 - not from Obama's staged raid.
Notably, Al Qaeda was a 1980s CIA creation during the Soviet-Afghan war. Moreover, Washington both supports international terrorism covertly and battles it by imperial wars and persecuting Muslims for their faith.
It's part of the fog to scare people enough to believe waging wars remove threats that, in fact, don't exist. So they have to be invented to enlist public support, unaware of the harm caused abroad and at home.
Only war profiteers benefit, not taxpayers they steal from or victims they attack. At the same time, corrosive militarism, financial wars, and other destructive policies destroyed America's soul. Its future as a free country is next.
So focused on bread and circus distractions, most people don't notice. How else can Washington get away with murder!
Finally, the fate of independent journalists trapped in Tripoli's Corinthia Hotel remains unclear. They're still in harm's way because a chartered ship for their safe passage out either hasn't arrived or it's too unsafe to reach it.
Further updates will follow.
In conclusion, Law Professor Francis Boyle's morning email said the following:
"After Six Months of fighting by the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world, Ghadafy has now become the Greatest African Warrior since Hannibal against the Romans - predecessors to the Americans."
"Generations from now, people will sing songs, write poems, and compose odes to Ghadafy all over Africa, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and the Third World long after Obama is dead and disparaged and discredited."
Sic transit Gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)!"
Keep Libya's freedom flame alive no matter how imperial monsters try to destroy it!
We're all Libyans now! Their struggle is ours!
It's high time we matched their courageous spirit against the world's most pernicious/destructive force.
Bowed perhaps, they're not broken! Isn't that enough to raise our consciousness enough to support them!
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/Never
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
In Honor Of The “Old Man”- On The 71st Anniversary Of The Death Of Leon Trotsky-Lev Davidovich By Jean van Heijenoort
Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
*******
Markin comment:
As I never tire of saying even seventy-odd years later I would not want to be on the pen/sword edge of one of Leon Trotsky's polemics. I would still be bleeding profusely from every pore.
******
Jean van Heijenoort
Lev Davidovich
Published: Fourth International, Winter 1959
When Engels, revered patriarch of international social-democracy, passed away peacefully in London, burdened with years, the end of the century was approaching which separated the revolutions of the bourgeoisie from those of the proletariat, Jacobinism from Bolshevism. The transformation of the world, announced by Marx, was to become the immediate task, and revolutionists were to know unparallelled vicissitudes. And in fact the heads of the three greatest revolutionary leaders since Engels sustained the blows of reaction. The historian of the future will not fail to see in this one of the characteristic marks of our epoch. Nor should he fail to note the source of these blows. Lenin's head was pierced by a bullet from the "Socialist Revolutionary" Fanny Kaplan. Rosa Luxemburg's head was shattered by the butt-ends of the guns of the "Social Democrat" Noske's soldiery. Trotsky's head was laid open by the pick-axe of one of the "Communist" Stalin's mercenaries.
Our epoch of crisis, with its abrupt jumps and feverish tempo, devours men and parties more and more rapidly. Those who only yesterday represented the revolution become the Instruments of the darkest reaction. This struggle between the head of the historic process and its leaden, dragging rump assumed its most dramatic form in the duel between Trotsky and Stalin, precisely because this struggle unfolded against the background of a workers' state already established. Trotsky, borne to the summits of power by the revolutionary explosion of the masses, persecuted and harassed when the defeats of the proletariat succeeded each other, became the very incarnation of the revolution.
He was aided by an astonishing physique. What struck you first was his forehead--phenomenally lofty, vertical, and not heightened by baldness. After that his eyes, blue and deep, with a gaze powerful and sure of its power. During his stay in France Lev Davidovich very often had to travel incognito in order to simplify the problem of guarding him. Then he would shave off his goatee and brush his hair to one side dividing it by a part. But when it came to his leaving the house and mingling with the public I was always worried: "No it's really impossible ... the first one to pass by will recognize him, he can't change that gaze of his ... " Then, when Lev Davidovich began to speak, what attracted attention was his mouth. Whether he spoke in Russian or a foreign language his lips constrained themselves to shape words distinctly. He was irritated at hearing confused and precipitate speech from others, and always compelled himself to enunciate with complete distinctness. It was only in addressing Natalia Ivanovna in Russian that on occasion his enunciation became more hurried and less articulate, descending sometimes into a whisper. In conversations with visitors in his study his hands, resting on the edge of his work-table at first, would soon begin moving with large, firm gestures, as though aiding his lips in molding the expression of his thought. His face with its halo of hair, the set of his head, and the whole carriage of his body were always proud and stately. His stature was above medium, with a powerful chest and a broad, stalwart back, and in comparison his legs appeared somewhat slender. it is undoubtedly easier for someone who paid him one visit to say what he saw in Trotsky's face than for one who was at his side for many years in the most variegated circumstances.
The one thing I never saw was the faintest expression of vulgarity. Nor was there any greater likelihood of finding what is called bonhomie. But a certain sweetness was not lacking, which no doubt originated in the formidable intelligence of whose readiness to understand everything you were always aware. What you usually saw was a youthful enthusiasm which joyously undertook everything, and at the same time was strong enough to induce others to cooperate in the undertaking. When it was a question of cudgeling an opponent this sort of gaiety swiftly changed into irony, biting and malicious, alternating with an expression of contempt, and when the enemy was particularly swinish, you would, for a moment, almost find a hint of malevolence. But his vivacity returned quickly. "We'll fix 'em!" he would say then with animation. In the isolation of exile the most dramatic circumstances where I could see Lev Davidovich were his conflicts with the police, or incidents with adversaries of bad faith. At these times his face would harden, and his eyes would flash, as though in them had suddenly been concentrated that vast will-power which ordinarily could be measured only by the labors of his entire life. Then it was obvious to everyone that nothing, nothing in the world could make him budge an inch.
How Trotsky Worked
In daily life this will-power expended itself in strictly organized labor. Any unmotivated disturbance irritated him extremely: he hated pointless conversations, unannounced visits, disappointments or delays in keeping engagements. To be sure there was nothing pedantic in any of this. If an important question turned up he would not hesitate a moment in upsetting all his plans, but it had to be worth it. If it had the slightest interest for the movement he would heedlessly give his time and energy, but he showed himself all the more miserly of them when the carelessness, lightmindedness, or bad organization of others threatened to waste them. He bearded the smallest particles of time, the most precious material of which life is made. His whole personal life was rigidly organized by the quality called singleness of purpose. He set up a hierarchy of duties, and brought to a conclusion whatever he undertook.
As a rule he did not work less than twelve hours a day, and sometimes, when it was necessary, much more. He remained at table as briefly as possible, and after sharing his meals for many years I could not say that I ever noticed on his face any mark of enjoyment for what he ate or drank. 'Eating, dressing, all these miserable little things that have to be repeated every day ... " he once said to me.
He could find his only diversion in great physical activity. Merely walking was scarcely a relaxation. He walked actively and in silence, and you could see that his mind was always at work. Now and then he would ask a question: "When did you answer that letter?" "Can you find me that quotation?" Only violent exercise gave him repose. In Turkey this consisted of hunting, and especially fishing, deep-sea fishing, complicated and agitated, where the body had to spend itself recklessly. When the fishing had been good, that is, very fatiguing, he began work on his return with redoubled enthusiasm. In Mexico, where fishing was impossible, he invented the gathering of cacti, of enormous weight, under a blazing sun.
Of course the necessity for security created certain obligations. During the eleven and a half years of his third emigration it was only for a few months, at certain times during his stay in France and in Norway, that Lev Davidovich could walk about freely, that is, unguarded, in the countryside around his house. As a rule each one of his excursions constituted a minor military operation. It was necessary to make all arrangements in advance, and fix his route carefully. "You treat me as though I were an object," he sometimes said, jokingly dissimulating whatever impatience there might have been in this remark.
He demanded the same methodical spirit he observed in his own work from the comrades who assisted him. The closer they were to him, the more did he demand of them and the less did he trouble himself with formalities. He desired precision in everything: an undated letter, an unsigned document always irritated him, as did in general anything easygoing, slipshod, or happy-go-lucky. Do whatever you're doing well, and do it till you finish. And in this rule he made no distinction between petty day-to-day chores and intellectual work: conduct your thoughts to their conclusion, is an expression that often sprang from his pen. He always displayed great solicitude for the health of those around him. Health is revolutionary capital that must not be wasted. He grew angry at seeing someone read in a bad light. It's necessary to risk your life for the revolution without hesitating, but why ruin your eyes when you can read comfortably and intelligently?
Trotsky's Conversations
In conversations with Lev Davidovich what visitors were struck by chiefly was his capacity to find his bearings in a novel situation. He was able to integrate it in his general perspective, and at the same time always give immediate and concrete advice. During his third emigration he often had the opportunity of conversing with visitors from countries he was not acquainted with directly, perhaps from the Balkans or Latin America. He did not always know the language, did not follow their press and had never had any particular interest in their specific problems. First of all he would allow his interrogator to speak, occasionally jotting down a few brief notes on a sliP of paper in front of him, sometimes asking for a few details: "How many members has this party?" "Isn't this politician a lawyer?"
Then he would speak, and the mass of information that had been given him would be organized. Soon one could distinguish the movements of different classes and of different layers within these classes, and then, bound up with these movements, there would be revealed the play of parties, groups and organizations, and then the place and the activities of various political figures, down to their profession and personal traits, would be logically fitted into the picture. The French naturalist Cuvier used to boast of his ability to reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone. With his vast knowledge of social and political realities Trotsky could devote himself to a similar work. His interrogator was always astounded at seeing how deeply he had been able to penetrate the reality of the particular problem, and would leave Trotsky's study knowing his own country a little better.
At every moment you felt in Trotsky a huge fund of experience, not merely engraved in his memory but organized and reflected on lengthily and profoundly· You could also see that the organization of this experience had taken place around indestructible principles. Though Lev Davidovich hated routine, though he was always anxious to discover new trends, the least attempt at innovation in the realm of principles made him prick up his ears. "Trimming Marx's beard," was his expression for all these attempts to put Marxism in line with the current fashion, and he did not dissimulate his contempt for them.
Trotsky's Style and Writing Methods
Trotsky's style is universally admired. It is undoubtedly to be best compared with that of Marx. However, Trotsky's sentences are less spacious than those of Marx, in whom one is aware of a wealth of scholarly resources, especially in the youthful works. Trotsky's style achieves its effects by extremely simple means. His vocabulary, especially in his more properly political writings, is always rather limited. The sentences are short, with few subordinate clauses. Their power arises from a sturdy articulation, most often with strongly marked but always well balanced oppositions. This temperance of means gives his style a great freshness and, one might say, youthfulness. In his writing Trotsky is considerably more youthful than Marx.
Trotsky knew how to take advantage of that Russian syntax whose inflections permit the word-order within a sentence to be upset, giving the expression of the thought a force and emphasis difficult to attain with the limited means of modern western languages. And also difficult to translate. Lev Davidovich demanded a mathematical fidelity from his translators, and at the same time kicked against the rules of grammar in the foreign language which forbade a similarly concise and direct rendition of his thought. Compared to that of Lenin, Trotsky's style is superior, by a large margin, in its lucidity and elegance, without any loss of power. Lenin's sentences occasionally become cumbrous, too heavy, disorganized. It seems as though the thought sometimes cripples its expression. Trotsky once said that in Lenin you could discover a Russian mushik, but one raised to the level of genius. Even though Lenin's father was a provincial functionary and Trotsky's a farmer, it is Trotsky who is the city-dweller, as opposed to Lenin, doubtless because of his race. This may be seen at once in the difference of styles, without any attempt being made here to uncover this opposition in other aspects of these two giant personalities.
When Trotsky was deported to Turkey, the passport the Soviet authorities gave him put down his profession as writer. And in truth he was a great, an exceedingly great writer. If the bureaucrats's inscription causes a smile it is because Trotsky was so much more than a writer. He wrote with ease, being able to dictate several hours at a sitting. But then he would go over the manuscript and correct it carefully. For some of these great writings, such as the History of the Russian Revolution, there are two successive drafts behind the definitive text, but in the majority of cases there is only one. His enormous literary production, in which are to be found books, pamphlets, innumerable articles, letters, hurried statements to the press, and notes of all sorts is, needless to say, uneven. Some parts are more worked over than others, but not a sentence in any of them has been neglected. You can take any five lines in this ponderous accumulation of writing and you will always recognize the inimitable Trotsky.
Their volume is also impressive, and would alone bear testimony to a very rare will and capacity for labor. Thirty volumes of Lenin's complete works have been collected, in addition to thirty-five volumes of correspondence and odd notes. Trotsky lived seven years longer than Lenin, but his writings, from his long books to his brief personal notes, would undoubtedly come to triple that amount. In the eleven and a half years of his third emigration he amassed a labor which would honorably fill an entire lifetime. It may be said that the pen never abandoned his hand, and what a hand it was!
He Lives in His Books
Trotsky has put all of himself into his books. personal contact with the man himself did not modify the portrait that emerged from a reading of his works, but deepened it and made it more precise: passion and reason, intelligence and will, all carried to an extreme degree, but at the same time blending into one another. In everything Lev Davidovich did one had the feeling that he had given his whole being. He often repeated Hegel's words: Nothing great is done in this world without passion; and he had nothing but contempt for the philistines who object to the "fanaticism" of the revolutionaries. But intelligence was always present, in miraculous harmony with the fire. Nor could one dream of discovering a conflict: the will was indomitable because the mind saw very far. Hegel would have to be quoted once again: Der Wille ist eine besondere Weise des Denkens. Will is a specific function of thought.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
*******
Markin comment:
As I never tire of saying even seventy-odd years later I would not want to be on the pen/sword edge of one of Leon Trotsky's polemics. I would still be bleeding profusely from every pore.
******
Jean van Heijenoort
Lev Davidovich
Published: Fourth International, Winter 1959
When Engels, revered patriarch of international social-democracy, passed away peacefully in London, burdened with years, the end of the century was approaching which separated the revolutions of the bourgeoisie from those of the proletariat, Jacobinism from Bolshevism. The transformation of the world, announced by Marx, was to become the immediate task, and revolutionists were to know unparallelled vicissitudes. And in fact the heads of the three greatest revolutionary leaders since Engels sustained the blows of reaction. The historian of the future will not fail to see in this one of the characteristic marks of our epoch. Nor should he fail to note the source of these blows. Lenin's head was pierced by a bullet from the "Socialist Revolutionary" Fanny Kaplan. Rosa Luxemburg's head was shattered by the butt-ends of the guns of the "Social Democrat" Noske's soldiery. Trotsky's head was laid open by the pick-axe of one of the "Communist" Stalin's mercenaries.
Our epoch of crisis, with its abrupt jumps and feverish tempo, devours men and parties more and more rapidly. Those who only yesterday represented the revolution become the Instruments of the darkest reaction. This struggle between the head of the historic process and its leaden, dragging rump assumed its most dramatic form in the duel between Trotsky and Stalin, precisely because this struggle unfolded against the background of a workers' state already established. Trotsky, borne to the summits of power by the revolutionary explosion of the masses, persecuted and harassed when the defeats of the proletariat succeeded each other, became the very incarnation of the revolution.
He was aided by an astonishing physique. What struck you first was his forehead--phenomenally lofty, vertical, and not heightened by baldness. After that his eyes, blue and deep, with a gaze powerful and sure of its power. During his stay in France Lev Davidovich very often had to travel incognito in order to simplify the problem of guarding him. Then he would shave off his goatee and brush his hair to one side dividing it by a part. But when it came to his leaving the house and mingling with the public I was always worried: "No it's really impossible ... the first one to pass by will recognize him, he can't change that gaze of his ... " Then, when Lev Davidovich began to speak, what attracted attention was his mouth. Whether he spoke in Russian or a foreign language his lips constrained themselves to shape words distinctly. He was irritated at hearing confused and precipitate speech from others, and always compelled himself to enunciate with complete distinctness. It was only in addressing Natalia Ivanovna in Russian that on occasion his enunciation became more hurried and less articulate, descending sometimes into a whisper. In conversations with visitors in his study his hands, resting on the edge of his work-table at first, would soon begin moving with large, firm gestures, as though aiding his lips in molding the expression of his thought. His face with its halo of hair, the set of his head, and the whole carriage of his body were always proud and stately. His stature was above medium, with a powerful chest and a broad, stalwart back, and in comparison his legs appeared somewhat slender. it is undoubtedly easier for someone who paid him one visit to say what he saw in Trotsky's face than for one who was at his side for many years in the most variegated circumstances.
The one thing I never saw was the faintest expression of vulgarity. Nor was there any greater likelihood of finding what is called bonhomie. But a certain sweetness was not lacking, which no doubt originated in the formidable intelligence of whose readiness to understand everything you were always aware. What you usually saw was a youthful enthusiasm which joyously undertook everything, and at the same time was strong enough to induce others to cooperate in the undertaking. When it was a question of cudgeling an opponent this sort of gaiety swiftly changed into irony, biting and malicious, alternating with an expression of contempt, and when the enemy was particularly swinish, you would, for a moment, almost find a hint of malevolence. But his vivacity returned quickly. "We'll fix 'em!" he would say then with animation. In the isolation of exile the most dramatic circumstances where I could see Lev Davidovich were his conflicts with the police, or incidents with adversaries of bad faith. At these times his face would harden, and his eyes would flash, as though in them had suddenly been concentrated that vast will-power which ordinarily could be measured only by the labors of his entire life. Then it was obvious to everyone that nothing, nothing in the world could make him budge an inch.
How Trotsky Worked
In daily life this will-power expended itself in strictly organized labor. Any unmotivated disturbance irritated him extremely: he hated pointless conversations, unannounced visits, disappointments or delays in keeping engagements. To be sure there was nothing pedantic in any of this. If an important question turned up he would not hesitate a moment in upsetting all his plans, but it had to be worth it. If it had the slightest interest for the movement he would heedlessly give his time and energy, but he showed himself all the more miserly of them when the carelessness, lightmindedness, or bad organization of others threatened to waste them. He bearded the smallest particles of time, the most precious material of which life is made. His whole personal life was rigidly organized by the quality called singleness of purpose. He set up a hierarchy of duties, and brought to a conclusion whatever he undertook.
As a rule he did not work less than twelve hours a day, and sometimes, when it was necessary, much more. He remained at table as briefly as possible, and after sharing his meals for many years I could not say that I ever noticed on his face any mark of enjoyment for what he ate or drank. 'Eating, dressing, all these miserable little things that have to be repeated every day ... " he once said to me.
He could find his only diversion in great physical activity. Merely walking was scarcely a relaxation. He walked actively and in silence, and you could see that his mind was always at work. Now and then he would ask a question: "When did you answer that letter?" "Can you find me that quotation?" Only violent exercise gave him repose. In Turkey this consisted of hunting, and especially fishing, deep-sea fishing, complicated and agitated, where the body had to spend itself recklessly. When the fishing had been good, that is, very fatiguing, he began work on his return with redoubled enthusiasm. In Mexico, where fishing was impossible, he invented the gathering of cacti, of enormous weight, under a blazing sun.
Of course the necessity for security created certain obligations. During the eleven and a half years of his third emigration it was only for a few months, at certain times during his stay in France and in Norway, that Lev Davidovich could walk about freely, that is, unguarded, in the countryside around his house. As a rule each one of his excursions constituted a minor military operation. It was necessary to make all arrangements in advance, and fix his route carefully. "You treat me as though I were an object," he sometimes said, jokingly dissimulating whatever impatience there might have been in this remark.
He demanded the same methodical spirit he observed in his own work from the comrades who assisted him. The closer they were to him, the more did he demand of them and the less did he trouble himself with formalities. He desired precision in everything: an undated letter, an unsigned document always irritated him, as did in general anything easygoing, slipshod, or happy-go-lucky. Do whatever you're doing well, and do it till you finish. And in this rule he made no distinction between petty day-to-day chores and intellectual work: conduct your thoughts to their conclusion, is an expression that often sprang from his pen. He always displayed great solicitude for the health of those around him. Health is revolutionary capital that must not be wasted. He grew angry at seeing someone read in a bad light. It's necessary to risk your life for the revolution without hesitating, but why ruin your eyes when you can read comfortably and intelligently?
Trotsky's Conversations
In conversations with Lev Davidovich what visitors were struck by chiefly was his capacity to find his bearings in a novel situation. He was able to integrate it in his general perspective, and at the same time always give immediate and concrete advice. During his third emigration he often had the opportunity of conversing with visitors from countries he was not acquainted with directly, perhaps from the Balkans or Latin America. He did not always know the language, did not follow their press and had never had any particular interest in their specific problems. First of all he would allow his interrogator to speak, occasionally jotting down a few brief notes on a sliP of paper in front of him, sometimes asking for a few details: "How many members has this party?" "Isn't this politician a lawyer?"
Then he would speak, and the mass of information that had been given him would be organized. Soon one could distinguish the movements of different classes and of different layers within these classes, and then, bound up with these movements, there would be revealed the play of parties, groups and organizations, and then the place and the activities of various political figures, down to their profession and personal traits, would be logically fitted into the picture. The French naturalist Cuvier used to boast of his ability to reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone. With his vast knowledge of social and political realities Trotsky could devote himself to a similar work. His interrogator was always astounded at seeing how deeply he had been able to penetrate the reality of the particular problem, and would leave Trotsky's study knowing his own country a little better.
At every moment you felt in Trotsky a huge fund of experience, not merely engraved in his memory but organized and reflected on lengthily and profoundly· You could also see that the organization of this experience had taken place around indestructible principles. Though Lev Davidovich hated routine, though he was always anxious to discover new trends, the least attempt at innovation in the realm of principles made him prick up his ears. "Trimming Marx's beard," was his expression for all these attempts to put Marxism in line with the current fashion, and he did not dissimulate his contempt for them.
Trotsky's Style and Writing Methods
Trotsky's style is universally admired. It is undoubtedly to be best compared with that of Marx. However, Trotsky's sentences are less spacious than those of Marx, in whom one is aware of a wealth of scholarly resources, especially in the youthful works. Trotsky's style achieves its effects by extremely simple means. His vocabulary, especially in his more properly political writings, is always rather limited. The sentences are short, with few subordinate clauses. Their power arises from a sturdy articulation, most often with strongly marked but always well balanced oppositions. This temperance of means gives his style a great freshness and, one might say, youthfulness. In his writing Trotsky is considerably more youthful than Marx.
Trotsky knew how to take advantage of that Russian syntax whose inflections permit the word-order within a sentence to be upset, giving the expression of the thought a force and emphasis difficult to attain with the limited means of modern western languages. And also difficult to translate. Lev Davidovich demanded a mathematical fidelity from his translators, and at the same time kicked against the rules of grammar in the foreign language which forbade a similarly concise and direct rendition of his thought. Compared to that of Lenin, Trotsky's style is superior, by a large margin, in its lucidity and elegance, without any loss of power. Lenin's sentences occasionally become cumbrous, too heavy, disorganized. It seems as though the thought sometimes cripples its expression. Trotsky once said that in Lenin you could discover a Russian mushik, but one raised to the level of genius. Even though Lenin's father was a provincial functionary and Trotsky's a farmer, it is Trotsky who is the city-dweller, as opposed to Lenin, doubtless because of his race. This may be seen at once in the difference of styles, without any attempt being made here to uncover this opposition in other aspects of these two giant personalities.
When Trotsky was deported to Turkey, the passport the Soviet authorities gave him put down his profession as writer. And in truth he was a great, an exceedingly great writer. If the bureaucrats's inscription causes a smile it is because Trotsky was so much more than a writer. He wrote with ease, being able to dictate several hours at a sitting. But then he would go over the manuscript and correct it carefully. For some of these great writings, such as the History of the Russian Revolution, there are two successive drafts behind the definitive text, but in the majority of cases there is only one. His enormous literary production, in which are to be found books, pamphlets, innumerable articles, letters, hurried statements to the press, and notes of all sorts is, needless to say, uneven. Some parts are more worked over than others, but not a sentence in any of them has been neglected. You can take any five lines in this ponderous accumulation of writing and you will always recognize the inimitable Trotsky.
Their volume is also impressive, and would alone bear testimony to a very rare will and capacity for labor. Thirty volumes of Lenin's complete works have been collected, in addition to thirty-five volumes of correspondence and odd notes. Trotsky lived seven years longer than Lenin, but his writings, from his long books to his brief personal notes, would undoubtedly come to triple that amount. In the eleven and a half years of his third emigration he amassed a labor which would honorably fill an entire lifetime. It may be said that the pen never abandoned his hand, and what a hand it was!
He Lives in His Books
Trotsky has put all of himself into his books. personal contact with the man himself did not modify the portrait that emerged from a reading of his works, but deepened it and made it more precise: passion and reason, intelligence and will, all carried to an extreme degree, but at the same time blending into one another. In everything Lev Davidovich did one had the feeling that he had given his whole being. He often repeated Hegel's words: Nothing great is done in this world without passion; and he had nothing but contempt for the philistines who object to the "fanaticism" of the revolutionaries. But intelligence was always present, in miraculous harmony with the fire. Nor could one dream of discovering a conflict: the will was indomitable because the mind saw very far. Hegel would have to be quoted once again: Der Wille ist eine besondere Weise des Denkens. Will is a specific function of thought.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- 1930s American Socialist Workers Party Leader Max Shachtman-Prospects for a Labor Party(1937)
Click on the headline to link to a Max Shachtman Internet Archives online copy of Prospects for a Labor Party(1937)
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
********
Markin comment on this article:
Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism back in the 1930s and believe it. Later he could speak that language only at Sunday picnics and the like as he drifted back into the warm embrace of American imperialism.
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
********
Markin comment on this article:
Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism back in the 1930s and believe it. Later he could speak that language only at Sunday picnics and the like as he drifted back into the warm embrace of American imperialism.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
In Honor Of The “Old Man”- On The 71st Anniversary Of The Death Of Leon Trotsky-Leon Trotsky: Organizer Of Victory By Karl Radek
Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
*************
Markin comment:
No question that all of Leon Trotsky's political and organization skills and the strong side of his personality came through as he set out to defense the nascent Soviet state against the Whites. Radek does a pretty good job here of hitting the highlights of those efforts.
****
Karl Radek
Organizer of Victory
Source: Fourth International, August, 1944
History has prepared our party for various tasks. However defective our state machinery or our economic activity may be, still the whole past of the party has psychologically prepared it for the work of creating a new order of economy and a new state apparatus. History has even prepared us for diplomacy. It is scarcely necessary to mention that world politics have always occupied the minds of Marxists. But it was the endless negotiations with the Mensheviki that perfected our diplomatic technique; and it was during these old struggles that Comrade Chicherin learned to draw up diplomatic notes. We are just beginning to learn the miracle of economics. Our state machinery creaks and groans. In one thing, however, we have been eminently successful – in our Red Army. Its creator, its central will, is Comrade L.D. Trotsky.
Old General Moltke, the creator of the German army, often spoke of the danger that the pen of the diplomats might spoil the work of the soldier’s sabre. Warriors the world over, though there were classical authors among them, have always opposed the pen to the sword. The history of the proletarian revolution shows how the pen may be re-forged into a sword. Trotsky is one of the best writers of world socialism, but these literary advantages did not prevent him from becoming the leader, the leading organizer of the first proletarian army. The pen of the best publicist of the revolution was re-forged into a sword.
Marxist Military Literature Was Scant
The literature of scientific socialism helped Comrade Trotsky but little in solving the problems which confronted the party when it was threatened by world imperialism. If we look through the whole of pre-war socialist literature, we find – with the exception of a few little-known works by Engels, some chapters in his Anti-Düehring devoted to the development of strategy, and some chapters in Mehring’s excellent book on Lessing, devoted to the war activity of Frederick the Great – only four works on military subjects: August Bebel’s pamphlet on militia, Gaston Moch’s book on militia, the two volumes of war history by Schulz, and the book by Jaurès, devoted to the propaganda of the idea of the militia in France. With the exception of the books of Schulz and Jaures, which possess high value, everything which socialist literature has published on military subjects since Engels’ death has been bad dilettantism. But even these works by Schulz and Jaures afforded no reply to the questions with which the Russian Revolution was confronted. Schulz’s book surveyed the development of the forms of strategy and military organizations for many centuries back. It was an attempt at the application of the Marxian methods of historical research, and closed with the Napoleonic period. Jaurès’ book-full of brilliance and sparkle – shows his complete familiarity with the problems of military organization, but suffers from the fundamental fault that this gifted representative of reformism was anxious to make of the capitalist army an instrument of national defense, and to release it from the function of defending the class interests of the bourgeoisie. He therefore failed to grasp the tendency of development of militarism, and carried the idea of democracy ad absurdum in the question of war, into the question of the army.
I do not know to what extent Comrade Trotsky occupied himself before the war with questions of military knowledge. I believe that he did not gain his gifted insight into these questions from books, but received his impetus in this direction at the time when he was acting as correspondent in the Balkan war, this final rehearsal of the great war. It is probable that he deepened his knowledge of war technique and of the mechanism of the army, during his sojourn in France (during the war), from where he sent his brilliant war sketches to the Kiev Mysli. It may be seen from this work how magnificently he grasped the spirit of the army. The Marxist Trotsky saw not only the external discipline of the army, the cannon, the technique. He saw the living human beings who serve the instruments of war, he saw the sprawling charge on the field of battle.
Trotsky is the author of the first pamphlet giving a detailed analysis of the causes of the decay of the International. Even in face of this great decay Trotsky did not lose his faith in the future of socialism; on the contrary, he was profoundly convinced that all those qualities which the bourgeoisie endeavors to cultivate in the uniformed proletariat, for the purpose of securing its own victory, would soon turn against the bourgeoisie, and serve not only as the foundation of the revolution, but also of revolutionary armies. One of the most remarkable documents of his comprehension of the class structure of the army, and of the spirit of the army, is the speech which he made – I believe at the first Soviet Congress and in the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council – on Kerensky’s July offensive. In this speech Trotsky predicted the collapse of the offensive, not only on technical military grounds, but on the basis of the political analysis of the condition of the army.
“You” – and here he addressed himself to the Mensheviki and the SR’s – “demand from the government a revision of the aims of the war. In doing so you tell the army that the old aims, in whose name Czarism and the bourgeoisie demanded unheard-of sacrifices, did not correspond to the interests of the Russian peasantry and Russian proletariat. You have not attained a revision of the aims of the war. You have created nothing to replace the Czar and the fatherland, and yet you demand of the army that it shed its blood for this nothing. We cannot fight for nothing, and your adventure will end in collapse.”
The secret of Trotsky’s greatness as organizer of the Red Army lies in this attitude of his towards the question.
All great military writers emphasize the tremendously decisive significance of the moral factor in war. One half of Clausewitz’s great book is devoted to this question, and the whole of our victory in the civil war is due to the circumstance that Trotsky knew how to apply this knowledge of the significance of the moral factor in war to our reality. When the old Czarist army went to pieces, the minister of war of the Kerensky government, Verkhovsky, proposed that the older military classes be discharged, the military authorities behind the front partly reduced, and the army reorganized by the introduction of fresh young elements. When we seized power, and the trenches emptied, many of us made the same proposition. But this idea was the purest Utopia. It was impossible to replace the fleeing Czarist army with fresh forces. These two waves would have crossed and divided each other. The old army had to be completely dissolved; the new army could only be built up on the alarm sent out by Soviet Russia to the workers and peasants, to defend the conquests of the revolution.
When, in April 1918, the best Czarist officers who remained in the army after our victory met together for the purpose of working out, in conjunction with our comrades and some military representatives of the Allies, the plan of organization for the army, Trotsky listened to their plans for several days – I have a clear recollection of this scene – in silence. These were the plans of people who did not comprehend the upheaval going on before their eyes. Every one of them replied to the question of how an army was to be organized on the old pattern. They did not grasp the metamorphosis wrought in the human material upon which the army is based. How the war experts laughed at the first voluntary troops organized by Comrade Trotsky in his capacity as Commissar of War! Old Borisov, one of the best Russian military writers, assured those Communists with whom he was obliged to come in contact, time and again, that nothing would come of this undertaking, that the army could only be built up on the basis of general conscription, and maintained by iron discipline. He did not grasp that the volunteer troops were the secure foundation pillars upon which the structure was to be erected, and that the masses of peasants and workers could not possibly be rallied around the flag of war again unless the broad masses were confronted by deadly danger. Without believing for a single moment that the volunteer army could save Russia, Trotsky organized it as an apparatus which he required for the creation of a new army.
Utilizing the Bourgeois Specialists
But Trotsky’s organizing genius, and his boldness of thought are even more clearly expressed in his courageous determination to utilize the war specialists for creating the army. Every good Marxist is fully aware that in building up a good economic apparatus we still require the aid of the old capitalist organization. Lenin defended this proposition with the utmost decision in his April speech on the tasks of the Soviet power. In the mature circles of the party the idea is not contested. But the idea that we could create an instrument for the defense of the republic, an army, with the aid of the Czarist officers – encountered obstinate resistance. Who could think of re-arming the White officers who had just been disarmed? Thus many comrades questioned. I remember a discussion on this question among the editors of the Communist, the organ of the so-called left communists, in which the question of the employment of staff officers nearly led to a split. And the editors of this paper were among the best schooled theoreticians and practicians of the party. It suffices to mention the names of Bukharin, Ossonski, Lomov, W. Yakovlev. There was even greater distrust among the broad circles of our military comrades, recruited for our military organizations during the war. The mistrust of our military functionaries could only be allayed, their agreement to the utilization of the knowledge possessed by the old officers could only be won, by the burning faith of Trotsky in our social force, the belief that we could obtain from the war experts the benefit of their science, without permitting them to force their politics upon us; the belief that the revolutionary watchfulness of the progressive workers would enable them to overcome any counter-revolutionary attempts made by the staff officers.
Trotsky’s Magnetic Energy
In order to emerge victorious, it was necessary for the army to be headed by a man of iron will, and for this man to possess not only the full confidence of the party, but the ability of subjugating with his iron will the enemy who is forced to serve us. But Comrade Trotsky has not only succeeded in subordinating to his energy even the highest staff officers. He attained more: he succeeded in winning the confidence of the best elements among the war experts, and in converting them from enemies of Soviet Russia to its most profoundly convinced followers. I witnessed one such victory of Trotsky’s at the time of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. The officers who had accompanied us to Brest-Litovsk maintained a more than reserved attitude towards us. They fulfilled their role as experts with the utmost condescension, in the opinion that they were attending a comedy which merely served to cover a business transaction long since arranged between the Bolsheviki and the German government. But the manner in which Trotsky conducted the struggle against German imperialism, in the name of the principles of the Russian revolution, forced every human being present in the assembly room to feel the moral and spiritual victory of this eminent representative of the Russian proletariat. The mistrust of the war experts towards us vanished in proportion to the development of the great Brest-Litovsk drama.
How clearly I recollect the night when Admiral Altvater – who has since died – one of the leading officers of the old regime, who began to help Soviet Russia not from motives of fear but of conscience, entered my room and said: “I came here because you forced me to do so. I did not believe you; but now I shall help you, and do my work as never before, in the profound conviction that I am serving the fatherland.” It is one of Trotsky’s greatest victories that he has been able to impart the conviction that the Soviet government really fights for the welfare of the Russian people, even to such people who have come over to us from hostile camps on compulsion only. It goes without saying that this great victory on the inner front, this moral victory over the enemy, has been the result not only of Trotsky’s iron energy which won for him universal respect; not only the result of the deep moral force, the high degree of authority even in military spheres, which this socialist writer and people’s tribune, who was placed by the will of the revolution at the head of the army, has been able to win for himself; this victory has also required the self-denial of tens of thousands of our comrades in the army, an iron discipline in our own ranks, a consistent striving towards our aims; it has also required the miracle that those masses of human beings who only yesterday fled from the battle-field, take up arms again today, under much more difficult conditions, far the defense of the country.
That these politico-psychological mass factors played an important role is an undeniable fact, but the strongest, most concentrated, and striking expression of this influence is to be found in the personality of Trotsky. Here the Russian revolution has acted through the brain, the nervous system, and the heart of its greatest representative. When our first armed trial began, with Czecho-Slovakia, the party, and with its leader Trotsky, showed how the principle of the political campaign – as already taught by Lassalle – could be applied to war, to the fight with “steel arguments.” We concentrated all material and moral forces on the war. The whole party had grasped the necessity of this. But this necessity also finds its highest expression in the steel figure of Trotsky. After our victory over Denikin in March 1920, Trotsky said, at the party conference: “We have ravaged the whole of Russia in order to conquer the Whites.” In these words we again find the unparalleled concentration of will required to ensure the victory. We needed a man who was the embodiment of the war-cry, a man who became the tocsin sounding the alarm, the will demanding from one and all an unqualified subordination to the great bloody necessity.
It was only a man who works like Trotsky, a man who spares himself as little as Trotsky, who can speak to the soldiers as only Trotsky can – it was only such a man who could be the standard bearer of the armed working people. He has been everything in one person. He has thought out the strategic advice given by the experts and has combined it with a correct estimate of the proportions of social forces; he knew how to unite in one movement the impulses of fourteen fronts, of the ten thousand communists who informed headquarters as to what the real army is and how it is possible to operate with it; he understood how to combine all this in one strategic plan and one scheme of organization. And in all this splendid work he understood better than anyone else how to apply the knowledge of the significance of the moral factor in war.
This combination of strategist and military organizer with the politician is best characterized by the fact that during the whole of this hard work, Trotsky appreciated the importance of Demian Bedny (communist writer), or of the artist Moor (who draws most of the political caricatures for the communist papers, posters, etc.) for the war. Our army was an army of peasants, and the dictatorship of the proletariat with regard to the army, that is, the leading of this peasants’ army by workers and by representatives of the working class, was realized in the personality of Trotsky and in the comrades co-operating with him. Trotsky was able, with the aid of the whole apparatus of our party, to impart to the peasants’ army, exhausted by the war, the profoundest conviction that it was fighting in its own interests.
Inseparably Linked in History
Trotsky worked with the whole party in the work of forming the Red Army. He would not have fulfilled his task without the party. But without him the creation of the Red Army and its victories, would have demanded infinitely greater sacrifices. Our party will go down in history as the first proletarian party which succeeded in creating a great army, and this bright page in the history of the Russian revolution will always be bound up with the name of Leon Davidovitch Trotsky, with the name of a man whose work and deeds will claim not only the love, but also the scientific study of the young generation of workers preparing to conquer the whole world.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
*************
Markin comment:
No question that all of Leon Trotsky's political and organization skills and the strong side of his personality came through as he set out to defense the nascent Soviet state against the Whites. Radek does a pretty good job here of hitting the highlights of those efforts.
****
Karl Radek
Organizer of Victory
Source: Fourth International, August, 1944
History has prepared our party for various tasks. However defective our state machinery or our economic activity may be, still the whole past of the party has psychologically prepared it for the work of creating a new order of economy and a new state apparatus. History has even prepared us for diplomacy. It is scarcely necessary to mention that world politics have always occupied the minds of Marxists. But it was the endless negotiations with the Mensheviki that perfected our diplomatic technique; and it was during these old struggles that Comrade Chicherin learned to draw up diplomatic notes. We are just beginning to learn the miracle of economics. Our state machinery creaks and groans. In one thing, however, we have been eminently successful – in our Red Army. Its creator, its central will, is Comrade L.D. Trotsky.
Old General Moltke, the creator of the German army, often spoke of the danger that the pen of the diplomats might spoil the work of the soldier’s sabre. Warriors the world over, though there were classical authors among them, have always opposed the pen to the sword. The history of the proletarian revolution shows how the pen may be re-forged into a sword. Trotsky is one of the best writers of world socialism, but these literary advantages did not prevent him from becoming the leader, the leading organizer of the first proletarian army. The pen of the best publicist of the revolution was re-forged into a sword.
Marxist Military Literature Was Scant
The literature of scientific socialism helped Comrade Trotsky but little in solving the problems which confronted the party when it was threatened by world imperialism. If we look through the whole of pre-war socialist literature, we find – with the exception of a few little-known works by Engels, some chapters in his Anti-Düehring devoted to the development of strategy, and some chapters in Mehring’s excellent book on Lessing, devoted to the war activity of Frederick the Great – only four works on military subjects: August Bebel’s pamphlet on militia, Gaston Moch’s book on militia, the two volumes of war history by Schulz, and the book by Jaurès, devoted to the propaganda of the idea of the militia in France. With the exception of the books of Schulz and Jaures, which possess high value, everything which socialist literature has published on military subjects since Engels’ death has been bad dilettantism. But even these works by Schulz and Jaures afforded no reply to the questions with which the Russian Revolution was confronted. Schulz’s book surveyed the development of the forms of strategy and military organizations for many centuries back. It was an attempt at the application of the Marxian methods of historical research, and closed with the Napoleonic period. Jaurès’ book-full of brilliance and sparkle – shows his complete familiarity with the problems of military organization, but suffers from the fundamental fault that this gifted representative of reformism was anxious to make of the capitalist army an instrument of national defense, and to release it from the function of defending the class interests of the bourgeoisie. He therefore failed to grasp the tendency of development of militarism, and carried the idea of democracy ad absurdum in the question of war, into the question of the army.
I do not know to what extent Comrade Trotsky occupied himself before the war with questions of military knowledge. I believe that he did not gain his gifted insight into these questions from books, but received his impetus in this direction at the time when he was acting as correspondent in the Balkan war, this final rehearsal of the great war. It is probable that he deepened his knowledge of war technique and of the mechanism of the army, during his sojourn in France (during the war), from where he sent his brilliant war sketches to the Kiev Mysli. It may be seen from this work how magnificently he grasped the spirit of the army. The Marxist Trotsky saw not only the external discipline of the army, the cannon, the technique. He saw the living human beings who serve the instruments of war, he saw the sprawling charge on the field of battle.
Trotsky is the author of the first pamphlet giving a detailed analysis of the causes of the decay of the International. Even in face of this great decay Trotsky did not lose his faith in the future of socialism; on the contrary, he was profoundly convinced that all those qualities which the bourgeoisie endeavors to cultivate in the uniformed proletariat, for the purpose of securing its own victory, would soon turn against the bourgeoisie, and serve not only as the foundation of the revolution, but also of revolutionary armies. One of the most remarkable documents of his comprehension of the class structure of the army, and of the spirit of the army, is the speech which he made – I believe at the first Soviet Congress and in the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council – on Kerensky’s July offensive. In this speech Trotsky predicted the collapse of the offensive, not only on technical military grounds, but on the basis of the political analysis of the condition of the army.
“You” – and here he addressed himself to the Mensheviki and the SR’s – “demand from the government a revision of the aims of the war. In doing so you tell the army that the old aims, in whose name Czarism and the bourgeoisie demanded unheard-of sacrifices, did not correspond to the interests of the Russian peasantry and Russian proletariat. You have not attained a revision of the aims of the war. You have created nothing to replace the Czar and the fatherland, and yet you demand of the army that it shed its blood for this nothing. We cannot fight for nothing, and your adventure will end in collapse.”
The secret of Trotsky’s greatness as organizer of the Red Army lies in this attitude of his towards the question.
All great military writers emphasize the tremendously decisive significance of the moral factor in war. One half of Clausewitz’s great book is devoted to this question, and the whole of our victory in the civil war is due to the circumstance that Trotsky knew how to apply this knowledge of the significance of the moral factor in war to our reality. When the old Czarist army went to pieces, the minister of war of the Kerensky government, Verkhovsky, proposed that the older military classes be discharged, the military authorities behind the front partly reduced, and the army reorganized by the introduction of fresh young elements. When we seized power, and the trenches emptied, many of us made the same proposition. But this idea was the purest Utopia. It was impossible to replace the fleeing Czarist army with fresh forces. These two waves would have crossed and divided each other. The old army had to be completely dissolved; the new army could only be built up on the alarm sent out by Soviet Russia to the workers and peasants, to defend the conquests of the revolution.
When, in April 1918, the best Czarist officers who remained in the army after our victory met together for the purpose of working out, in conjunction with our comrades and some military representatives of the Allies, the plan of organization for the army, Trotsky listened to their plans for several days – I have a clear recollection of this scene – in silence. These were the plans of people who did not comprehend the upheaval going on before their eyes. Every one of them replied to the question of how an army was to be organized on the old pattern. They did not grasp the metamorphosis wrought in the human material upon which the army is based. How the war experts laughed at the first voluntary troops organized by Comrade Trotsky in his capacity as Commissar of War! Old Borisov, one of the best Russian military writers, assured those Communists with whom he was obliged to come in contact, time and again, that nothing would come of this undertaking, that the army could only be built up on the basis of general conscription, and maintained by iron discipline. He did not grasp that the volunteer troops were the secure foundation pillars upon which the structure was to be erected, and that the masses of peasants and workers could not possibly be rallied around the flag of war again unless the broad masses were confronted by deadly danger. Without believing for a single moment that the volunteer army could save Russia, Trotsky organized it as an apparatus which he required for the creation of a new army.
Utilizing the Bourgeois Specialists
But Trotsky’s organizing genius, and his boldness of thought are even more clearly expressed in his courageous determination to utilize the war specialists for creating the army. Every good Marxist is fully aware that in building up a good economic apparatus we still require the aid of the old capitalist organization. Lenin defended this proposition with the utmost decision in his April speech on the tasks of the Soviet power. In the mature circles of the party the idea is not contested. But the idea that we could create an instrument for the defense of the republic, an army, with the aid of the Czarist officers – encountered obstinate resistance. Who could think of re-arming the White officers who had just been disarmed? Thus many comrades questioned. I remember a discussion on this question among the editors of the Communist, the organ of the so-called left communists, in which the question of the employment of staff officers nearly led to a split. And the editors of this paper were among the best schooled theoreticians and practicians of the party. It suffices to mention the names of Bukharin, Ossonski, Lomov, W. Yakovlev. There was even greater distrust among the broad circles of our military comrades, recruited for our military organizations during the war. The mistrust of our military functionaries could only be allayed, their agreement to the utilization of the knowledge possessed by the old officers could only be won, by the burning faith of Trotsky in our social force, the belief that we could obtain from the war experts the benefit of their science, without permitting them to force their politics upon us; the belief that the revolutionary watchfulness of the progressive workers would enable them to overcome any counter-revolutionary attempts made by the staff officers.
Trotsky’s Magnetic Energy
In order to emerge victorious, it was necessary for the army to be headed by a man of iron will, and for this man to possess not only the full confidence of the party, but the ability of subjugating with his iron will the enemy who is forced to serve us. But Comrade Trotsky has not only succeeded in subordinating to his energy even the highest staff officers. He attained more: he succeeded in winning the confidence of the best elements among the war experts, and in converting them from enemies of Soviet Russia to its most profoundly convinced followers. I witnessed one such victory of Trotsky’s at the time of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. The officers who had accompanied us to Brest-Litovsk maintained a more than reserved attitude towards us. They fulfilled their role as experts with the utmost condescension, in the opinion that they were attending a comedy which merely served to cover a business transaction long since arranged between the Bolsheviki and the German government. But the manner in which Trotsky conducted the struggle against German imperialism, in the name of the principles of the Russian revolution, forced every human being present in the assembly room to feel the moral and spiritual victory of this eminent representative of the Russian proletariat. The mistrust of the war experts towards us vanished in proportion to the development of the great Brest-Litovsk drama.
How clearly I recollect the night when Admiral Altvater – who has since died – one of the leading officers of the old regime, who began to help Soviet Russia not from motives of fear but of conscience, entered my room and said: “I came here because you forced me to do so. I did not believe you; but now I shall help you, and do my work as never before, in the profound conviction that I am serving the fatherland.” It is one of Trotsky’s greatest victories that he has been able to impart the conviction that the Soviet government really fights for the welfare of the Russian people, even to such people who have come over to us from hostile camps on compulsion only. It goes without saying that this great victory on the inner front, this moral victory over the enemy, has been the result not only of Trotsky’s iron energy which won for him universal respect; not only the result of the deep moral force, the high degree of authority even in military spheres, which this socialist writer and people’s tribune, who was placed by the will of the revolution at the head of the army, has been able to win for himself; this victory has also required the self-denial of tens of thousands of our comrades in the army, an iron discipline in our own ranks, a consistent striving towards our aims; it has also required the miracle that those masses of human beings who only yesterday fled from the battle-field, take up arms again today, under much more difficult conditions, far the defense of the country.
That these politico-psychological mass factors played an important role is an undeniable fact, but the strongest, most concentrated, and striking expression of this influence is to be found in the personality of Trotsky. Here the Russian revolution has acted through the brain, the nervous system, and the heart of its greatest representative. When our first armed trial began, with Czecho-Slovakia, the party, and with its leader Trotsky, showed how the principle of the political campaign – as already taught by Lassalle – could be applied to war, to the fight with “steel arguments.” We concentrated all material and moral forces on the war. The whole party had grasped the necessity of this. But this necessity also finds its highest expression in the steel figure of Trotsky. After our victory over Denikin in March 1920, Trotsky said, at the party conference: “We have ravaged the whole of Russia in order to conquer the Whites.” In these words we again find the unparalleled concentration of will required to ensure the victory. We needed a man who was the embodiment of the war-cry, a man who became the tocsin sounding the alarm, the will demanding from one and all an unqualified subordination to the great bloody necessity.
It was only a man who works like Trotsky, a man who spares himself as little as Trotsky, who can speak to the soldiers as only Trotsky can – it was only such a man who could be the standard bearer of the armed working people. He has been everything in one person. He has thought out the strategic advice given by the experts and has combined it with a correct estimate of the proportions of social forces; he knew how to unite in one movement the impulses of fourteen fronts, of the ten thousand communists who informed headquarters as to what the real army is and how it is possible to operate with it; he understood how to combine all this in one strategic plan and one scheme of organization. And in all this splendid work he understood better than anyone else how to apply the knowledge of the significance of the moral factor in war.
This combination of strategist and military organizer with the politician is best characterized by the fact that during the whole of this hard work, Trotsky appreciated the importance of Demian Bedny (communist writer), or of the artist Moor (who draws most of the political caricatures for the communist papers, posters, etc.) for the war. Our army was an army of peasants, and the dictatorship of the proletariat with regard to the army, that is, the leading of this peasants’ army by workers and by representatives of the working class, was realized in the personality of Trotsky and in the comrades co-operating with him. Trotsky was able, with the aid of the whole apparatus of our party, to impart to the peasants’ army, exhausted by the war, the profoundest conviction that it was fighting in its own interests.
Inseparably Linked in History
Trotsky worked with the whole party in the work of forming the Red Army. He would not have fulfilled his task without the party. But without him the creation of the Red Army and its victories, would have demanded infinitely greater sacrifices. Our party will go down in history as the first proletarian party which succeeded in creating a great army, and this bright page in the history of the Russian revolution will always be bound up with the name of Leon Davidovitch Trotsky, with the name of a man whose work and deeds will claim not only the love, but also the scientific study of the young generation of workers preparing to conquer the whole world.
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