AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Saturday, September 01, 2012

A MODEST LABOR PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS IN THE 2012 ELECTIONS.

IN THIS TIME OF THE ‘GREAT FEAR’ WE NEED CANDIDATES TO FIGHT FOR A WORKERS GOVERNMENT.

FORGET DONKEYS AND ELEPHANTS - BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

In the summer of 2006 I originally wrote the following commentary (used in subsequent election cycles and updated a little for today’s purpose) urging the recruitment of independent labor militants as write-in candidates for the mid-term 2006 congressional elections based on a workers party program. With the hoopla already in full gear for the 2012 election cycle I repost that commentary below with that same intention of getting thoughtful leftists to use the 2012 campaign to further our propagandistic fight for a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.

A Modest Proposal-Recruit, Run Independent Labor Militants In The 2012 Elections

All “anti-parliamentarian”, “anti-state”, “non-political” anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist brothers and sisters need read no further. This writer does not want to sully the purity of your politics with the taint of parliamentary electoral politics. Although I might remind you, as we remember the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Barcelona Uprising, that your political ancestors in Spain were more than willing to support the state and enter the government when they got the chance- the bourgeois government of a bourgeois state. But, we can fight that issue out later. We will, hopefully, see you on the barricades with us when the time comes.

As for other militants- here is my modest proposal. Either recruit fellow labor militants or present yourselves as candidates to run for public office, especially for Congress, during the 2012 election cycle. Why? Even a quick glance at the news of the day is calculated to send the most hardened politico screaming into the night. The quagmire in Afghanistan (and unfinished business in Iraq and threats to Iran), immigration walls, flag-burning amendments, anti -same-sex marriage amendments, the threat to separation of church state raised by those who would impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy on the rest of us, and the attacks on the hard fought gains of the Enlightenment posed by bogus theories such as ‘intelligent design.’ And that is just an average day. Therefore, this election cycle provides militants, at a time when the dwindling electorate is focused on politics, a forum to raise our program and our ideas. We use this as a tool, like leaflets, petitions, meetings, demonstrations, etc. to get our message across. Why should the Donkeys, Elephants, and the other smaller bourgeois parties have a monopoly on the public square?

I mentioned in the last paragraph the idea of program. Let us face it if we do not have a program to run on then it makes no sense for militants to run for public office. Given the political climate our task at this time is to fight an exemplary propaganda campaign. Our program is our banner in that fight. The Democrats and Republicans DO NOT RUN on a program. The sum of their campaigns is to promise not to steal from the public treasury (or at least not too much), beat their husbands or wives, or grossly compromise themselves in any manner. On second thought, given today’s political climate, they may not promise not to beat their husbands or wives or not compromise themselves in any untoward manner. You, in any case, get the point. Damn, even the weakest neophyte labor militant can make a better presentation before working people that this crowd. This writer presents a five point program (you knew that was coming, right?) that labor militants can run on. As point five makes clear this is not a ‘minimum’ program but a program based on our need to fight for power.

1. FIGHT FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST NOW (OR BETTER YET, YESTERDAY)! U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD! VOTE NO ON THE WAR BUDGET!

The quagmire in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iran) is the fault line of American politics today. Every bourgeois politician has to have his or her feet put to the fire on this one. Not on some flimsy ‘sense of the Congress’ softball motion for withdrawal next, year, in two years, or (my favorite) when the situation is stable. Moreover, on the parliamentary level the only real vote that matters is the vote on the war budget. All the rest is fluff. Militants should make a point of trying to enter Congressional contests where there are so-called anti-war Democrats or Republicans (an oxymoron, I believe) running to make that programmatic contrast vivid.

But, one might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the “popular front” days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere fight for this position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (yes, those 'progressive Democrats') who almost unanimously voted for the last war budget get a free ride on the cheap. War President Barack Obama desperately needs to be opposed by labor militants. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.

2. FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE AND WORKING CONDITIONS-UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.

It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less a family can live on the minimum wage (now $7/hr. or so). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930’s; go a long way to turning the conditions of labor around.

3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT.

Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Down with anti-same sex marriage legislation! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend political prisoners! This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that in the year 2012 over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But so be it.

4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY.

The Donkeys, Elephants and other smaller bourgeois parties have had their chance. Now is the time to fight for our own party and for the interests of our own class, the working class. Any campaigns by independent labor militants must highlight this point. And any campaigns can also become the nucleus of a workers’ party network until we get strong enough to form at least a small party. None of these other parties, and I mean none, are working in the interests of working people and their allies. The following great lesson of politic today must be hammered home. Break with the Democrats, Republicans!

5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT. THIS IS THE DEMAND THAT SEPARATES THE MILITANTS FROM THE FAINT-HEARTED REFORMISTS.

We need our own form of government. In the old days the bourgeois republic was a progressive form of government. Not so any more. That form of government ran out of steam about one hundred years ago. We need a Workers Republic. We need a government based on workers councils with a ministry (I do not dare say commissariat in case any stray anarchists are still reading this) responsible to it. Let us face it if we really want to get any of the good and necessary things listed above accomplished we are not going to get it with the current form of government.

Why the XYZ part? What does that mean? No, it is not part of an algebra lesson. What it reflects is that while society is made up mainly of workers (of one sort or another) there are other classes (and parts of classes) in society that we seek as allies and could benefit from a workers government. Examples- small independent contractors, intellectuals, the dwindling number of small farmers, and some professionals like dentists. Yes, with my tongue in my cheek after all my dental bills, I like the idea of a workers and dentists government. The point is however you formulate it you have got to fight for it.

Obviously any campaign based on this program will be an exemplary propaganda campaign for the foreseeable future. But we have to start now. Continuing to support or not challenging the bourgeois parties does us no good. That is for sure. While bourgeois electoral laws do not favor independent candidacies write-in campaigns are possible. ROLL UP YOUR SHEEVES! GET THOSE PETITIONS SIGNED! PRINT OUT THE LEAFLETS! PAINT THOSE BANNERS! GET READY TO SHAKE HANDS AND KISS BABIES.

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

Click on the headline to link to Downtown Boston BM Rally Facebook event page.

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

DATE: THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

TIME: STARTING AT 2:00 PM (People will be leafleting downtown from about 11:00 AM and we will stay until about 5:00 PM so join us anytime you can to show your solidarity.)

PLACE: DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HEADQUARTERS AT 77 SUMMER STREET (NEAR THE DOWNTOWN CROSSING STOP ON THE RED AND ORANGE LINES)

The Boston Smedley Butler Brigade and Samantha Smith Chapter- Veterans for Peace, the Boston Bradley Manning Support Network , Bradley Manning Square of Somerville Committee and other social activists and concerned citizens support the call by the National Bradley Manning Support Network and others to rally nationwide at local Obama headquarters on Thursday September 6, 2012, the day President Obama is scheduled to accept the Democratic Party nomination of president, to call for freedom for alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. We also will be calling on the president to use his constitutional authority to pardon Private Manning now.

Contact: Al Johnson-Event Coordinator -alfredjohnson34@comcast.net
or Pat Scanlon (VN 69’)-Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade patscanlonmusic@yahoo.com

FREE BRADLEY MANNING-PRESIDENT OBAMA PARDON BRADLEY MANNING NOW!

Check our Facebook event page –Downtown Boston Bradley Manning Support
Rally-September 6th- http://www.facebook.com/events/439879979398064/

Call for action at Obama 2012 offices nationwide Sept. 6th during DNC

The Bradley Manning Support Network, Afghans For Peace and SF Bay Iraq Veterans Against the War Call for Nationwide Actions at local Obama Campaign Offices September 6th 2012 during the Democratic National Convention! Free Bradley Manning!

Since Army PFC Bradley Manning’s arrest in May 2010 for allegedly sharing the “Collateral Murder” video and other evidence of war crimes and government corruption with the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, progressives and human rights activists have been asking, “Why isn’t President Obama stepping in to help Bradley?”

After all, it was President Obama who in May 2011 declared with regards to protests in the Middle East,

“In the 21st Century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.”

On Thursday, August 16, US military veterans in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and Los Angeles CA, occupied Obama 2012 campaign offices and faxed a letter of demands to the Obama campaign’s central office. Those letters began:

As those who have spent years serving our country, we have faith that as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama will do the right thing in answering our request.

The letter went on to list the following demands:

That President Obama retract and apologize for remarks made in April 2011, in which he said Bradley Manning “broke the law.” Because President Obama is commander-in-chief, this constitutes unlawful command influence, violating Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and prevents Bradley from receiving a fair trial.

That President Obama pardon the accused whistle-blower, taking into consideration his 800 days of pretrial confinement. UN torture chief Juan Mendez called Manning’s treatment “cruel and inhuman,” as it included nine months of solitary confinement at Quantico despite Brig psychiatrists recommending relaxed conditions.

The Bradley Manning Support Network maintains hope that justice will prevail and that President Obama can be the vehicle of change on this issue, but first he needs to hear loud and clear from veterans and civilians across the country that the American people want amends for the unlawful torture of Bradley Manning, and believe he should be freed.

Organizers of the August 16 West Coast actions are now urging others to join them in a nationwide effort to hold actions at many more local Obama campaign offices on September 6th, the day of candidate’s nomination acceptance speech. We want to share messages of support for Bradley with Obama campaign offices from coast to coast.

Please contact emma@bradleymanning.org for more information about attending and/or organizing an event.

Labor donated

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days- Karl Marx-The Poverty of Philosophy-Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy -Strikes and Combinations of Workers

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink.
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Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
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Markin comment on this series:

No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International). While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, smitten by fox hunts. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
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Karl Marx-The Poverty of Philosophy-Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy -Strikes and Combinations of Workers

“Every upward movement in wages can have no other effect than a rise in the price of corn, wine, etc., that is, the effect of a dearth. For what are wages? They are the cost price of corn, etc.; they are the integrant price of everything. We may go even further: wages are the proportion of the elements composing wealth and consumed reproductively every day by the mass of the workers. Now, to double wages ... is to attribute to each one of the producers a greater share than his product, which is contradictory, and if the rise extends only to a small number of industries, it brings a general disturbance in exchange; in a word, a dearth....

“It is impossible, I declare, for strikes followed by an increase in wages not to culminate in a general rise in prices: this is as certain as that two and two make four.”

(Proudhon, Vol. I, pp. 110 and 111)

We deny all these assertions, except that two and two make four.

In the first place, there is no general rise in prices. If the price of everything doubles at the same time as wages, there is no change in price, the only change is in terms.

Then again, a general rise in wages can never produce a more or less general rise in the price of goods. Actually, if every industry employed the same number of workers in relation to fixed capital or to the instruments used, a general rise in wages would produce a general fall in profits and the current price of goods would undergo no alteration.

But as the relation of manual labour to fixed capital is not the same in different industries, all the industries which employ a relatively greater mass of capital and fewer workers, will be forced sooner or later to lower the price of their goods. In the opposite case, in which the price of their goods is not lowered, their profit will rise above the common rate of profits. Machines are not wage-earners. Therefore, the general rise in wages will affect less those industries, which, compared with the others, employ more machines than workers. But as competition always tends to level the rate of profits, those profits which rise above the average rate cannot but be transitory. Thus, apart from a few fluctuations, a general rise in wages will lead, not as M. Proudhon says, to a general increase in prices, but to a partial fall – that is a fall in the current price of the goods that are made chiefly with the help of machines.

The rise and fall of profits and wages expresses merely the proportion in which capitalists and workers share in the product of a day's work, without influencing in most instances the price of the product. But that “strikes followed by an increase in wages culminate in a general rise in prices, in a dearth even” – those are notions which can blossom only in the brain of a poet who has not been understood.

In England, strikes have regularly given rise to the invention and application of new machines. Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labour. The self-acting mule, the greatest invention of modern industry, put out of action the spinners who were in revolt. If combinations and strikes had no other effect than that of making the efforts of mechanical genius react against them, they would still exercise an immense influence on the development of industry.

“I find,” continues M. Proudhon, “in an article published by M. Leon Faucher... September 1845, that for some time the British workers have got out the habit of combination, which is assuredly a progress for which one cannot but congratulate them: but this improvement in the morale of the workers comes chiefly from their economic education. ‘It is not on the manufacturers,’ cries a spinning-mill worker at a Bolton meeting, ‘that wages depend. In periods of depression the masters are, so to speak, merely the whip with which necessity arms itself, and whether they want to or not, they have to deal blows. The regulative principle is the relation of supply and demand; and the masters have not this power’ ....

“Well done!” cries M. Proudhon. “These are well-trained workers, model workers, etc., etc., etc. Such poverty did not exist in Britain; it will not cross the Channel.”

(Proudhon, Vol. I, pp. 261 and 262)

Of all the towns in England, Bolton is the one in which the radicalism is the most developed. The Bolton workers are known to be the most revolutionary of all. At the time of the great agitation in England for the abolition of the Corn Laws, the English manufacturers thought that they could cope with the landowners only by thrusting the workers to the fore. But as the interests of the workers were no less opposed to those of the manufacturers than the interests of the manufacturers were to those of the landowners, it was natural that the manufacturers should fare badly in the workers' meetings. What did the manufacturers do? To save appearances they organized meetings composed, to a large extent, of foremen, of the small number of workers who were devoted to them, and of the real friends of trade. When later on the genuine workers tried, as in Bolton and Manchester, to take part in these sham demonstrations, in order to protest against them, they were forbidden admittance on the ground that it was a ticket meeting – a meeting to which only persons with entrance cards were admitted. Yet the posters placarded on the walls had announced public meetings. Every time one of these meetings was held, the manufacturers' newspapers gave a pompous and detailed account of the speeches made. It goes without saying that it was the foremen who made these speeches. The London papers reproduced them word for word. M. Proudhon has the misfortune to take foremen for ordinary workers, and enjoins them not to cross the Channel.

If in 1844 and 1845 strikes drew less attention than before, it was because 1844 and 1845 were the first two years of prosperity that British industry had had since 1837. Nevertheless none of the trades unions had been dissolved.

Now let us listen to the foremen of Bolton. According to them manufacturers have no command over wages because they have no command over the price of products, and they have no command over the price of products because they have no command over the world market. For this reason, they wish it to be understood that combinations should not be formed to extort an increase in wages from the masters. M. Proudhon, on the contrary, forbids combinations for fear they should be followed by a rise in wages which would bring with it a general dearth. We have no need to say that on one point there is an entente cordiale between the foremen and M. Proudhon: that a rise in wages is equivalent to a rise in the price of products.

But is the fear of a dearth the true cause of M. Proudhon's rancour? No. Quite simple, he is annoyed with the Bolton foremen because they determine value by supply and demand and hardly take any account of constituted value, of value which has passed into the state of constitution, of the constitution of value, including permanent exchangeability and all the other proportionalities of relations and relations of proportionality, with Providence at their side.

“A workers' strike is illegal, and it is not only the Penal Code that says so, it is the economic system, the necessity of the established order....

“That each worker individually should dispose freely over his person and his hands, this can be tolerated, but that workers should undertake by combination to do violence to monopoly, is something society cannot permit.”

(Vol. I, pp. 334 and 335)

M. Proudhon wants to pass off an article of the Penal Code as a necessary and general result of bourgeois relations of production.

In England, combination is authorized by an Act of Parliament, and it is the economic system which has forced Parliament to grant this legal authorization. In 1825, when, under the Minister Huskisson, Parliament had to modify the law in order to bring it more and more into line with the conditions resulting from free competition, it had of necessity to abolish all laws forbidding combinations of workers. The more modern industry and competition develop, the more elements there are which call forth and strengthen combination, and as soon as combination becomes an economic fact, daily gaining in solidity, it is bound before long to become a legal fact.

Thus the article of the Penal Code proves at the most that modern industry and competition were not yet well developed under the Constituent Assembly and under the Empire. [1]

Economists and socialists [*1] are in agreement on one point: the condemnation of combination. Only they have different motives for their act of condemnation.

The economists say to workers:

Do not combine. By combination you hinder the regular progress of industry, you prevent manufacturers from carrying out their orders, you disturb trade and you precipitate the invasion of machines which, by rendering your labour in part useless, force you to accept a still lower wage. Besides, whatever you do, your wages will always be determined by the relation of hands demanded to hands supplied, and it is an effort as ridiculous as it is dangerous for you to revolt against the eternal laws of political economy.

The socialists say to the workers:

Do not combine, because what will you gain by it anyway? A rise in wages? The economists will prove to you quite clearly that the few ha'pence you may gain by it for a few moments if you succeed will be followed by a permanent fall. Skilled calculators will prove to you that it would take you years merely to recover, through the increase in your wages, the expenses incurred for the organization and upkeep of the combinations.

And we, as socialists, tell you that, apart from the money question, you will continue nonetheless to be workers, and the masters will still continue to be the masters, just as before. So no combination! No politics! For is not entering into combination engaging in politics?

The economists want the workers to remain in society as it is constituted and as it has been signed and sealed by them in their manuals.

The socialists want the workers to leave the old society alone, the better to be able to enter the new society which they have prepared for them with so much foresight.

In spite of both of them, in spite of manuals and utopias, combination has not yet ceased for an instant to go forward and grow with the development and growth of modern industry. It has now reached such a stage, that the degree to which combination has developed in any country clearly marks the rank it occupies in the hierarchy of the world market. England, whose industry has attained the highest degree of development, has the biggest and best organized combinations.

In England, they have not stopped at partial combinations which have no other objective than a passing strike, and which disappear with it. Permanent combinations have been formed, trades unions, which serve as ramparts for the workers in their struggles with the employers. And at the present time all these local trades unions find a rallying point in the National Association of United Trades, the central committee of which is in London, and which already numbers 80,000 members. The organization of these strikes, combinations, and trades unions went on simultaneously with the political struggles of the workers, who now constitute a large political party, under the name of Chartists.

The first attempt of workers to associate among themselves always takes place in the form of combinations.

Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance – combination. Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. This is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages in favor of associations, which, in the eyes of these economists, are established solely in favor of wages. In this struggle – a veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character.

Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.

In the bourgeoisie we have two phases to distinguish: that in which it constituted itself as a class under the regime of feudalism and absolute monarchy, and that in which, already constituted as a class, it overthrew feudalism and monarchy to make society into a bourgeois society. The first of these phases was the longer and necessitated the greater efforts. This too began by partial combinations against the feudal lords.

Much research has been carried out to trace the different historical phases that the bourgeoisie has passed through, from the commune up to its constitution as a class.

But when it is a question of making a precise study of strikes, combinations and other forms in which the proletarians carry out before our eyes their organization as a class, some are seized with real fear and others display a transcendental disdain.

An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself, it is necessary that the productive powers already acquired and the existing social relations should no longer be capable of existing side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society.

Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No.

The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all orders. [*2]

The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.

Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?

Do not say that social movement excludes political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social.

It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions. Till then, on the eve of every general reshuffling of society, the last word of social science will always be:

“Le combat ou la mort; la lutte sanguinaire ou le neant. C’est ainsi que la quéstion est invinciblement posée.”

[From the novel Jean Siska by George Sand:
“Combat or Death: bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.”]

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Footnotes
[1] The laws in operation at that time in France – the so-called Le Chapelier law adopted in 1791 during the revolution by the Constituent Assembly and the criminal code elaborated under the Napoleonic Empire – forbade the workers to form labour unions or to go on strike. The prohibition of trade unions was abolished in France in 1884.

[*1] That is, the Socialists of that time: the Fourierists in France, the Owenites in England. F.E. [– Engels note to the German edition, 1885]

[*2] Estates here in the historical sense of the estates of feudalism, estates with definite and limited privileges. The revolution of the bourgeoisie abolished the estates and their privileges. Bourgeois society knows only classes. It was, therefore, absolutely in contradiction with history to describe the proletariat as the “fourth estate.” [– Engels, 1885 German edition.]

Friday, August 31, 2012

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning-Call for action at Obama 2012 offices nationwide Sept. 6th during DNC

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 .
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We of the international anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable or, as of now, the Afghanistan one, but we can save the one hero of that war, American soldier Private Bradley Manning. The Manning legal case, and Private Manning as an exceptionally brave individual, can and should serve to rally all those looking for a concrete way to express their anti-war outrage at the continuing atrocious American imperial war policies. The message below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorable whistleblower.
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The following are remarks that I have been focusing on of late to build support for Private Manning’s cause at stand-outs, marches and rallies.

Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and in defense of, Private 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. Those precious bits of information leaked to Wikileaks about American soldiers committing war atrocities in Iraq as chronicled in the tape known on YouTube as “Collateral Murder” and the Iraq and Afghan War Diaries. 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 flim-flam house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting flim-flam 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 has been held in solidarity at Quantico, other locales, and now at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for over two years, and has been held without trial for 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.

Many of us have become somewhat inured to the constant cases of jackboot torturous behavior on the part of the American military in places like Guantanamo, Bagram and other national security hellhole black box locations against foreign nationals. We have also become inured, or at least no longer surprised, when American civilian citizens are subject to such actions, and more likely death. However, as recent allegations of pre-trial torturous conduct condoned by high military authority (see the allegations and motion to dismiss charged on the Bradley Manning Support Network website) by Private Manning’s civilian defense lawyer David Coombs make clear, those acts are not confined to foreign nationals and American civilian citizens. The torture of Private Manning, an American soldier, by the American government should give us all pause. And should have us shouting to the heavens for his release.

These are more than sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day this brave soldier is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.

I urge everyone to sign the petition calling on the American military to free Private Bradley Manning either here or on the Bradley Manning Support Network website. And if we cannot get Private Manning freed that way I urge everyone to begin a campaign in your area to call on President Barack Obama, or whoever is president while Private Manning is incarcerated, to pardon this brave soldier. The American president has the constitutional authority to grant pardons to the guilty and innocent, the convicted and those facing charges. I call on President Obama to pardon Private Manning now.

Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Free Private Manning Now! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!

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Call for action at Obama 2012 offices nationwide Sept. 6th during DNC

The Bradley Manning Support Network, Afghans For Peace and SF Bay Iraq Veterans Against the War Call for Nationwide Actions at local Obama Campaign Offices September 6th 2012 during the Democratic National Convention! Free Bradley Manning!

Since Army PFC Bradley Manning’s arrest in May 2010 for allegedly sharing the “Collateral Murder” video and other evidence of war crimes and government corruption with the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, progressives and human rights activists have been asking, “Why isn’t President Obama stepping in to help Bradley?”

After all, it was President Obama who in May 2011 declared with regards to protests in the Middle East,

“In the 21st Century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.”

On Thursday, August 16, US military veterans in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and Los Angeles CA, occupied Obama 2012 campaign offices and faxed a letter of demands to the Obama campaign’s central office. Those letters began:

As those who have spent years serving our country, we have faith that as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama will do the right thing in answering our request.

The letter went on to list the following demands:

That President Obama retract and apologize for remarks made in April 2011, in which he said Bradley Manning “broke the law.” Because President Obama is commander-in-chief, this constitutes unlawful command influence, violating Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and prevents Bradley from receiving a fair trial.

That President Obama pardon the accused whistle-blower, taking into consideration his 800 days of pretrial confinement. UN torture chief Juan Mendez called Manning’s treatment “cruel and inhuman,” as it included nine months of solitary confinement at Quantico despite Brig psychiatrists recommending relaxed conditions.

The Bradley Manning Support Network maintains hope that justice will prevail and that President Obama can be the vehicle of change on this issue, but first he needs to hear loud and clear from veterans and civilians across the country that the American people want amends for the unlawful torture of Bradley Manning, and believe he should be freed.

Organizers of the August 16 West Coast actions are now urging others to join them in a nationwide effort to hold actions at many more local Obama campaign offices on September 6th, the day of candidate’s nomination acceptance speech. We want to share messages of support for Bradley with Obama campaign offices from coast to coast.

Please contact emma@bradleymanning.org for more information about attending and/or organizing an event.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

***From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window

DVD Review

Rear Window, starring Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount Pictures, 1954

Most of us who live in the city, and maybe many who live in the suburbs as well, do so to be somewhat anonymous or to escape from the prying old childhood neighborhoods when everybody knew everybody else’s business, or wanted to know it. Especially when some mother’s Johnnie or Janie did something better than your mother’s Johnnie or Janie. Harmless stuff. City or suburb though most people who want to have their privacy can have it, if they determinedly fight for it. But let’s say one is stuck in one’s urban abode (New York City urban abode, Greenwich Village urban abode to boot), one has a set of binoculars, and a very vivid photo-journalist’s (played by Jimmy Stewart) imagination (or ability to put two and two together occasionally). Then you have the plot line for an Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller like the one under review, Rear Window.

Oh, yes, throw in drop- dead beautiful model for a girlfriend (played by Grace Kelly) to help with the heavy lifting you are unable to do and you are off to the races. Oh yes, as well, throw in a nefarious evil-doer, a wife-murderer (played by Perry Mason, oops, Raymond Burr) seen across the court yard from the rear window of your confined abode and anything can happen, or almost anything. The trick is to use your strong sense of investigative powers, your Dick Tracey taught ability to put clues together and an unforgivable, yes, unforgiveable habit of putting that fetching girlfriend in harms’ way and you have an A-One film. Throw in some wit by a world-wise nurse (played by Thelma Ritter) and a skeptical police officer (played by Wendell Corey) and well that is that.

Note: Forget all that stuff about helpful girlfriends (okay, okay fiancés) being put in harm’s way by photo-op crazed journalists I have a small bone, no, a very large bone to pick with one Jimmy Stewart. Why on this good green earth would anyone in their right mind, much less a hubby-to-be, allow anyone to touch one hair on the head of one Grace Kelly. I was too young to appreciate her beauty when I was kid as I was strictly into women (oops, girls) with stick shapes and winsome toothy smiles but some women in this world are just not built for the rough stuff of city life (or suburban life for that matter). I probably just balled all of this up so let me put it this way as I have on other occasions when dealing with Grace Kelly films. One story had it that her husband, Prince Rainer of Monaco, a man not known to show much public emotion, openly wept at her funeral. Now I know why.

***From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M For Murder”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder.

DVD Review

Dial M For Murder, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly. Robert Cummings, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Warner Brothers, 1954

Hey, we are all adults here, right? So why would one ex-tennis bum, Tony (play be Ray Milland), who in the course of his professional tennis career probably had more love affairs at the courts with an off-hand wealthy matron or two than one can shake a stick at, take umbrage when his wealthy wife, Margot (played by Grace Kelly), had a little dalliance of her own. A dalliance with an off-hand smart crime novel writer a la Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, Mark (played by Robert Cummings), to boot just in order to muddy up the waters.

Well that is the plot line here in the film under review, Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder, as an ill-disposed hubby Tony finds out about the little illicit tryst and plots revenge, revenge big time. Oh no, not like some smart guy, tennis bum or not, would do by raking dear wifey through the 1950s divorce courts with good old boy Mark as correspondent. No he had to go for the big M, Mas in murder. So naturally he needed to over-plan some nefarious plot by bringing a ne’er do well (English version, naturally) in to bungle the damn thing. Bungle it big time as Margot wound up killing said unjust assassin in self-defense.

But that little turn of events became our boy Tony’s opening as he framed said wifey big time, or almost. The line-up of circumstantial he led the peelers to was just too perfect, almost. On the evidence even a half-baked lawyer should have been able to get Margot out of a murder one charge and a hard look at the gallows but it took old Mark and his dime store crime investigative skills to set things right in the end.

Note: Forget all that stuff about evidence, about wifely adulterous affairs, about a cad named Tony, and a house-wreaker named Mark. Why on this good green earth would anyone in their right minds touch one hair on the head of one Grace Kelly. I was too young to appreciate her beauty when I was kid as I was strictly into women (oops, girls) with stick shapes and winsome toothy smiles but some women in this world are just not built to face the cruel executioner’s noose. I probably just balled all of this up so let me put it this way as I have on other occasions when dealing with Grace Kelly films. One story had it that her husband, Prince Rainer of Monaco, a man not known to show much public emotion, openly wept at her funeral. Now I know why.

Downtown Boston Rally in support of PFC. Bradley Manning-September 6,, 2012 -3:00 PM-Press Release

For Immediate Release

Contact: Al Johnson-Event Coordinator email: alfrcdjohnson34@comcast.net Or Pat Scanlon - VFP Coordinator email: PatScanlonMusic@yahoo.com

Rally in support of PFC. Bradley Manning

September 6th 3:00 pm

Obama Campaign Headquarters

77 Summer Street, Boston

The Boston Smedley Butler Brigade and North Shore Samantha Smith Chapter- Veterans for Peace, the Boston Bradley Manning Support Network , Somerville Manning Square Committee, Boston United Anti-War Coalition, United for Peace with Justice and other social activists and concerned citizens support the call by the National Bradley Manning Support Network and others to rally nationwide at local Obama headquarters on Thursday September 6, 2012, the day President Obama is scheduled to accept the Democratic Party nomination for president. We call upon President Obama to use his constitutional authority and immediately pardon Army Private First Class Bradley Manning.

The rally will take place at the Downtown Boston Obama Headquarters at 77 Summer Street (on the Downtown Crossing stop on the Red Line and Orange Line) starting at 2:00 PM

Since Army PFC Bradley Manning's arrest in May 2010 for allegedly sharing the "Collateral Murder" video and other evidence of war crimes and government corruption with the whistle-blower website Wik-iLeaks, progressives and human rights activists have been asking, "Why isn't President Obama stepping in to help Bradley?" After all, it was President Obama who in May 2011 declared with regards to protests in the Middle East, "In the 21st Century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens."

"As Veterans of many wars, Veterans For Peace stand with Bradley Manning" stated Al Johnson, a member of Veterans For Peace and the organizer for todays rally. "Bradley Manning has spent over two years hi jail for releasing information that exposed the secrecy of our foreign policy. Bradley Manning is a soldier of conscience, a hero to many, a whistle blower who saw a wrong, possibly war crimes and exposed the truth. We call on President Obama to immediately pardon Bradley Manning".

The Smedley D. Butler Brigade Chapter 9 of Veterans For Peace was established in the mid-1980s and includes more than 200 Veterans from the Boston area. The local chapter is part of the national Veterans For Peace and is named in honor of Marine Gen. Smedley D. Butler, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, who turned against war and famously said "War is a Racket. A few profit, the many pay."

The website of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace is www.SmedleyVFP.org. The national Veterans For Peace website is www.VeteransForPeace.org.
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Additional Information

Support Rally for PFC Bradley Manning - September 6,2012 - 2:00 PM Obama's Campaign Headquarters , 77 Summer Street, Boston, MA

On Thursday, August 16, US military veterans in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and Los Angeles CA, occupied Obama 2012 campaign offices and faxed a letter of demands to the Obama campaign's central office. Those letters began:
As those who have spent years serving our country, we have faith that as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama will do the right thing in answering our request.

The letter went on to list the following demands:

That President Obama retract and apologize for remarks made in April 2011, in which he said Bradley Manning "broke the law." Because President Obama is commander-in-chief, this constitutes unlawful command influence, violating Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and prevents Bradley from receiving a fair trial.

That President Obama pardon the accused whistle-blower, taking into consideration his 800 days of pretrial confinement. UN torture chief Juan Mendez called Manning's treatment "cruel and inhuman," as it included nine months of solitary confinement at Quantico despite Brig psychiatrists recommending relaxed conditions.

The Bradley Manning Support Network maintains hope that justice will prevail and that President Obama can be the vehicle of change on this issue, but first he needs to hear loud and clear from veterans and civilians across the country that the American people want amends for the unlawful torture of Bradley Manning, and believe he should be freed.

Organizers of the August 16 West Coast actions are now urging others to join them in a nationwide effort to hold actions at many more local Obama campaign offices on September 6th, the day of candidate's nomination acceptance speech. We want to share messages of support for Bradley with Obama campaign offices from coast to coast..

Please contact emma@bradleymanning.org for more information about attending and/or organizing an event.

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Works of Auguste Blanqui 1866-Proclamation of February 20, 1866

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 Occupy Boston 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.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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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!

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Works of Auguste Blanqui 1866-Proclamation of February 20, 1866

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Source: Auguste Blanqui. L’Eternité par les astres, hypothese astronomique et autres textes, Société encyclopedique française, Editions de la Tête de Feuilles. 1972;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.

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Given the declaration by the Minister of War, dated [blank] December 1851, signed Leroy and Saint-Arnaud, which states:

“All individuals taken arms in hand will be executed.”

Given that following the criminal attack of December 2, 1851 [1] those prisoners who were defenders of the constitution were put to death during and after the combat;

That in diverse places in the capitol a crowd of citizens, inoffensive and without arms; innocent bystanders, were killed at the hands of the Praetorian guards;

That on the boulevard, a mass of peaceful spectators, men, women and children were suddenly and without provocation massacred by Bonaparte’s soldiery;

That this same soldiery slaughtered, in their homes, without distinction of either age or sex, the residents of several houses;

That in the departments of the Herault, Ain and the Nievre, the defenders of the constitution were, not gunned down, but guillotined by sentence of the Councils of War, well after the end of the struggle;

Given that in the presence of these crimes the magnanimity which the people has shown over the last forty years during civil wars would from here on in be both a crime and an act of suicide.

The commander-in-chief of the Republican army declares:

Article 1 – Bonaparte, his ministers, the legislature and the senate are declared public enemies;

Article 2 – All government functionaries are suspended from their duties. All violators will be executed;

Article 3 – All police officers and agents are to remain at home. Those who appear on the streets, in uniform or otherwise, will be executed;

Article 4 – Those officers who are members of a body that fired on the people will be executed;

Article 5 – Officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of any artillery regiment that fired on houses so as to set them on fire, will be executed;

Article 6 – Those non-commissioned officers and soldiers who fired on the people will be sent to the colonies. Those who massacred children, women, or the elderly will be executed;

Article 7 – All soldiers are called upon to shoot down any chief who orders that the people be fired upon;

Article 8 – Those officers who, during the struggle, declare themselves for the republic, will receive a large reward as a sign of national gratitude;

Article 9 – Those soldiers and non-commissioned officers who, during the struggle, embrace the Republican cause will have a right either to leave the army, or to promotion to a higher rank within the national army. Upon leaving each soldier will receive 300 francs beyond his departure bonus, each non-commissioned officer 500 francs.

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1. Date of Louis Bonaparte’s coup d'état

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS.

Click on the headline to link to Downtown Boston BM Rally Facebook event page.

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS.

DATE: THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

TIME: STARTING AT 2:00 PM (People will be leafleting downtown from about 11:00 AM and we will stay until about 5:00 PM so join us anytime you can to show your solidarity.)

PLACE: DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HEADQUARTERS AT 77 SUMMER STREET (NEAR THE DOWNTOWN CROSSING STOP ON THE RED AND ORANGE LINES)

The Boston Smedley Butler Brigade and Samantha Smith Chapter- Veterans for Peace, the Boston Bradley Manning Support Network , Bradley Manning Square of Somerville Committee and other social activists and concerned citizens support the call by the National Bradley Manning Support Network and others to rally nationwide at local Obama headquarters on Thursday September 6, 2012, the day President Obama is scheduled to accept the Democratic Party nomination of president, to call for freedom for alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. We also will be calling on the president to use his constitutional authority to pardon Private Manning now.

Contact: Al Johnson-Event Coordinator -alfredjohnson34@comcast.net
or Pat Scanlon (VN 69’)-Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade patscanlonmusic@yahoo.com

FREE BRADLEY MANNING-PRESIDENT OBAMA PARDON BRADLEY MANNING NOW!

Check our Facebook event page –Downtown Boston Bradley Manning Support
Rally-September 6th- http://www.facebook.com/events/439879979398064/

Call for action at Obama 2012 offices nationwide Sept. 6th during DNC

The Bradley Manning Support Network, Afghans For Peace and SF Bay Iraq Veterans Against the War Call for Nationwide Actions at local Obama Campaign Offices September 6th 2012 during the Democratic National Convention! Free Bradley Manning!

Since Army PFC Bradley Manning’s arrest in May 2010 for allegedly sharing the “Collateral Murder” video and other evidence of war crimes and government corruption with the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, progressives and human rights activists have been asking, “Why isn’t President Obama stepping in to help Bradley?”

After all, it was President Obama who in May 2011 declared with regards to protests in the Middle East,

“In the 21st Century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.”

On Thursday, August 16, US military veterans in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and Los Angeles CA, occupied Obama 2012 campaign offices and faxed a letter of demands to the Obama campaign’s central office. Those letters began:

As those who have spent years serving our country, we have faith that as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama will do the right thing in answering our request.

The letter went on to list the following demands:

That President Obama retract and apologize for remarks made in April 2011, in which he said Bradley Manning “broke the law.” Because President Obama is commander-in-chief, this constitutes unlawful command influence, violating Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and prevents Bradley from receiving a fair trial.

That President Obama pardon the accused whistle-blower, taking into consideration his 800 days of pretrial confinement. UN torture chief Juan Mendez called Manning’s treatment “cruel and inhuman,” as it included nine months of solitary confinement at Quantico despite Brig psychiatrists recommending relaxed conditions.

The Bradley Manning Support Network maintains hope that justice will prevail and that President Obama can be the vehicle of change on this issue, but first he needs to hear loud and clear from veterans and civilians across the country that the American people want amends for the unlawful torture of Bradley Manning, and believe he should be freed.

Organizers of the August 16 West Coast actions are now urging others to join them in a nationwide effort to hold actions at many more local Obama campaign offices on September 6th, the day of candidate’s nomination acceptance speech. We want to share messages of support for Bradley with Obama campaign offices from coast to coast.

Please contact emma@bradleymanning.org for more information about attending and/or organizing an event.

Labor donated

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Mark Nieweem Of The NATO Five Brutalized by Cook County Guards - Call Sheriff Tom Dart -Free The NATO Five- Free All Occupy Protesters!

Mark Nieweem Brutalized by Cook County Guards - Call Sheriff Tom Dart

by Boston IMC
(No verified email address)

27 Aug 2012

Reposted from http://nato5.occupychi.org/content/mark-nieweem-aka-migs-brutalized-cook

Mark Nieweem, (pronounced Nye-wame) one of the NATO5, was badly beaten by Cook County Jail Guards and placed in solitary confinement, "the hole," for 20+ days. His lawyer confirmed that Mark spent the night in Cermak Hospital. he has stitches, his face is swollen and bruised. his ribs are sore but not broken. We, his activists and friends, cannot let this atrocity of state abuse stand.

We are calling on every person around the world to telephone Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart at (312) 603-6444 and ask to speak with him, demanding:
What happened to Mark Neiweem?
Why was Mark Neiweem beaten so severely that he was admitted to Cermak hospital overnight?

Remove Mark from the hole now!

By calling Tom Dart and demanding answers, we are holding him and his department accountable for the abhorrent treatment of Mark. Using the force of our network, we are showing him that his guard dog attacks will not be tolerated.

We won't sit down.
We won't shut up.
We won't forget about our comrade.
We will stand and speak for Mark. We will fight for him.
Call every day until Mark's released from the hole or until September 18.

Invite friends. Share widely. Repost. Retweet.

For more information on the NATO5 case, see nato5.occupychi.org

August 31st: National Day of Action for the Cleveland 4! -Free All Occupy Protesters!

August 31st: National Day of Action for the Cleveland 4!

by upma
Email: cleveland4solidarity (nospam) riseup.net (verified)
Address: Conveyor Belt Collective at P.O. Box 602117, Cleveland, OH 44102

27 Aug 2012

On Friday, August 31st, join your comrades around the country in raising legal support funds for the Cleveland 4, who were entrapped by the FBI and face up to life in prison because of their politics and association with the Occupy movement. The defendants need to raise $80K to create the best defense possible against the government's sensational prosecution based on manufactured crimes.

You can help fund our Indiegogo http://igg.me/p/165999?a=840349 , or send checks or money orders made out to Conveyor Belt Collective to P.O. Box 602117, Cleveland, OH 44102.

Arrested in Cleveland on April 30th in a calculated move designed to disrupt May Day protests and celebrations everywhere, five people initially faced charges for an alleged conspiracy to destroy a bridge. These five are Brandon Baxter, Connor Stevens, Douglas L. Wright, Joshua Stafford, and Tony Hayne. On July 25th, Tony accepted a cooperating plea deal with the government. He pled guilty to all three charges and agreed to testify against his co-defendants in exchange for a minimum sentence of 16 years in federal prison. His cooperation has directly increased the danger his co-defendants are facing and harmed our struggles for social justice.

The Cleveland 4 need our support now more than ever! With trial scheduled to begin on September 18th, time is running short and money is urgently needed for investigation costs, testimony from expert witnesses, and other legal expenses.

On August 31st, the Cleveland 4 will be preparing for one of the biggest moments in their lives from their jail cells. Their lawyers will be working fervently to secure their acquittal and release. And the prosecutors will be finalizing their plans to lock up these activists for life, as a threat to all of us to abandon our struggles for a better world—or else.

What will you be doing?

Fundraisers are being planned in Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Asheville, Denver, Ithaca, and other towns across the country. (Check back here for more details.)

Show solidarity for the Cleveland 4 by hosting a fundraiser in your town—a show, a movie screening, a discussion, a noise demo and rally, a bake sale, whatever strikes your fancy. Have you been a part of the Occupy movement in your city? Pass the hat among your comrades and raise $100 to support these defendants—every bit helps! Let us know your plans so we can add them to our calendar by contacting us at cleveland4solidarity (at) riseup.net, donate online to send in your donation, or send checks or money orders made out to Conveyor Belt Collective at P.O. Box 602117, Cleveland, OH 44102.

The case of the Cleveland 4 is not a story of misguided activists doing dangerous things. Rather, it is the story of a pattern of state repression focused on destroying resistance and undermining solidarity within the 99%. This is a story of an FBI agent provocateur who targeted activists, manufactured a plot to blow up a bridge, and coerced the defendants into going along with his scheme, all to keep himself out of prison.

This case is not an isolated incident, but one instance in an historic pattern of state repression. Just a couple weeks after the Cleveland 4, the Chicago police arrested the NATO 5, charging three Occupy activists (the NATO 3—Brent Betterly, Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase) with conspiracy to make Molotov cocktails, Sebastian Senakiewicz with falsely making terroristic threats, and Mark Neiweem with attempted possession and solicitation of an incendiary device. These five were also targeted by provocateurs because of their political views and associations. We must defend them as we defend all other political prisoners and prisoners of war—their liberation is bound up with ours! Find out more at http://nato5.occupychi.org/ and check back for an announcement about an upcoming National Day of Action for the NATO 5!

As the national political conventions quickly approach, we should expect to see more provocateurs targeting activists and manufacturing plots in order to charge them with serious crimes and threaten them with decades in prison. We must show the government that we will not stand idly by while they attack our movements and imprison our comrades. We must put a stop to this pattern of infiltration, provocation and entrapment. And we must step up to support our comrades around the country. So on Friday, August 31st, bring your community together to show your solidarity with the Cleveland 4!

For more information on current trends of state repression that are evident within these and other cases, check out these links:

http://www.justiceonline.org/our-work/ows-foia.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/25/nypd-occupy-protests-report?
http://cleveland4solidarity.org/media-coverage
http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2012/05/29/inside-the-fbi-entrapment-stra/

See also:
http://igg.me/p/165999?a=840349
http://www.freethe4.org

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- A Breathe Of Fresh Air Hits The Radio Airwaves – When Elvis Was Young And Hungry And Billie Was A Madman

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis performing Good Rockin’ Tonight.

“I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” I can still hear the echo of my old “the projects” boy, the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments for those who are sticklers for exact titles but the projects for the less timid and socially realistic, William James Bradley. William James Bradley , also known as Billie, not Billy, by the way, not some common billy-goat name as he made us painfully aware if we didn’t get it right. Not if you did not want to be on the wrong side of an argument if you made the mistake of calling him Billy and after a while no one did. No kid at least. Period.

Yes, Billie from the hills, a mad demon of a kid and my best friend from about second to sixth grade down in that projects elementary school, Adamsville South. We grew apart after a while, and I will tell you why sometime, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, hell maybe a thousand dreams but who kept count after a while. Billie of fifty (at least but still with no exact count) screw-ups made me laugh and made my day on many days when things were tough, like they almost always were, at my beat down broke down family house (ah, apartment). But this is not about me, my family, or that beat down family apartment so I won’t belabor the issue. This is about Billie, and the mad jail break-out craziness that Elvis created just by, well in the end, just by being Elvis.

You know though fifty some odd years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over him and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and throw their underwear at him and left no room, no room at all, for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired or tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys, us, who didn’t know how to dance, or sneer. We both got pissed off at my brother, my older brother by a year, James Michael, because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, no sneer, and no time for girls, they were all following him. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world.

And we loved Elvis for giving us, at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the parent-controlled radio and television but did not ‘”speak” to us. And for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy, Tin Pan Alley or somewhere like that, inspired “happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was from hunger. That, as we also from hunger, was like a siren call to break-out from cheap street and then we caught his act on television and that was that. I probably walk “funny,” knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my misbegotten body to impress the girls. No regrets though.

But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you already know Billie, or you should, from another story, a story about how he wanted to “channel” Bo Diddley. See he was crazy for that Afro-Carib Bo beat too (much more so than I then) and wanted to, as a change of pace break from the Elvis rut that he claimed every other young boy was into in order to attract girls, create his own “style.” That was Billie, Billie to a tee, a Billie dream and of course a Billie screw-up.

Billie (and not just Billie but me and a lot of guys then) our ears screwed to the radio didn’t know that Bo was black. Hell, we thought, if we thought about it at all, everybody was white on the radio it all sounded like everybody was bouncing to the non-parent approved same beat. (It was only when we madly dashed home after school to watch American Bandstand that we started to become race conscious.) Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white "the projects" filled to the brim with mainly unspoken racial animosity (and not directly observable since there were not blacks there, and maybe not in the whole town) learned the hard way. Poor unknowing Billie one church dance night when he started singing the crazy beat song Who Do You Love? For a crowd of girls got blasted away by one of the older, more knowing boys about wanting to emulate a n----r for his troubles.

That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate” part mentioned above comes in again. Billie believed, and he may still believe it today wherever he is, that if only he could approximate Elvis’s looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him.

Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve year old project boys (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi. And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the later, poor as church mice. No that‘s not right because church mice (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weary old world) would not do, would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the reader’s judgment.

See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble (a tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or “copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last expression in more detail then you had better just move on).

But also see Billie’s idea was that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it would make his story that has set to tell easier. And that story was none other than he wrote to Elvis (possible) and spoke man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from nowhere Mississippi like we were from the nowhere projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him these rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible.) Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.

But first you needed the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you wanted to be a ring stealer that you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings are. Now the reader, and rightly so, now, might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was he not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie got off on his rant you just waited to see what played out. The real reason though was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it, or could call it, aiding and abetting.

But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of the working class town we were appendaged to (literally so because the projects were located on a one road in and out peninsula). We walked a couple of miles to get there, plotting all the way. Bingo the Acme Jewelry Store (or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie’s was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I was just the “stooge”, if that. I was to wait outside to see if John Law comes by. Okay, Billie, good luck. And strangely enough his luck was good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days. That day his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the down town area.

When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what was at hand were five women’s rings. Now, how are you going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve year old girls, even if they were as naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis is you bosom buddy and you are practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn was right.

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night-Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing the classic Endless Sleep.

This blog is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working under sweating suns or noisy dust-filled factory floors, hard drinking Saturday into Sunday morning just before church blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off, the generation of ’68 from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly this retro look has been by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
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JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)

The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.

[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
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I want the iPhone number and e-mail address of the person who wrote this one. Whoever that person is (or they are, as the case may be) should be made to run the gauntlet, or put on a lonely desert isle, or, and this would be real justice in this case, made to follow Socrates, who also corrupted the morals of the youth of his time. Why all the hubbub? Well, read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics above on Endless Sleep.

Old Linc Davis (let’s call him that, although as in most cases with these 1950s teen lyrics, frustratingly, the parties are not named except things like teen angel, earth angel, johnnie angel, handy man, etc.) and his honey, Laura Pratt (again name made up to give some personality to this sketch, although it could have been Joanne, Dee-Dee, Claudette, Baby Blue, Donna, or a thousand other now quaint names) had a spat, a big one from Laura’s reaction, and then she flipped out and, as teenagers often will in a moment of overreaction to some slight, and had gone down to the seaside to end it all. Linc in desperation, once he heard what she had done, frantically tried to find her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the “sea” was calling out for him to join her. (Linc, by the way, heard about Laura’s stunt from some unnamed third party according to reliable sources, some corner boy guy who it turned out later tried to take one Laura Pratt away from one Linc Davis by showing up at her door one night in his ’56 cherry Chevy revved up and she went for a ride with him. That is a story for another time though.)

And that last part, the sea-calling part that practically begs for a joint teen suicide pact is where every right thinking person, and not just enraged parents either, should, or should have put his or her foot down and gone after the lyricist’s scalp, to speak nothing of the singer of such woe begotten lines. Yah, I know old Linc saved his honey from the endless sleep but still we cannot have this stuff filling the ears of impressionable teen-agers even now. Right?

Of course, from what I heard third-hand, this quarrel that old Linc spoke of, and that Laura went ballistic over, was about whether they were going to go bowling with Linc’s guy friends (including that unnamed third party “thief” I mentioned earlier) and their girls down the old Bowl-a-drome on Saturday night or to the drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie.

Linc, usually a mild-mannered kid, reared up at that thought of going to another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king, riding around in a big old car, having plenty of dough in his pocket and plenty of luscious young girls ready and waiting to help him spent that dough. Of such disputes however the battle of the sexes abound, and occasionally other battles, war battles as well. However, after hearing that take on the dispute I think old Linc had much the best of it. After all after Jailhouse Rock once you have seen one totally forgettable Elvis film you have seen them all. Around our town, Elvis movies at the drive-in theater on Saturday night were strictly background for “making out” (you can figure out what that is on your own). Also off of that same take on the dispute I am not altogether sure I would have been all that frantic to go down to the seaside looking for dear, sweet Laura. Just kidding.

But that brings something up, something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little. But I also know about the power of the sea, about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anyone or anything that gets in his way. From old double-high storm-tossed seawalls that crumble at the charging sea’s touch to rain-soaked, mast-toppled boats lost down under in the briny deep whose only sin was to stir up the waves. And Laura should have known that too if she lived in beach town, or nearby. So I am really ticked off, yes, ticked off, that Laura should have tempted the fates, and Linc’s fate, by pulling a bone-head water's edge stunt like that.

It reminds me, although in sharp contrast to silly Laura’s conduct, of the time that old flame, old hitchhike road searching for the blue-pink great American West night flame Angelica, old Indiana-bred, Mid-American naïve Angelica, who got so excited the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean, never having seen an ocean before, leaped right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had to pull her out. That Angelica error however was out of sheer ignorance. Laura had no excuse. When you look at it that way, and as much as I personally do no care a fig about bowling, would it really have been that bad to go bowl a couple of strings. Such are the ways of teen angst.

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Davis Square, Somerville –The Stand-Out Is Every Wednesday From 4:00-5:00 PM

Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Petition website page.

Markin comment:

The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a mid- 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 stand-out in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the stand-out’s duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons but we have since July 4, 2012 changed the time and day to 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This stand-out 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 stand-out in some location in your town whether it is in the Boston area, Berkeley or Berlin. And please sign the petition for his release either in person or through the Bradley Manning Support Network. I have placed links to the Manning Network and Manning Square website below.
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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 Private Manning’s cause at stand-outs, marches and rallies.

We of the international anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable or, as of now, the Afghanistan one, but we can save the one hero of that war, American soldier Private Bradley Manning. The Manning legal case, and Private Manning as an exceptionally brave individual, can and should serve to rally all those looking for a concrete way to express their anti-war outrage at the continuing atrocious American imperial war policies. The message below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorable whistleblower.
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Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and in defense of, Private 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. Those precious bits of information leaked to Wikileaks about American soldiers committing war atrocities in Iraq as chronicled in the tape known on YouTube as Collateral Murder and the Iraq and Afghan War Diaries. 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 flim-flam house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting flim-flam 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 has been held in solidarity at Quantico, other locales, and now at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for over two years, and has been held without trial for 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.

Many of us have become somewhat inured to the constant cases of jackboot torturous behavior on the part of the American military in places like Guantanamo, Bagram and other national security hellhole black box locations against foreign nationals. We have also become inured, or at least no longer surprised, when American civilian citizens are subject to such actions, and more likely death. However, as recent allegations of pre-trial torturous conduct condoned by high military authority (see the allegations and motion to dismiss charged on the Bradley Manning Support Network website) by Private Manning’s civilian defense lawyer David Coombs make clear, those acts are not confined to foreign nationals and American civilian citizens. The torture of Private Manning, an American soldier, by the American government should give us all pause. And should have us shouting to the heavens for his release.

These are more than sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day this brave soldier is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.

I urge everyone to sign the petition calling on the American military to free Private Bradley Manning either here or on the Bradley Manning Support Network website. And if we cannot get Private Manning freed that way I urge everyone to begin a campaign in your area to call on President Barack Obama, or whoever is president while Private Manning is incarcerated, to pardon this brave soldier. The American president has the constitutional authority to grant pardons to the guilty and innocent, the convicted and those facing charges. I call on President Obama to pardon Private Manning now.

Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Free Private Manning Now! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Saturday, September 01, 2012

A MODEST LABOR PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS IN THE 2012 ELECTIONS.

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days- Karl Marx-The Poverty of Philosophy-Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy -Strikes and Combinations of Workers

Friday, August 31, 2012

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning-Call for action at Obama 2012 offices nationwide Sept. 6th during DNC

Thursday, August 30, 2012

***From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”-A Film Review

***From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M For Murder”-A Film Review

Downtown Boston Rally in support of PFC. Bradley Manning-September 6,, 2012 -3:00 PM-Press Release

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS. –SEPTMEBER 6, 2012-2:00 PM

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Works of Auguste Blanqui 1866-Proclamation of February 20, 1866

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF ALLEGED WIKILEAKS WHISTLEBLOWER PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AT THE DOWNTOWN BOSTON OBAMA HDQTRS.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Mark Nieweem Of The NATO Five Brutalized by Cook County Guards - Call Sheriff Tom Dart -Free The NATO Five- Free All Occupy Protesters!

August 31st: National Day of Action for the Cleveland 4! -Free All Occupy Protesters!

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- A Breathe Of Fresh Air Hits The Radio Airwaves – When Elvis Was Young And Hungry And Billie Was A Madman

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night-Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep”

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Davis Square, Somerville –The Stand-Out Is Every Wednesday From 4:00-5:00 PM

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