***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘60s Song Night- The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine”

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

Enter Johnny O’Connor sitting sulking at a booth side at his corner boy hangout, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor:

That Frankie, Frankie Riley, really gets to me sometimes. Here he has the best girl around, Joanne Doyle, smart, cute, maybe more than cute but I don’t dare say it here just in case he has the joint cased (or maybe she will see it and be embarrassed since she turned me away for Frankie boy, turned me away without thinking twice about it, but that is the way frails are, the ones worth pursuing anyway), and he is catting around, catting around like crazy trying to make every twist (girl, young woman in our North Adamsville corner boy lingo) not tied to a big bruiser of a guy. Even then, if she is a boffo, he will take a run at her and hope his track shoes (and not those clunky but stylish Chuck Taylor’s that we have him caught before he hits the door) are fast enough, or faster than her boyfriend’s anyway.

And here I am all by myself, girl-less, Johnny O’Connor, Jumping Johnny O’Connor they call me but I don’t like it, don’t like it at all. See, back in sixth grade, back before Markin, Peter Paul Markin, came on the scene and took my place, my rightful place, as Frankie’s right-hand man we were at a “petting”party, a girl’s birthday party really, but you know how kids' stuff gets going, boy and girl kids' stuff, and this stick tried to kiss me hard, some sweet perfumed, freshly soaped stick (I can still smell her smell now, Ivory soap or Palmolive, something like that), when the lights went out and I jumped up and ran out of that birthday girl’s house. Now, and probably for eternity, I am Jumping Johnny O’Connor. But I still don’t like it. And funny that stick girl, I’ll just call her by her first name, Jenny, lately has turned out to be, well she turned out to be cute, maybe more than cute but I don’t dare say it just in case she has her spies around.

Now don’t get me wrong, Peter Paul’s a good guy, a funny guy really, and he has about twelve million facts that he seems to keep tied up in a bag and has ready for any occasion, any Frankie-needs-facts-occasion. So I can see where Frankie could use him as maybe second right hand guy, and I could be first. See, where Peter Paul has those facts I’ve got the beef, the well-muscled beef, that Frankie really needs if, and when, those track shoes aren’t fast enough when that boffo girl’s big bruiser boyfriend gets the word.

Some people call me a stup and a simp for hanging around with a weirdo like Frankie but that’s not right. I just don’t like to read a lot of books, and stuff like that. I like my sports, and getting some serious attention, some serious girl attention, except no dice from Joanne and ever since that party nothing but ice from that Jenny, for being good at them. But see, Frankie, and now Peter Paul, are into that new be-bop beat thing, and I have noticed that Joanne is playing right into it, even liking it when Peter Paul starts going on and on about this and that in the universe, poetry, politics, history, and not sports. But I am a sensitive guy about stuff like that jumping name, and no way would I do Peter Paul’s soap box tirade stuff or Frankie’s catting if ever I could find a true love girl.

Enter Jenny:

Oh there's John O’Connor across the street sitting in the window seat at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor alone. And there, as usual, walking over to him is Frankie Riley, the most esteemed high exalted leader of that pack of foolish beatniks who hang there after school and at night whenever he can escape the leash, the Joanne Doyle leash, and, of course, Peter Paul Markin, his slavish dribbling (oops) scribbling scribe who fancies himself a man of letters, whatever that is. Gee, I wish John would get away from that crowd. He doesn’t fit in. I know him and Frankie go way back, first grade at North Adamsville Elementary I think, but since Peter Paul and his eleven thousand useless facts made the scene a couple years ago John has been second fiddle. It’s a shame because John is so sexy and such a good athlete, football, basketball, baseball that he doesn’t need those flannel-shirt wearing, black chino-wearing, work-boot–wearing, sunglass-wearing, ah, men of some letters for any reason that I can think of.

Maybe you know the story about John and me in sixth grade already but let me just tell you my side. I’ve heard a lot of different stories about how he got the name, wrong stories, so let me set you straight. They call John Jumping John O’Connor because of me. See, I have had a crush on him since, well, since, so when Chrissie McNamara had her twelfth birthday and told me John was coming I was crazy to go too. I took a long bath, dressed up in my best dress, and wore some of my mother’s perfume (don’t tell her, alright). Okay, okay I wasn’t a beauty like Chrissie but I sure was prettier than that Joanne Doyle. And I didn’t have a shape, then. I was a stick like the boys called us among themselves (so they thought, like such terms could be kept secret, secret with sisters around) back them, shapes and sticks.

The party was going pretty good and John, for some reason, asked me to dance, we danced and that was that, for him anyway. But as will happen at twelfth birthday parties, and on other occasions as well, the party was really a cover for “petting.” You know what petting is right, and if you don’t look it up. I was thrilled, heart-beating thrilled, pulse-pulsating thrilled that John danced with me, and misread the meaning of it big time. So when the lights went out I drew a bee-line to John and gave him a big kiss right on the mouth as hard as I could. He pushed me away like I was one of his football opponents, jumped off the sofa he was on, and ran out the door. That’s the real story. Except for me, for my midnight alone sorrows. Since then he hasn’t spoken to me, or acknowledged my existence. Funny though, I have seen him in class lately looking over in my direction for a few seconds and then turning his head back when I have spotted him, at least I hope he is looking my way.

I admit it. I am miserable ever since that party a few years back. Sure I have gone out with other boys to parties, the movies, and for pizza. I even went out with Peter Paul once but he was so full of air, and of himself, that I put the geek (no go) sign on him. And, yes, Frankie, pure as the driven snow Frankie, just so you know, has made more passes at me than you can shake a stick at. And Joanne, Plain Jane Joanne Doyle, is clueless. But John is the only one who has my eyes since, well, since. Maybe one day, one day when I am just miserable enough, just miserable enough to say enough, I will walk into Salducci’s and just sit on his lap and dare, not double dare, John O’Connor to jump up. It’ll be harder to get me off of him than the whole opposing team on the football field on Saturday afternoon.

Reenter John:

Hey, there's Jenny at the bus stop. I wonder where she is going all by herself. I noticed that she noticed that I was looking at her, looking at her kind of long and easy, a couple of times in study class. I wonder if she is still sore at me for pushing her aside when she kissed me hard like that and I jumped out the door at Chrissie’s birthday party that time. I didn’t mean to do to it but I had never been kissed by a girl like that before. I wonder too if she knew when I asked her to dance then that I had had a crush on her since, well, since. Maybe someday, maybe someday when all the guys, all the guys with their be-bop wisdom wise-guy stuff, are not around, I’ll go over and apologize to her.

THE CHIFFONS

"He's So Fine"

(Do-lang, do-lang, do-lang)

(Do-lang, do-lang)

He's so fine

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

Wish he were mine

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

That handsome boy over there

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

The one with the wavy hair

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

I don't know how I'm gonna do it

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

But I'm gonna make him mine

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

He's the envy of all the girls

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

It's just a matter of time

(Do-lang-do-lang)

He's a soft [Spoken] guy

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

Also seems kinda shy

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

Makes me wonder if I

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

Should even give him a try

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

But then I know he can't shy

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

He can't shy away forever

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

And I'm gonna make him mine

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

If it takes me forever

(Do-lang-do-lang)

He's so fine

(Oh yeah)

Gotta be mine

(Oh yeah)

Sooner or later

(Oh yeah)

I hope it's not later

(Oh yeah)

We gotta get together

(Oh yeah)

The sooner the better

(Oh yeah)

I just can't wait, I just can't wait

To be held in his arms

If I were a queen

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

And he asked me to leave my throne

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

I'll do anything that he asked

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

Anything to make him my own

(Do-lang-do-lang-do-lang)

For he's so fine

(So fine) so fine

(So fine) he's so fine

(So fine) he's so fine

[Fades]

(So fine) oh yeah

(He's so fine) he's so fine

(So fine) uh-huh

(He's so fine)

He's so fine.....

Out Of The 1940s Film Noir Night-With Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake’s This Gun For Hire In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Raven was a piece of work a piece of work alright tough and mean, damn mean, if he had to be and gentle as a lamb when he wanted to be. Yah, it was a tough break, a big bad tough break that his father had died in the Great War (World War I, the war to end all wars if anybody was asking, although he usually forgot to mention that his father’s death was by hanging by his own side since he had deserted his unit under fire) and his mother had died when he was young so he was nothing but an orphan. It was tough too that the aunt who took him in was nothing but a bitch, a devilish bitch that beat him mercilessly for the slightest infraction. Like once grabbing an off-hand piece of candy without permission from the candy dish on her dining room table. Of course she got hers, got hers good. So while it was easy to see where the Raven (he refused all the way, under all conditions, to give any other name and nobody, nobody who wanted to stay alive, bothered with the formalities of name once he settled that issue in his mind) was kind of destined to fall off the tracks, to turn himself, his lonely self into nothing but a stone- cold killer, a professional hit man, a hired gun if you don’t want to put it so delicately. He wasn’t saying, in those very few reflective moments that he endured, that the dice were fixed but close enough and so he was what he was, and good at it too, very good for a while.

Very good until he hitched up with Willie James, a high-roller (self-advertised as such anyway) always looking for the main chance, and the main chance just then was selling high- grade chemical formulas to the highest bidder regardless of nationality. And that predilection might have meant nothing to anybody except for a funny little event, Pearl Harbor, where the slant-eyes, the Nips, the crazy yellow men bombed the hell out of the United States and thought nothing of it. See though Willie James thought nothing of it either and they, the Japanese, were willing to pay a very high price for a nice little formula, a poison gas formula if you want to know, to get it and use it during the current war, World War II for those who forgot.

Not everybody was happy to know that selling to the highest bidder was what Willie was about and one of his associates was willing to sell him out to the feds no question. Willie however had other ideas, Raven ideas, and so he was gainfully employed by Willie to waste that errant associate and he did, did it very professionally if somewhat messily. Actually for a moment it was a classic job of the profession- the target fell easily but he happened to have his honey secretary with him although that was not part of the deal. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Bang. Sorry honey. Sweet. Willie however playing for high stakes and wary of an off-hand witness to his nefarious deeds paid the Raven off in counterfeit money to set him for the frame, the big frame. Touché. Needless to say when Raven scoped to that hard fact, hard jail fact, he was ready to move heaven and earth to avenge his hurt, his long ago embedded hurt.

Of course a woman goes with it, a dame out of some old-time Hollywood film, a dame who looked like some angel if angels had their hair pushed just a little over that right eye that year, could sing, do magic tricks, and be, well fetching. The Raven took to her right away, right from the first moment he eyed her at the Neptune Club, Willie’s hangout. So he took a little time out from Willie to dig into her, to find out whether her tastes ran to hard guys, hard guys with chips on their shoulders, but just then looking for some pillow talk. He never had trouble with women, girls, all the way back to elementary school and he expected none now. And he didn’t get any resistance when he sent a drink over to her table at intermission.

After a few words, some banter really, a couple of sly double- ententes and some dreamy pillow talk by her once she sized him up as a hard guy but maybe good for a fling they agreed to meet after the show. They did so and went to her place. The next morning he shook off the night’s sweats and slumbers and headed out before she awoke. Headed over to Willie’s place out on Sunset Boulevard and placed two beauties, two 38s right between poor Willie Boy’s eyes. He knew he would now have to be on the lam for a while so he called that last night beautiful and told her to meet him in Frisco town, yes, Frisco town. He hung up and had just the slightest smile on his face, a smile for such a good day’s work. Yes, he was a pro, a pro no question…

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update –March 16, 2013

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 Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM
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Beginning in September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hoc and sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us there in calling for Private Manning’s freedom. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!
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Those who have followed the heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Private Bradley Manning’s case over the past year or so, since about April 2012 when the pre-trial hearings began in earnest, know that last November the defendant offered to plead guilty to a few lesser included charges in his indictment, basically taking legal and political responsibility for the leaks to WikiLeaks that had been the subject of some of the government’s allegations against him. Without getting into the arcane legal maneuvering on this issue the idea was to cut across the government’s pretty solid case against him being the leaker of information and to have the now scheduled for June trial be focused on the substantial question of whether his actions constituted “material aid to terrorism” which could subject Private Manning to life in prison. We noted then that we needed to stay with Bradley on this and make sure people know that what he admitted to was that he disclosed information about American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and other diplomatic high crime and misdemeanors and only that. We also noted that he was, and is, frankly, in trouble, big trouble, and needs our support more than ever. Especially in light of the following:

After enduring nearly three years of detention, at times under torturous conditions, on February 28, 2013 Bradley Manning confessed that he had provided WikiLeaksa trove of military and diplomatic documents that exposed U.S. imperialist schemes and wartime atrocities. Private Manning’s guilty plea on ten of 22 counts against him could land him in prison for 20 years. A day after Bradley confessed, military prosecutors announced plans to try him on the remaining counts, including “aiding the enemy” and violating the Espionage Act. Trial is expected to begin in early June. If convicted on these charges, Bradley Manning faces life in prison.

In lifting a bit of the veil of secrecy and lies with which the capitalist rulers cover their depredations, Bradley Manning performed a great service to workers and oppressed around the world. All who oppose the imperialist barbarity and machinations revealed in the material he provided must join in demanding his immediate freedom. Also crucially important is the defense of Julian Assange against the vendetta by the U.S., Britain and their cohorts, who are attempting to railroad him to prison by one means or another for his role in running WikiLeaks.

In a 35-page statement he read to the military court after entering his plea (written summary available at the Bradley Manning Support Network and an audio transcript as well), Manning told of his journey from nearly being rejected in basic training to becoming an army intelligence analyst. In that capacity he came across mountains of evidence of U.S. duplicity and war crimes. The materials he provided to WikiLeaks included military logs documenting 120,000 civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan and a formal military policy of covering up torture, rape and murder. A quarter-million diplomatic cables address all manner of lethal operations within U.S. client states, from the “drug war” in Mexico to drone strikes in Yemen. He also released files containing assessments of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These documents show that the government continued to hold many who, Manning stated, were believed or known to be innocent, as well as“low level foot soldiers that did not have useful intelligence.”

The Pentagon and the Obama Administration declared war against WikiLeaksfollowing the release of a video, now entitled Collateral Murder and widely available, conveyed by Manning, of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter airstrike in Iraq that killed at least 12 people, including two Reuters journalists. American forces are then shown firing on a van that pulled up to help the victims. Manning said he was most alarmed by the“bloodlust they appeared to have.” He described how instead of calling for medical attention for a seriously wounded individual trying to crawl to safety, an aerial crew team member “asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage.”

By January 2010, Manning said, he“began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year” and decided to make public many of the documents he had backed up as part of his work as an analyst. Manning first offered the materials to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Not getting anywhere with these pillars of the bourgeois press establishment, in February 2010 he made his first submission to WikiLeaks. He attached a note advising that “this is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare. Have a good day.”

The charge of “aiding the enemy”—i.e., Al Qaeda—is especially ominous. This used to mean things like military sabotage and handing over information on troop movements to a battlefield enemy. In Manning’s case, the prosecution claims that the very act of publicizing U.S. military and diplomatic activities, some of which took place years before, amounted to “indirect” communication with Al Qaeda. Manning told the court that he believed that public access to the information “could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.” He hoped that this “might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the affected environment everyday.” But by the lights of the imperialists’ war on terror, any exposure of their depredations can be construed as support to the“terrorist” enemy, whoever that might be.

The Pentagon intends to call no fewer than 141 witnesses in its show trial, including four people to testify anonymously. One of them, designated as “John Doe,” is believed to be a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. “Doe” is alleged to have grabbed three disks from bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound on which was stored four files’ worth of the WikiLeaksmaterial provided by Manning.

Nor do charges under the Espionage Act have to have anything to do with actual spying. The law was one of an array of measures adopted to criminalize antiwar activity after U.S. imperialism’s entry into the First World War. It mandated imprisonment for any act deemed to interfere with the recruitment of troops. Among its first and most prominent victims was Socialist Party spokesman Eugene V. Debs, who was jailed for a June 1918 speech at a workers’ rally in Canton, Ohio, where he denounced the war as capitalist slaughter and paid tribute to the leaders of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Dozens of Industrial Workers of the World organizers were also thrown into prison.

In the early 1970s, the Nixon government tried, unsuccessfully, to use this law to go after Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times shed light on the history of U.S. imperialism’s losing war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants. Obama has happily picked up Nixon’s mantle. Manning’s prosecution will be the sixth time the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act against the source of an unauthorized leak of classified information—more than the combined total under all prior administrations since the law’s enactment in 1917.
*******
The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial now scheduled for June 2013. The news on his case over the past several months has centered on the many pre-trial motion hearings including recent defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial. Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at over 1000 days and will be over well over 1000 days by the time of trial. That dismissal motion has now been ruled on by Military Judge Lind. On February 26, 2013 she denied the defense’s motion for dismissal, the last serious chance for Bradley Manning to go free before the scheduled June trial. She ruled furthermore that the various delays by the government were inherent in the nature of this case and that the military authorities, except in one short instance, had been diligent in their efforts to move the proceedings along. For those of us with military experience this is a classic, if perverse, case of that old army slogan-“Hurry up, and wait.” This is definitely tough news for Private Manning although perhaps a good appeal point in some future civilian court review.

The defense had contended that the charges should be dismissed because the military by its own statutes (to speak nothing of that funny old constitutional right to a speedy trial guarantee that our plebeian forbears fought tooth and nail for against the bloody British and later made damn sure was included in the Amendments when the founding fathers“forgot” to include it in the main document) should have arraigned Private Manning within 120 days after his arrest. They hemmed and hawed for almost 600 days before deciding on the charges and a court martial. Nobody in the convening authority, as required by those same statutes, pushed the prosecution forward in a timely manner. In fact the court-martial convening authority, in the person of one Colonel Coffman, seemed to have seen his role as mere “yes man” to each of the government’s eight requests for delays without explanation (and without informing the defense in order to take their objection). Apparently the Colonel saw his role as a mere clearing agent for whatever excuse the government gave, mainly endless addition time for clearing various classified documents a process that need not have held up the proceedings. The defense made timely objection to each governmental request to no avail.

Testimony from military authorities at pre-trial hearings in November 2012 about the reasons for the lack of action ranged from the lame to the absurd (mainly negative responses to knowledge about why some additional delays were necessary. One “reason” sticks out as a reason for excusable delay -some officer needed to get his son to a swimming meet and was thus “unavailable” for a couple of days. I didn’t make this up. I don’t have that sense of the absurd. Jesus, a man was rotting in Obama’s jails and they let him rot because of some damn swim meet). The prosecution, obviously, argued that the government has moved might and main to move the case along and had merely waited until all leaked materials had been determined before proceeding. The judge saw it the government’s way and ruled according as noted above.
*******
The defense has also recently pursued a motion for a dismissal of the major charges (espionage/ indirect material aid to terrorists) on the basis of the minimal effect of any leaks on national security issues as against Private Manning’s claim that such knowledge was important to the public square (freedom of information issues important for us as well in order to know about what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs). Last summer witnesses from an alphabet soup list of government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc., etc.) testified that while the information leaked shouldn’t have been leaked that the effect on national security was de minimus. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Leon Panetta, also made a public statement to that effect. The prosecution argued, successfully at the time, that the mere fact of the leak of classified information caused irreparable harm to national security issues and Private Manning’s intent, even if noble, was not at issue.

The recent thrust of the motion to dismiss has centered on the defense’s contention that Private Manning consciously and carefully screened any material in his possession to avoid any conflict with national security and that most of the released material had been over-classified (received higher security level than necessary). Much of the materials leaked, as per those parts published widely in the aftermath of the disclosures by the New York Times and other major outlets, concerned reports of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic interchanges that reflected poorly on that profession. The Obama government has argued again that the mere fact of leaking was all that mattered. That motion has also not been fully ruled on and is now the subject of prosecution counter- motions and has been a cause for further trial delay.
********
A defense motion for dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command (a three-star Army general, not the normal concern of someone so far up the chain in the matter of discipline for enlisted personal) while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011 has now been ruled on. In late November and early December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses over several days. Most important to the defense was the testimony by qualified military mental health professionals citing the constant willful failure of those who held Private Manning in close confinement to listen to, or act, on their recommendations during those periods

Judge Lind, the military judge who has heard all the pre-trial arguments in the case thus far, has essentially ruled unfavorably on that motion to dismiss given the potential life sentence Private Manning faces. As she announced at an early January pre-trial hearing the military acted illegally in some of its actions. While every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trial confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slap on the wrist to the military authorities. No dismissal or, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of illegal close confinement which would take years off any potential sentence) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior as the defense tirelessly argued for. And the result is a heavy-handed deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, who already are under enormous pressures to remain silent as a matter of course while in uniform, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.
*******
There has been increased media attention by mainstream outlets around the case (including the previously knowingly oblivious New York Times), as well as an important statement in November 2012 by three Nobel Peace Laureates (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails. (Available on the Support Bradley Manning Network website.)
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On February 23, 2013, the 1000th day of Private Bradley Manning’s pre-trial confinement, an international day of solidarity was observed with over seventy stand-outs and other demonstration held in America and internationally. Bradley Manning and his courageous stand have not been forgotten. Go to the Bradley Manning Support Network for more details about the events of that day. Another international day of solidarity is scheduled for June 1, 2013 at Fort Meade, Maryland and elsewhere just before the scheduled start of his trial on June 3rd. Check the support network for updates on that event as well.
********
5 Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-blower Private Bradley Manning

*Urgent: The government has announced, in the wake of Bradley Manning’s admission of his part in the Wikileaks expose in open court on February 28th, its intention to continue to prosecute him for the major charges of “aiding the enemy” (Espionage Act) and “material aid to terrorism.” Everyone should contact the presiding officer of the court –martial process, General Linnington, at 1-202-685-2807 and tell him to drop those charges. Once Maj. Gen. Linnington’s voicemail box is full – you can also leave a message at the DOD: (703) 571-3343 – press “5″ to leave a comment.*If this mailbox is also full, leave the Department of Defense a written message. Do it today.

*Come to stand-out in support of Private Bradley Manning in Central Square, Cambridge, Ma (corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street near MBTA Redline station) every Wednesday between 5-6 PM. For other locations in Greater Boston, nationally, and internationally check the Bradley Manning Support Network -http://www.bradleymanning.org/ and for details of the current status of the case and future event updates.

*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- as the trial date approaches funds are urgently needed! The government has unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Bradley. And the Obama government is fully using them. We have a fine defense civilian lawyer, David Coombs, many supporters throughout America and the world working hard for Bradley’s freedom, and the truth on our side. Still the hard reality of the American legal system, civilian or military, is that an adequate defense cost serious money. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network (for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )to the Secretary of the Army to free Bradley Manning-1000 plus days is enough! The Secretary of the Army stands in the direct chain of command up to the President and can release Private Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him at his discretion. For basically any reason that he wishes to-let us say 1000 plus days is enough. Join the over 25,000 supporters in the United States and throughout the world clamoring for Bradley’s well-deserved freedom.

*Call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) the White House to demand President Obama pardon Bradley Manning- The presidential power to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution:

“The President…shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in case of impeachment.”

In federal cases, and military cases are federal cases, the President of the United States can, under authority granted by the U.S. Constitution as stated above, pardon the guilty and the innocent, the convicted and those awaiting trial- former President Nixon and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for example among others, received such pardons for their heinous crimes- Now that Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to some lesser charges and is subject to further prison time (up to 20 years) this pardon campaign is more necessary than ever. Free Bradley Manning! Free the whistleblower!

AsThe 10^th Anniversary Of The Iraq War Approaches-U.S./Allied Troops Out Of Afghanistan Now!

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

[No this writer is not lost in a time warp, nor is he suffering from a senior moment in noting the 10^th Anniversary of the ill-fated, ill-advised, ill, well, let’s just keep it as the previous two, start of the now seemingly completed fiasco in Iraq. However although American troops have mainly been withdrawn many thousand American bought and paid for “contract” soldiers are still operating in that theater. Moreover the wreckage from the huge American footprint (bootprint, really) is still wreaking havoc on that benighted land from lack of electrical power to unexploded bombs to speak nothing of the current constant political turmoil between the myriad factions struggling for power. Then there is the question of those tens of thousands of soldiers switched over within a heartbeat from benighted Iraq to benighted Afghanistan. The call for immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan if not drawing much support in these back- burner concern days is still a necessary call. Finally, if there is a modern example of the follies of war, of a needless imperial adventure, of flat-out American imperial hubris to do something explosive (in more ways than one) then the ill-famed Iraq invasion started on March 19, 2003 should be etched in every leftist militant, hell, every thoughtful citizen’s brain.]

Tim Reid was sure where he stood, stood on the impending war in Iraq, on that cold February 2003 New York City Saturday morning as he noted many, many people walking in the opposite direction headed toward Union Square or somewhere around there carrying signs and banners calling for No War In Iraq, Stop The War, and other more politically direct ones aimed at President Bush. Tim knew for sure was that he was not going to be among those who were heading in that opposite direction that day ready to clog up the streets of Manhattan to make their point. Not that he wished them ill, not that war was not a terrible way to deal with issues, not that he was unconcerned that American sons and daughters were going to be put in harm’s way again in bloody Iraq but 9/11 had changed a lot of things since he had been out front against the first Iraq war back in 1991.

Yes the world had changed since then, had changed in ways not favorable to the interest of the United States, and so while he was against war like any reasonable man (or woman) he was backing President Bush on this one. At least until he saw what those weapons of mass destruction were that that bastard Saddam Hussein had brewing in those damn laboratories that he wouldn’t let inspectors see. Yes, in case anybody was asking, any of those peaceniks that were passing the other way, he had voted for George Bush in 2000 something he never thought he would do after his father dropped the ball in that first Iraq massacre. He had voted for Bill Clinton with both hands in 1992 against the old man. But like he said things had changed in the world since that dastardly deed on that sunny September morning. Stuff that no New Yorker alive should forgot, especially if like him, that citizen of this fair city had lost someone close to him or her. So it was personal too.

Maybe too, and he would not discount it if pressed, Tim had changed too, older now, with kids, with responsibilities to take every effort to make sure those kids were secure in a dangerous world. Any father would. The thing that had tipped it for him though was when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave the green light, declared that mad man Hussein was doing nasty stuff against our interests over there in the desert. Some of Bush’s people, frankly, seemed kind of weird when they talked about war but General Powell was a solid, no nonsense guy and that made the difference. So damn yes, until somebody proved otherwise, he was sticking with the President and his people who knew lots of stuff maybe he and those protesters did not know. He hoped so…

***In The Time Of The Time Of An Outlaw Country Music Moment- Steve Earle’s "Townes”

CD Review

Townes, Steve Earle, New West Records, 2009

I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music since traditional Nashville offerings or their offerings after about the time of the legendary Hank Williams and his generation received short shrift from me even in my country music minute, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre. It was the late 1970s, rock and roll, the music of my growing up in the 1950s childhood had run one of its course, and blues and folk the substance of my 1960s coming of age was, well, flat to my ear at that moment. So it was a time for investigating other non-non-non disco genres. Strangely now thinking back on it the music, the classical country music, the Hank Williams, Warren Smith, and crowd stuff greatly influenced that 1950s rock that I still have embedded in my brain and that I had heard, and rejected, in my father- side country background music that he listened to on the radio when the signals came through from the south.

After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and other more well- known country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of the man who Steve Earle is paying tribute on the accompanying YouTube entry above, Townes Van Zandt. And while, like I said, this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrabbled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes. And today listen to Townes through the medium of Steve Earle.

As the liner notes that accompany this CD indicate Steve Earle and Townes shared some common time together and Earle learned much of his trade at the side of Townes so it is rather appropriate that Steve has produced this tribute album to his fallen comrade. Townes led a nomad live, have some very peculiar ideas about life, and about how it was to be lived but he knew how to write songs. Songs of sorrows, songs of grief, songs of lost loves and lost opportunities. And even a few “happy” ones, although those do not stand the test of time as well as the more moody ones. And in his own way Steve Earle has captured those emotions, and in his own style. That style on some songs is seemingly very close in voice and sound to some of Bruce Springsteen’s later folk-oriented work.

The stick outs here are the hauntingly beautiful Colorado Girl; the lyrical No Place To Fall; the hard-edged Loretta; and my favorite Townes songs, the wistfully symbolic, magically word-mastered (Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria.

Lessons of the Paris Commune-Leon Trotsky

Out Of The 1960s Film Noir Night- WithBlast Of Silence In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Nah, nobody cried when Frankie, Frankie Fingers bought the big one, when he made that one mistake too many, when he cashed his check. Yah, maybe a couple of younger guys, young guys on the make and presumably on the way up, snickered like some hearse horses when the reports came in through the corner boy grapevine that they found Frankie boy face up like he was looking at the rain-filled clouds over in the marshlands on the Jersey side filled with more 38s holes than a colander. In case anybody wanted to know Frankie met his demise on that Jersey ditch because New Jack City was full-up, filled up to the brim with unsolved gangland slayings just then what with some Don angry at another or something like that, the heat, the downtown heat, the cop heat, was on, was on big time and hence old Frankie met his maker on the Jersey shores side of the fast flowing Hudson River.

It was kind of a shame though that Frankie took his final nap in Jersey since he was so identified with the bright lights of the big city. He grew up, if that is what you could call it, an orphan or close to it on those wicked Hell’s Kitchen streets and came of age there performing his first big time assault and battery with a deadly weapon which landed him in a state school for boys upstate, Utica, where they tried to rehabilitate him. And from there almost without missing a beat, as if to mock those rehabilitation efforts, he graduated, some strong arm jobs at first, then some off-hand low level punk wastings, and then he stepped up to the big ice jobs when Big Louie came calling and needed that work done. And done well since Frankie, unlike the average joe who took on this kind of work, had things worked out to avoid mistakes while he was on an assignment.

Funny someone recalled, someone from the old Kitchen days recalled, when they heard the news of Frankie Finger’s demise that he had once told this unnamed source that he actually liked killing, actually liked being a “hit man,” that the act gave him a rush, maybe not sexual like the shrinks up in Utica thought, but a rush, a feeling of being in control, of being god. He figured that as long as certain guys needed certain other guys wasted that he fit the bill, fit it to a tee. That he would have a long and prosperous career at it.

See too he had, when he was a kid, gone over to the Paramount over on Seventh Avenue to see this guy Raven in a film called This Gun For Hire. This Raven was a stone cold -killer hit man who wasted his target, some guy trying to put the squeeze for dough on some song and dance man, AND the target’s honey just because she was there when she wasn’t supposed to be. Beautiful. The lesson Frankie took from that film was that you have to figure all the angles, keep one step ahead, at least, of everybody, including the guy who hired you. Watch out for double-crosses night and day, day and night. Raven paid with the big blackout for not paying attention to that elementary principle. That and letting some skirt, some skirt with big blonde hair, big eyes and a sultry voice let him get off track, let him take his guard down. This Raven moreover was burned up about something, had some personal stake in doing his work. No way, no way said Frankie after that view. No way two ways. Nothing personal, just follow the plan. And no dames, no dames except maybe a toss or two on the pillows and then out the door. It wasn’t that he didn’t like dames, he wasn’t that way, that other way, no way, but they didn’t figure except for a night or two in his plans. Strictly a loner, strictly a pro.

And for a long time Frankie ruled the roost, ruled the exclusive high-end hit men kingdom. Why? He didn’t make mistakes, didn’t leave traces, and didn’t leave anything but a dead body and no leads for the coppers (if they were looking for more than a day to try to solve some yawn gangland slaying). Then the Capo assignment came up, a juicy assignment and a path to easy street and everything came unglued. While nobody knew all the details (and maybe nobody cared either) the Capo cashed his check thanks to Frankie’s work. But either Frankie had his occasional bout of head problems and didn’t take his medication to control it or he had just been on top too long and the percentages had worked their way against him but there was a slip-up.

A standard Frankie Finger’s job entailed coming into town all fresh and ready to go. Spend plenty of time scoping a target’s routine, and more importantly, his steps out of his routine, that time was hit time. So lots of tailing, plenty of switched cars while trailing along getting the lay of the land, and plenty of figuring avenues of escape. When Frankie was ready for the kill, working himself up nicely to “want” to do the deed, he worked his network to get a non-traceable gun and that was that. The problem this time, at least that is what those rising corner boys speculated happened, Frankie had some trouble with his source and had to waste him. Not good, not good at all with the Mister Big who was paying the freight. Still Frankie, a pro’s pro until the end, pulled his weight and took out that Capo, a guy who really did need to be taken out. And Mister Big to show his gratitude for a job well done had Frankie Finger’s fall down under a hail of bullets in some forsaken Jersey ditch with no one crying over him…

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- On The Anniversary Of The Paris Commune

Click on the healdine to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Paris Commune.


March 18, 2013 marks the 142nd Anniversary of the establishment of the heroic Paris Commune. As militants honor the Communards we should also draw the lessons of the Commune for today’s struggles. Below is a commentary on some of those lessons. There are others.

When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one can learn something new even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. Nevertheless, one can still learn lessons from those experiences and measure the mistakes of the Communards against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we also have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions in the post-World War II period.

Notwithstanding the mistake made by the Communards and the contradictory nature of the later revolutions cited above, and as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses, militants today proudly honor the Paris Commune as a beacon of the socialist revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe and faint-hearted elements in the European labor movement. As he noted, the Commune truly was the first workers government. Thus, it is one of the revolutionary peaks or the international labor movement.

Many working class tendencies, Anarchist, Anarcho-Syndicalist, Left Social Democratic, Communist and Left Communist justifiably pay homage to the defenders of the Paris Commune and claim its traditions. Why does an organization of short duration and subject to savage reprisals still command our attention? The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite for action, their capacity to sacrifice themselves in the name of a future, more just, organization of society. Every working class tendency can honor those qualities, even those parliamentary-based organizations which are far removed from any active need to do more than pay homage to the memory of the fallen Communards.

Nevertheless, to truly honor the Communards it is necessary to understand that along with its positive qualities at the same time the Commune shows us the many times frustrating incapacity of the masses to act in their objective interests, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their almost always fatal desire to halt after the first successes. Obviously, only a revolutionary party sure of itself and of its program can provide that kind of leadership in order fight against these negative trends. At that stage in the development of the European working class where political class consciousness was limited to the vanguard, capitalism was still capable of progressive expansion and other urban classes were at least verbally espousing socialist solutions it may have been improbable that such a mass organization could have been formed. Nevertheless such an organization was objectively necessary to seize and, more importantly, to hold power.

The Commune thus, in embryo, presents the first post-1848 Revolution instance of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement. That is, the necessity of a revolutionary party to order to lead the working class to victory. Placing the problems facing the Commune in this context made me realize that this crisis of revolutionary leadership really has a much longer lineage that I had previously recognized. I had formerly placed its start at the collapse of the Socialist International at the beginning of World War I when most European socialist parties took a defensist position toward their own governments by voting for war credits. Unfortunately, this leadership question is still to be resolved.

It is a truism in politics, including revolutionary politics, that timing is important and many times decisive. As many commentators have noted, seizure of power by the Commune came too late. It had all the possibilities of taking the power on September 4, 1870 rather than March 18, 1871 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at the head of the workers of the whole country in their struggle. At the very least it would have allowed time for the workers of other cities and the peasantry in the smaller towns and villages to organize their forces for action in defense of Paris and to create their own communes. Unfortunately the Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders forged by previous struggles who could or would reach out to the rest of France.

Furthermore, a revolutionary workers' party, while entirely capable of using parliamentary methods is not, and should not, be a machine for parliamentary wrangling. In a revolution to rely solely on such activity amounts to parliamentary cretinism. One can think of the role of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in the Provisional Government and the Soviets after the February Revolution in Russia in 1917. In Paris the Central Committee of the National Guard, the embodiment of organizational power and in effect the prototype for a Workers’ Council or Soviet, had more than its share of such wrangling and confusionist politics. The most militant elements within it needed to form a revolutionary party to break this impasse.

In contrast, a revolutionary party is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the road forward, all its stages, and knows how to act in the situation, that the proletariat avoids making the same historical mistakes, overcomes its hesitations, and acts decisively to seize power. Unfortunately, history shows no other way to defeat the class enemy. Needless to say those same qualities are necessary to retain power against the inevitable counter-revolutionary onslaught. The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Like other revolutionary opportunities six months delay proved fatal. Capitalist society cruelly exacted its revenge. That is the great lesson of the Commune.

Contingent history is always problematic. Nevertheless in the interest of fully drawing the lessons of the Commune let me highlight some actions which were entirely possible at the time but were not carried out. Later revolutionaries, particularly the Bolsheviks, did incorporate these lessons into their strategies. Again this presupposes the existence of a revolutionary party capable of learning these lessons.
First, let us note that if the working class had political power on March 18, 1871 it was not because it had been deliberately seized, but because its enemies had left Paris. This is very different political and psychological position from a position of the earlier French revolutions of 1789 and 1848 and the later Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The proletariat took power by default due to the bankruptcy of the then current bourgeois leadership headed by Thiers and a lack of confidence of the masses in it. Thus, this turn of events required an offensive strategy as an elementary act of self-defense. This did not happen.

Was such a strategy possible? The government fled Paris in order to concentrate its forces elsewhere. Unfortunately, it was allowed to do so with impunity. Furthermore, as can be noted in other revolutions this first success of the revolutionary forces was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. At that moment the government apparatus could have been crushed almost without the spilling of blood. In Paris, all the ministers could have been taken prisoner. If necessary, and as later events showed it proved necessary, they could have been used as hostages against future reprisals. Nobody would have defended them. It was however not done.

The Commune also had the complete possibility of winning even the peasant regiments, for the latter had lost all confidence and all respect for the power and the command. Yet it undertook nothing towards this end. The fault here is not in the relationships of the peasant and the working classes, but in the revolutionary strategy. The Bolsheviks went out of their way to court the demoralized peasant regiments stationed in Petrograd and elsewhere. The key to win those elements then was the land question and an end to the war. While the animating issues might be posed differently the Commune had those same possibilities to win the declassed peasant elements.
Moreover, after the defeats at the hands of the Germans the thread which tied the officers and the demoralized soldiers was pretty thin. The fleeing soldiers were hostile to the officers and thus the army was not reliable. Had there been a revolutionary party in Paris, it would have incorporated into the retreating armies some agitators. The party would have instructed those agitators to increase the discontent of the soldiers against the officers in order to free the soldiers from their officers and bring them back to Paris to unite with the people. This could easily have been realized, according to the admissions of Thiers' supporters themselves.

Nobody in the Central Committee of the National Guard even thought of it.
The Central Committee of the National Guard drew its authority from democratic elections. At the moment when the Central Committee needed to develop to the maximum its initiative in the offensive, deprived of the leadership of a proletarian party, it lost its head, hastened to transmit its powers to the representatives of the Commune which required a broader democratic basis. And, as Marx noted, it was a great mistake in that period to play with elections. But once the elections had been held and the Commune brought together, it was necessary to concentrate everything in the Commune at a single blow and to have it create an organ possessing real power to reorganize the National Guard. This was not the case. By the side of the elected Commune there remained the Central Committee; the elected character of the latter gave it a political authority thanks to which it was able to compete with the Commune. But at the same time that deprived it of the energy and the firmness necessary in the purely military questions which, after the organization of the Commune, justified its existence.

Without question the Central Committee of the National Guard needed to be led. It was indispensable to have an organization incarnating the political experience of the proletariat from previous battles and always present-not only in the Central Committee, but in the working class districts of Paris. By means of a Council of Deputies or other such broad-based formation-here they naturally centered on the organs of the National Guard-the party could have been in continual contact with the masses, known their state of mind; its leading center, most probably a central committee, could each day put forward a slogan which, through the medium of the party's militants, would have penetrated into the masses, uniting their thought and their will. If an offensive was to have a chance of success it needed such guidance.

Moreover, the real revolutionary task consisted of assuring the proletariat the power all over the country. Paris as a capital city naturally had to serve as its base. To attain this goal, it was necessary to defeat Versailles without the loss of time and to send agitators, organizers, and armed forces throughout France. It was necessary to enter into contact with sympathizers, to strengthen the hesitators and to shatter the opposition of the adversary. Instead of this offensive policy which was the only thing that could save the situation, the leaders of Paris attempted to seclude themselves in an individual commune. Their fatal policy amounted to not attacking others if the others do not attack them. The Communards stubbed their toes on this outdated premise.

Naturally, nobody can reasonably argue that a revolutionary party can create the revolution at will. It does not choose the moment for seizing power as it likes, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates at every moment the state of mind of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the power of resistance of the enemy, and thus determines the most favorable moment for decisive action. This is the ABC’s of revolutionary strategy. This is the most difficult side of its task. The more deeply a revolutionary party penetrates into all aspects of the proletarian struggle, the more unified it is by the unity of goal and discipline, the speedier and better will it arrive at resolving its task. To state the necessity of such conditions answers the question regarding the ultimate bloody fate of the Commune.

The comparison of March 18, 1871 in Paris with November 7, 1917 in Petrograd is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris, there is an absolute lack of initiative for action on the part of the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed earlier by the bourgeois government, is in reality the sole power in Paris, has all the material means of power-cannon and rifles-at its disposal, but it is not aware of it. This is the classic ‘dual power’ situation. The bourgeoisie makes an attempt to retake the weapons. The attempt fails. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is clear. The "leaders" are, however, in the wake of events, they record them when the latter are already accomplished, and they do everything in their power to blunt the revolutionary edge.

In contrast, in the lead up to the Russian October Revolution after the attempted counter-revolution of General Kornilov on Petrograd in August a purely military organ, the Revolutionary War Committee was created standing at the head of the Petrograd garrison. Commissioned by the Soviet it is in reality a legal organ of armed insurrection. At the same time commissars were designated in all the military units, in the military schools, arsenals, etc. The clandestine military organization accomplished specific technical tasks and furnished the Revolutionary War Committee with fully trustworthy militants for important military tasks. The essential work concerning the preparation and the realization and the armed insurrection took place openly under the cover of defense. Again, the Communards had those same possibilities, perhaps more so, as the internal enemy was rather less significant than in Petrograd. Learn these lessons. LONG LIVE THE MEMORY OF THE PARIS COMMUNE!!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- On The Paris Commune Of 1871 FromThe Pen Of Leon Trotsky

Click on the headline to link to a Leon Trotsky Internet Archives online copy of his work on the Paris Commune

THe Paris Commune, Leon Trotsky


The substance of this review was originally used to comment on Leon Trotsky’s pamphlet on the Paris Commune in which he emphasized the lack of revolutionary leadership as one of the decisive factors in the defeat of the Commune. All revolutionary Marxists, following Marx’s lead, have studied the lessons of the Commune from various angles and have essentially drawn the same lessons as he did. Therefore the essential points are covered by Trotsky.

Additionally, here you get the Marx’s masterful contemporary analysis of the events and his adamant defense of the Communards before the international working class. I might add one note which Lenin and others incorporated into their strategies. One of the few, if only substantial revisions that Marx made in his seminal document the Communist Manifesto was to revamp his understanding of the state after the takeover by the working class. In 1848 he assumed that the working class would take over the capitalist state as is. Reflecting on the Paris Commune experience he dramatically changed that factor and held that the working class would have to smash the old state machinery and develop its own institutions. This is in line with previous revolutionary history, especially the experience of the French Revolution.

All militants pay homage to the memory of the Commune. For a historical narrative of the events surrounding the rise and fall of the Commune look elsewhere. However, if you want to draw the lessons of the Commune this book offers a superior strategic study. Not surprisingly Trotsky, the organizer of the Russian October Revolution in 1917 and creator of the Red Army, uses the strength and weaknesses of the Commune against the experiences of the October Revolution to educate the militants of his day. Today some of those lessons are still valid for the international labor movement in the seemingly one-sided class struggle being waged against it.

When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one learns something new even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. Nevertheless, one can still learn lessons and measure them against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the immediate aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we also have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. Trotsky’s analysis follows this path.

Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of later experiences cited above, and as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses, Trotsky honored the Paris Commune as a beacon of the coming world socialist revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe and the faint-hearted elements in the European labor movement. It is truly one of the revolutionary peaks.

The Commune nevertheless also presented in embryo the first post-1848 Revolution instance of what was to be later characterized by Lenin at the beginning of World War I as the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement. Moreover, after Lenin’s death this question preoccupied Trotsky for much of the later part of his life. Trotsky’s placing the problems facing the Commune in this context made me realize that this crisis really has a much longer lineage that I had previously recognized. Unfortunately, that question is still to be resolved.

Many working class tendencies, Anarchist, Anarcho-Syndicalist, Left Social Democratic and Communist justifiably pay homage to the defenders of the Paris Commune and claim its traditions. Why does an organization of short duration and subject to savage reprisals still command our attention? The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite for action, their capacity to sacrifice themselves in the name of a future, more just, organization of society. Every working class tendency can honor those qualities, particularly when far removed from any active need to do more than pay homage to the memory of the fallen Communards.

Nevertheless, as Trotsky notes, to truly honor the Communards it is necessary to understand that at the same time the Commune shows us the many times frustrating incapacity of the masses to act in their objective interests, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their almost always fatal desire to halt after the first successes. Obviously, only a revolutionary party can provide that kind of leadership in order fight against these negative traits. At that stage in the development of the European working class where political class consciousness was limited to the vanguard, capitalism was still capable of progressive expansion and other urban classes were at least verbally espousing socialist solutions it is improbable that such an organization could have been formed. Nevertheless such an organization was objectively necessary.

It is a truism in politics, including revolutionary politics, that timing is important and many times decisive. As Trotsky noted seizure of power by the Commune came too late. It had all the possibilities of taking the power on September 4, 1870 rather than March 18, 1871 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at the head of the workers of the whole country in their struggle. At the very least, it would have allowed time for the workers of other cities and the peasantry in the smaller towns and villages to galvanize their forces for action in defense of Paris and to create their own communes. Unfortunately the Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders forged by previous struggles that could or would reach out to the rest of France.

Moreover, a revolutionary workers' party, while entirely capable of using parliamentary methods is not, and should not, be a machine for parliamentary wrangling. In a revolution such activity at times amounts to parliamentary cretinism. The Central Committee of the National Guard, the embodiment of organizational power, had more than its share of such wrangling and confusionist politics. In contrast, a revolutionary party is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the road forward, all its stages, and knows how to act in the situation, that the proletariat avoids making the same historical mistakes, overcomes its hesitations, and acts decisively to seize power. Needless to say those same qualities are necessary to retain power against the inevitable counter-revolutionary onslaught. The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Like other revolutionary opportunities six months delay proved fatal. Capitalism cruelly exacted its revenge. That is a great lesson of the Commune, for others read this book.

***As March 17^thApproaches- The Children of Easter 1916-A Moment In History… For M.M, Class of 1964

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

“A Terrible Beauty Is Born”, a recurring line from the great Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Easter, 1916.

At the corner of Hancock Street and East Main Street, forming a wedge in front of our old beige-bricked high school, ancient North Adamsville High School now of blessed memory although that hard fact was not always the case after passing through its portals but that for another day, stands against all weathers a poled plaque, sometimes, perhaps, garlanded with a flower of flag. From that vantage point, upon a recent walk-by, I have noticed that it gives the old school building a majestic “mighty fortress is our home” look. The plaque atop the pole, as you have probably already figured since such plaques are not uncommon in our casualty-filled, war-weary world, commemorates a fallen soldier, here of World War I, and is officially known as the Frank O’Brien Square. The corners and squares of most cities and towns in most countries of the world have such memorials to their war dead, needless to say far too many.

That plaque furthermore now, as it did not have to back in the 1960s, competes, unsuccessfully, with a huge Raider red billboard telling one and all of the latest doings; a football game here, a soccer game there, or upcoming events; a Ms. Something pageant, a cheer-leading contest, a locally produced play; or honoring somebody who gathered some grand academic achievement, won some accolade for a well-performed act and so forth. In due course that billboard too will be relegated to the “vaults" of the history of our town as well. This comment , however, is not about that possible scenario or about the follies of war, or even about why it is that young men (and now women) wind up doing the dangerous work of war that is decided by old men (and now increasingly old women), although that would be a worthy subject. No, the focus here is the name of the soldier, or rather the last name, O’Brien, and the Irish-ness of it.

A quick run through of the names of the students listed in, our yearbook, the Magnet for the Class of 1964, will illustrate my point. If Irish surnames are not in the majority, then they are predominant, and that does not even take into consideration the half or quarter Irish heritage that is hidden behind other names. My own family history is representative of that social mixing with a set of Irish and English-derived grandparents. And that is exactly the point.

If North Adamsville in the old days was not exactly “Little Dublin”, the heritage of the Irish diaspora certainly was nevertheless apparent for all to see, and to hear. More than one brogue-dripped man or woman, reflecting newness to the country and to the town, could be heard by an attentive listener at Harry’s Variety Store on Sagamore Street seeking that vagrant bottle of milk (or making that bet with Harry’s book on the sure-fire winner in the sixth at Aqueduct but we will keep that hush since, who knows, the statute of limitations may still not have run out yet on that“crime,” although the horse certainly did, run out that is). Or at Doc Andrews’Drugstore, yah, good old Doc over on the corner of Young Street and Newberry seeking, holy grail-seeking that vagrant bottle of whiskey, strictly for medicinal purposes of course.

And one did not have to be the slightest bit attentive but only within a couple of blocks of the locally famous, or infamous as the case may be, Dublin Grille to know through the mixes of brogue and rough-hewn strange language English that the newcomers had “assimilated.” To be fair, those same mixes could be heard coming piously out of Sunday morning Mass at Sacred Heart or at any hour on those gas-guzzling, smoked-fumed Eastern Mass buses that got one hither and fro in the old town. That North Adamsville was merely a way-station away from the self-contained Irish ghettos of Dorchester and South Boston to the Irish Rivieras, like Marshfield and heathen Cohasset and Duxbury, of the area was, or rather is, also apparent as anyone who has been in the old town of late will note.

And that too is the point. Today Asian-Americans, particularly the Chinese and Vietnamese, and other minorities have followed that well-trodden path to North Adamsville from way-station Boston. They have made, and will make, their mark on the ethos of this hard-working working-class part of town. So while the faint aroma of corn beef and cabbage (and colorful, red-drenched pasta dishes, from the other main ethnic group of old North Adamsville, the Italians) has been replaced by the pungent smells of moo shi and poi and the bucolic brogue by some sweet sing-song Mandarin dialect the life of the town moves on.

Yet, I can still feel, when I haphazardly walk certain streets, the Irish-ness of the diaspora “old sod” deep in my bones. To be sure, as a broken amber liquor bottle spotted on the ground reminded me, there were many, too many, father whiskey-sodden nights (complete with the obligatory beer chaser) that many a man spent his pay on to keep his“demons” from the door. And to be sure, as well, the grandmother passed-down ubiquitous, much dented, one-size-fits all pot on the old iron stove for the potato-laden boiled dinner (that’s the corn beef and cabbage mentioned above for the unknowing heathens) that stretched an already tight food budget just a little longer when the ever present hard times cast their shadow at that same door.

And, of course, there was the great secret cultural relic; the relentless, never-ending struggle to keep the family “dirty linen” from the public eye, from those “shawlie” eyes ready to pounce at the mere hint of some secret scandal. But also this: the passed down heroic tales of our forebears, the sons and daughters of Roisin, in their heart-rending eight hundred year struggle against the crushing of the “harp beneath the crown” (and even heathens know whose crown that was); of the whispered homages to the ghosts of our Fenian dead; of great General Post Office uprisings, large and small; and, of the continuing struggle in the North. Yes, as that soldier’s plaque symbolizes, an Irish presence will never completely leave the old town, nor will the willingness to sacrifice.

Oh, by the way, that Frank O'Brien for whom the square in front of the old school was named, would have been my grand uncle, the brother of my Grandmother Riley (nee O'Brien) from over on Young Street across from the Welcome Young Field.

Easter, 1916-William Butler Yeats

I HAVE met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

***Of This And That Out In The North Adamsville Be-Bop Night Circa, 1960

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

I have, on more than one occasion, cursed the Internet to the high heavens for stirring up, or of being the catalyst to stir up ancient memories, ancient memories I was entirely willing to keep back in the deep recesses of my mind. And then the next moment I find that I need to bow down, profusely bow face to the floor, to its ability to make some necessary link information available at the touch of a mouse. The latter is such a moment here.

Recently I received an e-mail via one of the sites that I am linked to from an old high school flame, well, maybe more of a flicker, Betty Ann Kelly (maiden name), who e-mailed me in response to a general question that I had posed to my fellow classmates at old North Adamsville High School, Class of 1964. That question actually involved any memories, such as they were, remembered of those times, more specifically of North Adamsville Junior High days (now, Middle School) since when I posed the question we were in the throes of “celebrating” our fiftieth anniversary of graduation from that school (1960). Her response was simple- as will be noted below she had not actually attended North Adamsville Junior High (Middle School) but rather Adamsville Central Junior High (ditto on the middle school thing).

Needless to say, flame or flicker, I have some egg on my face for not remembering that she was not one of us-a North Adamsville Junior Higher- when the town junior high school rivalries were almost as intense as those of the cross-town rivalry between North Adamsville High and Adamsville High. More to the point I would have gone to my grave believing that she had been a classmate and so I bow down, profusely bow down, to the high tech Internet for making the connections that made that connection possible. My return e-mail is posted below to “enlighten” those of our generation who face some of the same issues-how to turn on the computer, how to deal with forgetfulness (I am being kind to all parties here), and how to “forget” that if one has a 50th middle school graduation anniversary in 2010 then a 50th high school anniversary is on the horizon. Ugh! Damn Internet.
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Dear Betty Ann,

Thanks for your note. Before I go on I just have to comment, kiddingly anyway, on this e-mail snafu. [The response e-mail was received about a year after the original one was sent-Markin.] At your expense? Well, yes. I thought, and correct me if I am wrong, that e-mail was supposed to be faster than the regular mails. And if not that, then at least faster than the Pony Express of old, old days. I do note that you are located in up- state New York so that explains a lot, an awful lot. Now for a little fun at my expense. It seems that I did not edit the e-mail that I sent you. I forgot to correct, retype actually, the quotation marks when I went from my word processor to the site e-mail screen. Thus, you got some strange Serbo-Croatian transliterations, or some other forgotten language, in your e-mail. I will take some laughs on that one.

Okay, now down to business. The thing that I requested in that e-mail, information and ideas in order to honor our 50th anniversary since graduation, if you had been a North Adamsville Junior High alumna and not a benighted Adamsville Central alumna I got another way. I actually worked around it and wrote from different angle from what I expected to do. If you look on the Class Wall of the Class Of 1964 homepage you will find it- Entering North-1960. You will also find a couple of other posts, as well. Also if you Google Tales From Old North Adamsville High you will be able to click to a blog I established last year about the old days when we all bled raider red. Such little subjects as summer beach nights, Tri-Hi-Y, Howard Johnson’s ice cream, boys’ and girls’ bowling teams, and some sad, some silly, and some just plain be-bop things as well. Of course, since this is your 50th anniversary of graduating from Adamsville Central Junior High (oops, Middle School) you are duty-bound to write a little something, and we will all meet up in the fall of 1961 to form the North Adamsville Class of 1964.

As for rumors, threats, dreads, and celebrations of our 50th anniversary since graduation from high school I have no particular information right now. Perhaps someone on the site might have some information. I will say this-in 2004 I received an invitation to our 40th reunion, although I did not attend. I have never attended any reunion (although I wrote about old friend, Bill Connolly, going to the fifth reunion in 1969- it is posted on that Talesblog). How about you? The people who put that one together were Linda Paul and Gary Docker. Linda has her name listed on this site so maybe you could check with her. In 2004 I was not bleeding raider red but now I am not sure that I would not attend a 50th reunion if it is organized.



Let me hear from you- soon (within a year, okay). Friendly regards. Peter Paul Markin