FBI’s Racist “Anti-Terror” Vendetta Against Assata Shakur

FBI’s Racist “Anti-Terror” Vendetta Against Assata Shakur

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

 

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck [now deceased], whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania [former] death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long -time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class- war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases here. Likewise any cases, internationally that may come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

******

FBI’s Racist “Anti-Terror” Vendetta Against Assata Shakur

Although the government largely succeeded in destroying the Black Panther Party decades ago, the state vendetta against these courageous fighters for black freedom is not only alive and well, but thriving under the administration of the first black president and attorney general. To great fanfare, two weeks ago the FBI named Assata Shakur (formerly known as Joanne Chesimard) as the first woman to be placed on the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted Terrorists.” Shakur was convicted in 1977 on frame-up murder charges in the shooting death of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster on 2 May 1973 and sentenced to life plus 33 years. Shakur escaped from prison in 1979, and five years later was granted political asylum in the Cuban deformed workers state, where she has resided for the past 29 years. Declaring a 65-year-old grandmother one of the world’s deadliest “terrorists” may have many scratching their heads and wondering what the Feds are smoking. But this is deadly serious. At a May 2 press conference, the Feds and New Jersey State Police announced they were doubling the bounty on Shakur to $2 million. In an unprecedented move, the FBI placed billboards with her likeness, reading “Wanted: Terrorist Joanne Chesimard a/k/a Assata Shakur,” along New Jersey highways. Given that Shakur is unlikely to pop up in Newark or Jersey City any time soon, this may seem a bit gratuitous—but that’s hardly the point. Cloaking the decades-long vendetta against Assata Shakur in the guise of the current “war on terrorism” has a dual purpose: to settle the score against those who fought for black freedom over 40 years ago and to warn that radical activity would be treated as “domestic terrorism.” It underscores what we have insisted since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon—that the ultimate target of the vast “anti-terror” arsenal will be labor, blacks and radical youth. Indeed, the Democratic administration of Barack Obama has accelerated the use of anti-terror laws against leftists. The renewed vendetta against Shakur is particularly ominous coming on the heels of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, which was seized on by the bloody capitalist rulers to further enhance their vast repressive powers. The FBI/cop crusade is nothing but a racist political witchhunt with a drawn gun. New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes railed, “From her safe haven in Cuba, Chesimard has been given the pulpit to preach and profess, stirring supporters and groups to mobilize against the United States by any means necessary.” Aaron T. Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI Newark Division, complained that in Cuba Shakur has continued to espouse her “anti-U.S. views” in speeches advocating “revolution and terrorism,” and ludicrously added that she may have connections to international terrorist organizations. He added: “She’s a danger to the American government.” The State Department seized on the FBI announcement to make clear that Cuba will remain on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” one of the many pretexts for the continued embargo of the tiny island, where capitalist rule was overthrown 53 years ago. As always, whom the U.S. capitalist rulers consider a terrorist is entirely self-serving. Freely roaming the beaches of Miami is Cuban CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner, which killed 73 people, as well as hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded 12 other people. On 2 May 1973, Shakur and two other former Panthers, Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli—then members of the Black Liberation Army—were stopped by troopers Foerster and James Harper on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a “faulty taillight.” Approaching the car, one of the cops drew his gun and ordered the three to raise their hands. A moment later, Zayd Shakur was shot dead by Harper. Foerster died in the crossfire, shot with a bullet from a police revolver. Assata had just been shot twice, once in the back. Acoli was convicted of killing Foerster in 1974 and sentenced to life. After standing trial six times on other charges without a conviction, in 1977 Assata Shakur was finally tried and convicted by an all-white New Jersey jury on grotesque charges of killing her own comrade Zayd as well as Foerster. At their May 2 press conference, Fuentes and Ford repeated the lie, dutifully echoed by the bourgeois press, that Shakur “murdered a law enforcement officer execution style.” This never happened, nor could it have. One of the bullets that struck Assata shattered her clavicle and median nerve, paralyzing her entire right arm. Assata’s fingerprints were absent from every gun and piece of ammunition found at the scene. Neutron activation analysis taken immediately after Assata arrived at the hospital showed there was no gunpowder residue on her hands. Shakur was never convicted of firing the shot that killed Foerster. Instead, she was railroaded to prison as an “accomplice” under a New Jersey statute that declares that if a person present at the scene of a crime can be construed as “aiding and abetting” it, she can be convicted of the crime itself. Assata Shakur was on the receiving end of the greatest terrorist enterprise in the world—the bloodthirsty American capitalist rulers. She and her two comrades were among the targets for assassination by the FBI and cops under the deadly Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). In the eyes of the capitalist rulers, the great crime of the Panthers was not only proclaiming the need for a revolutionary solution to the oppression of black people but advocating the right of armed self-defense against the racist terrorists, whether in the white robes of the KKK or the navy blue of the police. The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover labeled the Panthers the “greatest threat to the internal security of the U.S.” and in 1968 vowed, “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries.” Despite our deep political differences with the Panthers, we as Marxists vigorously defended them against the capitalist state’s murderous drive to crush black radicalism. Thirty-eight Panthers were cut down, including Chicago party leader Fred Hampton, shot to death in December 1969 as he lay in his bed. Countless more were locked away for decades on frame-up charges. Foremost among them was Los Angeles Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who himself survived an LAPD assassination attempt days after Hampton’s murder and was later imprisoned for 27 years on frame-up charges for a murder that FBI wiretap logs confirmed he could not have committed, as he was 400 miles away. Today, former Panther spokesman Mumia Abu-Jamal is condemned to a life of prison hell on false charges of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Mumia spent 30 years on death row before his death sentence was overturned two years ago. Like Shakur, the seriously wounded Mumia could not have shot anyone: no physical evidence linked Mumia to Faulkner’s killing and the courts rejected outright the evidence of innocence. In Mumia’s case, the suppressed evidence included the confession of the actual killer. After the New Jersey governor put a $100,000 bounty on her head 15 years ago, Shakur stated in an open letter: “I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color.... “This political persecution was part and parcel of the government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.... “I guess the theory is that if they could kidnap millions of Africans from Africa 400 years ago, they should be able to kidnap one African woman today. It is nothing but an attempt to bring about the re-incarnation of the Fugitive Slave Act. All I represent is just another slave that they want to bring back to the plantation. Well, I might be a slave, but I will go to my grave a rebellious slave.” In the absence of a class-struggle leadership of labor committed to the fight for black freedom, the Panthers, their personal courage notwithstanding, rejected the only strategy for sweeping away the racist bourgeois order—socialist revolution by the multiracial proletariat. Instead, they embraced a reformist program that included the utopian call for “community control” of the police. Racist repression and cop terror will only be ended when the working class seizes state power under the leadership of a Leninist vanguard party. Hands off Assata Shakur! Free Sundiata Acoli! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!  * * * (reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 1024, 17 May 2013) Workers Vanguard is the newspaper of the Spartacist League with which the Partisan Defense Committee is affiliated.

***Plainsong For Private Bradley Manning-Take Three

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He came drowsily awake with a start at about 11:20 that night, that last day of May Friday night, of his long awaited journey, his journey to put paid to his past. He, Pete Markin (he had long ago, back in his late twenties after the hell of Vietnam, given up his appellation of choice, Peter Paul Markin, which he had used since childhood when he thought three name monikers were “cool” in his shabby growing up Adamsville “projects” working poor world), was within the hour to begin to make the journey south from Boston, south to Maryland, to Fort Meade, to stand in long awaited physical solidarity with Private Bradley Manning. Manning,the well-known whistle-blower soldier, was to stand on trial for his life the following Monday for what the government has charged were acts ofaiding the enemy and giving indirect material support to terrorism by releasing a slew of documents under his control to Wikileaks. Just then though he was sleepy and a little cranky having caught just a cat nap of sleep during the evening to fend off the tiredness that would come early the next morning after a night of lonesome thought travel .

After washing his face, splashing some extra water to revive himself, he began to make some last minute adjustments to the luggage that he was to take with him, To fiddle with that luggage in order to stave off thinking about that other idea that was on his mind, that idea that had driven him to make this late hour trip south. To avoid that idea he also thought of other midnight trips down south to Washington, D.C. for some anti-war demonstration or other related cause in the early 1970s and about the ways he had gotten there after he had found “religion”on the war issue, after he had become a winter soldier. Thought about the times that he and his then new flame Joyell (whom he later married but that was not a story he was turning over just then) had hitchhiked down picking up rides from road-weary bennie-eating truckers looking for company on their lonesome long- haul runs, picking them up maybe just to hear the sound of human voices above the din of engines and highway noises. Of rides with assorted stoned mini-van freaks, Volkwagen denizens, that word really was the only way to describe the rainbow-etched hippie crowds riding the roads in those blessed days. And thought too of the occasional stray regular driver, usually male, who maybe had had some fantasy about taking Joyell off into the night leaving her scraggly bearded boyfriend behind to hitch himself to oblivion. Yah, she had that look about her then, not beautiful not in the classic way, but rather fetching, fetching in the classic way. Then those roads got too dangerous, too hitchhike dangerous, once the ardor of the new age a-borning had turned to dust and the creeps and cranks began to mess up the clanky roads. (And the bloom of Joyell love had been strewn as well along some dusty back road, although she still held her fetching fantasy sway.)

Sometimes there would be quick runs, almost as seamless as if taking their own car. Other times they were stuck on dusty, dirty roads as if there were no such thing as cars. Of course it wasn’t always the hitchhike road, sometimes it was cramped buses provided by some anti-war organization or coalition, cheap rented buses with poor shocks, poor restroom facilities, bad air and hubris. Other times, later times, flush times, it would be a quick flight airline (usually the Eastern shuttle), although then Joyell-less. As he thought about those long gone times he couldn’t though quite dismiss that gnawing feeling that had been eating at him since the Manning case came on his horizon in September 2010.

That gnawing feeling had come to this- the accusations lodged against Private Manning concerning leaked information about American troop atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan had driven him back to his own soldier days, dog soldier days, dog soldier days in Vietnam and his own response to things he had witnessed, and later to information that he was privy to about American atrocities in that mist of war, that fog of war. He had dogged it, had kept his head down, had kept it way down. Then, in the back of his mind he heard, or half heard, the echo of some basic training drill sergeant telling his raw recruits to just follow orders and keep their heads down or else they would wind up doing some hard time in dreaded Fort Leavenworth. So he didn’t do a damn thing about what he knew and lived with that for a long time. It had taken a long time, too long, before he realized that there were worse fates than jail, than the Leavenworth’s of the world. Now he was to be redeemed, to settle accounts with his past, redeemed by a dog soldier two generation removed, a soldier who had held his head up high, had acted against the monster wars. Yah, his brother.

Pete once again thought back to those dark days when his unit spear-headed assaults on villages out in the Vietnam boondocks, mainly around Kontum, burned everything in sight, declared every villager an agent of Hanoi, declared that the proper role of a soldierwas to let God separate out the innocent from the guiltyand though nothing of it. Later he had seen official reports, classified, of fistfuls of atrocities against civilians, and kept his head down, kept it way down. Reliving those scenes in his head this night was too much and after a while he could not think more in that vein and switched his thoughts forward to the solidarity rally down at Fort Meade scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. He expected to be tired after the long ride, expected to be faded by the heat of the day which would be well up in the high numbers and would be nothing but a chore to survive. He thought too, as he chuckled about it to himself, that he would rather go to the gates of hell and back than not be there, not be there to stand with his newfound brother, not be there for redemption day.

As Pete heard the honk from a car outside his house that indicated that the young man and his other two passengers that would be his companions on the long ride had arrived he thought about his brother Bradley Manning, about how that young man’s life story on the face of it had been a very unlikely source to be the agent of his own fate, and that he would spent his energies, every energy to gain freedom for that valiant winter soldier. As he left the house he yelled up to his wife goodbye, and yelled too “Free Bradley Manning” and asked her if it sounded okay, sounded energetic enough. “Yah, it sounded just fine,” came the reply.

***Where The Dough Is- With The Film Noir Cash On Demand In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Frankly I always like my bank robbers straight up. You know guys like the famous Willie Sutton who when asked why he robbed banks stated the no-brainer obvious that that was where the money, kale, dinero, moola, or however you describe cash in your area was. Moreover I like my bank robbers working alone, working without an elaborate net, working without about fifteen guys who will rat you out for three bucks and a shortened jail sentence if things get dicey.

 

I remember once these guys, smart guys too, four or five of them, the mastermind who had the thing wired from jump street, had it worked up fine while he had time to while away in stir working off another matter, the fine-tooth safecracker, edgy and sharp, the whizz driver who was like some Indy racer behind the wheel, and the heavy work guy, the rootie-toot-toot guy, a little light upstairs but a stand-up guy and no snitch, no way, and maybe another guy, a lookout guy, I forget, for good luck planned this beautiful (on paper) caper of a high- end jewelry store. The night of the heist they were doing just fine, had it made until the last minute when one guy, maybe the look-out, accidently slipped since he had been sweating profusely in tight quarters and blew the whole caper to kingdom come. Blew some alarm and sent a covey of cops all over them in about two minutes flat. Naturally that crew, desperate at that point and not hip to any jail time, had to blast their way out killing a couple of off-hand coppers in the melee. After you waste a cop or two though you might as well walk to jail, walk to the big step off, after that since when a cop get killed in a caper then all bets are off, way off. Two and it is only fifty-fifty you will get to the big step off. You know the old “tried to escape” gag with about three slugs in your heart. So yah, I like my bank robbers to play it simple, play it by the numbers, and just take the money and run.

 

That is what bothered me about this guy Cecil I heard about recently, a sharp guy from all accounts over in England who had quite a record of success pulling off bank heists by himself, and without any bang-bang. A guy who took a big haul from some Bank of England vault while the clerk was making eyes at some dame (the dame proved to be his, the clerk’s, girlfriend so no foul on him, okay). Of course like every bank robber who has ever existed back to Adam and Eve time, maybe before, has done at least one jolt, done one stretch at uncle’s expense Or the queen’s). That comes with the territory. Cecil did his for an off-hand knockoff when he “forgot” that the alarm was reset after entry into some teller’s cage. He did a nickel for that one. They also say he never carried a gun, didn’t like them, didn’t know how to use one. That might have been an error on his last caper and as a general principle when you are in a tight spot in the bank robbery business, especially these days, but I will let the issue of guns pass. What bothered me was that his plan, and it was a good plan as far as such plans, go was kind of crazy, was way too wild in its application.

 

Cecil, who as a kid had been a carnival drifter, knew how to fake voices and that knowledge was the basis that he planned that last caper on. See what Cecil did was pick a Podunk branch of a big bank, something like Barclay’s, something like that and found out what the branch manager’s wife and kid’s voices sounded like and then he went into the branch and maneuvered his way into the manager’s office as an insurance inspector. Then he was off to the races. This manager, Basil I think his name was, a freaky kind of straight- laced, kind of a fussy sort, was afraid of losing his position, afraid of his own shadow really bought Cecil’s threat that he would kill his wife and child without compulsion if he didn’t follow his instructions to the letter. Cecil had faked the doom-struck wife and kid’s voices sending Basil into a panic. After that he was putty in Cecil’s hands. It must have been fun watching old Basil crack under the whip, carrying out each instruction, hell, begging to carry them out. Christ Cecil could have just sat in the manager’s office and let Basil pull the heist for him. Beautiful.

 

A great work of art, no question, as far it went. And that is my Cecil problem. He got too cute, had too many moving parts, had to ham it up a little too much like some low-rent midnight grafter rather than the potential hall of fame bank robber that he could have been. What happened was that one of the employees, a long- time employee sensed that old Mister Fussy boss wasn’t acting just right, seemed to be a little, well, nice, oh maybe not nice, but civil. That employee started to put two and two together with the combined actions of the two men not adding up and so he called the coppers and after some hi-jinx that doomed our man Cecil in the end. So he turned out to be just another number up in British stir, Darthmoor maybe. Just another of the endless examples that crime doesn’t pay. If he had only decide to just take the money and run ….

Court martial to begin. Solidarity events June 1-8.

Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Court Martial Begins June 3rd Over 1000 people have RSVP'ed for the mass demonstration for Bradley Manning at Fort Meade June 1st. And on June 2nd, please join us in Washington, DC for a panel on Bradley and the media, with Daniel Ellsberg, Jesselyn Radack, Michael Ratner, and Peter Van Buren. International actions June 1-8, and a mass shout out for Bradley online! Join us at Fort Meade June 1st! June 1st. Mass demonstration for Bradley Manning. After more than three years of imprisonment, including eleven months of solitary confinement, three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning’s trial will finally begin June 3, 2013, at Fort Meade, Maryland. The outcome of this trial will determine whether a conscience-driven 25-year-old WikiLeaks whistle-blower spends the rest of his life in prison. Bradley believed that the American people have a right to know the truth about what our government does around the world in our name. This is our last chance before the court martial to stand up for Bradley. Let's send a message to the military prosecuting authority, and President Obama, that Bradley Manning is a patriot and heroic truth-teller. When: June 1, 2013 - 1pm. Where: Fort Meade (Reece Road & US 175) Click here for directions and lodging information. Numerous charter buses have been organized. Get on a chartered Bradley Manning bus! Click here for information on buses from Baltimore MD, Washington DC, New York City NY, Willimantic CT, New Brunswick NJ, Philadelphia PA, Syracuse NY, and Minneapolis MN. RSVP to the event on Facebook here. Daniel Ellsberg speaking out for Bradley Manning June 2nd. Panel on Manning and the Media. Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, Government Accountability Project director and DOJ whistle-blower Jesselyn Radack, Center for Constitutional Rights president emeritus Michael Ratner , and former State Department employee Peter Van Buren will discuss how WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning trial have impacted journalism. The panelists will examine how the information released by Bradley Manning helped shaped the public’s understanding of war, diplomacy, and government secrecy, and the way the press reports on each. They’ll explore how the government’s unprecedentedly broad interpretation of “aiding the enemy” in prosecuting Bradley Manning gravely threatens press freedoms in the United States. When: June 2, 2013 – 5:00-7:00 Where: All Soul’s Church, 1500 Harvard Street NW, Washington DC, 20009 RSVP to the event on Facebook here. International Events Brisbane City, Australia -6/1 Sydney, NSW, Australia -6/1 Vancouver, Canada -6/7 Vancouver, Canada -6/8 Toronto, Canada -6/1 Heidelberg, Germany -6/1 Berlin, Germany -6/1 Cardiff, Cardiff -6/1 London, UK -6/1 Rome, Italy -6/1 Seoul City, South Korea -6/1-6/8 U.S. Events Phoenix, AZ -6/7 Tucson, AZ -6/1 Dublin, CA -6/8 Los Angeles, CA -6/1 Montrose, CA -6/7 West Hollywood, CA -6/8 San Diego, CA -6/1 San Francisco, CA -6/1 San Francisco, CA -6/1 Santa Cruz, CA -6/1 Hartford, CT -6/6 Tallahassee, FL -6/2 Tampa, FL -6/1 Tampa, FL -6/6 Des Moines, IA -6/5 Chicago, IL -6/3 Cambridge, MA -6/5 Boston, MA -6/1 Portland, ME -6/1 Minneapolis, MN -6/6 Honolulu, HI -6/1Highland Park, NJ -6/1 Delmar, NY -6/3 Medford, OR -6/1 Toledo, OH -6/1 Toledo, OH -6/9 Seattle, WA -6/1 Join our mass shout out for Bradley Manning online On June 3rd, when the court martial is scheduled to begin, supporters will be shouting out a message of support for Bradley in unison across Facebook and Twitter. Thunderclap is a web service that schedules your post or tweet, so once you sign up you don't have to be online to take part! Every person counts. Join us! Click here to signup for the "I Am Bradley Manning" Thunderclap!

***Plainsong For Private Bradley Manning-Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He came drowsily awake with a start at about 11:20 that night, that last day of May Friday night of his long awaited journey, his journey to put paid to his past. He, Pete Markin (he had long ago, back in his late twenties after the hell of Vietnam, given up his appellation of choice, Peter Paul Markin, used since childhood when he thought three name monikers were “cool” in his shabby working poor world), was within the hour to begin to make the journey south, south to Maryland, to Fort Meade, to stand in long delayed physical solidarity with Private Bradley Manning the well-known whistle-blower soldier who was to stand on trial for his life the following Monday for what the government has charged were acts of aiding the enemy and giving indirect material support to terrorism by releasing a slew of documents under his control to Wikileaks. Just then though he was sleepy and a little cranky having caught just a cat nap of sleep during the evening to fend off the tiredness that would come early the next morning after a night of lonesome thought travel .

After washing his face, splashing some extra water to revive himself, he began to make some last minute adjustments to the luggage that he was to take with him, To fiddle with that luggage in order to stave off thinking about that other idea that was on his mind, that idea that had driven him to make this late hour trip south. To avoid that idea he thought of other midnight trips down south to Washington, D.C. for some anti-war demonstration or other related cause in the early 1970s and about the ways he had gotten there after he had found “religion” on the war issue, after he had become a winter soldier. Thought about the times that he and his then new flame Joyell (whom he later married but that was not a story he was turning over just then) had hitchhiked down picking up rides from road-weary bennie-eating truckers looking for company on their lonesome long haul runs, picking them up maybe just to hear the sound of human voices above the din of engines and highway noises. Of rides with assorted stoned mini-van freaks, Volkwagen denizens, that really was the only way to describe the rainbow-etched hippie crowds riding the roads in those blessed days. And too of the occasional stray regular driver, usually male, who maybe had had some fantasy about taking Joyell off into the night leaving her scraggly bearded boyfriend behind to hitch himself to oblivion. Yah, she had that look about her then, not beautiful not in the classic way, but rather fetching, fetching in the classic way. Then those roads got too dangerous, too hitchhike dangerous, once the ardor of the new age had turned to dust and the creeps and cranks began to mess up the clanky roads. (And the bloom of Joyell love had been strewn as well along some dusty back road, although she still held her fetching fantasy sway.)

Sometimes there would be quick runs, almost as seamless as if taking their own car. Other times they were stuck on dusty, dirty roads as if there were no such thing as cars. Of course it wasn’t always the hitchhike road, sometimes it was cramped buses provided by some anti-war organization or coalition, cheap rented buses with poor shocks, poor restroom facilities, bad air and hubris. Other times, flush times, it would be a quick flight airline (usually the Eastern shuttle), although then Joyell-less. As he thought about those long gone times he couldn’t quite dismiss that gnawing feeling that had been eating at him since the Manning case came on his horizon in September 2010.

That gnawing feeling had come to this- the accusations lodged against Private Manning concerning leaked information about American troop atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan had driven him back to his own soldier days, dog soldier days, dog soldier days in Vietnam and his own response to things he had witnessed, and later to information that he was privy to about American atrocities in that mist of war, that fog of war. He had dogged it, had kept his head down, had kept it way down. In the back of his mind he heard, or half heard the echo of some basic training drill sergeant telling his raw recruits to just follow orders and keep their heads down or else they would wind up in dreaded Fort Leavenworth. So he didn’t do a damn thing about it and lived with that for a long time. It had taken a long time, too long, before he realized that there were worse fates than jail. Now he was to be redeemed, to settle accounts with his past, redeemed by a dog soldier two generation removed, a soldier who had held his head up high, had acted against the monster wars. Yah, his brother.

Pete thought back to those dark days when his unit spear-headed assaults on villages out in the Vietnam boondocks, mainly around Kontum, burned everything in sight, declared every villager an agent of Hanoi, declared that the proper role of a soldier was to let God separate out the innocent from the guilty and though nothing of it. Later he had seen official reports, classified, of fistfuls of atrocities against civilians, and kept his head down, kept it way down. Reliving those scenes in his head was too much and after a while he could not think more in that vein and switched his thoughts forward to the solidarity rally down at Fort Meade scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. He expected to be tired after the long ride, expected to be faded by the heat of the day which would be well up in the high numbers and would be nothing but a chore to survive. He thought too, as he chuckled about it to himself, that he would rather go to the gates of hell and back than not be there, not be there to stand with his newfound brother, not be there for redemption day.

As Pete heard the honk from a car outside his house that indicated that the young man and his other two passengers that would be his companions on the long ride had arrived he thought about his brother Bradley Manning, about how that young man’s life story on the face of it had been a very unlikely source to be the agent of his own fate, and that he would spent his energies, every energy to gain freedom for that valiant winter soldier. As he left the house he yelled up to his wife goodbye, and yelled too “Free Bradley Manning” and asked her if it sounded okay, sounded energetic enough. Yah, it sounded just fine came the reply.

Write letters of solidarity to Private Bradley Manning

 

In political prisoner cases, and Bradley’s is a classic case, it is important that the brother or sister know that people outside the walls have his or her back. We have Bradley's back.     

*Write letters of solidarity to Bradley Manning while he is being tried. Bradley’s mailing address: Commander, HHC, USAG, Attn: PFC Bradley Manning, 239 Sheridan Avenue, Bldg. 417, JBM-HH, VA 22211. Bradley Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum. Mail sent to the above address is forwarded to Bradley.     

***From The Boston Bradley Manning Support Committee Archives (September 2012)

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...

 

BOSTON PRIDE PARADE - PLEASE JOIN VFP- THIS SATURDAY (RAIN OR SHINE)

  

 

 

Smedleys & Samanthas

Please join us for the Boston Pride Parade.
This is the biggest parade in Boston, let's have a great showing.

If you are free please come and join us. Several of our members (Smedleys) are also part of the LGBT community. Please come and stand with your gay, lesbian and transgendered VFP members.

We should be proud that VFP is an open and welcoming veterans organization. Hopefully we will have a great showing to show everyone we support our LGBT members and friends.

The LGBT community supported our Saint Pats Peace Parade in a big way.
Let’s show them our support for the LGBT community.

Stonewall Warriors will be marching with us. This is a group of LGBT veterans.

For the first time the VA is actively encouraging veterans and staff from the VA hospitals to walk in the Pride Parade. We have met with the person from the VA who is coordinating the VA participation. We have both asked the parade organizers to place us adjacent to each other.

This is the last "BIG" thing we will do for a while, please join us.

Assemble location: We will assemble on the corner of Boylston and Exeter streets. That is one block away from the Copley T Station.

Time: We will gather between 10:30 and 11:00 am, look for the flags
Parade steps off at 12:00 noon, rain or shine - let’s hope for good weather

Rides: If you are unable to walk the distance and need a ride please let me know asap. We will order one or two convertibles for our members who need assistance.

Please bring your flags and VFP clothing and hats.
Hope to see you on Saturday.

Manning supervisor undercuts aspect of aiding the enemy charge: trial report, day 3

digg

On day 3 of Bradley Manning’s court martial, one of his supervisors didn’t mention WikiLeaks when asked about specific websites the military warned that the enemy might visit. Bradley’s fellow soldiers relayed that Iraq War Log documents didn’t reveal source names and that an Excel spreadsheet he created was done for intelligence work, not for WikiLeaks. Read reports from day 1 and day 2.
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 5, 2013.

Pfc. Bradley Manning at Ft. Meade, MD. (Photo credit: Patrick Semansky, AP)

Captain Casey Fulton testified at the end of today’s Bradley Manning’s trial proceedings that there were no specific websites, other than social media sites, that intelligence analysts knew that America’s enemies visited. Capt. Fulton deployed to Iraq with Bradley in November 2009 and was in charge of Bradley’s intelligence section.
The government’s aiding the-enemy charge relies on the claim that Bradley knew that giving intelligence to WikiLeaks meant giving it to Al Qaeda. Prosecutors have cited several times this Army Counterintelligence Special Report, which asks,

Will the Wikileaks.org Web site be used by FISS, foreign military services, foreign insurgents, or terrorist groups to collect sensitive or classified US Army information posted to the Wikileaks.org Web site?

But when defense lawyer David Coombs asked Capt. Fulton which websites the enemy was known to visit gathering intelligence, she merely said that it was general knowledge that the enemy goes to “all sorts” of websites. Pressed to name something specific, Capt. Fulton said that they were briefed on social media sites like Facebook, where people generally post lots of personal information, and Google and Google Maps. Once more Coombs asked if there were any specific websites that she and her fellow analysts had “actual knowledge” that the enemy visited, and Capt. Fulton said no.
Intelligence work for Army, not WikiLeaks
She also provided more information on an Excel spreadsheet that Bradley created as an analyst in Baghdad, which included all of the Significant Activities (SigActs) later released in the Iraq War Logs. The government has referred to this spreadsheet as an indication that Bradley was culling information and preparing it to be sent to WikiLeaks. But Capt. Fulton said that the spreadsheet was used for an intelligence analyst assignment: she had asked him to compile all SigActs from the entire Iraq War to discern any patterns and increases or decreases in violence throughout the war. Bradley was simply doing his job.
That testimony corroborates what we heard from other witnesses today. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Hondo Hack and Warrant Officer Kyle Balonek testified to Bradley’s exceptional organizational abilities and impressive work for such an inexperienced analyst.
CW3 Hack rarely saw Bradley since they had opposite work shifts, so he looked into the shared drive where analysts posted reports and files they were researching. He called Bradley’s folder perhaps the most organized he’d ever seen, providing far more detail than more experienced analysts.
That revelation came after government questioning that attempted to paint Bradley as neglectful of his duties, presenting an email from him to CW3 Hack providing the name of a high-value target several months after he started his work. Prosecutors admitted when prompted by Judge Denise Lind that they were trying to show a dereliction of duty, and Coombs recalled their effort to characterize him as working for WikiLeaks when he should have been doing his job.
But CW3 Hack said he was frustrated with the entire intelligence analyst squad, and didn’t expect Bradley, as a junior analyst, to provide “actionable” information and in fact expected more from his more senior colleagues.
War Log reports didn’t reveal source names

CW Balonek was one of those more experienced analysts, who worked in Bradley’s division. He testified about keeping classified information secret, since he witnessed Bradley’s signing of the Non-Disclosure Agreement vowing to protect sensitive documents. He told government lawyers that it wasn’t common practice for those in Iraq to look at Afghanistan SigActs or other files, but he told the defense that there wasn’t any provision that he knew of prohibiting it.
He gave more insight into what those SigActs or HUMINT (Human Intelligence) files contained. The SigActs typically provided the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where, and why an incident occurred, documenting basic information about incidents like IED attacks. Both types of files didn’t refer U.S. sources by name—HUMINT reports cited sources by number, and SigActs would protect the source from identification as well. SigActs have some names, but those are witnesses, for example, to violent incidents, and not reliable sources with exact information.
Supervisor Showman’s conversations with Bradley
Specialist Jihrleah Showman was Bradley’s team leader at Ft. Drum before he deployed to Iraq, interacting with him daily. She testified with slight but visible disdain about their personal conversations, which she said typically involved “his topic of choosing,” and that he talked about social interests including “martini parties” in the D.C. area, having friends with influence in the Pentagon, and his interest in shopping.
She also said he liked to talk about politics, and that he would often debate with others about broad U.S. policy and that she found him “very political” and on the “extreme Democratic side,” responding affirmatively to Coombs’s phrasing.
When she oversaw him at Ft. Drum, most soldiers uploaded video games, movies, and music to their computers, which weren’t explicitly authorized but which she believed her superiors knew about. Bradley was so “fluent” with computers, she said, that she asked him to install the military chat client mIRC to her computer, and that he once mentioned that military portals’ passwords “weren’t complicated” and that he could always get through them.
Because the government moved through its witnesses so quickly, court is in recess for the week and will resume Monday, June 10.

Boston Veterans For Peace In Pride Parade -June 8

 

Smedleys & Samanthas,

Some members poo poo our participation in parades thinking they are a waste of time. Well I for one firmly disagree. Not only do parades give our chapter great exposure and help with our brand recognition but it is a opportunity to put forth our message of peace.

 

This Saturday we will be in the Boston Pride Parade. Not only will we be supporting our LGBT members and the LGBT community at large who so wholeheartedly supported our efforts in the Saint Pats Peace Parade, but this is an opportunity for tens if not hundreds of thousands to see our message to FREE BRADLEY MANNING.

 

Bradley's trial began on Monday, this is an opportunity within just a couple of hours of marching on the streets of Boston to make thousands of people aware of the plight of this heroic whistle-blower. We have two huge banners, one being brought by the Stonewall Warriors and the other on loan by Dorchester People for Peace.

Please come and participate. We have turned the corner, the recognition we get when marching in the Honk Parade and the Dorchester Day Parade are so overwhelmingly positive. The Boston Pride Parade is the largest parade in Boston and I hope you join us so we have a great showing. It would be great to see "all" our flags in the air on Saturday in solidarity with our LGBT members and friends and in support of Bradley Manning.

 

Other VFP Chapters can join in our contingent and we encourage other chapters to come to Boston on Saturday with your chapter banners.

Thanks, hope to see you on Saturday, see information below

Pat

PS - The weather looks great for the parade!!!

 

Smedleys & Samanthas

Please join us for the Boston Pride Parade.

This is the biggest parade in Boston, let's have a great showing.

 

If you are free please come and join us. Several of our members (Smedleys) are also part of the LGBT community. Please come and stand with your gay, lesbian and transgendered VFP members.

 

We should be proud that VFP is an open and welcoming veterans organization. Hopefully we will have a great showing to show everyone we support our LGBT members and friends.

 

The LGBT community supported our Saint Pats Peace Parade in a big way.

Lets show them our support for the LGBT community.

Stonewall Warriors will be marching with us. This is a group of LGBT veterans.

They have a huge banner supporting Bradley Manning

 

For the first time the VA is actively encouraging veterans and staff from the VA hospitals to walk in the Pride Parade. We have met with the person from the VA who is coordinating the VA participation. We have both asked the parade organizers to place us adjacent to each other.

 

This is the last "BIG" thing we will do for a while, please join us.

 

Assemble location: We will assemble on the corner of Boyleston and Exeter streets. That is one block away from the Copley T Station.

Day: Saturday, June 8 (Rain or Shine)

Time: We will gather between 10:30 and 11:00 am, look for the flags

Parade steps off at 12:00 noon, rain or shine - lets hope for good weather

 

Rides: If you are unable to walk the distance and need a ride please let me know asap. We will order one or two convertibles for our members who need assistance.

 

Please bring your flags and VFP clothing and hats.

Hope to see you on Saturday.

Pat

All out for Bradley! June 1-8

• 
• 

Mass Rally for Bradley Manning at Ft. Meade, Maryland on Saturday, June 1st. Info: 1pm gather (Reece Road and US 175, Fort Meade, Maryland), march and rally to follow. Sponsored by the Bradley Manning Support Network and the national Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War organizations, with the help of Courage to Resist, and many other groups. Chartered bus tickets are available from NYC, Baltimore, Philly, DC, or other cities. RSVP at the Facebook event. Complete Ft. Meade rally info.
June 1-8: International week of action for Bradley Manning. For those that can't make it to Ft. Meade, dozens of solidarity events are currently planned worldwide, including: Seoul, Toronto, London, Heidelberg, Cardiff, and Honolulu. Complete listing of events.
After more than three years of imprisonment, including nine months of torture, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning’s trial is finally scheduled to begin June 3, 2013, at Fort Meade, Maryland. The outcome of this trial will determine whether a conscience-driven 25-year-old WikiLeaks whistle-blower spends the rest of his life in prison. Bradley believed that the American people have a right to know the truth about what our government does around the world in our name. We the People must send a message to the military prosecuting authority, and President Obama, that Bradley Manning is a patriot and heroic truth-teller.
Please take our 10 question survey. With less than two weeks remaining before the start of Bradley's trial, we're asking for your feedback in prioritizing a number of possible projects.

***Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-"Come On Now, Get With The Program- Crime, I Repeat, Crime Does Not Pay"- Richard Basehart’s “Tension"

 

 

DVD Review

Tension, starring Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Barry Sullivan, Paramount Pictures, 1950

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) The film under review, 1950’s Tension, falls somewhere in the grey area, the plot line while it started out with a certain amount of promise got dragged in the end toward a standard police procedural, a kiss of death for most crime noir films in my book. And the femme fatale is neither fetching (a la Rita) nor wicked (except for an involvement in murder and mayhem, but they all, the femme fatales that is, are involved in that, one way or the other, it comes with the territory).

A quick review of the plot will explain my bewilderment at where to place this one in the crime noir pantheon. Warren (Richard Basehart), a Walter Middy-type, married to Claire (Audrey Totter), a second-rate gold-digger who attached herself to Warren in harder times (her harder times) out in Southern California when that locale was becoming the homeland of the dreams- the post-World War II suburban sun-drenched tract dreams. And Warren is a prime number one prospect for that dream working nights like a mad man to get Claire those things he promised her, or half of them anyway. But Claire, the little round-heels, is looking for speedier stuff now that she is settled into a good thing, and a plaint husband. And sweetheart Claire is flouting her stuff right in front of Warren with a guy of unknown resources (Barney) with some dough, a nice car, and a place on the beach in up-scale Malibu to sun herself. Well, a girl has to look out for herself, a round-heels girl anyway, right?

The plot thickens when Warren, no longer content to be a door-mat, decides to kill Mr. Somebody over this transgression (Barney, heaven’s no, not lovely, wicked, maybe just misunderstood Claire). The long and short of it is that after planning the perfect murder by changing his identity (new idea, right?) he gets cold feet, as Walter Middys do, or maybe a slug of rationality that maybe, just maybe, sweet Claire ain’t worth it and good riddance. Especially after, as part of his change of identity, he meets a honey, Mary (played by the leggy Cyd Charisse), who is more his speed and, well, is happy to think about that suburban house and that white picket fence with 2.2 kids, and a dog, one dog.

But see the story would become really tedious if somebody didn’t kill somebody, and so old Barney winds up dead. And of course Warren (or his changed identity self, Paul) is fit six ways to Sunday for the frame. Someone is going to the chair for this one, this murder one job, and Warren better start making a list of his last requests.

Except of course, crime noir or not, guys who don’t commit murder and mayhem are not stepping off for such crimes, at least in 1950s movies. And that is where the tedious police procedural aspect of this film meets low-rent femme fatale when L.A.’s finest get on the case and “entrap” if you can believe that about the police in 1950, or now, everybody connected with the crime (except of course, the deceased Barney, although he too might have had a motive, who knows). And guess who is going to take the fall for this one? Well, guess. But you could see where this one was headed from a long way off.

Hey didn’t Phillip Marlowe work these same slumming L.A. streets in those days. Often taking a little off-hand beating before swinging the scales of justice back where they belong. He could have been used here to tell Claire what’s what, and to spice this one up.

 

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Haki Malik Abdullah, (s/n Michael Green)

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

**********