From The American Left History Blog Archives(2008)- On American Political Discourse - A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2013 ELECTIONS (Updated)

 

Markin comment:

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.
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This one commentary was edited and updated on February 17, 2013
A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2008 ELECTIONS

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

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM!

I originally planned to repost the blog below in the summer of 2007. However, two trends have forced me to republish earlier than I planned. The first is the fact that the whole 2008 bourgeois electoral process has gone into warp speed. Yes, yes I know that thinking about electoral politics, or any politics, in the spring of 2007 is only for political junkies and other misbegotten types. I confess to that sin and someday I will turn myself into the appropriate twelve-step program. Nevertheless the campaign season goes full throttle. Thus if we are to have any effect on the 2008 campaign on behalf of our fight for socialism we better get in harness now.

The second trend revolves around the periodic publication of, and commentary on, the not so startling, by now, fact that the wealth distribution gap between the very, very rich here in America and the rest of us has over the last few years has once again become wider, the widest since the 1920s. In response a number of political commentators, especially liberal commentators, have bemoaned this condition noting that part of the problem is the very real ‘class struggle’ by the rich and their minions. One of the better commentators on this subject the Boston Globe Op/Ed writer Robert Kuttner, who is almost always worth reading to gauge the pulse of the Eastern liberal part of the Democratic Party, recently placed the blame on the fight against unionization by the corporations and their political hangers-on. So far, no argument there. Where we part company is over his exclusive and eternal strategy of relying on the political ‘goodwill’ of the ‘friends of labor’ in the Democratic Party to make capitalism fairer. He further argues that this is where labor has found its earlier successes. No, one thousand times no. Despite Kuttner’s obviously truncated reading of labor history (if at all) the way unions were organized, particularly in the 1930’s the heyday of militant action, usually meant hard-fought factory and street actions over and against those so-called ‘friends of labor’. This is the simple truth that we must get out and have labor militant candidates shout to the rooftops. LET OUR CAMPAIGN BEGIN.

MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS IN FOR THE 2006 ELECTIONS.

Updated April 2007. In the summer of 2006 I wrote a commentary about writing in workers party candidates based on a program for the fall 2006 elections. With the hoopla already starting for the 2008 election cycle I repost that commentary below with that same intention of getting thoughtful leftist to use the 2008 campaign to further our propaganda needs.

All “anti-parliamentarian”,“anti-state”,“non-political” anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist brothers and sisters need read no further. This writer does not want to sully the purity of your politics with the taint of parliamentary electoral politics. Although I might remind you, as we remember the 70^th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, that your political ancestors in Spain were more than willing to support the state and enter the government when they got the chance- the bourgeois state and the bourgeois government. But, we can fight that issue out later. We will, hopefully, see you on the barricades.

As for other militants- here is my modest proposal. Either recruit fellow labor militants or present yourselves as candidates to run for public office, especially for Congress, during the 2006 election cycle. Why? Even a quick glance at the news of the day is calculated to send the most hardened politico screaming into the night. The quagmire in Iraq, immigration walls, flag-burning amendments, anti- same-sex marriage amendments, the threat to separation of church state raised by those who would impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy on the rest of us, and the attacks on the hard fought gains of the Enlightenment posed by bogus theories such as ‘intelligent design’. And that is just an average day. Therefore, this election cycle provides militants, at a time when the dwindling electorate is focused on politics, a forum to raise our program and our ideas. We use this as a tool, like leaflets, petitions, meetings, demonstrations, etc. to get our message across. Why should the Donkeys, Elephants, and Greens have a monopoly on the public square?

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

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

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

But, one might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the ‘popular front’ days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the war in Iraq fight for this no funding position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (yah, those progressive Democrats) who unanimously voted for the last war budget get a free ride on the cheap. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.

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

It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less families, can live on the minimum wage of $7/hr. (or proposed $10/hr). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930’s, go a long ay to turning the conditions of labor around.

3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT.

Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Down with ant-same sex marriage legislation! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend political prisoners! This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that in the year 2006 over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But, so be it.

4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY.

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

5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT.

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

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

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

On Bradley Manning’s Show-Trial-Part Two-The Sentencing Phase

The following observations and comments are those of one of Bradley Manning’s supporters from Boston who has attended several sessions of the court-martial that has been held at Fort Meade in Maryland since June 3, 2013. This part concentrates on the sentencing phase which started on Wednesday July 31^st, the day after Private Manning was convicted of some 19 charges amounting to a total possible sentence at that point of 136 years.

July 31, 2013

The initial euphoria, or at least sign of relief over Judge Lind’s find Bradley not guilty of “aiding the enemy” charge, one that would essential have declared him a traitor and which carries a life without parole maximum, quickly dissipated as the grim reality of the total number of years that he faces, 136, unless some charges for similar acts are consolidated set in. The government, as has been the case throughout since it brought the case, will start first (and have the last word as well after the defense’s presentation) today once again to vilify Bradley, especially on the espionage counts. The gist of their claim is that Bradley’ s leaking of classified information to Wikileaks caused a severe blow to whatever it is the American government is trying to do around the world.

Retired Brigadier General Robert Carr, the first witness in the sentencing phase, testified that no individuals in Iraq or Afghanistan were killed as a result of WikiLeaks’ releasing the Afghan War Diary and Iraq War Logs.

Apparently this phase, like the trial phase, is also going to include plenty of material presented by governmental witnesses in closed session as occurred today with John Kirchhofer.

August 1, 2013

Most of the session was closed. An important expected defense motion to consolidate a number of the charges based on the same course of action or which were charged separately as part action was taken under by advisement by Judge Lind at that time. She eventually ruled that some of the charges should be consolidated and reduced Bradley’s total possible sentence from 136 years to 90. By my calculations, and correct my Math if I am wrong, 90 plus 25 (Bradley’s age) comes out to 115 years, a very long time making him a very old man unless we can gain his freedom, and gain it quickly.

August 2 to August 9

Most of the government witnesses, civilian from the State Department or those from the military spent their open court time (not much since many witnesses testified in closed court to the utter frustration of many Bradley court-side supporters) going on and on about the harmful effect of the Wikileaks revelations, although very little actual proof of harm was elicited. The defense has continually tried to rein in the governmental testimony when the prosecution has led the witnesses to speculate broadly about some speculative harm might have or might in the future affect American military or diplomatic policy. That was particularly true of the State Department’s Patrick Kennedy. Judge Lind has rules several times in the defense’s favor on the question of speculation but has also let some information in helpful to the prosecution. There was a running battle throughout as the prosecution ended its part of the sentencing phase on August 9^th.

The defense will be begin its efforts on Monday August 12^th- A now traditional first day of the trial week stand-out is scheduled in front of Fort Meade at 7 AM that day.

As the sentencing phase has wound down, with a potential sentence to be imposed as early as August 16^th the Bradley Manning Support Network has called for world-wide emergency actions on the day the sentence is announced. Here is some information on that- Stay tuned to the Support Network for a Boston action:

Immediately following the sentencing announcement of heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning by the military court at Fort Meade, Maryland, join us in the streets to declare, “Free Bradley Now!”

Many communities have a historic gathering location, such as a downtown intersection, central park, or other visible location. Please spread the word for folks to join you immediately following the sentencing to celebrate, protest, and/or simply show your support for Bradley.

We will likely have one day notice before sentencing occurs, so we’ll have some heads up. If it takes place in the morning, we suggest gathering that evening. If it takes place in the afternoon or evening, we suggest the following day. Same-day events are more likely to be covered by your local media in conjunction with the national breaking story of Bradley’s sentencing. Please contact the Support Network for posters, stickers, and info cards.

Our primary message for these response rallies:“President Obama: Pardon Bradley Manning”

From The Marxist Archives-The Fraud of Bourgeois Democracy

Workers Vanguard No. 916	6 June 2008

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Fraud of Bourgeois Democracy

(Quote of the Week)

Underlining that capitalist democracy is a fig leaf for the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explained in a lecture delivered after the 1917 Russian Revolution that only under the dictatorship of the proletariat would the state serve the interests of the working masses against the capitalist exploiters. It will take the victory of proletarian revolution on an international scale to lay the basis for the creation of a classless communist society and the withering away of the state.

The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and in another way where another form exists—but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact, the more democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet nowhere (and those who have been there since 1905 probably know it) is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no franchise can change its nature....

We shall reject all the old prejudices about the state meaning universal equality—for that is a fraud: as long as there is exploitation there cannot be equality. The landowner cannot be the equal of the worker, or the hungry man the equal of the full man. This machine called the state, before which people bowed in superstitious awe, believing the old tales that it means popular rule, tales which the proletariat declares to be a bourgeois lie—this machine the proletariat will smash. So far we have deprived the capitalists of this machine and have taken it over. We shall use this machine, or bludgeon, to destroy all exploitation. And when the possibility of exploitation no longer exists anywhere in the world, when there are no longer owners of land and owners of factories, and when there is no longer a situation in which some gorge while others starve, only when the possibility of this no longer exists shall we consign this machine to the scrap-heap. Then there will be no state and no exploitation.

—V.I. Lenin, “The State” (July 1919)

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V. I. Lenin

Forward to

“Deception of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality”

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Delivered: 23 June, 1919
First Published: Published in the pamphlet N. Lenin, Two Speeches at the First All-Russia Congress on Adult Education, Moscow, 1919; Published according to the pamphlet.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 377-381
Translated: George Hanna
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

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The question I dealt with in my speech at the Congress on adult education on May 19—the question of equality in general and the equality of the worker and the peasant in particular—is undoubtedly one of the most pressing and “painful” questions of our time, and one that touches upon the most deep-seated prejudices of the petty bourgeois, the small proprietor, the petty commodity owner, every philistine and nine-tenths of the intelligentsia (including the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary intelligentsia).

Deny the equality of the worker and the peasant! How terrible! Of course, this is something all the friends of the capitalists, all of their hangers-on, and the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries first of all, are trying to seize upon in order to “irritate” the peasant, to “stir him up”, to incite him against the workers, against the Communists. Such attempts are inevitable, but since they are founded on lies, they are doomed to disgraceful failure.
Peasants are sober-minded, business-like, practical people. Things must be explained to them in a practical light, through simple, everyday examples. Is the peasant who has a surplus of grain justified in hiding this surplus until prices reach exorbitant, profiteering levels, without any regard for the workers who are going hungry? Or is the state authority, which is in the hands of the workers, justified in taking over all surplus grain not at profiteering, huckstering, exorbitant prices, but at a fixed price set by the state?
That is the point at issue That is the whole thing in a nutshell. To avoid facing up to this fact the various swindlers who, like the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, are working for the capitalists, for the return of undivided power to them, are resorting to empty phrase-mongering about “equality” and the “unity of labour democracy”.
The peasant must make his choice:
either freedom to trade in grain, which means speculation in grain, freedom for the rich to grow richer, freedom for the poor to be pauperised and to starve, return of undivided power to the landowners and capitalists, dissolution of the alliance of the peasants and the workers,
or delivery of grain surpluses at a fixed price to the state, i.e., the united workers’ authority, which means an alliance between the peasants and the workers to get rid of the bourgeoisie altogether and to eliminate any possibility of their rule being restored.
Such is the choice.
The richer peasants, the kulaks, will choose the first alternative; they will want to try their luck in alliance with the capitalists and landowners against the workers, against the poor, but such peasants are a minority in Russia. The majority of the peasants will prefer an alliance with the workers against the restoration of capitalist rule, against “freedom for the rich to grow richer”, against “freedom for the poor to starve”, against the deceitful camouflage of this accursed capitalist “freedom” (freedom to starve to death) with flowery words about “equality” (the equality of the well-fed, who have a surplus of grain, and the starving).
Our task is to fight the—cunning capitalist deception which the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries practise by means of resounding and flowery phrase-mongering about “freedom” and “equality”.
Peasants! Unmask the wolves in sheep’s clothing who praise “freedom”, “equality”, and “unity of labour democracy” and thereby actually champion the “freedom” of the landowner to oppress the peasants, the “equality” of the wealthy capitalist and the worker or the semi-starved peasant, the “equality” of the well-fed man who hides his surplus grain and the worker who is tormented by hunger and unemployment because the country has been ruined by war. Such wolves in sheep’s clothing are the working people’s worst enemies; whether they call themselves Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, or non-party they are in reality friends of the capitalists.
“The workers and peasants are equal as working people, but the well-fed grain profiteer is not the equal of the hungry worker.” “We are fighting only to protect the interests of labour, we take grain from profiteers, and not from working people.” “We want to reach an understanding with the middle peasants, the working peasants”—this is what I said in my speech, this is the crux of the matter, this is the real truth which is confused by loud-sounding phrases about “equality”. Moreover, the vast majority of the peasants know that this is the truth, that the workers’ state fights the profiteers and the rich while rendering every assistance to the working people and the poor, whereas both the landowner’ state (under a monarchy) and the capitalist state (under the freest and most democratic republic) have always and everywhere, in all countries, helped the rich to rob the working people, helped the speculators and the rich to grow richer at the expense of the poor who become poorer.
This is a truth every peasant knows. And hence the greater their awareness, the sooner and more resolutely the majority of the peasants will make their choice and declare for alliance with the workers, for agreement with the workers’ government, against the landowner or capitalist state; for Soviet power against the “Constituent Assembly” or the “democratic republic”; for agreement with the Bolshevik Communists, against any support for the capitalists, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries!
To the “learned” gentlemen, to the democrats, socialists, Social-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., we say: you all pay lip-service to the “class struggle”, but actually you close your eyes to it at the very time when it is growing especially acute. And to do that means to side with capital, with the bourgeoisie, against the working people.
He who recognises the class struggle must also recognise that in a bourgeois republic, even in the freest and most democratic bourgeois republic, “freedom” and “equality” never were, and never could be, anything but an expression of the equality and freedom of the commodity owners, the equality and freedom of capital. Marx, in all of his writings and especially in his Capital (which you all recognise in words ), made this clear thousands of times; he ridiculed the abstract conception of “freedom and equality” and the vulgarisers, the Benthams who closed their eyes to the facts, and he revealed the material roots of these abstractions.
Under the bourgeois system (i.e., as long as private property in land and in the means of production persists) and under bourgeois democracy, “freedom and equality” remain purely formal, signifying in practice wage-slavery for the workers (who are formally free and equal) and the undivided rule of capital, the oppression of labour by capital. This is the ABC of socialism, my learned gentlemen—and you have forgotten it.
It follows from this ABC that during the proletarian revolution, when the class struggle has sharpened to the point of civil war, only fools and traitors will seek to get away with empty talk about “freedom”, “equality” and “unity of labour democracy”. Actually everything depends on the outcome of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the intermediate, middle classes (including the entire petty bourgeoisie, and hence the entire peasantry) inevitably vacillate between the two camps.
The issue is this—which of the main forces, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, these intermediate sections will join. There cannot be any third way; he who has not understood this from reading Marx’s Capital has understood nothing in Marx, understood nothing in socialism, but is in fact a philistine and a petty bourgeois who blindly follows in the wake of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, he who has understood all this, will not allow himself to be deceived by empty phrases about “freedom” and “equality”, but will think and speak of practical things, that is, of the concrete conditions for a rapprochement between the peasants and the workers, their alliance against the capitalists, agreement between them against the exploiters, the rich and the profiteers.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat that is victorious and has taken political power into its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a specific form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the working people, and the numerous non-proletarian strata of the working people (petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.), or the majority of these strata, an alliance against capital, an alliance whose aim is the complete overthrow of capital, complete suppression of the resistance offered by the bourgeoisie as well as of attempts at restoration on its part, an alliance for the final establishment and consolidation of socialism. It is a specific kind of alliance which takes shape in a specific situation, namely, amidst fierce civil war; it is an alliance between firm supporters of socialism and its vacillating allies, sometimes “neutrals” (in which case instead of an agreement on struggle the alliance becomes an agreement on neutrality); an alliance between economically, politically, socially, and spiritually different classes. Only the corrupt heroes of the corrupt Berne or yellow International, people like Kautsky, Martov and Co., can evade examination of the concrete forms, conditions, and tasks of this alliance by resorting to platitudes about “freedom”, “equality”, and “unity of labour democracy”, that is, by snatching fragments from the ideological baggage of the era of commodity economy.

N. Lenin

June 23, 1919

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Fall Guy-Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

There is a fall guy born every minute, especially fall guys who will jump through hoops when they are down on their luck, or when a woman crosses their path, yeah particularly when a dame passes through. Take a guy like Dane Clark, a guy that used to hang around the old neighborhood, my old neighborhood, old Hullsville down by the sea, down by the ocean breezes south of Boston back in the early 1960s. You could always see him hanging in front of Bigelow’s Drug Store on any given night ready to tell his story, tell his story endlessly to whoever would listen.  We, my corner boys and me, got so we could recite it back to him point by point and he always was surprised that we remembered the details and wondered too how we knew the story since he did not recall telling it to us. 

Dane grew up in Hullsville, old run-down seen better days Huntsville , loss in some sea mist back when they used to build ships, great ocean ships in that town,   and like a lot of us blew the dust or the seaweed of the place off his shoes and headed out, out to the big world as fast as he could. As fast as he could and just as fast became a fall guy like a million other guys who tried to blow the dust of their growing up towns off their shoes. And learned to jump through hoops out in that world too, learned that hard task the hard way. Especially when said hoops were being held by foxy-looking young blonde dames (although they do not have to be blonde, okay, no way). Yes, old Dane learned the hard way something it took me a while to figure out too but this is old Dane’s moment in the sun and I can tell my story any old time.

Sure it was about a boy meets girl story just like in the movies, or rather man meets woman, but more to the point was the hard fact of life that the just rich, the very rich, and the super-rich are different, and in this case, very different, from you and me. Now here is the “skinny.”  Dane Clark, after a stint travelling by rail, hobo freight car rail not the deluxe Pullman sleepers in the Great Depression 1930s, shifting, drifting, midnight sifting in the great railroad jungles out west avoiding the bulls and avoiding hungers as best he could, got drafted like a lot of other guys, guys like my father, into the American army during World War II and did his service in Europe, serviceable service, mainly in France after Normandy. After he got out he tried this and that first for a minute in Hullsville, the place was too small for his big world appetites by then though,  that didn’t work and then he drifted to  New York City trying to make a dime out of nothing, and mainly stalling out. He made a few bucks though, enough to get him to London, a town that intrigued him when he was stationed near there at an American base before the D-Day invasion.

So Dane wound up like a lot of other guys as a down and out American looking, well, looking for something in the post-World War II night and he figured London was just as good a place as any to land, and cheaper too. Naturally a down and out guy had to figure things out once in a while, get his bearings, and what better place to do so than at a bar. A bar, a pub I guess you call them over there, that just happened to have a fetching and rich blonde damsel in distress, Phyllis Lee, if you are looking for a name but don’t hold on too long that that was her right name, looking to get married and willing to pay for that status for her own reasons. Maybe it was that If I Didn't Care that was playing in the background and they laughingly instantly called "their song that did it, maybe the high-shelf scotch he was drinking at her expense but he accepted, although as fate would have it he wound up with a case of blackout, really some dropout pills, a mickey for the crime noir fans, and was dumped in some doorway groggy for his efforts immediately after the ceremony. There he was befriended by a very independent starving woman artist who lived on the other side of that door, and who was only tangentially connected with the nefarious doings going on that led to his doorway stop. (And whom he would eventually have an affair with before she too got lost in the London fog, or just quit him, quit him for her own reasons and left him high and dry.)

And then the chase was on, the chase to put a big old frame on one Dane Clark late of Hullsville, late of the great Southern Pacific hobo, jungles, late of the 82^nd Airborne Division, late of cheap street New York City, and make it stick. Why? Phyllis’ rich, very rich, father had been murdered that very marriage night and guess who the prime suspect, the numero uno fall guy, was? Needless to say, patsy or not, this called for drastic action to recoup his honor (and to stay out of the slammer) by our boy Dane. But, as usual, everybody and their brother (or sister) had a motive to do harm to old man Lee, had an ax to grind including that fetching blonde who lured him in since that old man was no tone of nature’s noblemen. Who to trust (or not trust) while evading the coppers in the black and white dreary streets and cooped-up apartments of 1950s London got Dane all mixed up.

What drove the real villain, a guy, a guy okay, Philip Reed, yes of the old time British Reed steel fortune long since spent, and by the way not the blonde beauty Phyllis was not involved, no way, although she made Dane think twice about it a couple of times when she abandoned him to his fate and divorced him out of hand when she was done with him, was the need to have plenty of dough. Reed, an old MI5 hand, and a guy who knew people it was good to know when trying to flee, people who knew people for a price,  eventually escaped to the continent and the police never did find him, or the cool two million (pounds) he received, embezzled, from Phyllis’ father’s estate before he fled.

As for Dane, after a few months in gaol (jail, quaint right) the coppers released him for lack of evidence and a semi-confession, meaning guy couldn’t positively identify Dane as the guy who paid him to get rid of old Lee’s body, by a guy who worked with the villainous Reed and he scrambled his way back home, home to Hullsville. Home, never to leave again, seldom leaving the small area around Bigelow’s Drug, and never to stop telling his tale of woe in the ocean air night to whoever would listen. That is where that point about the rich being different, very different, comes in.

 

From The Marxist Archives-For the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

Workers Vanguard No. 914	9 May 2008

TROTSKY

LENIN

For the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

(Quote of the Week)

Writing after the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky polemicized against German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky, who denounced the Soviet workers state and promoted bourgeois parliamentarism. In exposing bourgeois democracy as a facade for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, Trotsky quoted French revolutionary socialist (and Karl Marx’s son-in-law) Paul Lafargue.

“Parliamentarism,” wrote Paul Lafargue in the Russian review, Sozialdemokrat, in 1888, “is a system of government in which the people acquires the illusion that it is controlling the forces of the country itself, when, in reality, the actual power is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie—and not even of the whole bourgeoisie, but only of certain sections of that class. In the first period of its supremacy the bourgeoisie does not understand, or, more correctly, does not feel, the necessity for making the people believe in the illusion of self-government. Hence it was that all the parliamentary countries of Europe began with a limited franchise. Everywhere the right of influencing the policy of the country by means of the election of deputies belonged at first only to more or less large property holders, and was only gradually extended to less substantial citizens, until finally in some countries it became from a privilege the universal right of all and sundry.

“In bourgeois society, the more considerable becomes the amount of social wealth, the smaller becomes the number of individuals by whom it is appropriated. The same takes place with power: in proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected rulers increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals.” Such is the secret of the majority.

For the Marxist, Lafargue, parliamentarism remains as long as the supremacy of the bourgeoisie remains. “On the day,” writes Lafargue, “when the proletariat of Europe and America seizes the state, it will have to organize a revolutionary government, and govern society as a dictatorship, until the bourgeoisie has disappeared as a class.”

Kautsky in his time knew this Marxist estimate of parliamentarism, and more than once repeated it himself, although with no such Gallic sharpness and lucidity. The theoretical apostasy of Kautsky lies just in this point: having recognized the principle of democracy as absolute and eternal, he has stepped back from materialist dialectics to natural law. That which was exposed by Marxism as the passing mechanism of the bourgeoisie, and was subjected only to temporary utilization with the object of preparing the proletarian revolution, has been newly sanctified by Kautsky as the supreme principle standing above classes, and unconditionally subordinating to itself the methods of the proletarian struggle.

—Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (1920)

************

Leon Trotsky

Terrorism and Communism

---

Chapter 2
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before his death – the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is the “sole form in which it can realize its control of the state.”

That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago. The sole form of power for the proletariat he considered to be not a Socialist majority in a democratic parliament, but the political autocracy of the proletariat, its dictatorship. And it is quite clear that, if our problem is the abolition of private property in the means of production, the only road to its solution lies through the concentration of State power in its entirety in the hands of the proletariat, and the setting up for the transitional period of an exceptional regime – a regime in which the ruling class is guided, not by general principles calculated for a prolonged period, but by considerations of revolutionary policy.
The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not exclude, of course, either separate agreements, or considerable concessions, especially in connection with the lower middle class and the peasantry. But the proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general Socialist task.
Kautsky now repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat at the very outset, as the “tyranny of the minority over the majority.” That is, he discerns in the revolutionary regime of the proletariat those very features by which the honest Socialists of all countries invariably describe the dictatorship of the exploiters, albeit masked by the forms of democracy.
Abandoning the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship, Kautsky transforms the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat into a question of the conquest of a majority of votes by the Social-Democratic Party in one of the electoral campaigns of the future. Universal suffrage, according to the legal fiction of parliamentarism, expresses the will of the citizens of all classes in the nation, and, consequently, gives a possibility of attracting a majority to the side of Socialism. While the theoretical possibility has not been realized, the Socialist minority must submit to the bourgeois majority. This fetishism of the parliamentary majority represents a brutal repudiation, not only of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but of Marxism and of the revolution altogether. If, in principle, we are to subordinate Socialist policy to the parliamentary mystery of majority and minority, it follows that, in countries where formal democracy prevails, there is no place at all for the revolutionary struggle. If the majority elected on the basis of universal suffrage in Switzerland pass draconian legislation against strikers, or if the executive elected by the will of a formal majority in Northern America shoots workers, have the Swiss and American workers the “right” of protest by organizing a general strike? Obviously, no. The political strike is a form of extra-parliamentary pressure on the “national will,” as it has expressed itself through universal suffrage. True, Kautsky himself, apparently, is ashamed to go as far as the logic of his new position demands. Bound by some sort of remnant of the past, he is obliged to acknowledge the possibility of correcting universal suffrage by action. Parliamentary elections, at all events in principle, never took the place, in the eyes of the Social-Democrats, of the real class struggle, of its conflicts, repulses, attacks, revolts; they were considered merely as a contributory fact in this struggle, playing a greater part at one period, a smaller at another, and no part at all in the period of dictatorship.
In 1891, that is, not long before his death, Engels, as we just heard, obstinately defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only possible form of its control of the State. Kautsky himself more than once repeated this definition. Hence, by the way, we can see what an unworthy forgery is Kautsky’s present attempt to throw back the dictatorship of the proletariat at us as a purely Russian invention.
Who aims at the end cannot reject the means. The struggle must be carried on with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy of the proletariat. If the Socialist revolution requires a dictatorship – ”the sole form in which the proletariat can achieve control of the State” – it follows that the dictatorship must be guaranteed at all cost.
To write a pamphlet about dictatorship one needs an ink-pot and a pile of paper, and possibly, in addition, a certain number of ideas in one’s head. But in order to establish and consolidate the dictatorship, one has to prevent the bourgeoisie from undermining the State power of the proletariat. Kautsky apparently thinks that this can be achieved by tearful pamphlets. But his own experience ought to have shown him that it is not sufficient to have lost all influence with the proletariat, to acquire influence with the bourgeoisie.
It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage, insurrections, or the calling in of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie, hurled from power, must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests used to terrify the people with future penalties. We have no such resources at our disposal. But even the priests’ hell never stood alone, but was always bracketed with the material fire of the Holy Inquisition, and with the scorpions of the democratic State. Is it possible that Kautsky is leaning to the idea that the bourgeoisie can be held down with the help of the categorical imperative, which in his last writings plays the part of the Holy Ghost? We, on our part, can only promise him our material assistance if he decides to equip a Kantian-humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak. At all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing himself that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally devoid of character, and that, thanks to their six years’ existence in the fire and smoke of war, their character has managed to become thoroughly hardened. Every White Guard has long ago acquired the simple truth that it is easier to hang a Communist to the branch of a tree than to convert him with a book of Kautsky’s. These gentlemen have no superstitious fear, either of the principles of democracy or of the flames of hell – the more so because the priests of the church and of official learning act in collusion with them, and pour their combined thunders exclusively on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The Russian White Guards resemble the German and all other White Guards in this respect – that they cannot be convinced or shamed, but only terrorized or crushed.
The man who repudiates terrorism in principle – i.e., repudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined and armed counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of the working class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the Socialist revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism.

* * *

At the present time, Kautsky has no theory of the social revolution. Every time he tries to generalize his slanders against the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, he produces merely a réchauffé of the prejudices of Jaurèsism and Bernsteinism.

“The revolution of 1789,” writes Kautsky, “itself put an end to the most important causes which gave it its harsh and violent character, and prepared the way for milder forms of the future revolution.” (Page 140) [Translator’s Note – For convenience sake, the references throughout have been altered to fall in the English translation of Kautsky’s book. Mr. Kerridge’s translation, however, has not been adhered to.] Let us admit this, though to do so we have to forget the June days of 1848 and the horrors of the suppression of the Commune. Let us admit that the great revolution of the eighteenth century, which by measures of merciless terror destroyed the rule of absolutism, of feudalism, and of clericalism, really prepared the way for more peaceful and milder solutions of social problems. But, even if we admit this purely liberal standpoint, even here our accuser will prove to be completely in the wrong; for the Russian Revolution, which culminated in the dictatorship of the proletariat, began with just that work which was done in France at the end of the eighteenth century. Our forefathers, in centuries gone by, did not take the trouble to prepare the democractic way – by means of revolutionary terrorism – for milder manners in our revolution. The ethical mandarin, Kautsky, ought to take these circumstances into account, and accuse our forefathers, not us. Kautsky, however, seems to make a little concession in this direction. “True,” he says, “no man of insight could doubt that a military monarchy like the German, the Austrian, or the Russian could be overthrown only by violent methods. But in this connection there was always less thought” (amongst whom?) “of the bloody use of arms, and more of the working class weapon peculiar to the proletariat – the mass strike. And that a considerable portion of the proletariat, after seizing power, would again – as at the end of the eighteenth century – give vent to its rage and revenge in bloodshed could not be expected. This would have meant a complete negation of all progress.” (Page 147) As we see, the war and a series of revolutions were required to enable us to get a proper view of what was going on in reality in the heads of some of our most learned theoreticians. It turns out that Kautsky did not think that a Romanoff or a Hohenzollern could be put away by means of conversations; but at the same time he seriously imagined that a military monarchy could be overthrown by a general strike – i.e., by a peaceful demonstration of folded arms. In spite of the Russian revolution, and the world discussion of this question, Kautsky, it turns out, retains the anarcho-reformist view of the general strike. We might point out to him that, in the pages of its own journal, the Neue Zeit, it was explained twelve years ago that the general strike is only a mobilization of the proletariat and its setting up against its enemy, the State; but that the strike in itself cannot produce the solution of the problem, because it exhausts the forces of the proletariat sooner than those of its enemies, and this, sooner or later, forces the workers to return to the factories. The general strike acquires a decisive importance only as a preliminary to a conflict between the proletariat and the armed forces of the opposition – i.e., to the open revolutionary rising of the workers. Only by breaking the will of the armies thrown against it can the revolutionary class solve the problem of power – the root problem of every revolution. The general strike produces the mobilization of both sides, and gives the first serious estimate of the powers of resistance of the counterrevolution. But only in the further stages of the struggle, after the transition to the path of armed insurrection, can that bloody price be fixed which the revolutionary class has to pay for power. But that it will have to pay with blood, that, in the struggle for the conquest of power and for its consolidation, the proletariat will have not only to be killed, but also to kill – of this no serious revolutionary ever had any doubt. To announce that the existence of a determined life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie “is a complete negation of all progress,” means simply that the heads of some of our most reverend theoreticians take the form of a camera-obscura, in which objects are represented upside down.
But, even when applied to more advanced and cultured countries with established democratic traditions, there is absolutely no proof of the justice of Kautsky’s historical argument. As a matter of fact, the argument itself is not new. Once upon a time the Revisionists gave it a character more based on principle. They strove to prove that the growth of proletarian organizations under democratic conditions guaranteed the gradual and imperceptible – reformist and evolutionary – transition to Socialist society – without general strikes and risings, without the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Kautsky, at that culminating period of his activity, showed that, in spite of the forms of democracy, the class contradictions of capitalist society grew deeper, and that this process must inevitably lead to a revolution and the conquest of power by the proletariat.
No one, of course, attempted to reckon up beforehand the number of victims that will be called for by the revolutionary insurrection of the proletariat, and by the regime of its dictatorship. But it was clear to all that the number of victims will vary with the strength of resistance of the propertied classes. If Kautsky desires to say in his book that a democractic upbringing has not weakened the class egoism of the bourgeoisie, this can be admitted without further parley.
If he wishes to add that the imperialist war, which broke out and continued for four years, in spite of democracy, brought about a degradation of morals and accustomed men to violent methods and action, and completely stripped the bourgeoisie of the last vestige of awkwardness in ordering the destruction of masses of humanity – here also he will be right.
All this is true on the face of it. But one has to struggle in real conditions. The contending forces are not proletarian and bourgeois manikins produced in the retort of Wagner-Kautsky, but a real proletariat against a real bourgeoisie, as they have emerged from the last imperialist slaughter.
In this fact of merciless civil war that is spreading over the whole world, Kautsky sees only the result of a fatal lapse from the “experienced tactics” of the Second International.
“In reality, since the time,” he writes, “that Marxism has dominated the Socialist movement, the latter, up to the world war, was, in spite of its great activities, preserved from great defeats. And the idea of insuring victory by means of terrorist domination had completely disappeared from its ranks.

“Much was contributed in this connection by the fact that, at the time when Marxism was the dominating Socialist teaching, democracy threw out firm roots in Western Europe, and began there to change from an end of the struggle to a trustworthy basis of political life.” (Page 145)

In this “formula of progress” there is not one atom of Marxism. The real process of the struggle of classes and their material conflicts has been lost in Marxist propaganda, which, thanks to the conditions of democracy, guarantees, forsooth, a painless transition to a new and “wiser” order. This is the most vulgar liberalism, a belated piece of rationalism in the spirit of the eighteenth century – with the difference that the ideas of Condorcet are replaced by a vulgarisation of the Communist Manifesto. All history resolves itself into an endless sheet of printed paper, and the centre of this “humane” process proves to be the well-worn writing table of Kautsky.

We are given as an example the working-class movement in the period of the Second International, which, going forward under the banner of Marxism, never sustained great defeats whenever it deliberately challenged them. But did not the whole working-class movement, the proletariat of the whole world, and with it the whole of human culture, sustain an incalculable defeat in August, 1914, when history cast up the accounts of all the forces and possibilities of the Socialist parties, amongst whom, we are told, the guiding role belonged to Marxism, “on the firm footing of democracy”? Those parties proved bankrupt. Those features of their previous work which Kautsky now wishes to render permanent – self-adaptation, repudiation of “illegal” activity, repudiation of the open fight, hopes placed in democracy as the road to a painless revolution – all these fell into dust. In their fear of defeat, holding back the masses from open conflict, dissolving the general strike discussions, the parties of the Second International were preparing their own terrifying defeat; for they were not able to move one finger to avert the greatest catastrophe in world history, the four years’ imperialist slaughter, which foreshadowed the violent character of the civil war. Truly, one has to put a wadded nightcap not only over one’s eyes, but over one’s nose and ears, to be able to-day, after the inglorious collapse of the Second International, after the disgraceful bankruptcy of its leading party – the German Social Democracy – after the bloody lunacy of the world slaughter and the gigantic sweep of the civil war, to set up in contrast to us, the profundity, the loyalty, the peacefulness and the sobriety of the Second International, the heritage of which we are still liquidating.

COTW on the march ... -------- Original Message -------- The City of Concord, NH has applied for a Homeland Security grant for a $258,000 militarized Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck (BearCat) aka a Tank. The application stated that terrorism “slants primarily towards the domestic type,” and “the threat is real and here”. It went on to say that “groups such as sovereign citizens, free staters, and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges.” See Occupy NH's reaction to the news: http://occupynewhampshire.org/2013/08/02/occupy-new-hampshire-a-daily-terrorist-threat-to-the-concord-pd/ On Monday August 12 the City is holding a public hearing on whether or not it should accept the DHS grant. Turn out with signs, prepared statements, or just yourself to stand up for your community and against militarization! ** 6:00pm - Demonstration with Signs and Speeches outside of City Council Chambers (may be moved 2 blocks east to Main Street for visibility to traffic) ** 7:00pm - City Council Meeting. There are likely to be other issues on the docket, so be patient, and please consider speaking on the issue, especially if you're a Concord resident. More info on the demonstration: https://www.facebook.com/events/206057732886699/

Prepare for a worldwide call to action after sentencing!

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Respond to Bradley’s sentence in your community! Vancouver Immediately following the sentencing announcement of heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning by the military court at Fort Meade, Maryland, join us in the streets to declare "Free Bradley Now!" Many communities have a historic gathering location, such as a downtown intersection, central park, or other visible location. Please spread the word for folks to join you immediately following the sentencing to celebrate, protest, and/or simply show your support for Bradley. Haverfordwest We will likely have one day notice before sentencing occurs, so we'll have some heads up. If it takes place in the morning, we suggest gathering that evening. If it takes place in the afternoon or evening, we suggest the following day. Same-day events are more likely to be covered by your local media in conjunction with the national breaking story of Bradley's sentencing. Please contact the Support Network for posters, stickers, and info cards. Our primary message for these response rallies: "President Obama: Pardon Bradley Manning" Sentencing could occur as soon as Friday, August 16. Chicago Minneapolis New York City Professor Cornel West and Chris Hedges speak out for Bradley Manning (video) Watch on Youtube Defense to begin sentencing arguments Monday Bradley Manning expected to give statement Wednesday After Judge Lind’s verdict, Bradley Manning’s defense successfully merged several of the needlessly multiplied charges for sentencing purposes, so he now faces a maximum potential sentence of 90 years, instead of the previous 136. The prosecution then spent a week and a half attempting to prove WikiLeaks’ releases had caused severe damage, in an effort to send Bradley Manning to prison for decades. But the government’s own witnesses failed to confirm prosecutors’ mendacious rhetoric. Brigadier General Robert Carr, who reviewed the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs for identified individuals, said that he could find no casualties connected with the war logs’ release. Similarly, Undersecretary for the Department of State Patrick Kennedy reviewed the diplomatic cables to see if named activists and sources were at risk, and he too couldn’t connect any deaths or injuries to WikiLeaks’ releases. A large portion of the prosecution’s case took place in classified sessions, closed off to the press and public, because even though the released cables are in the public domain, the government refuses to officially acknowledge them, referring to them as “purported” cables and files. Monday, August 12, the defense will begin presenting its sentencing case with nearly two dozen witnesses, currently projected to last three days. Courtroom notes Two plays about Bradley Manning Bradass87 will be performed in Washington DC on Aug 16, 17. Courage is contagious, and the stories that we tell show what we value. Acting from conscience at any cost is a story as old as humanity and often adapted for the stage. The ancient Greek myth of Prometheus’ heroic act of rebellion against Zeus; bringing fire to humanity at the cost of his own freedom, was performed in 415 BC. Now that our own Prometheus, young, slight, gay soldier PFC Bradley Manning has the full force of the American Empire coming down on him in a tiny courtroom in Ft Meade, Maryland for “want[ing] people to know the truth,” we are learning all over again that knowledge comes at a very high price for which he may pay with life in prison. Bradley’s story has inspired two modern day playwrights to examine if the costs of rebellion and truth telling are so very different in our modern age. Read more about the two plays here. Watch daily live stream performances of the Radicalisation of Bradley Manning Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.

So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star- Not Fade Away –A Film Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Not Fade Away, starring John Magaro, Will Brill, James Gandolfini, directed by David Chase, Paramount Vintage, 2012

As a member in good standing of the generation of ‘68 I have spent much cyber-ink talking about this and that “seeking a newer world” experiment we tried, with the emphasis on “tried”, back in the day, back in the 1960s day under the sign of the 18^th century English poet William Wordworth’s response to the early stirrings of the French Revolution- “to be young was very heaven.”And while, in the end, we were defeated by the monster of the prevailing mores of American society we tried to rock the boat. And politics aside nowhere was this culturally more exploited that in our music, our second-wave rock music (Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Buddy and Jerry Lee being the first wave back in the 1950s).

Some argued, argued strenuously that “music was the revolution.” Well, no, no it wasn’t but who could blame anybody at the time for thinking that lofty thought.Nowhere was this sentiment more pronounced that in the garages and family rooms of America, of suburban America when guys, and it was mainly guys then, tried to form their own rock and roll bands, especially in the wake of the “British invasion (the Beatles and The Stone, mainly). Formed rock and roll bands to become famous, and if not famous as was the fate most bands that were formed including the band in the film under review, Not Fade Away, at least to act as a magnet for, what else, girls.

David Chase directed this little slice-of-life, 1960s style film, reflecting the hard fact that our generation is now deep in our memory mist stage, centered on the trials and tribulation of a group of guys, Jersey guys, high school Jersey guys at the start trying to break-out into the be-bop rock and roll night. But it could have just as easily been guys from Ames, Iowa or Winnemucca, Nevada trying for the brass ring amid the upheavals all around including the down-pressing downwar in Vietnam, the black liberation struggle south then north, the budding women’sand gay struggles, and the very publicly declared war against parental authority. Reflecting too here the unspoken assumption that that time was when men (and women) played rock and roll for keeps in case our memory mist stage was a little foggy.

Here, as always with garage and family room bands, there were struggles around who was, and who was not, going to be “on the bus”, going to be in the band. And what level of commitment those members were willing to pursue to make it to the“bigs.” Other issues that came up as well were how much hard time in lonely low-down joints were the members willing to do to “pay their dues” and the big question in the break-out sixties about whether to be a cover band or concentrate, like the Beatles and the Stones, on writing their own music and not depend of Tin Pan Alley.

Of course no 1960s coming-of-age film saga can avoid the generational conflicts and the film has plenty of that focused on star John Magaro and his relationship with his father, the late James Gandolfini, as back-drop to muddy the cultural waters (you know-“ what are you going to do with your life after this momentary obsession, son or daughter”-what do you mean you are dropping out of school”-what are you going to do about that damn draft notice”-what do you mean you’regoing to live with him (or her)-well you get the drift). And as well the changing boy-girl thing in the post-pill world, the beginning of women striking out on their own guys be damned, drugs, more drugs, and of course more rock and roll. So if you want to see what it was like for a minute back then through the eyes of those who were pioneers, or just confused and “winging it” then take a couple of hours to imbibe this one. And listen to a great soundtrack as well. Yah, then you might know what I meant when I said “to be young was very heaven.”

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
-The Byrds

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time
and learn how to play
And with your hair swung right
And your pants too tight
It's gonna be all right

Then it's time to go downtown
Where the agent man won't let you down
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
And in a week or two
If you make the charts
The girls'll tear you apart

The price you paid for your riches and fame
Was it all a strange game?
You're a little insane
The money, the fame, the public acclaim
Don't forget what you are
You're a rock 'n' roll star!

 

Free Bradley Manning Now!

CENTCOM’s Kevin Donegan testifies about WikiLeaks’ war logs, confirming no resulting casualties: trial report, day 31

digg

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. August 9, 2013.

Rear Admiral Kevin Donegan, drawn by Debra Van Poolen

Former Central Command (CENTCOM) Director of Operations, Rear Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, testified today about CENTCOM’s response to WikiLeaks’ 2010 releases, notifying identified individuals of potential risk, and the response effort’s impact on CENTCOM.
RADM Donegan was part of a 24/7 WikiLeaks response team that worked from August 2010 to May 2011, coordinating with the Information Review Task Force (which Brig. Gen. Carr testified about last month). “We dealt with the WikiLeaks thing for my entire time” at the Pentagon, he said. He is now Director of Warfare Integration for the Pentagon.
RADM Donegan issued 2 Fragmentary Orders (FRAGOs), to Iraq and Afghanistan, notifying U.S. military commanders of individuals identified in the WikiLeaks-released war logs so that they could inform those identified that they were potentially at risk of harm. He left it up to commanders to decide if the benefit of notifying outweighed any risk the mission to notify entailed. Sometimes, he said, commanders had to notify a village instead of a single person, as “each area of Afghanistan has a shadow Taliban governor” associated with it who could retaliate against anyone offering assistance to U.S. forces.
Though he said some of these notification missions were potentially dangerous, RADM Donegan said that he identified no U.S. casualties as a result of these ‘duty to inform’ operations.
Defense lawyer Maj. Thomas Hurley asked RADM Donegon to clarify whether these individuals identified were “sources,” as that term typically refers to Human Intelligence (HUMINT) sources that the U.S. works with continually. RADM Donegan said that these individuals were not HUMINT sources; these are any people who have cooperated with U.S. forces and could therefore be at risk of retaliation.
RADM Donegan testified about the usefulness of the Significant Activity (SigActs) reports to the enemy, alleging that they sometimes signaled future operations if viewed with other SigActs. He said the reports didn’t individually disclose ‘doctrine’ – for example, how the U.S. would react to a certain enemy tactic – but that doctrine would be easy to deduce.
The government then moved to question RADM Donegan, as it has with nearly every other sentencing witness, in a closed session.
In the trial’s merits portion, the defense submitted a letter from RADM Donegan confirming that the Collateral Murder video was unclassified and did not disclose TTPs, contradicting testimony from Apache pilot John LaRue.
Update
Maj. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testified in a brief open session before the court moved again to a closed session. He was Deputy to the Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS) for Stability, for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2009-10. He traveled to the Middle East’s gulf states, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, up to Jordan, to maintain face-to-face relationships with these nations. He testified that despite chronic instability in that region, he’d felt in 2010 that the U.S. was “building trust” with these nations.
Asked if he observed an “impact” on CENTCOM’s relationship with these releases as a result of WikiLeaks’ release of State Dept. diplomatic cables in November 2010, Maj. Gen. McKenzie said “yes” and the prosecution moved to close the court after that.
The defense is scheduled to begin its sentencing case Monday, at 9:30am ET.