Click on the headline to link to the National Jericho Movement website for the latest news on our brother and sister class-war political prisoners.
Markin comment:
Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long-time supporter of class- war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Monday, July 02, 2012
The Latest From The "Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" Website-Free Leonard Peltier Now!-Free All Our Class-War Prisoners!-An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!
The Latest From The "Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" Website-Free Leonard Peltier Now!-Free All Our Class-War Prisoners!-An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
Click on the headline to link to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee website for the latest news on our class-war political prisoner brother, Leonard Peltier.
Markin comment:
Long live the tradition of the James P. Cannon-founded International Labor Defense (via the American Communist Party and the Communist International's Red Aid). Free Leonard, Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners!
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
Click on the headline to link to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee website for the latest news on our class-war political prisoner brother, Leonard Peltier.
Markin comment:
Long live the tradition of the James P. Cannon-founded International Labor Defense (via the American Communist Party and the Communist International's Red Aid). Free Leonard, Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners!
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- “Who Will The Next Fool Be”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the late Koko Taylor holding forth righteously on I ‘m A Woman.
CD Review
Alligator Records : 40th Anniversary Collection, 2 CD set, various artists, Alligator Records, 2011
My old friend from the 1960s great American hitchhike highway, Peter Paul Markin (then consciously carrying the moniker of Be-Bop Benny), really was the first person who tuned me into the world of blues, old time country blues (driven by the Saturday juke joints), and the later post-World War II electrification of the blues as blacks headed north to the cities- and electricity. He got me, a small city Maine boy, hip to the likes of Son House, Skip James, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf. All unabashedly raw talent, and all out front down deep blues, country or city.
Of course that was over forty years ago and almost all of those who he hipped me too have now passed on, although not their musical influence and that is what brings me to this review, Alligator Records: 40th Anniversary Collection 2 CD set. Since the blues are still very much with us, although that genre, like rock and roll, has it up and down periods of popularity it is necessary to take a peek at who has carried on the traditions that Be-Bop Benny started me out on when we travelled those West Coast highways seeking the great American West night.
And that is where the Alligator Record label comes in. In earlier times certain record companies were known, and well-known, for certain kinds of music. Chess Record sin Chicago comes readily to for electric blues. As does Sun Records for early rock (and rockabilly). And Vanguard Records for folk stuff. Well Alligator has filled a certain niche for those who wished to carry on the electric blues tradition and this 38 performance collection set is testimony to those efforts for the last forty –something years.
While they may have recoded for other recoding companies or had other label arrangements (not uncommon in the helter-skelter world of record production) the artists list here constitute something of “who’s who” of post-1960s electric blues. A small roll call of names like Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, Guitar Shorty, Marcia Ball, Son Seal, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Johnny Winter, Lonnie Brooks, Hound Dog Taylor, James Cotton and the rest make my case. The only question that I have is who will produce the next generation of blues material? Alligator Records efforts here are the new benchmark.
CD Review
Alligator Records : 40th Anniversary Collection, 2 CD set, various artists, Alligator Records, 2011
My old friend from the 1960s great American hitchhike highway, Peter Paul Markin (then consciously carrying the moniker of Be-Bop Benny), really was the first person who tuned me into the world of blues, old time country blues (driven by the Saturday juke joints), and the later post-World War II electrification of the blues as blacks headed north to the cities- and electricity. He got me, a small city Maine boy, hip to the likes of Son House, Skip James, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf. All unabashedly raw talent, and all out front down deep blues, country or city.
Of course that was over forty years ago and almost all of those who he hipped me too have now passed on, although not their musical influence and that is what brings me to this review, Alligator Records: 40th Anniversary Collection 2 CD set. Since the blues are still very much with us, although that genre, like rock and roll, has it up and down periods of popularity it is necessary to take a peek at who has carried on the traditions that Be-Bop Benny started me out on when we travelled those West Coast highways seeking the great American West night.
And that is where the Alligator Record label comes in. In earlier times certain record companies were known, and well-known, for certain kinds of music. Chess Record sin Chicago comes readily to for electric blues. As does Sun Records for early rock (and rockabilly). And Vanguard Records for folk stuff. Well Alligator has filled a certain niche for those who wished to carry on the electric blues tradition and this 38 performance collection set is testimony to those efforts for the last forty –something years.
While they may have recoded for other recoding companies or had other label arrangements (not uncommon in the helter-skelter world of record production) the artists list here constitute something of “who’s who” of post-1960s electric blues. A small roll call of names like Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, Guitar Shorty, Marcia Ball, Son Seal, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Johnny Winter, Lonnie Brooks, Hound Dog Taylor, James Cotton and the rest make my case. The only question that I have is who will produce the next generation of blues material? Alligator Records efforts here are the new benchmark.
Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-Sweet, Moonless Ohio Dreams-1969
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Four: Sweet, Moonless Ohio Dreams In The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night
The 1960s asphalt-driven, white-lined, hitchhike road, the quest for the blue-pink great American West night, the eternal midnight creep of over-weight trucks with their company-seeking, benny-high, overwrought teamster drivers, and the steam-driven, onion-filled meatloaf-milk-heavy mashed potatoes-and limpid carrots daily special diner truck stop are all meshed together. You could say that there was no hitchhike road, and no blue-pink dreams, if the old-fashioned caboose (sometimes literally) diner was not part of the mix that glued things together out on that lonely highway.
No, I do not speak of the then creeping family-friendly one-size-fits-all but still steamed meats-milky starches-sogged vegetable franchise interstate restaurants that now dot the roads from here to ‘Frisco but back road, back hitchhike road if you were smart, back old time route one, or sixty-six or twenty road where you had a chance for pushing distance and for feeling America in the raw. Hey, I have a million diner stories, diners with and without truck stops, diners famous and obscure, diners of every shape and composition to tell about. Or rather I have about three basic diner stories with a million steamed meat loaf-mashed taters-carrots (okay, maybe string beans, steamed, for a change-up)-bread pudding for dessert variations. I want to tell you one, one involving a young woman, and involving the great American night that drives these scenes. The other variations can wait their turns for some other time.
Car-less, and with no hope for any car any time soon, but with enough pent-up energy and anger to build a skyscraper single-handedly, I set out on the early May open roads, thumb in good working order, bedroll on one shoulder, life’s worldly goods in a knapsack on the other. It was that simple in those days. Today, sadly, it would take my rental of a major U-Haul truck, for starters. As always in those days as well, and some of you may know the spot if you have ever been in Boston (or, better, Cambridge) there was (and is) an old abandoned railroad yard that was turned into a truck depot near the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike where most of the truckers, the big diesel-fuelled ones, the doubled-wheeled, eight and sixteen-wheeled ones, picked up or unloaded their goods for further transport. That was the place to check first if you were heading west on the off chance that some mad man trucker was looking for company on that white-lined, hard-scrabble road, and did not mind bedraggled, bearded, long-haired, hippie boy company, at that. As luck would have it I caught a guy who was heading out to Chicago with a load of widgets (or whatever, even these guys didn’t know, or want to know, what was on the manifest half the time, especially if they were running “heavy”).
And why, by the way, although it is not germane to the story, was I heading out on that old California road? Why all that pent-up energy and skyscraper-building anger. Well, the cover story was so that I could get my head straight but you know the real reason, and this is for your eyes only, I had just broken up, for the umpteenth time, with a woman who drove me to distraction, sometimes pleasantly but on that occasion fitfully, who I could not, and did not, so I thought, want to get out of my system, but had to put myself a little distance away from. You know that story, boys and girls, in your own lives so I do not have to spend much time on the details here. Besides, if you really want to read that kind of story the romance novel section of any library or the DVD film section, for that matter, can tell the story with more heart-throbbing panache that you could find here.
Now there were a million and one reasons that long-haul drivers back then would take hitchhikers on board, even hippies who represented most of what they hated about what was happening in, and to, their America in those days (in the days before the trucking companies, and the insurance companies, squashed that traveler pick-up idea and left the truckers to their own solitary devises). Some reasons maybe were perverse but usually it was just for sheer, human companionship, another voice, or more usually someone to vent to at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour, especially at night when those straight white lines started to get raggedy looking.
This guy, this big-chested, brawny, beef-eating teamster guy, Denver Slim by name (really, I heard other truckers call him that at truck stops when they gave each other the nod, although, as described, he was neither slim nor, as he told me, from Denver), was no different except the reason, at least the reason that he gave me, was that I reminded him of his goddam son (I am being polite here) whom he loved/hated. Loved, because that is what a father was expected to feel toward kin, son kin especially and hated because he was showing signs or rebellion (read: becoming a hippie). I, needless to say, was a little queasy and sat close to the door handle for a while until I realized that it was more about love than hate. Old Denver Slim just didn’t get what was happening to his world, especially the part, the huge part, that he had no control over.
Hey, I had countless hitchhike rides in all kinds of vehicles, from the Denver Slim big wheels to Volkswagen bugs (look that up) but the common thread was that there were some interesting (if disturbing and hopeless) stories out there. Let me fill you in on Denver Slim’s story both because it helps explain what is coming up in my own quest and the hard, hard fact that there was a malaise, a palpable malaise, in the land and his story was prima facie evidence for that notion. Denver Slim had gone, like a million other members of my parent’s generation, through his childhood in the Great Depression (Chicago) and did his military in the throes of World War II (Corporal, U.S. Army, European Theater, and proud of it). After the war he started driving trucks, finally landing unionized teamster jobs as an over-the-road long haul driver based in Chicago. As was not unusual then, and maybe not now either, he married a local woman he knew from the old neighborhood, had several children, moved out of Chicago proper to a suburban plot house (“little boxes,” from the description he gave) and bought into the mortgaged, green-grassed lawn, weekly mowed (when he was not on the road), television-watching, neighbor-averting (except for the kids when young) routine that was a blueprint for America 1950s life in the lower-middle classes.
Here is where Slim’s story gets tricky though, and interesting. Of course being on the road, being mortgaged up to the neck on the road, he was never home enough to make the word family stick. He, as he admitted, when talking about his son Jamie, the rebellious son (read: becoming a hippie son), didn’t really know the kids (the other three were daughters whom he , as he said, wouldn’t have known anyway past the age of ten or so the way things work in girl world). But here is the kicker, the kicker for me back then although I get it better now, much better. The wife, Ruth, the ever-loving wife, had along the way taken a boyfriend and, off and on, lived with that boyfriend. Slim went crazy at first about it but somehow got through it and accepted that situation. Oh, you thought that was the kicker. No, that was just the prelude to the kicker. Here it is. Denver Slim, old proud soldier-warrior, old mortgaged to the neck teamster, old work and slave on the road for the kids that he doesn’t know had a girlfriend, and had said girlfriend way before his wife took her lover. A beautiful family values story out of the age of Ozzie and Harriet, right?
But this is the real kicker for your harried hippie listener, old salt of the earth Denver Slim in relating his life story got a little bit lovesick for his honey (no, not the wife, the girlfriend, come on now, listen up) who lived in Steubenville, Ohio. And that, my friends, was where we were heading as we made tracks to Youngstown on Interstate 70 and so instead of getting a ride through to Chicago (a place where I knew how to catch a ride west, no problem, almost like out of Boston) I was to be left off, and good luck, at the diner truck stop just off Route 7 outside of Steubenville, Ohio. Right near the Ohio River, at the eastern end that I was not familiar with. Christ, I never even heard of the place before, never mind trying to get a ride out of there, getting out of there at night as it looked like was going to happen by the time we got to the stop. Well, such is the road, the hitchhike road, and I hope old Slim had a good time with his honey, maybe, maybe I hope he did that is.
Slim must have had it bad, love bug-bitten bad, because he no sooner left me off at the diner than he then barrel-assed (nice term, right?) that big rig back, that big sixteen wheeler, onto the lovesick -night road and to his own dream sleep. So there I was doing graduate-level diner study by my lonesome. Look, I was no stranger, by this time in my wanderings, to the diners, trucks stops, cafes, and hash houses of this continent. From the look of this one (and one judged these things by the number of big rigs idling nearby) it was something of a Buckeye institution, maybe not like the football team or various legendary football coaches but busy (see, I know a little about Ohio, although not much outside the bigger cities and campus towns).
As I went inside through the glass-plated double doors I could practically inhale the steam from the vegetables, the dank, faded glory of the taters, and the inevitable onion smell than can only mean meat loaf. Hey, this is what passes for home-cooking on the road. And be glad of it, friend. As a single I would not be so uncool as to take a booth, although at that time of day there were some empties, but rather hopped right up on that old stool at the Formica-top red counter replete with individual paper mat and dinner setting, spoons, folks, knives, various condiments and plastic-entombed menu that every self-respecting diner has for those caught by their lonesome. Their sincere, if futile, attempt at home-away from homey-ness. It was not like this was a date-taking place (or at least I hope nobody thinks along those lines, but you never know, maybe people celebrate their anniversaries in the place) but it is okay out here abandoned in the neon-lighted wilderness of a back road truck stop.
Okay, at long last here is the part that you have been waiting for, the girl in the story part. Well, wait a minute, let me hold forth on waitresses because that is important to the girl part (and it was almost always waitresses in those days, or in a pinch, the owner/short order cook) who served them off the arm. In college towns and big cities, waitresses were (and are) just doing that job to mark time while going to college or some other thing but in the hash houses, the roadside diners, the hole-in-the-wall faded restaurants of this continent it was (is) almost universally true that in this type of establishment this was an upwardly-mobile career move (or, maybe, just a lateral move). You have all seen and heard about the typical career waitress- surly, short-tempered, steam-pressed uniform, steamed by the proximity to the food trays that is, hardly has time to take your order because that party of six in the booths is waiting on dessert (and her big tip for this evening, she hopes, although if she thought about it the hard facts should have told her that old lonesome single male trucker was the best tipper). There is a smidgen of truth in those old hoary stories about waitresses but there is also some very hard-pressed, ill-fated bad luck thrown in as well. They all had stories to tell, at least the ones who didn’t scurry away like rats from “hippies.”
Okay, okay I can now tell you about angelic Angelica. That name, the smell of that name, the swirl around the tongue speaking that name, the touch of that name, still evokes strong memories even after all this time. But enough of nostalgia. Let’s get down to cases. First of all she was young, very young for a truck stop diner waitress so at first I thought that she was a career waitress-in-training or that there was a college nearby that I might not have heard of. I will describe her virtues in a second but let me tell you right off that the minute I sat down, and although there were several others at the counter who had come in before me, she came right over to my stool and asked if I wanted coffee. Well, kind of sleepy that I was at the time, I said yes and she went right off, got it, and came right back. And then, while the others at the counter were cooling their heels, she took my order, and as she moved away to put that order in (No, I do not remember what it was but, probably, since I was counting pennies, a burger and fries, meat loaf and other such high-end cuisine was saved for serious hungers) she slightly turned to give me another look and a sly smile.
In those days I was susceptible, very susceptible, to that winsome sly smile that some women know exactly how to throw (hell, I am still a sucker for that one, and don’t tell me you aren’t, or couldn’t be, too, male or female, it works both ways on this one). That sly smile and her, well, looks. Forget that endless physical description stuff about soft auburn hair, full ruby-red lips, bright, fresh, naïve blue eyes, nicely-shaped hips and well-formed legs. Very good legs. Okay, forget all that. I will describe her looks in “on the road” terms because when you were on the road and trying to get across the country the rules, the rules of the road, were a little different. Your take on life and your usually transient relationships with passing strangers, male or female, got a little twisted. Not necessarily in a bad way, but twisted.
There were different protocols for different situations when you were hitchhiking. A lone male hitching was usually not a bad proposition, especially if you stayed close to the highways and knew the truck stops, and appeared to be drug free, or at least that you were not in the throes of a terminal drug experience while trying to hitch a ride. This Hunter Thompson Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas drug stuff is good road fiction, but fiction nevertheless, if you were trying to get from point A to point B before your old age set in. The same with goofy Dennis Hooper Easy Rider stuff. Good cinema, bad, real bad road stuff. The main problem then, and probably would be today as well, is single middle-age guys, maybe desperate for a little company, picking you up with the idea of making advances. I don’t know about anybody else, as least I never heard anybody talk much about it then, but a simple "no" usually was enough to stop that(and not infrequently got you dumped in some odd spot between exits to thumb down some flying-by traffic). It’s only later, in the early 1970s when I wasn’t on the road so much that things started to get hairy, and the talk turned to weirdness, serious weirdness, out on the white-lined lanes.
In the late 1960s a pair of males was not a bad combination either. Not so much for getting rides from truckers who usually did not have room for two (or, if so, it was uncomfortable as hell) but for the plethora of Volkswagen vans, converted school buses, campers, and pick-up trucks that were out there on the blue-pink seeking road. There were times on the Pacific Coast Highway out in California that you barely got your thumb out and some vehicle stopped, especially if you looked like you were part of “youth nation.” Two more guys in back, sure thing, no problem. Those were good days to travel the roads, and another time I will tell you about some of those experiences but right now I have to get back to describe Angelica, or her road-worthy attributes anyway.
The optimal road set-up though, the one that got you rides the fastest, usually was to be paired up with a woman, truth be told, preferable a good-looking young woman. Ya, it’s not good form today, it’s certainly not politically correct or socially useful today to work from this premise, but back then the idea was that a guy and girl were safe from the driver’s perspective. And it was almost always guys, truckers or loners, or an occasional man and woman, who picked you up. Not single women drivers, young or old. For my perspective, the hitcher’s perspective, a good-looking woman, with good legs, made the road easier. And other delights, of course.
And it did no harm to have the woman act as an upfront side-of-the-road decoy for that same reason. Maybe not in the desert tumbleweed badlands of Arizona or Nevada where the hot sun, or dust, got you a ride from people who knew that area and knew they had to stop as a matter of your survival, and who knows their own sense of survival as well, but between exits on Interstate 80, let’s say, it helped, hell it helped a lot. Maybe not old Denver Slim, high on benny and moaning and groaning for his honey (the girlfriend not the wife remember) in dark night, white-lined blur but a guy like me would have made those lonesome highway brakes squeal to high heaven, and gladly. Angelica, at first glance, would certainly make the road easier, although this little detour is strictly for descriptive purposes in this part of the story. Put a simpler way, she was fetching.
But all of that is music for the future. Needless to say making any kind of move toward continuing the conversation with Angelica required a certain diligence and patience in the middle of diner traffic. As it turned out the diligence was only partially necessary because she was more than willing to talk to me while taking orders all around us. Her story was that she had been enrolled in some local Podunk (her term) business school (Muncie Business College for Women, or something like that) in her hometown of Muncie, Indiana but now wanted to be a medical technician of some sort (radiologist is what it was, I think). But most of all she wanted to get away from home (be still my heart) and had wound up in Steubenville as some kind of way station between dreams. Yes, I can hear the snickers now about some small-town girl seeing the bright lights of Steubenville and going all a-flutter. Stop it. Stop it right now.
In the dark of that night I was obviously not in any particular rush to leave, and as the dinner crowd thinned out we talked some more, as she filled my coffee cup repeatedly so that I could look like I was a "real" paying customer. To say this gal was innocent in some ways would be an understatement, and on the face of it a Midwest naïve and an East Coast hippie just would not make sense, no sense at all. But so would the fact, the hard fact that I would be in Steubenville, Ohio as part of a search for the great American night. Let’s just call it the times, and leave it at that.
And the times here included a very convenient fact. Angelica, as occurred more often than one would have thought out in those highway stops, as part of her job resided in one of the diner owner's motel cabins that dotted the outside ring of the truck stop. These single units provided cheap lodging for someone new, or transient, in town and were basically provided to the help so the newer help could be readily available on call when the inevitable call came in from the drunken cook, the moving-on dishwasher, or when one of the love-smitten senior career waitresses called in “sick.” Mainly though these cabins were for over-weary transcontinental truckers to grab a little sleep before pushing on. Thus they weren’t, at least these weren’t, your basic family-friendly digs that made you feel that you were in some room at home but rather that you were on that hell-bent, weary road, and this is the best you could do to rest those weary bones.
Well, yes we got around to leaving after her shift was over about 11:00 PM and did the ceremonial dancing around that generations, no, generations of generations, have pursued in the “courting ritual” on that initial question of whether, and when, a smitten pair get together for the night. But this time there is no story if they don’t, right?
Well, to spare any more suspense dear Angelica asked me into her digs. Just to talk, okay, and frankly I was so tired from my long day’s journey that just talk seemed about right then. I will describe that talk in a minute but let me describe this cabin homestead as we approached it on our one hundred, or one hundred and fifty, yard walk from the diner. Now that I think about it though I really shouldn’t have to describe it to you because you have all seen them, that is if you have been on the back roads of America a little, especially out on those one-lane country roads where working- class people who don’t have much money go out to the country to get away from the city and this is what they can afford. There are about fifteen or twenty barely whitewashed cabins in a semi-circle, or maybe a few degrees over. If they were not numbered or if you came to them unknowingly on a dark, moonless night like that night I guarantee that you would be hard-pressed to tell your new-found home away from home from any other in that arc.
The telltale old-fashioned, green oil-based painted screened door told you immediately that you were not at the Ritz, or even its fifth cousin. As we entered amid the inevitable light-drawn flies, or moths, or whatever those insects are that you need to swat away to get in the door, or else you have to deal with them inside all night. Like I say these places are built for the moment and so the amenities are on the Spartan side.
As we walked inside, if I were to hazard a guess, and I was a professor in some upscale home interior design school, if someone presented this layout in a portfolio I would sent them, and sent them quickly, to remedial work. Or to a job at Sears& Roebuck. But we were here and here the basic bed, bureau, kitchenette with a small table and a couple of wooden chairs, small sleeper sofa, and tiny shower ¾ bathroom filled the room. The only things personal about this place were Angelica’s alternate uniform that matches the one that she has on hanging to one side, drying out for her next bout with the ham-fisted crowd at the diner, and a small open suitcase that had her clothes neatly packed in it. On the bureau her “making my face” fixings and a few gee gads that everyone throws on the bureau when they want to unload their pockets. Hey, I have placed my head down to sleep on paper-strewn park benches and under paperless bridges and on up to downy-pillowed, vast, roomy, and leafy suburban estates so a highway motel cabin is hardly down at the low end of my sleeping quarters resume. This, my friends, will be just fine for the night.
So we start the "just talk" that Angelica promised. I don’t and, frankly, no one should expect me to, remember most of what we talked about but here is my lingering impression. Turnabout is fair play. I thought that I was going to get an in-depth view of what “square” small-town Midwest girls dreamed of, or what drove them from the Lynds’ Middletown (that’s Muncie, okay, the subject of a famous study in sociology), to the wilds of Ohio. Instead I was the interrogated. It seems that Angelica had been so “brain-washed” (her term) about “hippies” or what the old town folks thought was hippie-dom (basically a variant of their mid-country fears of the “Bolsheviks” under every bed) that she was crazy to “capture” (my term) one. And, as it turned out, in the course of events, I was the one. And on top of that and here is a direct quote from her, “You seemed nice, right from the time you sat down.” (Well, of course, without question, without a doubt, it’s a given, and so on).
But here is the unexpected part, or at least the somewhat unexpected part. Off the top of my head I would not then, in the 1960s, bet my last dollar that a young woman from Muncie (town used here for convenience only) would be coy (nice word, right?) on her first “date.” Coyness here signifying her willingness to gather me to her bed at about 3:00 AM as we both were trying to fight off the sleep that was descending on us. But get this, and I will sign any notarized document necessary in support of this, she asked, yes, asked me into her bed. Well, as I mentioned above, she said I seemed nice, and there you have it. Of course, being “nice” I couldn’t say no. Yes, the gentleman “hippie”, that was me.
You know the boy meets girl plot lines of most movies have it all messed up. Either they meet, give each other lecherous stares (hell, not even winsome smiles), and proceed to tear each other clothes off in an act of sexual frenzy then spent the rest of the movie justifying their eternal love by that first edenic act. Or, and this is truer of older films (and prudish modern comic book-based superhero flicks), the “foreplay” lasts so long that by the time that they hit the downy billows you go ho-hum and are more interested in the unfolding plot. Novels follow a lot of the same paths except, mostly the sexual scenes are about a paragraph or so and reflect the wisdom of the parties involved more than raw sexual energy. Romance novels, a category that would seem to be made for sexual exploits, using don’t get around to hitting the pillows until about page 323 and by then all you care about is whether the sheets are pastel or designer prints.
Real life, real life first encounter romances (read: sexual encounters) are more halting and, frankly, timid. Except, of course, those phantom Herculean and nubile sex-crazed teeny-boppers of urban legend that we have heard about. Ya, I have heard about them too. But that’s about it, heard about them. Think about the awkwardness of that first touch reflecting those ancient memories of being kissed back in about sixth grade, or about those gone wrong affairs that have piled up in your life’s memory bank, or that intense moment when both parties look downward in trepidation at what may come ahead. Or, and here is where memory plays no trick, that woman back home, that woman of one thousand frustrations that you needed to get some distance from, and that set you on this blue-pink road, but whose 999 delights have now surfaced and clouded all thinking. I nevertheless plunged recklessly onward.
For those pruriently-inclined readers who now expect a touch by touch, feel by feel, clothes taking-off by clothes taking-off, flesh against flesh description of our precious, sweet, private, very private love-making look elsewhere. Wait a minute. Look elsewhere, unless you have a written book (and/or movie rights) contract in hand. In that case I will be more than happy to fill in the sweaty, steamy, lurid, blood-pressure-rising details. I will make the earth under that old cabin shake, and the rafters too. I will give details that would make the Marquis de Sade blush, blush profusely. If you have no contract then let’s leave it at this; something deep in that moonless Ohio night, that times out of joint, moonless Ohio night, created a passion, or better, a moment of passion that we both could have bet our last dollars on. Something that, it seemed, we had both been waiting all our lives for, although we didn’t use those words. Just a couple of sly, knowing smiles, and then sleep.
Suddenly, we were awakened with a start. A still dark of night start and a hard rapping on the door, that damn, fly-flecked, oil-based painted green door. And a voice, a female voice. “Angelica, one of Penny’s kids is sick you’ll have to take her shift.” Even a night of passion, a moonless Ohio sly-smiled night of passion, cannot fend off the day’s realities, Angelica’s day realities. She says: “Yes, I’ll be there in a little while,” almost automatically. But just as automatically she says to me: “Don’t go out on the highway yet.”
Humble, barely whitewashed cabin or exotic, leafy country estate if a woman jumps out of bed and orders me to stay put who was I to disobey, at least until I see what my next move was. I agreed and turn over. A few hours later she returns and we mess up her bed sheets again, and again. Then, after some Angelica sleep, and some kitchenette supper she says to me, just as boldly as when she invited me to her bed, that she wanted to go “on the road” with me.
My heart was racing for a thousand reasons, one of them included the thought that our little romance would lead to this although I didn't put it that way in my answer. More like: “Ya, I guess I was kinda thinking, maybe, a little about that idea.” A couple of days later, after she had worked some double-shifts and I did my bit doing some off-hand dish- washing for meals and wages we gathered up her stuff off the bureau, place it in that orderly small suitcase, shut that damn, moth-crusted oil-based painted green door and head for the trucks a couple of hundred yards away and our ride out. Our ride out in search of the blue-pink great American West night that I have not told her about, at least not in those exact words, but that that she will find out about in her own good time and in her own way.
Scene Four: Sweet, Moonless Ohio Dreams In The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night
The 1960s asphalt-driven, white-lined, hitchhike road, the quest for the blue-pink great American West night, the eternal midnight creep of over-weight trucks with their company-seeking, benny-high, overwrought teamster drivers, and the steam-driven, onion-filled meatloaf-milk-heavy mashed potatoes-and limpid carrots daily special diner truck stop are all meshed together. You could say that there was no hitchhike road, and no blue-pink dreams, if the old-fashioned caboose (sometimes literally) diner was not part of the mix that glued things together out on that lonely highway.
No, I do not speak of the then creeping family-friendly one-size-fits-all but still steamed meats-milky starches-sogged vegetable franchise interstate restaurants that now dot the roads from here to ‘Frisco but back road, back hitchhike road if you were smart, back old time route one, or sixty-six or twenty road where you had a chance for pushing distance and for feeling America in the raw. Hey, I have a million diner stories, diners with and without truck stops, diners famous and obscure, diners of every shape and composition to tell about. Or rather I have about three basic diner stories with a million steamed meat loaf-mashed taters-carrots (okay, maybe string beans, steamed, for a change-up)-bread pudding for dessert variations. I want to tell you one, one involving a young woman, and involving the great American night that drives these scenes. The other variations can wait their turns for some other time.
Car-less, and with no hope for any car any time soon, but with enough pent-up energy and anger to build a skyscraper single-handedly, I set out on the early May open roads, thumb in good working order, bedroll on one shoulder, life’s worldly goods in a knapsack on the other. It was that simple in those days. Today, sadly, it would take my rental of a major U-Haul truck, for starters. As always in those days as well, and some of you may know the spot if you have ever been in Boston (or, better, Cambridge) there was (and is) an old abandoned railroad yard that was turned into a truck depot near the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike where most of the truckers, the big diesel-fuelled ones, the doubled-wheeled, eight and sixteen-wheeled ones, picked up or unloaded their goods for further transport. That was the place to check first if you were heading west on the off chance that some mad man trucker was looking for company on that white-lined, hard-scrabble road, and did not mind bedraggled, bearded, long-haired, hippie boy company, at that. As luck would have it I caught a guy who was heading out to Chicago with a load of widgets (or whatever, even these guys didn’t know, or want to know, what was on the manifest half the time, especially if they were running “heavy”).
And why, by the way, although it is not germane to the story, was I heading out on that old California road? Why all that pent-up energy and skyscraper-building anger. Well, the cover story was so that I could get my head straight but you know the real reason, and this is for your eyes only, I had just broken up, for the umpteenth time, with a woman who drove me to distraction, sometimes pleasantly but on that occasion fitfully, who I could not, and did not, so I thought, want to get out of my system, but had to put myself a little distance away from. You know that story, boys and girls, in your own lives so I do not have to spend much time on the details here. Besides, if you really want to read that kind of story the romance novel section of any library or the DVD film section, for that matter, can tell the story with more heart-throbbing panache that you could find here.
Now there were a million and one reasons that long-haul drivers back then would take hitchhikers on board, even hippies who represented most of what they hated about what was happening in, and to, their America in those days (in the days before the trucking companies, and the insurance companies, squashed that traveler pick-up idea and left the truckers to their own solitary devises). Some reasons maybe were perverse but usually it was just for sheer, human companionship, another voice, or more usually someone to vent to at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour, especially at night when those straight white lines started to get raggedy looking.
This guy, this big-chested, brawny, beef-eating teamster guy, Denver Slim by name (really, I heard other truckers call him that at truck stops when they gave each other the nod, although, as described, he was neither slim nor, as he told me, from Denver), was no different except the reason, at least the reason that he gave me, was that I reminded him of his goddam son (I am being polite here) whom he loved/hated. Loved, because that is what a father was expected to feel toward kin, son kin especially and hated because he was showing signs or rebellion (read: becoming a hippie). I, needless to say, was a little queasy and sat close to the door handle for a while until I realized that it was more about love than hate. Old Denver Slim just didn’t get what was happening to his world, especially the part, the huge part, that he had no control over.
Hey, I had countless hitchhike rides in all kinds of vehicles, from the Denver Slim big wheels to Volkswagen bugs (look that up) but the common thread was that there were some interesting (if disturbing and hopeless) stories out there. Let me fill you in on Denver Slim’s story both because it helps explain what is coming up in my own quest and the hard, hard fact that there was a malaise, a palpable malaise, in the land and his story was prima facie evidence for that notion. Denver Slim had gone, like a million other members of my parent’s generation, through his childhood in the Great Depression (Chicago) and did his military in the throes of World War II (Corporal, U.S. Army, European Theater, and proud of it). After the war he started driving trucks, finally landing unionized teamster jobs as an over-the-road long haul driver based in Chicago. As was not unusual then, and maybe not now either, he married a local woman he knew from the old neighborhood, had several children, moved out of Chicago proper to a suburban plot house (“little boxes,” from the description he gave) and bought into the mortgaged, green-grassed lawn, weekly mowed (when he was not on the road), television-watching, neighbor-averting (except for the kids when young) routine that was a blueprint for America 1950s life in the lower-middle classes.
Here is where Slim’s story gets tricky though, and interesting. Of course being on the road, being mortgaged up to the neck on the road, he was never home enough to make the word family stick. He, as he admitted, when talking about his son Jamie, the rebellious son (read: becoming a hippie son), didn’t really know the kids (the other three were daughters whom he , as he said, wouldn’t have known anyway past the age of ten or so the way things work in girl world). But here is the kicker, the kicker for me back then although I get it better now, much better. The wife, Ruth, the ever-loving wife, had along the way taken a boyfriend and, off and on, lived with that boyfriend. Slim went crazy at first about it but somehow got through it and accepted that situation. Oh, you thought that was the kicker. No, that was just the prelude to the kicker. Here it is. Denver Slim, old proud soldier-warrior, old mortgaged to the neck teamster, old work and slave on the road for the kids that he doesn’t know had a girlfriend, and had said girlfriend way before his wife took her lover. A beautiful family values story out of the age of Ozzie and Harriet, right?
But this is the real kicker for your harried hippie listener, old salt of the earth Denver Slim in relating his life story got a little bit lovesick for his honey (no, not the wife, the girlfriend, come on now, listen up) who lived in Steubenville, Ohio. And that, my friends, was where we were heading as we made tracks to Youngstown on Interstate 70 and so instead of getting a ride through to Chicago (a place where I knew how to catch a ride west, no problem, almost like out of Boston) I was to be left off, and good luck, at the diner truck stop just off Route 7 outside of Steubenville, Ohio. Right near the Ohio River, at the eastern end that I was not familiar with. Christ, I never even heard of the place before, never mind trying to get a ride out of there, getting out of there at night as it looked like was going to happen by the time we got to the stop. Well, such is the road, the hitchhike road, and I hope old Slim had a good time with his honey, maybe, maybe I hope he did that is.
Slim must have had it bad, love bug-bitten bad, because he no sooner left me off at the diner than he then barrel-assed (nice term, right?) that big rig back, that big sixteen wheeler, onto the lovesick -night road and to his own dream sleep. So there I was doing graduate-level diner study by my lonesome. Look, I was no stranger, by this time in my wanderings, to the diners, trucks stops, cafes, and hash houses of this continent. From the look of this one (and one judged these things by the number of big rigs idling nearby) it was something of a Buckeye institution, maybe not like the football team or various legendary football coaches but busy (see, I know a little about Ohio, although not much outside the bigger cities and campus towns).
As I went inside through the glass-plated double doors I could practically inhale the steam from the vegetables, the dank, faded glory of the taters, and the inevitable onion smell than can only mean meat loaf. Hey, this is what passes for home-cooking on the road. And be glad of it, friend. As a single I would not be so uncool as to take a booth, although at that time of day there were some empties, but rather hopped right up on that old stool at the Formica-top red counter replete with individual paper mat and dinner setting, spoons, folks, knives, various condiments and plastic-entombed menu that every self-respecting diner has for those caught by their lonesome. Their sincere, if futile, attempt at home-away from homey-ness. It was not like this was a date-taking place (or at least I hope nobody thinks along those lines, but you never know, maybe people celebrate their anniversaries in the place) but it is okay out here abandoned in the neon-lighted wilderness of a back road truck stop.
Okay, at long last here is the part that you have been waiting for, the girl in the story part. Well, wait a minute, let me hold forth on waitresses because that is important to the girl part (and it was almost always waitresses in those days, or in a pinch, the owner/short order cook) who served them off the arm. In college towns and big cities, waitresses were (and are) just doing that job to mark time while going to college or some other thing but in the hash houses, the roadside diners, the hole-in-the-wall faded restaurants of this continent it was (is) almost universally true that in this type of establishment this was an upwardly-mobile career move (or, maybe, just a lateral move). You have all seen and heard about the typical career waitress- surly, short-tempered, steam-pressed uniform, steamed by the proximity to the food trays that is, hardly has time to take your order because that party of six in the booths is waiting on dessert (and her big tip for this evening, she hopes, although if she thought about it the hard facts should have told her that old lonesome single male trucker was the best tipper). There is a smidgen of truth in those old hoary stories about waitresses but there is also some very hard-pressed, ill-fated bad luck thrown in as well. They all had stories to tell, at least the ones who didn’t scurry away like rats from “hippies.”
Okay, okay I can now tell you about angelic Angelica. That name, the smell of that name, the swirl around the tongue speaking that name, the touch of that name, still evokes strong memories even after all this time. But enough of nostalgia. Let’s get down to cases. First of all she was young, very young for a truck stop diner waitress so at first I thought that she was a career waitress-in-training or that there was a college nearby that I might not have heard of. I will describe her virtues in a second but let me tell you right off that the minute I sat down, and although there were several others at the counter who had come in before me, she came right over to my stool and asked if I wanted coffee. Well, kind of sleepy that I was at the time, I said yes and she went right off, got it, and came right back. And then, while the others at the counter were cooling their heels, she took my order, and as she moved away to put that order in (No, I do not remember what it was but, probably, since I was counting pennies, a burger and fries, meat loaf and other such high-end cuisine was saved for serious hungers) she slightly turned to give me another look and a sly smile.
In those days I was susceptible, very susceptible, to that winsome sly smile that some women know exactly how to throw (hell, I am still a sucker for that one, and don’t tell me you aren’t, or couldn’t be, too, male or female, it works both ways on this one). That sly smile and her, well, looks. Forget that endless physical description stuff about soft auburn hair, full ruby-red lips, bright, fresh, naïve blue eyes, nicely-shaped hips and well-formed legs. Very good legs. Okay, forget all that. I will describe her looks in “on the road” terms because when you were on the road and trying to get across the country the rules, the rules of the road, were a little different. Your take on life and your usually transient relationships with passing strangers, male or female, got a little twisted. Not necessarily in a bad way, but twisted.
There were different protocols for different situations when you were hitchhiking. A lone male hitching was usually not a bad proposition, especially if you stayed close to the highways and knew the truck stops, and appeared to be drug free, or at least that you were not in the throes of a terminal drug experience while trying to hitch a ride. This Hunter Thompson Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas drug stuff is good road fiction, but fiction nevertheless, if you were trying to get from point A to point B before your old age set in. The same with goofy Dennis Hooper Easy Rider stuff. Good cinema, bad, real bad road stuff. The main problem then, and probably would be today as well, is single middle-age guys, maybe desperate for a little company, picking you up with the idea of making advances. I don’t know about anybody else, as least I never heard anybody talk much about it then, but a simple "no" usually was enough to stop that(and not infrequently got you dumped in some odd spot between exits to thumb down some flying-by traffic). It’s only later, in the early 1970s when I wasn’t on the road so much that things started to get hairy, and the talk turned to weirdness, serious weirdness, out on the white-lined lanes.
In the late 1960s a pair of males was not a bad combination either. Not so much for getting rides from truckers who usually did not have room for two (or, if so, it was uncomfortable as hell) but for the plethora of Volkswagen vans, converted school buses, campers, and pick-up trucks that were out there on the blue-pink seeking road. There were times on the Pacific Coast Highway out in California that you barely got your thumb out and some vehicle stopped, especially if you looked like you were part of “youth nation.” Two more guys in back, sure thing, no problem. Those were good days to travel the roads, and another time I will tell you about some of those experiences but right now I have to get back to describe Angelica, or her road-worthy attributes anyway.
The optimal road set-up though, the one that got you rides the fastest, usually was to be paired up with a woman, truth be told, preferable a good-looking young woman. Ya, it’s not good form today, it’s certainly not politically correct or socially useful today to work from this premise, but back then the idea was that a guy and girl were safe from the driver’s perspective. And it was almost always guys, truckers or loners, or an occasional man and woman, who picked you up. Not single women drivers, young or old. For my perspective, the hitcher’s perspective, a good-looking woman, with good legs, made the road easier. And other delights, of course.
And it did no harm to have the woman act as an upfront side-of-the-road decoy for that same reason. Maybe not in the desert tumbleweed badlands of Arizona or Nevada where the hot sun, or dust, got you a ride from people who knew that area and knew they had to stop as a matter of your survival, and who knows their own sense of survival as well, but between exits on Interstate 80, let’s say, it helped, hell it helped a lot. Maybe not old Denver Slim, high on benny and moaning and groaning for his honey (the girlfriend not the wife remember) in dark night, white-lined blur but a guy like me would have made those lonesome highway brakes squeal to high heaven, and gladly. Angelica, at first glance, would certainly make the road easier, although this little detour is strictly for descriptive purposes in this part of the story. Put a simpler way, she was fetching.
But all of that is music for the future. Needless to say making any kind of move toward continuing the conversation with Angelica required a certain diligence and patience in the middle of diner traffic. As it turned out the diligence was only partially necessary because she was more than willing to talk to me while taking orders all around us. Her story was that she had been enrolled in some local Podunk (her term) business school (Muncie Business College for Women, or something like that) in her hometown of Muncie, Indiana but now wanted to be a medical technician of some sort (radiologist is what it was, I think). But most of all she wanted to get away from home (be still my heart) and had wound up in Steubenville as some kind of way station between dreams. Yes, I can hear the snickers now about some small-town girl seeing the bright lights of Steubenville and going all a-flutter. Stop it. Stop it right now.
In the dark of that night I was obviously not in any particular rush to leave, and as the dinner crowd thinned out we talked some more, as she filled my coffee cup repeatedly so that I could look like I was a "real" paying customer. To say this gal was innocent in some ways would be an understatement, and on the face of it a Midwest naïve and an East Coast hippie just would not make sense, no sense at all. But so would the fact, the hard fact that I would be in Steubenville, Ohio as part of a search for the great American night. Let’s just call it the times, and leave it at that.
And the times here included a very convenient fact. Angelica, as occurred more often than one would have thought out in those highway stops, as part of her job resided in one of the diner owner's motel cabins that dotted the outside ring of the truck stop. These single units provided cheap lodging for someone new, or transient, in town and were basically provided to the help so the newer help could be readily available on call when the inevitable call came in from the drunken cook, the moving-on dishwasher, or when one of the love-smitten senior career waitresses called in “sick.” Mainly though these cabins were for over-weary transcontinental truckers to grab a little sleep before pushing on. Thus they weren’t, at least these weren’t, your basic family-friendly digs that made you feel that you were in some room at home but rather that you were on that hell-bent, weary road, and this is the best you could do to rest those weary bones.
Well, yes we got around to leaving after her shift was over about 11:00 PM and did the ceremonial dancing around that generations, no, generations of generations, have pursued in the “courting ritual” on that initial question of whether, and when, a smitten pair get together for the night. But this time there is no story if they don’t, right?
Well, to spare any more suspense dear Angelica asked me into her digs. Just to talk, okay, and frankly I was so tired from my long day’s journey that just talk seemed about right then. I will describe that talk in a minute but let me describe this cabin homestead as we approached it on our one hundred, or one hundred and fifty, yard walk from the diner. Now that I think about it though I really shouldn’t have to describe it to you because you have all seen them, that is if you have been on the back roads of America a little, especially out on those one-lane country roads where working- class people who don’t have much money go out to the country to get away from the city and this is what they can afford. There are about fifteen or twenty barely whitewashed cabins in a semi-circle, or maybe a few degrees over. If they were not numbered or if you came to them unknowingly on a dark, moonless night like that night I guarantee that you would be hard-pressed to tell your new-found home away from home from any other in that arc.
The telltale old-fashioned, green oil-based painted screened door told you immediately that you were not at the Ritz, or even its fifth cousin. As we entered amid the inevitable light-drawn flies, or moths, or whatever those insects are that you need to swat away to get in the door, or else you have to deal with them inside all night. Like I say these places are built for the moment and so the amenities are on the Spartan side.
As we walked inside, if I were to hazard a guess, and I was a professor in some upscale home interior design school, if someone presented this layout in a portfolio I would sent them, and sent them quickly, to remedial work. Or to a job at Sears& Roebuck. But we were here and here the basic bed, bureau, kitchenette with a small table and a couple of wooden chairs, small sleeper sofa, and tiny shower ¾ bathroom filled the room. The only things personal about this place were Angelica’s alternate uniform that matches the one that she has on hanging to one side, drying out for her next bout with the ham-fisted crowd at the diner, and a small open suitcase that had her clothes neatly packed in it. On the bureau her “making my face” fixings and a few gee gads that everyone throws on the bureau when they want to unload their pockets. Hey, I have placed my head down to sleep on paper-strewn park benches and under paperless bridges and on up to downy-pillowed, vast, roomy, and leafy suburban estates so a highway motel cabin is hardly down at the low end of my sleeping quarters resume. This, my friends, will be just fine for the night.
So we start the "just talk" that Angelica promised. I don’t and, frankly, no one should expect me to, remember most of what we talked about but here is my lingering impression. Turnabout is fair play. I thought that I was going to get an in-depth view of what “square” small-town Midwest girls dreamed of, or what drove them from the Lynds’ Middletown (that’s Muncie, okay, the subject of a famous study in sociology), to the wilds of Ohio. Instead I was the interrogated. It seems that Angelica had been so “brain-washed” (her term) about “hippies” or what the old town folks thought was hippie-dom (basically a variant of their mid-country fears of the “Bolsheviks” under every bed) that she was crazy to “capture” (my term) one. And, as it turned out, in the course of events, I was the one. And on top of that and here is a direct quote from her, “You seemed nice, right from the time you sat down.” (Well, of course, without question, without a doubt, it’s a given, and so on).
But here is the unexpected part, or at least the somewhat unexpected part. Off the top of my head I would not then, in the 1960s, bet my last dollar that a young woman from Muncie (town used here for convenience only) would be coy (nice word, right?) on her first “date.” Coyness here signifying her willingness to gather me to her bed at about 3:00 AM as we both were trying to fight off the sleep that was descending on us. But get this, and I will sign any notarized document necessary in support of this, she asked, yes, asked me into her bed. Well, as I mentioned above, she said I seemed nice, and there you have it. Of course, being “nice” I couldn’t say no. Yes, the gentleman “hippie”, that was me.
You know the boy meets girl plot lines of most movies have it all messed up. Either they meet, give each other lecherous stares (hell, not even winsome smiles), and proceed to tear each other clothes off in an act of sexual frenzy then spent the rest of the movie justifying their eternal love by that first edenic act. Or, and this is truer of older films (and prudish modern comic book-based superhero flicks), the “foreplay” lasts so long that by the time that they hit the downy billows you go ho-hum and are more interested in the unfolding plot. Novels follow a lot of the same paths except, mostly the sexual scenes are about a paragraph or so and reflect the wisdom of the parties involved more than raw sexual energy. Romance novels, a category that would seem to be made for sexual exploits, using don’t get around to hitting the pillows until about page 323 and by then all you care about is whether the sheets are pastel or designer prints.
Real life, real life first encounter romances (read: sexual encounters) are more halting and, frankly, timid. Except, of course, those phantom Herculean and nubile sex-crazed teeny-boppers of urban legend that we have heard about. Ya, I have heard about them too. But that’s about it, heard about them. Think about the awkwardness of that first touch reflecting those ancient memories of being kissed back in about sixth grade, or about those gone wrong affairs that have piled up in your life’s memory bank, or that intense moment when both parties look downward in trepidation at what may come ahead. Or, and here is where memory plays no trick, that woman back home, that woman of one thousand frustrations that you needed to get some distance from, and that set you on this blue-pink road, but whose 999 delights have now surfaced and clouded all thinking. I nevertheless plunged recklessly onward.
For those pruriently-inclined readers who now expect a touch by touch, feel by feel, clothes taking-off by clothes taking-off, flesh against flesh description of our precious, sweet, private, very private love-making look elsewhere. Wait a minute. Look elsewhere, unless you have a written book (and/or movie rights) contract in hand. In that case I will be more than happy to fill in the sweaty, steamy, lurid, blood-pressure-rising details. I will make the earth under that old cabin shake, and the rafters too. I will give details that would make the Marquis de Sade blush, blush profusely. If you have no contract then let’s leave it at this; something deep in that moonless Ohio night, that times out of joint, moonless Ohio night, created a passion, or better, a moment of passion that we both could have bet our last dollars on. Something that, it seemed, we had both been waiting all our lives for, although we didn’t use those words. Just a couple of sly, knowing smiles, and then sleep.
Suddenly, we were awakened with a start. A still dark of night start and a hard rapping on the door, that damn, fly-flecked, oil-based painted green door. And a voice, a female voice. “Angelica, one of Penny’s kids is sick you’ll have to take her shift.” Even a night of passion, a moonless Ohio sly-smiled night of passion, cannot fend off the day’s realities, Angelica’s day realities. She says: “Yes, I’ll be there in a little while,” almost automatically. But just as automatically she says to me: “Don’t go out on the highway yet.”
Humble, barely whitewashed cabin or exotic, leafy country estate if a woman jumps out of bed and orders me to stay put who was I to disobey, at least until I see what my next move was. I agreed and turn over. A few hours later she returns and we mess up her bed sheets again, and again. Then, after some Angelica sleep, and some kitchenette supper she says to me, just as boldly as when she invited me to her bed, that she wanted to go “on the road” with me.
My heart was racing for a thousand reasons, one of them included the thought that our little romance would lead to this although I didn't put it that way in my answer. More like: “Ya, I guess I was kinda thinking, maybe, a little about that idea.” A couple of days later, after she had worked some double-shifts and I did my bit doing some off-hand dish- washing for meals and wages we gathered up her stuff off the bureau, place it in that orderly small suitcase, shut that damn, moth-crusted oil-based painted green door and head for the trucks a couple of hundred yards away and our ride out. Our ride out in search of the blue-pink great American West night that I have not told her about, at least not in those exact words, but that that she will find out about in her own good time and in her own way.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Life Is Cheap South Of The Border, Real Cheap
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
“Get that stinking bracero out of my sight before I kill him with my own two hands,” barked El Paso County Sheriff Harry White. Although barked did not, did not by a long shot, convey the menace in the good sheriff’s voice but after this length of time, almost thirty years, I think that barked will suffice for today’s more tender ears. And with that barked venomous sentence I was introduced to Harry White, El Paso Anglo justice, south Texas Mex sensibilities and small town Anglo justice along the tenuous border between Estados Unidos and Mexico. Let me tell those who though that I only breathed the rarified airs of the big questions-war, more war, and more war, saving green mother earth, trying to shine a little light on the rotten deal most of the little guys (and gals) have been dealt in this wicked old world you don’t know nothing about my rocky road start in the public prints.
After doing a hard two year stretch on the city desk as a glorified gopher for every rotten police blotter detail that the drunken copy editor could foist on me (else he would have to go and “miss” his date with Mr. Johnny Walker Red) at the Portland Daily Gazette (that is in Maine, I don’t think they have crime in the Oregon one) I had had it. Especially after spending a tough few months covering the Lady In Shay’s Pond case from the first day when some hikers found the first body until the Greer sisters drew life, no parole, for their little escapades. So I gave my notice, asked for a little recommendation (granted since I was given some half-ass award for my Lady coverage), and decided to head back west.
Oh, did I mention that that reignited desire to head west again (I had spent a few years out their cadging this and that, under my New Age a-borning name of the Prince of Love, as part of being “on” Captain Crunch’s yellow bus magical mystery tour and drug coma) did not seep into my crime frazzled head but was put there is one Lucy Defarge whom I met as part of that wild wind Lady story. She covered it for the Kittery Times and so we spent a fair amount of time on that, and kind of half- circling each other in the process. Then one night we just kind of united, and decided to live together on the road west. It was that kind of times for those who did not live through it. The idea was to pull up stakes in the East and see what happened picking up free-lance newspaper jobs (or “think” pieces for exotic New Age journals who had the “trust fund baby” financed wherewithal to pay for articles on whether solar or wind was better as an energy source for mother earth and stuff along that line. Don’t laugh. In a forty year career such “manna from heaven” got me, and mine, through some cold Maine winters.)
So Lucy and I headed out in a used Volkswagen bus (of course) in early 1976 and had an uneventful, and mainly interesting time, making some money here for a few weeks writing about the corn harvest for the Omaha Times, and there about some local celebrity in Winnemucca (that is in Nevada and there is definitely crime there, a money pit draws it like flies to honey) who donated his winnings at five card stud to help some orphanage. Strictly for cash stuff, and no apologies or dreams of high art reportage about it. Along the West Coast we mainly “lived off the land” as only the creative (and white) can do in those sunny climes. Then we started heading southwest rounding our way back East and south was best to avoid crazy rocky mountain white out squalls and other crazy western plains weather disasters.
So that was how I (we) came to be in El Paso, a little broke, a little road tired, and, frankly a little in need of some action right around the time Harry White blew his top. This is how I came to see this scene. My recommendation from the Gazette t(and my having been on a big town, I think the editor though it was that other Portland , although he never said as much), and my portfolio articles got me, well, got me right at the top of the pecking order on the city desk at the El Paso Chronicle. And, naturally, having been an “ace” crime reporter before I was a no on- the-job-training necessary top candidate when the Larkin story broke out over our heads.
Joe Bob (real names, not nicknames) Larkin was the biggest rancher/grower in southwest Texas, with tens of thousands of prime ranching and growing (cotton, mainly) acres right along the border. So, of course, he needed thousands of people willing to work that hot, dusty south Texas sun getting in the crops). And very conveniently he had some neighbors south of the border who would be more than happy to come and pick, hell, pick anything for fifty cents a bushel, a tin roof shack, and some gringo food. As now, braceros, wet-backs, mexs, tio tacos (y tias tambien) whatever mal nombre you wanted to call them this work required massive numbers of illegal workers to cross the lines, do the work, and then suffer whatever fate was in store for them after they were all used up. And Joe Bob Larkin was just the good old boy (from all accounts) to grease the hand of the devil himself to get his workers. And the king hell king of proving such services for his top constituent was one Sheriff Harry White.
So when one Joe Bob Larkin wound up (along with his bleach blonde, ah, personal secretary, although her employment status was a little fuzzy, especially to his wife back on the ranch) very dead in a flea-bag hotel room in Cuidad Juarez after some arsonist, some professional arsonist from the way the job was done, including jamming all the doors, torched the place big Harry White was across the border in a flash. No niceties of international diplomacy for Harry, big, no obese, gruff, cigar-chomping with a sweat-stained shirt and hat to match. Something out of an Orson Welles idea of what a borderland red neck sheriff, full of anglo hates, and anglo would look like.
But Harry had missed out on that community/international relations class that cops, gruff cops or meek, were supposed to take in order to smooth the tensions in some high risk situations. Old Harry just hated braceros, stinking braceros, from some tio taco on up. But this is where Harry really blundered. He didn’t realize that 1970 something was not 1940 something when he could have covered this whole thing up with no questions asked on either side of the border, and no reason to. The money exchanged was too good. And that too is where Harry underestimated Mexican National Police cop, Johnny Rivers, specially assigned to the case by the Mexican government because of his previous work with these illegal obreros.
Johnny Rivers (born Juan Rios down Sonora way) was a good cop, a cop not on the take, if you can believe that. Funny, he hated, hated maybe worse than Harry White the braceros, the stinking braceros, with their ten children and their manana ways always ready to eat crow when a gringo came around, or some batos locos looking for easy dough. See he was from them, his father and mother were from them, hell, probably back to the conquest he was from them. So his hate was driven differently from Harry’s, but still hate. And hate that some gabacho Anglo sheriff was coming into Mexico, taking his case, and beating down “his” braceros.
Harry just looked at good cop Johnny Rivers, noted the anglo-ized names, noted the gringa wife (probably some tramp from some Tijuana joy house from the look of her, but she was definitely gringa and knew how to stir a man, even an old sweat-stained leather cigar man), and noted those Pancho Villa charcoal eyes and that Zapata burning sense of national pride and knew he had to take this Juan Rios down a peg, maybe two.
But here is where it all got crazy, crazy for Harry, trying to cover up everything and no questions asked like always. Harry was the guy who set old Joe Bob up. He knew when Joe Bob would be in Juarez with his blond honey, knew that Joe Bob was trying to bring in his own bands of braceros, and paid, paid big money to that arsonist to “scare.” Joe Bob. The pro was just too good for his job (and was found face down later in some outback arroyo, food for the coyotes, after everything came out). Harry, instead of leaving well enough alone, decided that he would “solve” this one by bringing down everyone in the operation who could connect him with those thousands of border crossings. So he brought each and every one he could find in turn to the American side and “put the frame” on them. And that is where I came in, during one of his “hearings,” nightstick in hand.
And that is where Harry went over the edge, where his old ways did him dirt. Harry figured that Johnny was closing in on him, or would figure things out pretty soon and not give up until some bracero justice was done. So Harry just did what he thought was called for, he had that pretty gringa wife of Johnny’s kidnapped, held in a tough spot, and laid the bait for Johnny to come looking for her on the Mexican side of the border. Then he would have them both killed and set face down in some Mexican side arroyo, everybody figuring that some “coyote” rogue elements got to them. What Harry didn’t figure was that Johnny wasn’t one of those old time bracero take it and like it guys. Through about sixteen different connections he had with some mex drug lords he found her, offed her captors and headed straight back over the border.
Needless to say Harry got his just deserts, a couple of slugs in the right place from the gun of one Juan Rios, and he lying face down in a pool of oil at the oil well field where he finally hunted Harry down. And I, well, I got to write it all up for that old El Paso Chronicle. See, in the old days, Captain Crunch and his merry pranksters used to “winter” in LaJolla just above San Diego and the place we wintered at was a big old mansion which belonged to some heavy-duty drug dealers who let us stay there as caretakers. We did that for a couple of years, maybe three. So how do you thing a guy like Juan Rios, a good cop, got the sixteen different connections with those Mexican drug lords. Ya, life is cheap, and not just south of the border.
“Get that stinking bracero out of my sight before I kill him with my own two hands,” barked El Paso County Sheriff Harry White. Although barked did not, did not by a long shot, convey the menace in the good sheriff’s voice but after this length of time, almost thirty years, I think that barked will suffice for today’s more tender ears. And with that barked venomous sentence I was introduced to Harry White, El Paso Anglo justice, south Texas Mex sensibilities and small town Anglo justice along the tenuous border between Estados Unidos and Mexico. Let me tell those who though that I only breathed the rarified airs of the big questions-war, more war, and more war, saving green mother earth, trying to shine a little light on the rotten deal most of the little guys (and gals) have been dealt in this wicked old world you don’t know nothing about my rocky road start in the public prints.
After doing a hard two year stretch on the city desk as a glorified gopher for every rotten police blotter detail that the drunken copy editor could foist on me (else he would have to go and “miss” his date with Mr. Johnny Walker Red) at the Portland Daily Gazette (that is in Maine, I don’t think they have crime in the Oregon one) I had had it. Especially after spending a tough few months covering the Lady In Shay’s Pond case from the first day when some hikers found the first body until the Greer sisters drew life, no parole, for their little escapades. So I gave my notice, asked for a little recommendation (granted since I was given some half-ass award for my Lady coverage), and decided to head back west.
Oh, did I mention that that reignited desire to head west again (I had spent a few years out their cadging this and that, under my New Age a-borning name of the Prince of Love, as part of being “on” Captain Crunch’s yellow bus magical mystery tour and drug coma) did not seep into my crime frazzled head but was put there is one Lucy Defarge whom I met as part of that wild wind Lady story. She covered it for the Kittery Times and so we spent a fair amount of time on that, and kind of half- circling each other in the process. Then one night we just kind of united, and decided to live together on the road west. It was that kind of times for those who did not live through it. The idea was to pull up stakes in the East and see what happened picking up free-lance newspaper jobs (or “think” pieces for exotic New Age journals who had the “trust fund baby” financed wherewithal to pay for articles on whether solar or wind was better as an energy source for mother earth and stuff along that line. Don’t laugh. In a forty year career such “manna from heaven” got me, and mine, through some cold Maine winters.)
So Lucy and I headed out in a used Volkswagen bus (of course) in early 1976 and had an uneventful, and mainly interesting time, making some money here for a few weeks writing about the corn harvest for the Omaha Times, and there about some local celebrity in Winnemucca (that is in Nevada and there is definitely crime there, a money pit draws it like flies to honey) who donated his winnings at five card stud to help some orphanage. Strictly for cash stuff, and no apologies or dreams of high art reportage about it. Along the West Coast we mainly “lived off the land” as only the creative (and white) can do in those sunny climes. Then we started heading southwest rounding our way back East and south was best to avoid crazy rocky mountain white out squalls and other crazy western plains weather disasters.
So that was how I (we) came to be in El Paso, a little broke, a little road tired, and, frankly a little in need of some action right around the time Harry White blew his top. This is how I came to see this scene. My recommendation from the Gazette t(and my having been on a big town, I think the editor though it was that other Portland , although he never said as much), and my portfolio articles got me, well, got me right at the top of the pecking order on the city desk at the El Paso Chronicle. And, naturally, having been an “ace” crime reporter before I was a no on- the-job-training necessary top candidate when the Larkin story broke out over our heads.
Joe Bob (real names, not nicknames) Larkin was the biggest rancher/grower in southwest Texas, with tens of thousands of prime ranching and growing (cotton, mainly) acres right along the border. So, of course, he needed thousands of people willing to work that hot, dusty south Texas sun getting in the crops). And very conveniently he had some neighbors south of the border who would be more than happy to come and pick, hell, pick anything for fifty cents a bushel, a tin roof shack, and some gringo food. As now, braceros, wet-backs, mexs, tio tacos (y tias tambien) whatever mal nombre you wanted to call them this work required massive numbers of illegal workers to cross the lines, do the work, and then suffer whatever fate was in store for them after they were all used up. And Joe Bob Larkin was just the good old boy (from all accounts) to grease the hand of the devil himself to get his workers. And the king hell king of proving such services for his top constituent was one Sheriff Harry White.
So when one Joe Bob Larkin wound up (along with his bleach blonde, ah, personal secretary, although her employment status was a little fuzzy, especially to his wife back on the ranch) very dead in a flea-bag hotel room in Cuidad Juarez after some arsonist, some professional arsonist from the way the job was done, including jamming all the doors, torched the place big Harry White was across the border in a flash. No niceties of international diplomacy for Harry, big, no obese, gruff, cigar-chomping with a sweat-stained shirt and hat to match. Something out of an Orson Welles idea of what a borderland red neck sheriff, full of anglo hates, and anglo would look like.
But Harry had missed out on that community/international relations class that cops, gruff cops or meek, were supposed to take in order to smooth the tensions in some high risk situations. Old Harry just hated braceros, stinking braceros, from some tio taco on up. But this is where Harry really blundered. He didn’t realize that 1970 something was not 1940 something when he could have covered this whole thing up with no questions asked on either side of the border, and no reason to. The money exchanged was too good. And that too is where Harry underestimated Mexican National Police cop, Johnny Rivers, specially assigned to the case by the Mexican government because of his previous work with these illegal obreros.
Johnny Rivers (born Juan Rios down Sonora way) was a good cop, a cop not on the take, if you can believe that. Funny, he hated, hated maybe worse than Harry White the braceros, the stinking braceros, with their ten children and their manana ways always ready to eat crow when a gringo came around, or some batos locos looking for easy dough. See he was from them, his father and mother were from them, hell, probably back to the conquest he was from them. So his hate was driven differently from Harry’s, but still hate. And hate that some gabacho Anglo sheriff was coming into Mexico, taking his case, and beating down “his” braceros.
Harry just looked at good cop Johnny Rivers, noted the anglo-ized names, noted the gringa wife (probably some tramp from some Tijuana joy house from the look of her, but she was definitely gringa and knew how to stir a man, even an old sweat-stained leather cigar man), and noted those Pancho Villa charcoal eyes and that Zapata burning sense of national pride and knew he had to take this Juan Rios down a peg, maybe two.
But here is where it all got crazy, crazy for Harry, trying to cover up everything and no questions asked like always. Harry was the guy who set old Joe Bob up. He knew when Joe Bob would be in Juarez with his blond honey, knew that Joe Bob was trying to bring in his own bands of braceros, and paid, paid big money to that arsonist to “scare.” Joe Bob. The pro was just too good for his job (and was found face down later in some outback arroyo, food for the coyotes, after everything came out). Harry, instead of leaving well enough alone, decided that he would “solve” this one by bringing down everyone in the operation who could connect him with those thousands of border crossings. So he brought each and every one he could find in turn to the American side and “put the frame” on them. And that is where I came in, during one of his “hearings,” nightstick in hand.
And that is where Harry went over the edge, where his old ways did him dirt. Harry figured that Johnny was closing in on him, or would figure things out pretty soon and not give up until some bracero justice was done. So Harry just did what he thought was called for, he had that pretty gringa wife of Johnny’s kidnapped, held in a tough spot, and laid the bait for Johnny to come looking for her on the Mexican side of the border. Then he would have them both killed and set face down in some Mexican side arroyo, everybody figuring that some “coyote” rogue elements got to them. What Harry didn’t figure was that Johnny wasn’t one of those old time bracero take it and like it guys. Through about sixteen different connections he had with some mex drug lords he found her, offed her captors and headed straight back over the border.
Needless to say Harry got his just deserts, a couple of slugs in the right place from the gun of one Juan Rios, and he lying face down in a pool of oil at the oil well field where he finally hunted Harry down. And I, well, I got to write it all up for that old El Paso Chronicle. See, in the old days, Captain Crunch and his merry pranksters used to “winter” in LaJolla just above San Diego and the place we wintered at was a big old mansion which belonged to some heavy-duty drug dealers who let us stay there as caretakers. We did that for a couple of years, maybe three. So how do you thing a guy like Juan Rios, a good cop, got the sixteen different connections with those Mexican drug lords. Ya, life is cheap, and not just south of the border.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Romance Down Sonora Way
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his early To Ramona.
To Ramona by Bob Dylan
Lyrics
Ramona
Come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at times
And there’s no use in tryin’
T’ deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines
Your cracked country lips
I still wish to kiss
As to be under the strength of your skin
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I’m in
But it grieves my heart, love
To see you tryin’ to be a part of
A world that just don’t exist
It’s all just a dream, babe
A vacuum, a scheme, babe
That sucks you into feelin’ like this
I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin’ and returnin’
On back to the South
You’ve been fooled into thinking
That the finishin’ end is at hand
Yet there’s no one to beat you
No one t’ defeat you
’Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad
I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better ’n no one
And no one is better ’n you
If you really believe that
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose
From fixtures and forces and friends
Your sorrow does stem
That hype you and type you
Making you feel
That you must be exactly like them
I’d forever talk to you
But soon my words
They would turn into a meaningless ring
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring
Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows, baby
I’ll come and be cryin’ to you
Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music
“If you see that bastard Be-Bop Benny tell him, and tell him straight, that he still owes me fifteen hundred dollars for that last shipment I delivered up norte. And tell him he better come across quick because my guys don’t wait for late payments. Don’t wait at all,” yelled Selena, with no guile in her voice and no concern that anyone or everyone within earshot might hear her, across the Hotel Sonora lobby as I checked in at the main desk for a conference that I was attending. And, as if to emphasis that last point, she said the whole thing over again in Spanish for the locals, and me.
I am sure more than one companero was taken aback by the dead death-rattle tone in her voice coming from a senorita whose looks epitomized any virtue that came out of the old time Spanish conquest. Dark black hair, dark skin but mixed just right by generations of mestizo blending, big ruby-red lips and a toothy smile to set them off, all topped by those dancing black Spanish eyes that tore the heart (and soul) of more than one man, companero or gringo. Hell they almost had me just then and I was nothing but a convenient whipping boy caught up in some ill-fated (or apparently ill-fated) international drug deal that had some loose ends sticking out. Yes, Be-Bop Benny was in serious trouble if he ever showed his face south of the border, and maybe any place until this issue was resolved.
It was not always that way though, not by a long shot. It all started out as innocence and wildflowers when Selena, fresh in town, stepped up to Be-Bop Benny a few years back in the middle of Cambridge Common and asked him point blank if he wanted to “share a joint” with her. Said not in that death voice that just strung me out across this lobby floor but in that sing-song voice of hers then that spoke of transport and swirls. As well as along with those eyes, that skin and those ruby-red lips. He did, and they did. That was the start of it, simple. A good start for the times, and the times were full of little innocent starts like this, some still burning in the trying 1970s night others, well, others, wound up like this bummer of a scene that I have found myself in the middle of. And no way to fix it, to fix Be-Bop Benny’s problem.
See I don’t have clue one where one Peter Paul Markin, moniker Be-Bop Benny, is in this year of our lord 1976. The last I had seen, or heard of him, was in late 1974 when he was just getting in a little over his head and was making mutterings to me about splitting for the coast (West Coast, of course) and getting clean, ocean clean. But mainly to get Selena off his Selena-obsessed mind, and get out from under his “product” problem. I also knew that he had “borrowed” fifteen hundred dollars that he was supposed to pay to Selena for her to give to her distributor, and so on up the chain.
Damn, it all started out so innocently. A couple of joint “joints,” some wild Spanish perfume and a couple of tumbles in some silken sheets and Be-Bop Benny was Selena’s slave. And then his money ran out, and hers too. That was when she brought up the matter of employment, lucrative employment to keep those sheets swishing and the wolves from the door. The idea at first was for her to head home, Sonora, down in sunny Mexico, pick up some dope (weed, mary jane, herb, whatever you call it in your neighborhood) bring it back and sell to a few friends. And then back to the swishing silky sheets. Then those friends brought their friends around, and those friends their friends until they were selling, selling hot and heavy (for the Mex dope was primo, Acapulco Gold), to strangers and their friends. So the business got out of hand after a while. And Be-Bop Benny got tired of his mule work, got tired of the trips to Sonora, and got tired of Selena sharing her joint come-on and have some fun with every guy who walked in the middle of Cambridge Common. Hell he was crazy for her, and she was just crazy. She tried her routine on me just to spite Be-Bop one time after some fight over dough just to do it.
So if you see Be-Bop Benny tell him for me to keep moving, moving fast, and keep the hell away from Sonora, down in sunny Mexico. Okay, amigo.
To Ramona by Bob Dylan
Lyrics
Ramona
Come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at times
And there’s no use in tryin’
T’ deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines
Your cracked country lips
I still wish to kiss
As to be under the strength of your skin
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I’m in
But it grieves my heart, love
To see you tryin’ to be a part of
A world that just don’t exist
It’s all just a dream, babe
A vacuum, a scheme, babe
That sucks you into feelin’ like this
I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin’ and returnin’
On back to the South
You’ve been fooled into thinking
That the finishin’ end is at hand
Yet there’s no one to beat you
No one t’ defeat you
’Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad
I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better ’n no one
And no one is better ’n you
If you really believe that
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose
From fixtures and forces and friends
Your sorrow does stem
That hype you and type you
Making you feel
That you must be exactly like them
I’d forever talk to you
But soon my words
They would turn into a meaningless ring
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring
Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows, baby
I’ll come and be cryin’ to you
Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music
“If you see that bastard Be-Bop Benny tell him, and tell him straight, that he still owes me fifteen hundred dollars for that last shipment I delivered up norte. And tell him he better come across quick because my guys don’t wait for late payments. Don’t wait at all,” yelled Selena, with no guile in her voice and no concern that anyone or everyone within earshot might hear her, across the Hotel Sonora lobby as I checked in at the main desk for a conference that I was attending. And, as if to emphasis that last point, she said the whole thing over again in Spanish for the locals, and me.
I am sure more than one companero was taken aback by the dead death-rattle tone in her voice coming from a senorita whose looks epitomized any virtue that came out of the old time Spanish conquest. Dark black hair, dark skin but mixed just right by generations of mestizo blending, big ruby-red lips and a toothy smile to set them off, all topped by those dancing black Spanish eyes that tore the heart (and soul) of more than one man, companero or gringo. Hell they almost had me just then and I was nothing but a convenient whipping boy caught up in some ill-fated (or apparently ill-fated) international drug deal that had some loose ends sticking out. Yes, Be-Bop Benny was in serious trouble if he ever showed his face south of the border, and maybe any place until this issue was resolved.
It was not always that way though, not by a long shot. It all started out as innocence and wildflowers when Selena, fresh in town, stepped up to Be-Bop Benny a few years back in the middle of Cambridge Common and asked him point blank if he wanted to “share a joint” with her. Said not in that death voice that just strung me out across this lobby floor but in that sing-song voice of hers then that spoke of transport and swirls. As well as along with those eyes, that skin and those ruby-red lips. He did, and they did. That was the start of it, simple. A good start for the times, and the times were full of little innocent starts like this, some still burning in the trying 1970s night others, well, others, wound up like this bummer of a scene that I have found myself in the middle of. And no way to fix it, to fix Be-Bop Benny’s problem.
See I don’t have clue one where one Peter Paul Markin, moniker Be-Bop Benny, is in this year of our lord 1976. The last I had seen, or heard of him, was in late 1974 when he was just getting in a little over his head and was making mutterings to me about splitting for the coast (West Coast, of course) and getting clean, ocean clean. But mainly to get Selena off his Selena-obsessed mind, and get out from under his “product” problem. I also knew that he had “borrowed” fifteen hundred dollars that he was supposed to pay to Selena for her to give to her distributor, and so on up the chain.
Damn, it all started out so innocently. A couple of joint “joints,” some wild Spanish perfume and a couple of tumbles in some silken sheets and Be-Bop Benny was Selena’s slave. And then his money ran out, and hers too. That was when she brought up the matter of employment, lucrative employment to keep those sheets swishing and the wolves from the door. The idea at first was for her to head home, Sonora, down in sunny Mexico, pick up some dope (weed, mary jane, herb, whatever you call it in your neighborhood) bring it back and sell to a few friends. And then back to the swishing silky sheets. Then those friends brought their friends around, and those friends their friends until they were selling, selling hot and heavy (for the Mex dope was primo, Acapulco Gold), to strangers and their friends. So the business got out of hand after a while. And Be-Bop Benny got tired of his mule work, got tired of the trips to Sonora, and got tired of Selena sharing her joint come-on and have some fun with every guy who walked in the middle of Cambridge Common. Hell he was crazy for her, and she was just crazy. She tried her routine on me just to spite Be-Bop one time after some fight over dough just to do it.
So if you see Be-Bop Benny tell him for me to keep moving, moving fast, and keep the hell away from Sonora, down in sunny Mexico. Okay, amigo.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Free Lynne Stewart And Her Co-Workers Now!-“Court Confirms Ten-Year Sentence for Lynne Stewart” by Jeff Mackler
Click on the headline to link to the Justice For Lynn Stewart Defense Committee for the latest in her case.
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
*******
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
*******
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo Of An Alternate Government Gone Wrong-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Blanqui’s Appeal to the students, December 11, 1830
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
************
Works of Auguste Blanqui 1830
Blanqui’s Appeal to the students, December 11, 1830
Source: Auguste Blanqui, textes choisi, Ed. V.P. Volguine, Editions Social, Paris 1971.
Translated: by Andy Blunden for marxists.org, 2003, Proofed and corrected by Mitch Abidor, 2004;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
Transcribed: Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the students of Law and Medicine,
Benjamin Constant has died. France weeps for one of the firmest upholders of its freedom, a great citizen and a great man. For us, it is a for friend that we weep. You know the accents his voice found to repulse the calumnies and insults poured upon us by an oppressive power. You know what burning words he made heard in 1820, 1821, 1822 and 1827, when, not content to sacrifice us to the sword of their hirelings, the powerful insulted us from the tribune and in their newspapers. Benjamin Constant made it a point of pride to be the friend of young people. Until his last moment, he raised his voice to defend us, because the youth of France, just as much as freedom, needed to be defended, even after the battle of the July Days. Five days before his death, the assembly halls still resounded to his patriotic tones; he died in battle as a combatant for the principles and the achievements of our revolution. An entire people will accompany the mortal remains of the defender of our rights to his last resting place. The Colleges owe to their friend a particular mourning, a solemn homage of recognition. I invite all my comrades to meet on the place du Pantheon, Sunday at precisely nine o'clock in the morning. Those of you who have weapons shall come armed, in order to render Benjamin Constant funeral honours.
Louis-Auguste Blanqui,
Student of Law.
P.S. – General Lafayette has given approval to this meeting; one of his staff officers will go along with us tomorrow.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
************
Works of Auguste Blanqui 1830
Blanqui’s Appeal to the students, December 11, 1830
Source: Auguste Blanqui, textes choisi, Ed. V.P. Volguine, Editions Social, Paris 1971.
Translated: by Andy Blunden for marxists.org, 2003, Proofed and corrected by Mitch Abidor, 2004;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
Transcribed: Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the students of Law and Medicine,
Benjamin Constant has died. France weeps for one of the firmest upholders of its freedom, a great citizen and a great man. For us, it is a for friend that we weep. You know the accents his voice found to repulse the calumnies and insults poured upon us by an oppressive power. You know what burning words he made heard in 1820, 1821, 1822 and 1827, when, not content to sacrifice us to the sword of their hirelings, the powerful insulted us from the tribune and in their newspapers. Benjamin Constant made it a point of pride to be the friend of young people. Until his last moment, he raised his voice to defend us, because the youth of France, just as much as freedom, needed to be defended, even after the battle of the July Days. Five days before his death, the assembly halls still resounded to his patriotic tones; he died in battle as a combatant for the principles and the achievements of our revolution. An entire people will accompany the mortal remains of the defender of our rights to his last resting place. The Colleges owe to their friend a particular mourning, a solemn homage of recognition. I invite all my comrades to meet on the place du Pantheon, Sunday at precisely nine o'clock in the morning. Those of you who have weapons shall come armed, in order to render Benjamin Constant funeral honours.
Louis-Auguste Blanqui,
Student of Law.
P.S. – General Lafayette has given approval to this meeting; one of his staff officers will go along with us tomorrow.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now!-Bradley Manning, military resistance, and the left
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning On Wednesday April 25th - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Bradley Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning On Wednesday April 25th - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Bradley Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! -Update 6/27/12: Bradley wins discovery documents in court, Alexa O’Brien harassed at Ft. Meade
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Fort Meade Maryland On Wednesday April 25th At 8:00 AM - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Bradley Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Fort Meade Maryland On Wednesday April 25th At 8:00 AM - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Bradley Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
Comentarios en soliarity con Manning hecha por un miembro de Veteranos por la Paz en el 09 de mayo 31 de Saint James Street Boston concentración en solidaridad con nuestra hermana SEIU asediado y conserjes hermano.
Comentarios en soliarity con Manning hecha por un miembro de Veteranos por la Paz en el 09 de mayo 31 de Saint James Street Boston concentración en solidaridad con nuestra hermana SEIU asediado y conserjes hermano.
Hermanas y hermanos, hermanas y hermanos, nosotros, los de Veteranos por la Paz posición en solidaridad con nuestros esforzados compañeros de trabajo tratando de conseguir algo de justicia en este mundo viejo y malvado, y no permita que pierdan sus puestos de trabajo de una corporación sin rostro tratando de jugar a "la raza hacia el fondo "para sus propios beneficios.
Yo, personalmente, nos solidarizamos también, porque en su día yo también trabajó durante un tiempo como conserje por aquí en el Emerson College en la oscuridad de la noche. Eso fue sólo para ganar un poco de pasta. Más tarde, cuando tengo más conocimientos políticos, que era portero en una fábrica de automóviles sindicalizados. Así que sé que los trabajadores de limpieza de hermanos y hermanas que trabajan en la calle 31 de Santiago son muy trabajadores. Pulido de los pisos, aspirar las alfombras, quitar el polvo esto y aquello, el vaciado de papeleras, y, bueno, la limpieza de los baños, y sin ánimo de ofender a las Mujeres, en la audiencia, los suyos eran los peores de limpiar. Ustedes los porteros ya me entiendes, ¿verdad? Los edificios de oficinas, las fábricas, los parques industriales y de alta tecnología no sólo se limpian. Se necesita un trabajo honesto por los obreros olvidados e invisibles para hacerlo. Y ellos deben estar bien remunerados y tener seguridad en el trabajo por sus esfuerzos.
Ahora Veteranos por la Paz es mejor conocido por su militancia contra la guerra, el trabajo, especialmente en estos días de guerra permanente ahora centrada en Afganistán, pero el año que viene quién sabe dónde una vez que el gobierno imperial se alza sus patas traseras. Y la defensa de Manning denunciante privado. Pero VFP también ha participado en las luchas anti-capitalistas de todo el Bank of America y las ejecuciones hipotecarias y similares. Piensa en ello, sin embargo, la lucha contra la guerra, la lucha contra las ganancias de los bancos arrancados y sus prácticas depredadoras y la lucha contra la carrera por los capitalistas de fondo para la dignidad del trabajo y un poco de justicia social y económica. Mi amigos son todos la misma lucha, la lucha misma. Así como el lema de los viejos tiempos de trabajo militante va-una ofensa a uno es una ofensa a todos. Venceremos.
Hermanas y hermanos, hermanas y hermanos, nosotros, los de Veteranos por la Paz posición en solidaridad con nuestros esforzados compañeros de trabajo tratando de conseguir algo de justicia en este mundo viejo y malvado, y no permita que pierdan sus puestos de trabajo de una corporación sin rostro tratando de jugar a "la raza hacia el fondo "para sus propios beneficios.
Yo, personalmente, nos solidarizamos también, porque en su día yo también trabajó durante un tiempo como conserje por aquí en el Emerson College en la oscuridad de la noche. Eso fue sólo para ganar un poco de pasta. Más tarde, cuando tengo más conocimientos políticos, que era portero en una fábrica de automóviles sindicalizados. Así que sé que los trabajadores de limpieza de hermanos y hermanas que trabajan en la calle 31 de Santiago son muy trabajadores. Pulido de los pisos, aspirar las alfombras, quitar el polvo esto y aquello, el vaciado de papeleras, y, bueno, la limpieza de los baños, y sin ánimo de ofender a las Mujeres, en la audiencia, los suyos eran los peores de limpiar. Ustedes los porteros ya me entiendes, ¿verdad? Los edificios de oficinas, las fábricas, los parques industriales y de alta tecnología no sólo se limpian. Se necesita un trabajo honesto por los obreros olvidados e invisibles para hacerlo. Y ellos deben estar bien remunerados y tener seguridad en el trabajo por sus esfuerzos.
Ahora Veteranos por la Paz es mejor conocido por su militancia contra la guerra, el trabajo, especialmente en estos días de guerra permanente ahora centrada en Afganistán, pero el año que viene quién sabe dónde una vez que el gobierno imperial se alza sus patas traseras. Y la defensa de Manning denunciante privado. Pero VFP también ha participado en las luchas anti-capitalistas de todo el Bank of America y las ejecuciones hipotecarias y similares. Piensa en ello, sin embargo, la lucha contra la guerra, la lucha contra las ganancias de los bancos arrancados y sus prácticas depredadoras y la lucha contra la carrera por los capitalistas de fondo para la dignidad del trabajo y un poco de justicia social y económica. Mi amigos son todos la misma lucha, la lucha misma. Así como el lema de los viejos tiempos de trabajo militante va-una ofensa a uno es una ofensa a todos. Venceremos.
Voyons redoubler d'efforts pour sauver le soldat Bradley Manning-faire de chaque Town Square Un Bradley Manning Place De Boston Pour nous Berkeley-Join In Davis Square, Somerville-Début Juillet 4 ° La veillée sera tous les mercredis de 16:00-17:00
Cliquez sur le titre pour un lien vers un de l' Soldat Bradley Manning Pétition page du site.
commentaire Markin:
Le Soldat Bradley Manning cas est dirigé vers une fin de l'automne / début de l'hiver procès. Ceux d'entre nous qui soutiennent sa cause doit redoubler d'efforts pour obtenir sa liberté. Pour les derniers mois il ya eu une vigile hebdomadaire dans le Grand Boston en face de l'arrêt Davis Square Redline MBTA (rebaptisé Bradley Manning place pour la durée de la veillée de) Somerville de 4:00-17:00 les mercredis. Cette veillée a, pour dire le moins, été très peu fréquentée. Nous avons besoin de le construire avec plus de supporters présents. S'il vous plaît joindre à nous quand vous le pouvez. Ou mieux encore, si vous ne pouvez pas vous joindre à nous lancer un soutien Bradley Manning vigile hebdomadaire dans un certain endroit dans votre ville si elle est dans la région de Boston ou Berkeley. Et s'il vous plaît signer la pétition pour sa libération. J'ai placé des liens vers le réseau Manning et Manning site web de Square-dessous.
Réseau de soutien Bradley Manning
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Place site
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Ce qui suit sont des remarques que j'ai été axées sur de la fin de construire soutien à la cause Bradley Manning.
Combattants pour la Paix se dresse fièrement en signe de solidarité avec, et la défense des soldat Manning Bradley.
Nous du mouvement anti-guerre n'étaient pas en mesure de faire beaucoup d'affecter l'administration Bush-Obama la guerre en Irak calendrier, mais nous pouvons sauver le seul héros de cette guerre, Bradley Manning.
Je me tiens en solidarité avec les agissements présumés de Bradley Manning privé dans la mise à la lumière, juste un peu de lumière, certains des infâmes liées à la guerre faits et gestes de ce gouvernement, sous l'administration Bush et Obama. Si il l'a fait de tels actes, ils sont pas un crime. Aucun crime du tout à mes yeux ou aux yeux de la grande majorité des gens qui savent de l'affaire et de son importance comme un acte individuel de résistance aux injustes et barbares menées par les Américains des guerres en Irak et en Afghanistan. Je dors un peu l'ombre plus facile ces jours-ci en sachant que soldat Manning a peut-être exposée ce que nous savions tous, ou aurait dû savoir-la guerre en Irak et les justifications de guerre afghans reposait sur un château de cartes. Pistolet-toting de l'impérialisme américain château de cartes, mais les cartes malgré tout.
Je suis debout dans la solidarité avec le soldat Bradley Manning, parce que je suis outré par le traitement infligé à Manning privé, sans doute un homme innocent, par un gouvernement qui prétend lui-même y avoir une certaine «phare» du monde civilisé. Bradley Manning a eu lieu à la solidarité à Quantico et d'autres lieux pour plus de 500 jours, et a été détenu sans procès depuis bien plus longtemps, comme le gouvernement et son armée essayer de coller une affaire ensemble. Le militaire, et ses sbires dans le département de la Justice, ont obtenu plus sournois mais pas plus intelligent depuis que je suis un soldat dans leur ligne de mire il ya quarante ans.
Ce sont des raisons plus que suffisantes pour rester debout dans la solidarité avec Manning privé et sera jusqu'au jour où il est libéré par ses geôliers. Et je vais continuer à manifester leur solidarité avec les fiers soldat Manning jusqu'à ce grand jour.
Immédiate le retrait inconditionnel de toutes les troupes des États-Unis / Allied et des mercenaires en Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Gratuit Bradley Manning maintenant!
commentaire Markin:
Le Soldat Bradley Manning cas est dirigé vers une fin de l'automne / début de l'hiver procès. Ceux d'entre nous qui soutiennent sa cause doit redoubler d'efforts pour obtenir sa liberté. Pour les derniers mois il ya eu une vigile hebdomadaire dans le Grand Boston en face de l'arrêt Davis Square Redline MBTA (rebaptisé Bradley Manning place pour la durée de la veillée de) Somerville de 4:00-17:00 les mercredis. Cette veillée a, pour dire le moins, été très peu fréquentée. Nous avons besoin de le construire avec plus de supporters présents. S'il vous plaît joindre à nous quand vous le pouvez. Ou mieux encore, si vous ne pouvez pas vous joindre à nous lancer un soutien Bradley Manning vigile hebdomadaire dans un certain endroit dans votre ville si elle est dans la région de Boston ou Berkeley. Et s'il vous plaît signer la pétition pour sa libération. J'ai placé des liens vers le réseau Manning et Manning site web de Square-dessous.
Réseau de soutien Bradley Manning
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Place site
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Ce qui suit sont des remarques que j'ai été axées sur de la fin de construire soutien à la cause Bradley Manning.
Combattants pour la Paix se dresse fièrement en signe de solidarité avec, et la défense des soldat Manning Bradley.
Nous du mouvement anti-guerre n'étaient pas en mesure de faire beaucoup d'affecter l'administration Bush-Obama la guerre en Irak calendrier, mais nous pouvons sauver le seul héros de cette guerre, Bradley Manning.
Je me tiens en solidarité avec les agissements présumés de Bradley Manning privé dans la mise à la lumière, juste un peu de lumière, certains des infâmes liées à la guerre faits et gestes de ce gouvernement, sous l'administration Bush et Obama. Si il l'a fait de tels actes, ils sont pas un crime. Aucun crime du tout à mes yeux ou aux yeux de la grande majorité des gens qui savent de l'affaire et de son importance comme un acte individuel de résistance aux injustes et barbares menées par les Américains des guerres en Irak et en Afghanistan. Je dors un peu l'ombre plus facile ces jours-ci en sachant que soldat Manning a peut-être exposée ce que nous savions tous, ou aurait dû savoir-la guerre en Irak et les justifications de guerre afghans reposait sur un château de cartes. Pistolet-toting de l'impérialisme américain château de cartes, mais les cartes malgré tout.
Je suis debout dans la solidarité avec le soldat Bradley Manning, parce que je suis outré par le traitement infligé à Manning privé, sans doute un homme innocent, par un gouvernement qui prétend lui-même y avoir une certaine «phare» du monde civilisé. Bradley Manning a eu lieu à la solidarité à Quantico et d'autres lieux pour plus de 500 jours, et a été détenu sans procès depuis bien plus longtemps, comme le gouvernement et son armée essayer de coller une affaire ensemble. Le militaire, et ses sbires dans le département de la Justice, ont obtenu plus sournois mais pas plus intelligent depuis que je suis un soldat dans leur ligne de mire il ya quarante ans.
Ce sont des raisons plus que suffisantes pour rester debout dans la solidarité avec Manning privé et sera jusqu'au jour où il est libéré par ses geôliers. Et je vais continuer à manifester leur solidarité avec les fiers soldat Manning jusqu'à ce grand jour.
Immédiate le retrait inconditionnel de toutes les troupes des États-Unis / Allied et des mercenaires en Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Gratuit Bradley Manning maintenant!
Vamos a redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para salvar privado Bradley Manning-Que todas las Plaza de la Ciudad A Bradley Manning Plaza De Boston a nosotros Berkeley-Ingreso en Davis Square, Somerville-A partir del 04 de julio La Vigilia será todos los miércoles de 4:00-5:00 pm
Haga clic en el título para el enlace a un privado Bradley Manning Petición página web.
comentario Markin:
El caso de Bradley Manning privada se dirige hacia un otoño / invierno temprano ensayo. Aquellos de nosotros que apoyan su causa, debemos redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para asegurar su libertad. Para los últimos meses ha habido una vigilia semanal en el área metropolitana de Boston frente a la Plaza de Davis Redline MBTA parada (rebautizada Plaza de Bradley Manning para la duración de la vigilia) en Somerville de 4:00-5:00 pm los miércoles. Esta vigilia tiene, por decir lo menos, ha sido muy poca asistencia. Tenemos que construir con más seguidores presentes. Por favor, únase a nosotros cuando pueda. O mejor aún si usted no puede unirse a nosotros iniciar una vigilia de apoyo Bradley Manning la semana en algún lugar en su ciudad ya sea en el área de Boston o Berkeley. Y por favor, firmen la petición para su liberación. He puesto enlaces a la red de Manning y Manning sitio web de la plaza de abajo.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Plaza de página web
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Los siguientes son comentarios que se han centrado en los últimos tiempos para conseguir apoyo para la causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos por la Paz se yergue en la solidaridad y la defensa de los soldado Bradley Manning.
Nosotros, los del movimiento anti-guerra no pudieron hacer mucho para afectar el gobierno de Bush-Obama Irak calendario guerra, pero podemos salvar uno de los héroes de esa guerra, Bradley Manning.
Estoy en solidaridad con las supuestas acciones de soldado Bradley Manning en sacar a la luz, sólo un poco de luz, algunos de los nefastos hechos relacionados con la guerra de este gobierno, el gobierno de Bush y Obama. Si lo hiciera tales actos no son delito. Ningún crimen en absoluto en mis ojos o en los ojos de la gran mayoría de la gente que conoce del caso y de su importancia como un acto individual de resistencia a las injustas y bárbaras encabezadas por Estados Unidos las guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Duermo un poco de sombra más fácil en estos días a sabiendas de que Manning podría haber expuesto lo que todos sabían, o debían haber sabido, la guerra de Irak y de las justificaciones de la guerra afgana se basaba en un castillo de naipes. El imperialismo estadounidense pistolero castillo de naipes, pero las tarjetas, sin embargo.
Estoy de pie en solidaridad con el soldado Bradley Manning, porque estoy indignado por el trato dado a Manning, presumiblemente un hombre inocente, por un gobierno que afirma a sí misma como un "faro" del mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning se había celebrado en la solidaridad en Quantico y otras localidades de más de 500 días, y ha sido detenido sin juicio durante mucho más tiempo, ya que el gobierno y sus fuerzas armadas tratan de pegar un caso juntos. Los militares y sus secuaces en el Departamento de Justicia, se han vuelto más tortuosa, aunque no más inteligente desde que era un soldado en la mira más de cuarenta años.
Estas son razones más que suficientes para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning y lo será hasta el día en que es liberado por sus carceleros. Y voy a seguir para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning orgullosos hasta ese gran día.
La retirada inmediata e incondicional de todas las tropas estadounidenses / Allied y mercenarios de Afganistán! Manos Fuera de Irán! Guías gratuitas de Bradley Manning ahora!
comentario Markin:
El caso de Bradley Manning privada se dirige hacia un otoño / invierno temprano ensayo. Aquellos de nosotros que apoyan su causa, debemos redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para asegurar su libertad. Para los últimos meses ha habido una vigilia semanal en el área metropolitana de Boston frente a la Plaza de Davis Redline MBTA parada (rebautizada Plaza de Bradley Manning para la duración de la vigilia) en Somerville de 4:00-5:00 pm los miércoles. Esta vigilia tiene, por decir lo menos, ha sido muy poca asistencia. Tenemos que construir con más seguidores presentes. Por favor, únase a nosotros cuando pueda. O mejor aún si usted no puede unirse a nosotros iniciar una vigilia de apoyo Bradley Manning la semana en algún lugar en su ciudad ya sea en el área de Boston o Berkeley. Y por favor, firmen la petición para su liberación. He puesto enlaces a la red de Manning y Manning sitio web de la plaza de abajo.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Plaza de página web
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Los siguientes son comentarios que se han centrado en los últimos tiempos para conseguir apoyo para la causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos por la Paz se yergue en la solidaridad y la defensa de los soldado Bradley Manning.
Nosotros, los del movimiento anti-guerra no pudieron hacer mucho para afectar el gobierno de Bush-Obama Irak calendario guerra, pero podemos salvar uno de los héroes de esa guerra, Bradley Manning.
Estoy en solidaridad con las supuestas acciones de soldado Bradley Manning en sacar a la luz, sólo un poco de luz, algunos de los nefastos hechos relacionados con la guerra de este gobierno, el gobierno de Bush y Obama. Si lo hiciera tales actos no son delito. Ningún crimen en absoluto en mis ojos o en los ojos de la gran mayoría de la gente que conoce del caso y de su importancia como un acto individual de resistencia a las injustas y bárbaras encabezadas por Estados Unidos las guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Duermo un poco de sombra más fácil en estos días a sabiendas de que Manning podría haber expuesto lo que todos sabían, o debían haber sabido, la guerra de Irak y de las justificaciones de la guerra afgana se basaba en un castillo de naipes. El imperialismo estadounidense pistolero castillo de naipes, pero las tarjetas, sin embargo.
Estoy de pie en solidaridad con el soldado Bradley Manning, porque estoy indignado por el trato dado a Manning, presumiblemente un hombre inocente, por un gobierno que afirma a sí misma como un "faro" del mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning se había celebrado en la solidaridad en Quantico y otras localidades de más de 500 días, y ha sido detenido sin juicio durante mucho más tiempo, ya que el gobierno y sus fuerzas armadas tratan de pegar un caso juntos. Los militares y sus secuaces en el Departamento de Justicia, se han vuelto más tortuosa, aunque no más inteligente desde que era un soldado en la mira más de cuarenta años.
Estas son razones más que suficientes para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning y lo será hasta el día en que es liberado por sus carceleros. Y voy a seguir para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning orgullosos hasta ese gran día.
La retirada inmediata e incondicional de todas las tropas estadounidenses / Allied y mercenarios de Afganistán! Manos Fuera de Irán! Guías gratuitas de Bradley Manning ahora!
Independent 2nd New Hampshire Congressional District Candidate And Iraqi War Veteran Daniel Keating Joins In The Portsmouth “Welcome Home” Tribute To Returning Iraq War Veterans On July 8, 2012
Click on the headline to link to the Keating For Congress Committee Keating Facebook page.
From: The Keating For Congress Committee
In re: Press Release- Welcome Home Paraded In Portsmouth, N.H. on July 8, 2012
Date: June 22, 2012
The Keating For Congress Committee today has announced that 2nd New Hampshire Congressional District Independent candidate and Socialist Alternative activist Daniel Keating joins in efforts by fellow 2nd District citizens and all New Hampshire citizens to pay a “Welcome Home” tribute for retuning Iraqi and Afghan War veterans in Portsmouth on July 8, 2012. Danny Keating, himself an Iraqi War veteran, while, perhaps, having political differences with some of the organizations and individuals who have helped organize the event around those war can agree with one Veteran For Peace member that we can “pay tribute to the common soldier who did his or her duty as they saw it, if not the cause.”
Danny Keating, while paying tribute to his fellow veterans, notes that while a one time “welcome home” event is a worthwhile endeavor the problems of returning veterans (and of serving soldiers as well) have not adequately been addressed by either Bush or the Obama administrations. He calls, first and foremost, for the immediate unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied troops from Afghanistan. And to use those war funds to provide veteran services from A to Z. Moreover, Danny Keating in travelling around the 2nd district and other locales talking to veterans, has become painfully aware that from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to the struggle to adjust to the “real world” to getting jobs, education and decent, affordable housing, to the mounting (and appalling) evidence of extraordinarily high suicide rates and other maladies returning Iraqi and Afghan War veterans have not been provided governmental services commensurate with their sacrifice.
Danny Keating, if elected, from Day One in office pledges to use his 2nd District offices as virtual adjuncts to the Veterans Administration. Further he will fight for massive job, housing, educational and other appropriate services programs for his fellow Iraqi (and Afghan) veterans, all veterans, and all citizens of the 2nd district. Vote Keating For Congress!
For more information about the Keating campaign, Socialist Alternative, or requests for interviews call: 603-233-2999 or email: danny.keating.for.congress@gmail.com
From: The Keating For Congress Committee
In re: Press Release- Welcome Home Paraded In Portsmouth, N.H. on July 8, 2012
Date: June 22, 2012
The Keating For Congress Committee today has announced that 2nd New Hampshire Congressional District Independent candidate and Socialist Alternative activist Daniel Keating joins in efforts by fellow 2nd District citizens and all New Hampshire citizens to pay a “Welcome Home” tribute for retuning Iraqi and Afghan War veterans in Portsmouth on July 8, 2012. Danny Keating, himself an Iraqi War veteran, while, perhaps, having political differences with some of the organizations and individuals who have helped organize the event around those war can agree with one Veteran For Peace member that we can “pay tribute to the common soldier who did his or her duty as they saw it, if not the cause.”
Danny Keating, while paying tribute to his fellow veterans, notes that while a one time “welcome home” event is a worthwhile endeavor the problems of returning veterans (and of serving soldiers as well) have not adequately been addressed by either Bush or the Obama administrations. He calls, first and foremost, for the immediate unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied troops from Afghanistan. And to use those war funds to provide veteran services from A to Z. Moreover, Danny Keating in travelling around the 2nd district and other locales talking to veterans, has become painfully aware that from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to the struggle to adjust to the “real world” to getting jobs, education and decent, affordable housing, to the mounting (and appalling) evidence of extraordinarily high suicide rates and other maladies returning Iraqi and Afghan War veterans have not been provided governmental services commensurate with their sacrifice.
Danny Keating, if elected, from Day One in office pledges to use his 2nd District offices as virtual adjuncts to the Veterans Administration. Further he will fight for massive job, housing, educational and other appropriate services programs for his fellow Iraqi (and Afghan) veterans, all veterans, and all citizens of the 2nd district. Vote Keating For Congress!
For more information about the Keating campaign, Socialist Alternative, or requests for interviews call: 603-233-2999 or email: danny.keating.for.congress@gmail.com
Vamos a redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para salvar privado Bradley Manning-Que todas las Plaza de la Ciudad A Bradley Manning Plaza De Boston a nosotros Berkeley
Vamos a redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para salvar privado Bradley Manning-Que todas las Plaza de la Ciudad A Bradley Manning Plaza De Boston a nosotros Berkeley
Markin comentario:
El caso de Bradley Manning privado se encamina hacia un juicio otoño. Aquellos de nosotros que apoyan su causa, debemos redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para asegurar su libertad. Para los últimos meses ha habido una vigilia semanal en el área metropolitana de Boston frente a la Plaza de Davis Redline MBTA parada (rebautizada Plaza de Bradley Manning para la duración de la vigilia) en Somerville de 16:00-17:00 los miercoles. Esta vigilia tiene, por decir lo menos, ha sido muy poca asistencia. Tenemos que construir con más seguidores presentes. Por favor, únase a nosotros cuando pueda. O mejor aún si usted no puede unirse a nosotros iniciar una vigilia de apoyo Bradley Manning la semana en algún lugar en su ciudad ya sea en el área de Boston o Berkeley. Y por favor, firmen la petición para su liberación. He puesto enlaces a la red de Manning y Manning sitio web de la plaza de abajo.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Plaza de página web
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Los siguientes son comentarios que se han centrado en los últimos tiempos para conseguir apoyo para la causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos por la Paz se yergue en la solidaridad y la defensa de los soldado Bradley Manning.
Nosotros, los del movimiento anti-guerra no pudieron hacer mucho para afectar el gobierno de Bush-Obama Irak calendario guerra, pero podemos salvar uno de los héroes de esa guerra, Bradley Manning.
Estoy en solidaridad con las supuestas acciones de soldado Bradley Manning en sacar a la luz, sólo un poco de luz, algunos de los nefastos hechos relacionados con la guerra de este gobierno, el gobierno de Bush y Obama. Si lo hiciera tales actos no son delito. Ningún crimen en absoluto en mis ojos o en los ojos de la gran mayoría de la gente que conoce del caso y de su importancia como un acto individual de resistencia a las injustas y bárbaras encabezadas por Estados Unidos las guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Duermo un poco de sombra más fácil en estos días a sabiendas de que Manning podría haber expuesto lo que todos sabían, o debían haber sabido, la guerra de Irak y de las justificaciones de la guerra afgana se basaba en un castillo de naipes. El imperialismo estadounidense pistolero castillo de naipes, pero las tarjetas, sin embargo.
Estoy de pie en solidaridad con el soldado Bradley Manning, porque estoy indignado por el trato dado a Manning, presumiblemente un hombre inocente, por un gobierno que afirma a sí misma como un "faro" del mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning se había celebrado en la solidaridad en Quantico y otras localidades de más de 500 días, y ha sido detenido sin juicio durante mucho más tiempo, ya que el gobierno y sus fuerzas armadas tratan de pegar un caso juntos. Los militares y sus secuaces en el Departamento de Justicia, se han vuelto más tortuosa, aunque no más inteligente desde que era un soldado en la mira más de cuarenta años.
Estas son razones más que suficientes para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning y lo será hasta el día en que es liberado por sus carceleros. Y voy a seguir para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning orgullosos hasta ese gran día.
La retirada inmediata e incondicional de todas las tropas estadounidenses / Allied y mercenarios de Afganistán! Manos Fuera de Irán! Guías gratuitas de Bradley Manning ahora!
Markin comentario:
El caso de Bradley Manning privado se encamina hacia un juicio otoño. Aquellos de nosotros que apoyan su causa, debemos redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para asegurar su libertad. Para los últimos meses ha habido una vigilia semanal en el área metropolitana de Boston frente a la Plaza de Davis Redline MBTA parada (rebautizada Plaza de Bradley Manning para la duración de la vigilia) en Somerville de 16:00-17:00 los miercoles. Esta vigilia tiene, por decir lo menos, ha sido muy poca asistencia. Tenemos que construir con más seguidores presentes. Por favor, únase a nosotros cuando pueda. O mejor aún si usted no puede unirse a nosotros iniciar una vigilia de apoyo Bradley Manning la semana en algún lugar en su ciudad ya sea en el área de Boston o Berkeley. Y por favor, firmen la petición para su liberación. He puesto enlaces a la red de Manning y Manning sitio web de la plaza de abajo.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Plaza de página web
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Los siguientes son comentarios que se han centrado en los últimos tiempos para conseguir apoyo para la causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos por la Paz se yergue en la solidaridad y la defensa de los soldado Bradley Manning.
Nosotros, los del movimiento anti-guerra no pudieron hacer mucho para afectar el gobierno de Bush-Obama Irak calendario guerra, pero podemos salvar uno de los héroes de esa guerra, Bradley Manning.
Estoy en solidaridad con las supuestas acciones de soldado Bradley Manning en sacar a la luz, sólo un poco de luz, algunos de los nefastos hechos relacionados con la guerra de este gobierno, el gobierno de Bush y Obama. Si lo hiciera tales actos no son delito. Ningún crimen en absoluto en mis ojos o en los ojos de la gran mayoría de la gente que conoce del caso y de su importancia como un acto individual de resistencia a las injustas y bárbaras encabezadas por Estados Unidos las guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Duermo un poco de sombra más fácil en estos días a sabiendas de que Manning podría haber expuesto lo que todos sabían, o debían haber sabido, la guerra de Irak y de las justificaciones de la guerra afgana se basaba en un castillo de naipes. El imperialismo estadounidense pistolero castillo de naipes, pero las tarjetas, sin embargo.
Estoy de pie en solidaridad con el soldado Bradley Manning, porque estoy indignado por el trato dado a Manning, presumiblemente un hombre inocente, por un gobierno que afirma a sí misma como un "faro" del mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning se había celebrado en la solidaridad en Quantico y otras localidades de más de 500 días, y ha sido detenido sin juicio durante mucho más tiempo, ya que el gobierno y sus fuerzas armadas tratan de pegar un caso juntos. Los militares y sus secuaces en el Departamento de Justicia, se han vuelto más tortuosa, aunque no más inteligente desde que era un soldado en la mira más de cuarenta años.
Estas son razones más que suficientes para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning y lo será hasta el día en que es liberado por sus carceleros. Y voy a seguir para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning orgullosos hasta ese gran día.
La retirada inmediata e incondicional de todas las tropas estadounidenses / Allied y mercenarios de Afganistán! Manos Fuera de Irán! Guías gratuitas de Bradley Manning ahora!
Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Save Private Bradley Manning-Make Every Town Square A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley-Join Us In Davis Square, Somerville -Beginning July 4th The Vigil Will Be Every Wednesday From 4:00-5:00 PM
Click on the headline to link to a the Private Bradley Manning Petition website page.
Markin comment:
The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a late fall/early winter trial. Those of us who support his cause should redouble our efforts to secure his freedom. For the past several months there has been a weekly vigil in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the vigil’s duration) in Somerville from 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This vigil has, to say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more supporters present. Please join us when you can. Or better yet if you can’t join us start a Support Bradley Manning weekly vigil in some location in your town whether it is in the Boston area or Berkeley. And please sign the petition for his release. I have placed links to the Manning Network and Manning Square website below.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
Manning Square website
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
The following are remarks that I have been focusing on of late to build support for Bradley Manning’s cause.
Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and defense of, Private Bradley Manning.
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq War timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
I stand in solidarity with the alleged actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious war-related doings of this government, under Bush and Obama. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning may have exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justifications rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
I am standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
These are more than sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Free Bradley Manning Now!
************
"God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms...
I want people to see the truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
—online chat attributed to Army RFC Bradley Manning
Accused Wikileaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning,
a 23-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, is accused of sharing a video of the killing of civilians— including two Reuters journalists—by a US helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq with the Wikileaks website.
He is also charged with blowing the whistle on the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and revealing US diplomatic cables. In short, he's been charged with telling us the truth.
The video and documents have illuminated the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and brines play in international diplomacy.
Half of every edition of The New York Times has cited one or more of these documents during the past year. The leaks have caused Amnesty International to hail Wikileaks for catalyzing the democratic middle eastern revolutions and changing journalism forever.
What happens now is up to YOU!
Never before in U.S. history has someone been charged with "Aiding the enemy through indirect means" by making information public.
A massive; popular outpouring of support for Bradley Manning is needed to save his life.
We are at a turning point in our nation's history. Will we as a public demand greater transparency and accountability from pur elected leaders? Will we be governed by fear and secrecy? Will we accept endless war fought with our tax dollars? Or, will we demand the right to know the truth—the real foundation of democracy.
Here are some actions you should take now to support Bradley:
» Visitwww.standwithbrad.org to sign the petition. Then join our photo petition at iam.bradleymanning.org
» Join our facebook page, savebradley,
to receive campaign updates, and follow SaveBradley on twitter
» Visitwww.bradleymanning.org and
download our Organizer Toolkit to learn howyou can educate community members, gain media attention, and donate toward Bradley's defense.
The People Have the Right to Know...
Visit wvwv.braclleymaiiniiig.org to learn howyou can take action!
************
What did WikiLeaks reveal?
.
"In no case shall information be classified... in order to: conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency... or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security."
—Executive Order 13526, Sec. 7.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations
"Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is this awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."
—Robert Gates, Unites States Secretary of Defense
PFC Bradley Manning is a US Army intelligence specialist who is accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, an organization that he allegedly understood would release portions of the information to news organizations and ultimately to the public.
Was the information that PFC Manning is accused of leaking classified for our protection and national security, as government officials contend? Or do the revelations provide the American public with information that we should have had access to in the first place? Just
what are these revelations? Below are some key facts that PFC Manning is accused of making public.
There is an official policy to ignore torture in Iraq.
The "Iraq War Logs" published by WikiLeaks revealed that thousands of reports of prisoner abuse and torture had been filed against the Iraqi Security Forces. Medical evidence detailed how prisoners had been whipped with heavy cables across the feet, hung from ceiling hooks, suffered holes being bored into their legs with electric drills, urinated upon, and sexually assaulted. These logs also revealed the existence of "Frago 242,"an order implemented in 2004 not to investigate allegations of abuse against the. Iraqi government This order is a direct violation of the UN Convention Against Torture, which was ratified by the United States in 1994. The Convention prohibits the Armed Forces from transferring a detainee to other countries "where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." According to the State Department's own reports, the U.S. government was already aware that the Iraqi Security Forces engaged in torture (1).
U.S. officials were told to cover up evidence of child abuse by contractors in Afghanistan.
U.S. defense contractors were brought under much tighter supervision after leaked diplomatic cables revealed that they had been complicit in child trafficking activities. DynCorp — a powerful defense contracting firm that claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from U.S. tax dollars — threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring boys purchased from child traffickers for entertainment. DynCorp had already faced human trafficking charges before this incident took place. According to the cables, Afghan Interior minister HanifAtmar urged the assistant US ambassadorto"quash"the story.These revelations have been a driving factor behind recent calls for the removal of all U.S. defense contractors from Afghanistan (2).
Guantanamo prison has held mostly innocent people and low-level operatives.
The Guantanamo Files describe how detainees were arrested based on what the New York Times referred to as highly subjective evidence. For example, some poor farmers were captured after they were found wearing a common watch or a jacket that was the same as those also worn by Al Queda operatives. How quickly innocent prisoners were released was heavily dependent on their country of origin. Because the evidence collected against Guantanamo prisoners is not permissible in U.S. courts, the U.S. State Department has offered millions of dollars to other countries to take and try our prisoners. According to a U.S. diplomatic cable written on April 17, 2009, the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners requested that the National Court indict six former U.S. officials for creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture against five Spanish prisoners. However,"Senator Mel Martinez... met Acting FM [Foreign Minister] AngelLossada... on April 15. Martinez... -underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship"(3).
There is an official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even though the Bush and Obama Administrations maintained publicly that there was no official count of civilian casualties, the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this claim was false. Between 2004 and 2009, the U.S. government counted a total of 109,000 deaths in Iraq, with 66,081 classified as non-combatants. This means that for every Iraqi death that is classified as a combatant, two innocent men, women or children are also killed (4),
FOOTNOTES:
(1)Alex Spillius, "Wikileaks: Iraq War Logs show US ignored torture allega-
tions,"Telegraph, October 22,2010. http://www.telegrapti.co.uk/news/
woridnews/middleeast/iraq/8082223/WiMleab-lraq-War-Logs-show-US-
ignored-torture-allegations.html.
(2)foreign contractors hired Afghan 'dancing boys; WikiLeaks cable
reveals'guanJian.co.uk, December 2,2010, http://www.guardian.co.tik/
world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys
(3) Scott Shane and Benjamin Weiser.The Guatanamo Files: Judging Detainees'Risk, Often With Rawed Evidence'New York Times, April 24,2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/2S/world/guantanamo-files-flawed-evidence-for-assessing-risk.html;'US embassy cables: Don't pursue Guantanamo criminal case, says Spanish attorney general'guardian.co.uk, December 1,2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202776.
(4) Iraq War Logs Reveal 15,000 Previously Unlisted Civilian Deaths,' guard-ian.co.uk, October 22,2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/won'd/2010/ oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq
Markin comment:
The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a late fall/early winter trial. Those of us who support his cause should redouble our efforts to secure his freedom. For the past several months there has been a weekly vigil in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the vigil’s duration) in Somerville from 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This vigil has, to say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more supporters present. Please join us when you can. Or better yet if you can’t join us start a Support Bradley Manning weekly vigil in some location in your town whether it is in the Boston area or Berkeley. And please sign the petition for his release. I have placed links to the Manning Network and Manning Square website below.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
Manning Square website
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
The following are remarks that I have been focusing on of late to build support for Bradley Manning’s cause.
Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and defense of, Private Bradley Manning.
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq War timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
I stand in solidarity with the alleged actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious war-related doings of this government, under Bush and Obama. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning may have exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justifications rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
I am standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
These are more than sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Free Bradley Manning Now!
************
"God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms...
I want people to see the truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
—online chat attributed to Army RFC Bradley Manning
Accused Wikileaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning,
a 23-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, is accused of sharing a video of the killing of civilians— including two Reuters journalists—by a US helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq with the Wikileaks website.
He is also charged with blowing the whistle on the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and revealing US diplomatic cables. In short, he's been charged with telling us the truth.
The video and documents have illuminated the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and brines play in international diplomacy.
Half of every edition of The New York Times has cited one or more of these documents during the past year. The leaks have caused Amnesty International to hail Wikileaks for catalyzing the democratic middle eastern revolutions and changing journalism forever.
What happens now is up to YOU!
Never before in U.S. history has someone been charged with "Aiding the enemy through indirect means" by making information public.
A massive; popular outpouring of support for Bradley Manning is needed to save his life.
We are at a turning point in our nation's history. Will we as a public demand greater transparency and accountability from pur elected leaders? Will we be governed by fear and secrecy? Will we accept endless war fought with our tax dollars? Or, will we demand the right to know the truth—the real foundation of democracy.
Here are some actions you should take now to support Bradley:
» Visitwww.standwithbrad.org to sign the petition. Then join our photo petition at iam.bradleymanning.org
» Join our facebook page, savebradley,
to receive campaign updates, and follow SaveBradley on twitter
» Visitwww.bradleymanning.org and
download our Organizer Toolkit to learn howyou can educate community members, gain media attention, and donate toward Bradley's defense.
The People Have the Right to Know...
Visit wvwv.braclleymaiiniiig.org to learn howyou can take action!
************
What did WikiLeaks reveal?
.
"In no case shall information be classified... in order to: conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency... or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security."
—Executive Order 13526, Sec. 7.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations
"Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is this awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."
—Robert Gates, Unites States Secretary of Defense
PFC Bradley Manning is a US Army intelligence specialist who is accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, an organization that he allegedly understood would release portions of the information to news organizations and ultimately to the public.
Was the information that PFC Manning is accused of leaking classified for our protection and national security, as government officials contend? Or do the revelations provide the American public with information that we should have had access to in the first place? Just
what are these revelations? Below are some key facts that PFC Manning is accused of making public.
There is an official policy to ignore torture in Iraq.
The "Iraq War Logs" published by WikiLeaks revealed that thousands of reports of prisoner abuse and torture had been filed against the Iraqi Security Forces. Medical evidence detailed how prisoners had been whipped with heavy cables across the feet, hung from ceiling hooks, suffered holes being bored into their legs with electric drills, urinated upon, and sexually assaulted. These logs also revealed the existence of "Frago 242,"an order implemented in 2004 not to investigate allegations of abuse against the. Iraqi government This order is a direct violation of the UN Convention Against Torture, which was ratified by the United States in 1994. The Convention prohibits the Armed Forces from transferring a detainee to other countries "where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." According to the State Department's own reports, the U.S. government was already aware that the Iraqi Security Forces engaged in torture (1).
U.S. officials were told to cover up evidence of child abuse by contractors in Afghanistan.
U.S. defense contractors were brought under much tighter supervision after leaked diplomatic cables revealed that they had been complicit in child trafficking activities. DynCorp — a powerful defense contracting firm that claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from U.S. tax dollars — threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring boys purchased from child traffickers for entertainment. DynCorp had already faced human trafficking charges before this incident took place. According to the cables, Afghan Interior minister HanifAtmar urged the assistant US ambassadorto"quash"the story.These revelations have been a driving factor behind recent calls for the removal of all U.S. defense contractors from Afghanistan (2).
Guantanamo prison has held mostly innocent people and low-level operatives.
The Guantanamo Files describe how detainees were arrested based on what the New York Times referred to as highly subjective evidence. For example, some poor farmers were captured after they were found wearing a common watch or a jacket that was the same as those also worn by Al Queda operatives. How quickly innocent prisoners were released was heavily dependent on their country of origin. Because the evidence collected against Guantanamo prisoners is not permissible in U.S. courts, the U.S. State Department has offered millions of dollars to other countries to take and try our prisoners. According to a U.S. diplomatic cable written on April 17, 2009, the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners requested that the National Court indict six former U.S. officials for creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture against five Spanish prisoners. However,"Senator Mel Martinez... met Acting FM [Foreign Minister] AngelLossada... on April 15. Martinez... -underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship"(3).
There is an official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even though the Bush and Obama Administrations maintained publicly that there was no official count of civilian casualties, the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this claim was false. Between 2004 and 2009, the U.S. government counted a total of 109,000 deaths in Iraq, with 66,081 classified as non-combatants. This means that for every Iraqi death that is classified as a combatant, two innocent men, women or children are also killed (4),
FOOTNOTES:
(1)Alex Spillius, "Wikileaks: Iraq War Logs show US ignored torture allega-
tions,"Telegraph, October 22,2010. http://www.telegrapti.co.uk/news/
woridnews/middleeast/iraq/8082223/WiMleab-lraq-War-Logs-show-US-
ignored-torture-allegations.html.
(2)foreign contractors hired Afghan 'dancing boys; WikiLeaks cable
reveals'guanJian.co.uk, December 2,2010, http://www.guardian.co.tik/
world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys
(3) Scott Shane and Benjamin Weiser.The Guatanamo Files: Judging Detainees'Risk, Often With Rawed Evidence'New York Times, April 24,2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/2S/world/guantanamo-files-flawed-evidence-for-assessing-risk.html;'US embassy cables: Don't pursue Guantanamo criminal case, says Spanish attorney general'guardian.co.uk, December 1,2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202776.
(4) Iraq War Logs Reveal 15,000 Previously Unlisted Civilian Deaths,' guard-ian.co.uk, October 22,2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/won'd/2010/ oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq
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