President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

• Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.

• Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.

• Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.

• Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but  the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

• Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

• Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

• Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

• Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

Six Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The Struggle Continues …

Six Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning  “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You  can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.

*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns.  Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Contribute to the Private  Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Bradley E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304. You must use Bradley on the address envelope.

Private 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.

*Call: (913) 758-3600-Write to:Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander U.S. Detention Barracks 1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027-Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).” (for more details-http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html#!/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html

Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me.
Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include: 

*that Private Manning  was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.

*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.

*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.

*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!

Signature ___________________________________________________________

Print Name __________________________________________________________

Address_____________________________________________________________

City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The 1960s Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

Nine –To Be Judged By One’s Own

No question, no question at all that Robertson Edgars, twenty-two, all sable warrior tough, six-two, two hundred and forty pounds, who had played some ball in high school, a rumbling, tumbling, stumbling break back fullback, the worst kind, who devoured opposing linemen, was every white man’s nightmare, every white man’s nightmare dream that if he, Robertson Edgars, came into that white man’s range, say his neighborhood at dusk or dawn, never mind into his curtilage anytime, that he would sweat, sweat like hell, about what to do with the bastard, especially if the wife and kids were there to see him sweat, sweat death fear sweat. And no question either that every white woman (well, maybe not everyone since Brother Edgars had had a bed full of white chicks, white chicks who status conscious in high school craved amazing break back fullbacks and later craved that ersatz black man experience when the times dictated that as a rite of passage experience among certain white educated women, and a few not so well educated too, although nothing steady, that was strictly black stuff, strictly, some educated, some not), every white women, mothering woman, feared, feared that black night fear when she came within fifty feet of a monster like the brother.

So Robertson’s lawyer, his mother downtown red brick textile sweat shop crimp and save bought lawyer, Jim Everett, was surprised (and in fact had tried like hell to argue him out of the decision, try to explain one more time the what and why of the white man’s justice system that even he, an honored white man, knew, knew not just in his bones but through his pile of black convictions and the many years prison time was stacked again him) when he had told him that he preferred to have his case, his burglary case tried before a jury rather than a judge (the judge in this case, Judge Abbott, notorious in the Court of Common Pleas, for his quick dispatch of young men into the Texas prison system night with heavy terms, and fines too).

And here was the rub. In Macomb County even though blacks outnumbered whites about three to two that the jury pool would probably wind up being majority white. Robertson’s argument that a few black mothers empaneled might take pity on him since he actually was innocent and had an alibi (a black alibi but an alibi nevertheless) and although he had some priors (a couple of drug busts, a couple of DUIs, kid’s stuff really) he thought he could survive that information if the situation came to that since those mothers would perhaps have had their own crimp and save son in trouble woes, (or knew of such doings) time came for that. His back-up was that maybe some black father (although not Robertson’s, his father had died in some stinking jungle hellhole in Vietnam in 1971) worried about his own son might see where Robertson had been framed, framed like a million other black kids. Jim thought he was foolish to believe that might happen but he kept it to himself one Robertson made it plain he was adamant on the question.

On the day set for trial Judge Abbott, according to Jim Everett, seemed to be in a particularly bad mood. He was known to be ill-tempered even on his good days and was deliberately rude to Jim when he requested dismissal of the charges for lack of evidence, some standard Jim argued not met by the prosecution, and he ruled that motion down in about two seconds with no arguments heard. This action by the judge only confirmed in Robertson’s mind the wisdom of his choice. Shortly thereafter the jury selection proceeded and from the start it things went badly when a young white woman was dismissed for some cause and then a young black woman who looked like she was making eyes at Robertson (neither of those two women would be picked, or have survived challenge, under any circumstances, black or white, being young was a bar to selection, an unwritten law). By noontime the jury had been selected and Robertson almost, as big as he was, cried. Not only in three to two black Macomb County was the jury all- white it was ten men and two women. And the two women might as well have been men because they looked and acted like they were prison guards at the women’s prison or some such thing. Robertson reached back as he was walking outside for a cigarette before the start of the trial itself that afternoon and said out loud to himself Paul (his black brother alibi) better come through, he had better come through…

Ten Point Program[edit]

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[43][44]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

 

***La Dolce Vita Redux- Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)    

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), starring Toni Sevillo, directed by Paolo Sorrentino , Medusa Films, 2013  

Many of us have seen the great epic explorations of the tattered and worn decadent post-World War Italian high society social scene done by the late director Federico Fellini. Most notably his La Dolce Vita which captured his fine sense of the absurd machinations of the high rollers with plenty of time (and lira) on their hands. That film is a direct descendent of the film under review Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza where the leading character Jep (played by Toni Sevillo), a classic product of current Italian high society, conclusively proves that the rich and their hangers-on have not changes much in the last half century except their habits are become more exotic and expensive.

The plot, well, this kind of film really has no plot, is centered on an exploration of Jep’s, well, boredom with life now that he had reached the age of sixty-five and has seen it all, heard it all, and done it all without making much of a dent in the world. Oh sure Jep (and maybe some others in his crowd) had youthful aspirations (maybe even dabbled a little in leftist politics), had written a book, maybe more but had settled into a life of bourgeois comfort and forgetfulness. While the “plot” may not be much the reason to watch this film, and you should, is the remarkable acting of Toni Sevillo as the faded novelist turned cultural critic bound to shoulder on in the vacuum of high society. That acting and the lush party scenes when high society breaks out are what kept my eyes riveted to the screen. A last fifteen minute or so of the seemingly mandatory attack on the powerful Roman Catholic Church in Italian life could, no, should have been cut at no lost to the great beauty of this cinematic study.

     

On Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Memorial To Colonel Robert Gould Shaw And The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment (Volunteers) –Take Two  

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

…he had walked pass that blessed then muddied- unattended frieze across the street from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston it seemed like half his now graying life. Anytime he had cadged a hooky day from high school back in the early 1960s in order to head into downtown Boston and check out the day life on the Common, grab an off-beat movie at the many big house theaters on lower Washington Street to kill a couple of hours, or just hang out he would circle around Beacon Street after emerging from the Park Street subway station. Walked around just to get a “feel” for his city, the city of his birth, on humid summer days, leaves falling orange/red/yellow/autumn days, bleak snow-bound winter lights days, and rebirth green spring days. Walked head down right by the seemingly obscure defaced and unrepaired marble. Walked by thinking of his big world existential problems too intense to worry about faded pasts  

Later, mid-1960s later, when he went to school, a two-year school and then transferred to Suffolk University in that same downtown Boston and had to work trucks down toward Congress Street to make his daily meat he would pass the memorial on his way to school. Still later when he lived on the hill (Beacon Hill) with some rarified suburban girl from Long Island who foot the bill (or rather some New Jack City banker Daddy) in sullen splendor (until she in her turn married some junior up and coming stockbroker) his studied neglect continued.

Passed it, that subtle monument to past fights, like it was just another in a long line of historic ornaments in a town filled with memorials to its ancient arrival long continental history. You know bloody battle number one here, bloody battle number two there, a pigeon-bedecked statute of some fire-breathing Puritan divine casting out heathens here or some furious bearded abolitionist turning up the heat there, some battle-hardened general leaning Grant-like there, some corruption-filled over-fed civic leader in full three piece suit regalia here. Yes, the town was a breathing tribute to all that went down in the cold times American East when west, real west, was someplace around the Hudson River and white man European dreams were of making it along the Eastern seaboard and not having to trek inland luckless to face the unknown, natural or man-make.  

 

 

Had briskly passed blinkered that perfect pre-historic monument to some pretty important history going on right before his eyes down in bloody Birmingham/Selma/Greensboro/Philadelphia (MS that is)/Montgomery/Oxford (MS again) and one thousand other later to be   storied locales after the dust cleared (and the fight reined in). Yet with all that civil rights let-them-vote-sent-books-to Alabama-ride-the-freedom-bus bust he was clueless to that aspect of his history. Clueless (and no high school history class, at least the days he attended ever mentioned such things) to those places, Fort Wagner above all, where his people, his black proud Massachusetts 54^th (and later the 55^th) had made righteous stands for freedom, had filled the sable ranks, had arms in hand confirmed the worst planter’s John Brown-benighted nightmare, had bled rivers of blood and  inelegantly sweated buckets of sweat, had trooped down to their citadel, Charleston, singing marching songs, and had not waited, no, no more wait, on some benevolent white man to do the work of freedom…

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-A ‘Moscow Trial’ in Ho Chi Minh’s Guerilla Movement

 

Book Review

Year One of the Russian Revolution-Victor Serge
I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.

The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And try to stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated Russia as the weakest link in the capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as Utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the specific Russian Question as a factor in world politics anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

 

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

A ‘Moscow Trial’ in Ho Chi Minh’s Guerilla Movement

What appears here is an account by the veteran Vietnamese Trotskyist Ngo Van Xuyet, to whom, along with our translator, Simon Pirani, our thanks are due. It should establish once and for all that the Vietnamese Communist Party is an organisation of the purest Stalinist type, and becoming as it did a military apparatus supporting itself on the peasantry, could not do otherwise in a real revolutionary situation than attack the working class movement and its authentic representatives, as Trotsky foresaw so long ago in the case of its sister party, that in China (Peasant War in China and the Proletariat, 22 September 1932, Leon Trotsky on China, New York 1976, pp.529-30). Readers who are interested in this phenomenon should consult our remarks in the introduction to the article in Revolutionary History, Volume 2, no.4, Spring 1990, p22.
The contrary view, that the Vietnamese Communist Party was a real revolutionary working class organisation, is to be found argued by Michael Lowy in The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, London 1981, pp.130-41, and by Pierre Rousset in The Vietnamese Revolution and the Ro1e of the Party, International Socialist Review (SWP, USA), Volume 25 no.4, April 1974, pp.4-25 and in Le parti communiste vietnamien, Paris 1975. The cruder versions of this belief occur in John Spencer’s Vietnamese Trotskyism and the August Revolution of 1945 (Communist Forum, n.d.), Stephen John’s Stalinism and the Liberation of Vietnam, (Fourth International (WRP), Volume 9 no.3, Autumn 1975, part 1 , pp.1114-128) and Martin McLaughlin’s Vietnam and the World Revolution, Detroit 1985, the last two, which repeat the old Stalinist canard that the Trotskyists “underestimate the role of the peasantry”.

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

The coming to power of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam in 1945 was favoured by the special conjuncture of circumstances in which the country found itself: the absence of the French imperialist state apparatus, disrupted by the Japanese army since 9 March 1945, and the surrender of Japan itself on 15 August 1945. Arriving at the head of his guerilla bands from the highlands of Tonkin, Ho Chi Minh took power in Hanoi. He was able to impose himself upon the insurgent masses not only by his reactionary nationalist demagogy but also above all by force of arms and through the murders carried out by his GPU, the Ty Cong-Au.
Whilst the former mandarins, bourgeois, landlords, peasants and workers were being invited to participate in the Stalinist Vietminh front, Ho Chi Minh was asking the emperor Bao Dai to abdicate in favour of the ‘republic’ and to agree to become Supreme Counsellor/Advisor to the ‘democratic’ government. At the same time his assassination committees were arranging for the ‘thorough’ disappearance of the printer Luong Doc Thi, the leader of the Thanh Nien Thothuyen Xahoi (Socialist Worker Youth), Nguyen Te My and many other internationalist militants, including Tiep, Luong, Vinh, and Sam, who suffered the same fate. Nguyen Te My had been organiser of the Viet Da Tuyen (Independent People’s Front) in the Haiphong area. The teacher Tran Tien Chinh was arrested and died from the effects of torture in [illegible] prison at [illegible].
Just as Ho Chi Minh was occupying Hanoi, the miners of Hoa-gay in Camphu district (a conurbation with a population of 300,000) rose in revolt, set up workers’ committees, and on that basis established a truly proletarian government. The workers took over the mines, tramways, railways and telegraph system, arrested the bosses and the police, and destroyed the local apparatus of the old imperialist state. The Japanese troops, who had surrendered, remained indifferent to the situation. All the means of production were placed under the direct control of a management committee elected by the workers themselves and completely controlled by them. The principle of equal pay for all levels of manual and intellectual work was put into effect. Public order was maintained by armed workers. During the three months of its existence (from the end of August until December 1945) this first proletarian government made mining production work normally, secured the economic life of the region, conducted an intensive struggle against illiteracy and brought in sickness benefit.
But isolated by circumstances, the movement was unable to spread and rouse the other working class centres in the country.
After having established himself in Hanoi and having murdered the proletarian revolution in that city, Ho Chi Minh sent for his armed gangs from the Delta under the leadership of Nguyen Binh (the future Commander-in-Chief of the guerillas of Cochin China) to surround the insurgent mining district and force the workers’ government installed there to dissolve itself. The workers’ militia had only a few rifles and sharpedged weapons, so a compromise was reached: Nguyen Binh’s troops entered the district promising to respect the status quo. Thereupon, by means of underhand police intrigues, the militants S, Lam, Bien, Hien, Le and others, who had been elected by the workers, were ousted from their positions, placed under arrest and taken to Haiphong, where several of them had to be released in face of the anger of the miners. But in the end the entire region was occupied and subjected to the military and police control of the Ho Chi Minh government.
On 14 September 1945 in Cochin China (South Vietnam), this same Vietminh government arrested the Popular Revolutionary Committee at 9 rue Duclos that had been set up on the initiative of the International Communist League (LCI). This embryonic soviet had placed its stamp upon the region of Saigon-Cholon, Gia-dinh and Bien-Hoa. Bombarded by the general staff of General Gracey’s British troops of occupation, as well as the Stalinist Tran Van Giau clique who led the Vietminh government, it had advanced the slogans of arming the people, expropriating the landlords and handi over the land to the peasants, and for workers’ occupation of the factories. The Stalinist Minister of the Interior, Nguy Van Tao, sent soldiers to bring to their senses with bursts of machine gun fire the peasants of Go-den, as well as the peasants of the Plain of Reeds, who had themselves expropriated the landlords.
Whilst Ho Chi Minh and his follow were advertising themselves as supporters of the ‘democratic’ (Russo-Anglo-American imperialist) ‘Allies against Japanese Fascism’, and whilst the Popular Revolutionary Committees were calling the masses to armed insurrection against all the imperialisms (democratic or Fascist), Tran Van Giau sent his police (those same cops who only yesterday had still been in the service first of French and then of Japanese imperialism) to dissolve the Committee, and its militants were sent the Central Prison in Saigon to be shot. When the British troops, whom the Vietminh government had but recently welcomed with a “Hurrah to the Allied Forces”, helped the French to reoccupy Saigon, Tran Van Giau and his gang fled to Cho-dem, leaving the revolutionaries locked up in the hands of the French police and the (British) intelligence service, whilst the popular insurrection, against the wishes of those in flight, erupted against the Franco-British troops on the night of 23 September.
The Vietminh GPU continued to hunt down the revolutionaries on its blacklist even whilst in flight. The leading members of the Socialist Workers Party of Vietnam (whose leader Ta Thu Thau had been murdered on Ho Chi Minh’s personal orders in September 1945) Tran Van Thach, Nguyen Van So, Nguyen Van Tien and many other workers were murdered at Kien-an (Thu-dau-mot) on 23 October 1945; Phan Van Hum and Phan Van Chanh ‘disappeared’ somewhere in the areas controlled by the guerillas in the north of Cochin China; Nguyen Thi Loi, a member of the same party, was murdered at Binh Dang (Cholon) in October 1945; Le Ngoc and Nguyen Van Ky, members of the LCI, were tortured to death by the GPU of the Vietminh in the Hoc-món region at the beginning of 1946.
This marked the end of the period of simple murders and of the ‘execution of traitors’, and was the beginning of the period of the ‘Moscow Trials’.
Having already escaped from Ho Chi Minh’s GPU in 1945, Nguyen Van Linh, known as Rene, and Truong Khanh Hinh, two revolutionary workers from Saigon, fell into a trap laid by the Vietminh in May 1950. [1] Nguyen Van Linh had taken part in the European workers’ movement since 1930 as an activist among the circles of the Left Opposition in France. Having returned to Indochina at the beginning of the war, he had been a member of the LCI from the time of the Saigon Uprising of September 1945. He had been one of the organisers of the Go-Vap Tramway Workers’ militia (whose leader, Tran Dinh Minh, known as Nguyen Hai Au, had died in battle with the French troops on the Cao-Lanh Front). Arrested by the GPU of the Vietminh in 1946, he had escaped from Soc-Trang and returned to Saigon. Last year, having been invited by the guerillas of Bien Hoa to discuss a proposal for a so-called ‘United Front’, Nguyen Van Linh and two other comrades were treacherously arrested. When his wife went to search for him, she too was detained by the GPU. They bound her feet and suspended her from the rafters. Then they made cuts on her limbs with a pen-knife into which they put oil-soaked wicks of cotton, which they set alight to force her to counter-sign a statement allegedly signed by her husband. According to this statement, Nguyen Van Linh had confessed to having been an agent of the French Deuxieme Bureau, and to having received 31,000 piastres from Bazin, the Security Commissioner, for use against the ‘resistance’ movement. His wife, who was being held separately, saw him and hardly recognised him; he was a mere human bundle of rags. There is no need to dwell on the fate that awaits him – if he has not been shot already. The two other comrades have already been killed.
Nguyen Van Linh’s wife escaped from her torturers in the middle of a battle between them and the French troops.
Ho Chi Minh and his GPU are marching in step with the Bao Dai regime and the French expeditionary corps as far as methods of torture and murder are concerned.
The only victims are the oppressed and exploited masses and those who constitute their revolutionary vanguard. Whilst the American imperialist bloc, hand in hand with Mao Zedong, puts Korea to fire and sword and makes intensive preparations for the destruction of mankind with its atom and hydrogen bombs, Russian imperialism, by means of its hired assassins in every corner of the globe – in China, in Central Europe, and in the guerilla areas of South East Asia – proceeds with the methods of the Inquisition, besides which all the Torquemadas of the Middle Ages pale into insignificance, to the total annihilation of what yet remains of those elements that are faithful to the world proletarian revolution, the movement for the liberation of mankind. The case of Vietnam shows that the Stalinists of the Asian guerillas are the equals of their masters in Moscow when it comes to monstrous crimes against the revolutionary proletariat.
Ngo Van Xuyet

Notes

1. According to Ch’en Pi-Lan, Looking Back over My Years with P’eng Shu-tse in P’eng Shu-tse (ed.), The Chinese Communist Party in Power, New York 1980, pp.42-3, Rene and Liu, the two leading Trotskyists, had organised a conference in a zone controlled by the Vietminh army, the chief of staff of which in that area was a Trotskyist. But this was a trap prepared by the Stalinists, and they were all arrested along with the Chinese Trotskyist Lu Chia-Ling, who was on his way to Europe with Peng Shuzi and his wife, and so died in prison in Vietnam.

In Honor Of Women’s History Month- “Big Bill” Haywood’s Nevada Jane    

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Nevada Jane-Utah Phillips

Are the linens turned down in folds of glowing white?
Are you lying there alone again tonight?
He’s marching with the men through the cold November rain,
But you know he’ll come back home, Nevada Jane.

(Chorus)
Have you seen the way he holds her as thought she was a bride,
Children riding on shoulders strong & wide?
She never thought to scold him or even to com-plain,
& Big Bill always loved Nevada Jane.

And when he stumbles in with blood upon his shirt,
Washing up alone, just to hide the hurt,
He will lie down by your side and wake you with your name,
You’ll hold him in your arms, Nevada Jane. (Chorus)

Nevada Jane went riding, her pony took a fall,
The doctor said she never would walk again at all;
But Big Bill could lift her lightly, the big hands rough and plain
Would gently carry home Nevada Jane.

The storms of Colorado rained for ten long years,
The mines of old Montana were filled with blood and tears,
Utah, Arizona, California hear the name
Of the man who always loved Nevada Jane. (Chorus)

Although the ranks are scattered like leaves upon the breeze,
And with them go the memory of harder times than these,
Some things never change, but always stay the same,
Just like the way Bill loved Nevada Jane. (Chorus)

*******

Nevada Jane

I've been told that I'm wrong about this song. I don't know whether I am or not, since Bill Haywood, who was with the Western Federation of Miners and was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World, never mentioned his wife in his autobiography except very briefly, so I can't tell whether he really loved his wife or not.

I do have stories from old-timers who tell me about when Bill Haywood was working in a mine camp, basically doing a job of de-horning. His wife, Nevada Jane, had been crippled by a fall from her pony, so she couldn't walk. Bill had a house on the edge of town, and he would carry his wife down to the railroad station every morning. She would sit there and talk to the women of the town about what they could do to help organize the town, while Bill was brawling at the bars. He'd come back at the end of the day, pick Nevada Jane up, hang one of their kids off of each shoulder, and every night you'd see him carrying the wife and kids up to the house.

Most of the songs about labor struggles are full of loud shouting and arm-waving and thunder and rhetoric. It's good for me, every now and then, to try to take a look at the human side of it, right or wrong.

The tune is by one of my favorite songwriters, Stephen Foster. I first heard "Gentle Annie" from Kate McGarrigle of Canada. The tune has too many wide-apart changes in it for me to sing the way Stephen Foster wrote it, so I changed it some –Utah Phillips

… and I will follow Utah’s lead

She knew she wanted him, knew she wanted “Big Bill” Haywood (nobody ever called him just Bill, not even his drinking companions, and certainly not his legion of lady friends who had a different take of that Big Bill notion, so Big Bill it was)  from the first time she set eyes on him. First set eyes on him in front of those Virginia City miners all hungry, sweaty, and dirty from the thankless work-a-day toil, listening intently at that meeting where he boomed out his message-his message that working men had to stick together against the damn (he used less elegant language but that conveyed the idea) bosses and their agents in and out of the government, that all working men were brothers  and that a better system, a system where the working man had a say in what the hell (again he used more salty language) was going on and how to keep from starving for starters to boot. He had more to say, spent the better part of an hour saying it with all those sweaty bodies filled with haggard eyes still following him, but she, Nevada Jane (although just Jane then, he gave her the Nevada part later, later after he had “conquered” her or that was the way he told the story) was more, uh, interested in the look of him, that big rugged man look, that take no prisoners look, that man of the West look, that had her entranced from that first moment. She had to have him, have him come hell or high water.

And she did, she did snare that man of the West by being a woman of the West, and just aiming straight for him. Oh, she used her feminine wiles for part of it, no question, but what Big Bill found interesting in her was that pioneer stock woman who asked for no more than he could give, and gave no less than she could give. Now everybody heard, hell, everybody knew, that Big Bill liked the ladies, had to have them, but even before her accident, her damn accident on that favored mare which crippled her up, she knew that when the deal went down he would always come back to her if he could. And after the accident he did, did more often than not come back, pleased to be with her back, back to his Nevada Jane.

But see Big Bill was a man of action and she knew, knew deep in her pioneer stock womanhood, that he had to do what he had to do. And so along with the joy at his sight when he showed up she had days and nights of anguish. Days and nights when he was on a miners’ organizing drive in some hellhole place like Bisbee, out in Arizona copper country, or over in the rapidly vanishing Nevada silver mines or up in Butte, up in Big Sky country where the mines stretched out over the high prairies  and hills. All places where the bosses’ had a bounty out on Big Bill’s hide.  Days and nights of worry about his health, especially that big heart that might break at any time, or that dead eye that might flare up and cause some hell. Days and nights of worry that he might drink that river of liquor, hard liquor, hard old whiskey, that he kept saying he needed to keep him fit for the work (except when he wanted to call a meeting and would literally close down every bar in some town, forcibly if he had to, to insure a proper attendance).

Mostly though she worried about the women, about some young thing, maybe a pioneer woman who was not crippled up, or maybe one if those New York society women who were all agog over him when he went East to raise money and support for the miners and for the IWW (Wobblies, Industrial Workers Of The World), but she worried. She worried and she kept his home clean and nice, pioneer simple but clean and neat, for his return. And he did return for as long as he could…

And hence this Women’s History Month contribution   

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The 1960s Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

Eight –No More Jail Cells

Jesus, how did he, let’s leave him nameless at his request but his story is legion, legion in black ghetto America and brown Latino barrio America too ever since Mister, Senor and their damn cop justice system decided to go after drugs, small change drugs really, get caught up in the dragnet this time, just as he was starting to get things in his life under control, a little. His teenage years had been one hell after another once his father left, left rolling stone left with some woman not his mother and was down south somewhere according to his paternal grandmother and his mother had taken up, undivided attention taken up, with some Johnny Blade (not a bad guy really but not his father, no way).

First thing was that first “clip” bust at thirteen (laughable when he thought about it now, some damn onyx ring, snagged under his shirt so cool from over at Mister Earl’s junk jewelry two bit joint, a two bit joint though with a big old monitor cruising the premises, that he just had to have for Shana’ s Valentine present, long gone and now forgotten Shana), then a couple more small robbery, burglary things (stealthy midnight creeps through back alleys and shimmied windows in the neighborhood apartments, close to home stealing ), then dropping out of school (that too to spent time with some Shana, although that was not her name, name now not remembered), then a “go to jail or go to the army, or else” thing from that old white-bread judge who thought he was doing him a favor when he and two other confederates (nice, huh) did one too many midnight creeps. The favor being that he had two little purple hearts from two- tour Iraq courtesy of Saddam Hussein’s boys, or somebody nasty in Baghdad. Then back to the streets the down streets of Boston, really Roxbury, you know around Washington Street and Geneva his old home turf and its change from just a neighborhood, the ‘hood of child remembrance to something else, a free-fire zone of a different kind.

And you know too that a guy, a black guy, even a purple heart black guy, without any real education, without some serviceable skill (nothing but a damn 11-Bravo to tout, nothing), and without some luck, real luck was up against it, up against it when the cops were always looking you up and down for just walking (he had been eye-balled and stopped twice right after he got back from Iraq and hell he was in uniform one time and they could see the damn purple hearts) since he got back. So, you know, he took up “the life” again, the life this time meaning no small time Mr. Earl cheap jack jewel clips and midnight creep robberies (kid’s stuff) but working his way up the chain in the burgeoning local drug scene.

And he was doing okay for a while until one night they, and you know who the "they" was, came smashing down the door at the safe house over on Norfolk (somebody had snitched, somebody not alive right now) and he was taken in. He did a year at South Bay for that one. It was there that he got “religion.” No, not some damn Black Moslem thing, or god holy roller thing, jesus, no, but, you know, wise to the hard fact that if he was going to make thirty (a milestone for a young black man according to some stuff he read from some report some foundation did while he was in) his life flow was going against that prospect. And so he changed, changed a little, got a job through the VA, not much of a job, but steady, a short order cook and was moving along. Then this night of all nights he decided that he wanted to see a friend, not being exactly sure why but maybe a little wobbly on that straight and narrow, from the old neighborhood, yes, bad move, a guy related to the drug trade and he was present when they came storming in. Thirty ain’t looking so good tonight…

Ten Point Program[edit]

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[43][44]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

 

 

***The Wedding Crashers Crash Out- Vince Vaughn’s The Internship-A Film Review

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Internship, starring Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, 20^th Century-Fox, 2013

See there were these two guys who had an agenda, a clever line of spiel, a back and forth repartee and patter with the women, and could sell whatever there was to sell, in selling themselves. And successfully jumping into various and sundry beds as a result. Oh, no that was the Wedding Crashers not the film under review, The Internship. Well, wait a minute, maybe that synopsis is not so far off as this pair, Vince Vaughn (who co-wrote this one) and Owen Wilson (the pair playing modern day Mutt and Jeff, Abbott and Costello, etc. etc.) once again team up to give a funny pair of performances which kept the thinness and commonality of the plot-line from causing us all to go into a stupor.  These guys can apparently save anything with their antic hay humor.     

Okay, let’s try again. See there are two guys, two guys who can sell anything while selling themselves, who become unemployed by virtue of their company going under. What to do. Well why not go from just your average low- tech middle-aged joes to try out life in the land of high- tech. And the culture of high- tech chosen (and on display) is none other than at Google out in sunny California. Except you just don’t walk in and grab some job on your resume there (at least in this film) but must run the gauntlet by serving an internship filled with all kinds of funny tasks, including team-building, for the few available jobs. Well you know our two boys are nothing but low-tech guys so they would fail themselves and their motley of teammates if it was only techie stuff but they bring their version of shoulder-to-the-wheel-think-out-of-the-box in to save the day. And mercifully save this film with their flat-out slap-stick hi-jinx that made even this low-tech guy laugh a few times. No, many times.