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Friday, June 27, 2014
We
had an idea in our head of who we thought we were fighting against. It
conflicted very much with the information on the ground. We had this idea that
the people we were fighting in Fallujah were some sort of a foreign element,
repudiated by the majority of the populartion in Fallujah, who had some kind of
ideological goals they were trying to impose onthe city of Fallujah. [Our
command] very much framed it as a hostage situation where there was a foreign
element oppressing the city, and we were going to come in and liberate the city
from this oppression. 
Hands Off Iraq! Hands Off Syria!
Despite Propaganda: Americans Oppose U.S. Intervention In Iraq
Above:
Anti-war groups hold a demonstration against a US military intervention in Iraq
in front of the White House in Washington on June 16, 2014. NICHOLAS
KAMM/AFP/Getty Images.
Poll: Fifty-five percent are against U.S. intervention of any kind, while only 20 percent support it.
WASHINGTON
— Americans overwhelmingly oppose U.S. intervention in Iraq in the face of an
advance by radical Sunni Islamists that routed the Iraqi army, a Reuters-IPSOS
Poll showed on Thursday.
Fifty-five
percent of those polled said they were against U.S. intervention of any kind,
while only 20 percent supported it. There was little disparity in the overall
response among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Among
those who supported some form of intervention, the most popular action was
humanitarian aid for refugees from the conflict, and the second most popular was
air strikes to support Iraqi government forces.
When
presented with President Barack Obama’s position that there would be no U.S.
military intervention unless the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government took steps toward
power-sharing with Sunni and Kurdish leaders, most still opposed U.S.
engagement.
Forty-five
percent responded that the United States should not get involved in the conflict
“no matter what,” 34 percent said Obama was setting appropriate conditions for
engagement and 21 percent said U.S. involvement was needed to keep extremists
from taking power.
The
poll reflected predictable splits between Republicans and Democrats on ascribing
blame for the Iraq crisis, in particular on the decision by Democrat Obama to
pull all U.S. forces out of the country in 2011, eight years after they were
sent in by Republish President George W. Bush.
Sixty-one
percent of Republicans said the crisis was evidence that U.S. forces should not
have left Iraq, compared with 26 percent of Democrats. However 74 percent of
Democrats said it was evidence that withdrawing the forces was the right
decision, compared with 39 percent of Republicans.
The
online poll of 1,019 Americans was carried out between June 17 and 19 and had a
credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
(Reporting
by David Storey; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/
A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.
Markin comment:
I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. Not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times but enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing. One though should always remember, despite our political differences, her heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.
*************
Additional Markin comment:
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. 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.
********
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/
A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.
Markin comment:
I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. Not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times but enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing. One though should always remember, despite our political differences, her heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.
*************
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. 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.
********
Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox June 15, 2014 GUEST: ALAN MAKI TOPIC: MINIMUM WAGE VS. LIVING WAGE CLICK PLAYER TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW In Seattle, a campaign to raise the minimum wage (for some) to 15/hr (in 2017) was successful and Cindy chats with Alan Maki about how this really wasn't a victory for workers and what a good plan for a living wage and full job's program could be. *More Thoughts about a Minimum Wage* by Alan Maki Alan's blog is at: Thoughts from Podunk ALAN AND FRED Alan Maki's bio (from his blog): *I live in northern Minnesota with my dog Fred, a Chocolate Lab. I have been i... more »
The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/
A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.
Markin comment:
I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. Not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times but enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing. One though should always remember, despite our political differences, her heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.
*************
Additional Markin comment:
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. 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.
********
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/
A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.
Markin comment:
I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. Not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times but enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing. One though should always remember, despite our political differences, her heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.
*************
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. 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.
********
--> Intended Consequences The Imperial Meat Wagon Rolls On Cindy Sheehan Girl in Futhal, Baghdad, February 2012. (AP Photo/Kamaran Najm/Metrography/Corbis) I recently saw an article in the UK *Guardian *about how the global anti-Iraq War movement was correct about predicting that the US led invasion and bloody occupation would lead to “chaos and instability.” Well, “duh.” And, I hate to say this, but, of course, in the place wherever these invasions and bloody occupations are planned, whichever war criminal was in attendance, knew it good and damn well, too. How can a nation’s n... more »
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Approaches ... Some Remembrances
- Lenin-A German Voice on the War (1914)
The events leading up to World War I from the massive
military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in
Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of
the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges by the Social-Democrats
and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the
international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the
approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. The ability
to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first
portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial
might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th
century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow
exponentially with each new turn in the war machine.
The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon
fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for
the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried
out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the
race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany
tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried
to gain a big hold in the Asia seas. The deeply disturbing submarine warfare
wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other
such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred
years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers
and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched
fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or
nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt
before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss
in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything
concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included
the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was
committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette
in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs,
were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in
this space. Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations
centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments
began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to
clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times,
most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the
decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are
able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my
lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in
its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A
time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to
subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in
1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the
fevered masses would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one
hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as
the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.
Over the next period as we lead up to the 100th
anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline
post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in
order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle
against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive
struggles in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the
battlefields.
********
Teddy Martin had come from a long line of workers, some of
his forbears had been among the first domestic weavers in Spitalfield, had been
the first machine-tenders in Manchester and had been workers like him and his
father in the London shipbuilding trade. He knew deep in his blood there was an
“us” and “them” in the world without his party, the Labor Party, having to tell
him word one on the subject. He had even read Karl Marx in his early teens when
he was trying to figure out why his family was stuck in the faraway outer tenements
with their squalor and their human closeness (he never could get over being in
close quarters ever since then). So yes he was ready to listen to what some
left members of the party had to say if the war clouds on the horizon turned
any darker. But, and hear him true, his was like his forbears and his father
before him as loyal a man as to be found in the country. Loyal to his king
(queen too if it came to that) and his country. So he would have to think,
think carefully, about what to do if those nasty Huns and their craven allies
making loud noises of late threatened his way of life. Most of his mates to the
extent that they had any opinion were beginning to be swept up in the idea that
a little war might not be such a bad thing to settle some long smoldering
disputes. Still he, Teddy Martin, was not a man to be rushed and so he would
think, think hard, about what to do if there was a mass mobilization.
No question, thought Teddy Martin, his majesty’s government
had gotten itself into a hard situation ever since that mangy Archduke somebody
had got himself shot by a guy, a damn anarchist working with who knows who,
maybe freemasons, over in Sarajevo, over in someplace he was not quite sure he
knew where it was if somebody had asked him to point it out in a map. That
seemingly silly little act (except of course to the Archduke and his wife also
killed) apparently has exposed Britain, damn the whole British Empire that they
claim the sun never sets on, to some pretty serious entanglements because if
France were to go to war with Austria or someplace like that then the king is
duty bound to come to France’s rescue. And Teddy Martin as thinking man, as a
working man, as a member in good standing of the Labor Party ever since its
inception was still not sure what he would do. Not sure that he would follow
the war cries being shouted out by the likes of Arthur Henderson from his own
party. All he knew was that the usual talk of football or the prizefights that
filled the air at his pub, The Cock and Bull, was being supplanted by war talk,
by talk of taking a nip out of the Germans and those who spoke in that way were
gaining a hearing. All Teddy knew was that it was getting harder and harder for
him to openly express thoughts that he needed to think about the issues more.
That was not a good sign, not a good omen.
Yes, once the Germans were on the march toward Belgium and
then threatened Paris in a race to the sea if not stopped then the guys at the
Cock and Bull became more pensive, started to see that they would have to do
right by the king. One night, one July night before the blood started flowing
on the continent, one of the boys, Brewster, Teddy thought had led a toast to
the king and all including Teddy rather sheepishly. But now, now with the blood
up, no with the Empire at stake, new with even the wogs in India clamoring to
serve their king and emperor Teddy Martin could see where each must do his
duty. And so Teddy found himself less and less at the pub with the boys and
more and more at home with his wife and two young boys waiting for that minute when he would find himself
heading to the recruiting station to give his all for his country. Although he
lifted no glass to that fact.
********
The German Social-Democratic Party had given Fritz Klein
everything. Had taken him from a small furniture-making factory(less than one
hundred employees constituting in those days small) where he led the fight for
unionization (against all odds for that woefully unorganized industry and against
the then still standing laws against unionization pressed by the state as well
as well as the outlaw status of the S-D Party in those pre-legal days) and
brought him along into the burgeoning party bureaucracy (boasting of this
number of party publications, that number of members, and the pinnacle the
votes attained for the growing number of party parliamentarians in the
Reichstag). Made him a local then regional shop steward agent. Later found him
a spot in the party publications department and from there to alternate member
of the party’s national committee. As he grew older, got married, had two
lovely children the party had severely sapped the youthful idealism out of him.
Still he was stirred whenever Karl Liebknecht, old Wilhelm’s son, the father whom
he knew from the old days, delivered one of his intellectual and rational
attacks against the war aims of the Kaiser and his cabal. Still too though he
worried, worried to perdition, that the British and, especially the French were
deliberately stepping on German toes. Although tired, endlessly tired, he hoped
that he would be able to stick to the Second International’s pledge made at
Basle in 1912 to do everything to stop war in case it came, as was now likely.
He just didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know at all.
Fritz was furious, furious at two things. First that those
damn whatever they were anarchists, nationalists, or whatever had assassinated
the Archduke Ferdinand. Had threatened the peace of Europe, his peace, with
their screwy theory of picking off various state officials thinking that would,
unlike victory in the mass class struggles, change the world. Christ, they
could have at least read Marx or somebody. Make no mistake Fritz had no truck
with monarchy, certainly not the moribund Austro-Hungarian monarchy, despised
the Kaiser himself right here in the German homeland (although on the quiet
since the Kaiser was not above using his courts for the simple pleasure of
skewering a man for lese majeste and had
done so to political opponents and the idle wild-talkers alike). Still his
blood boiled that some desperados would pick at a fellow Germanic target. Fritz
was not at all sure that maybe the French, or the English, the bloody English
were behind the activities. Hugo Heine thought so, his immediate regional director,
so there could be some truth to the assertion.
Secondly, that same Hugo Heine had begun, at the behest of
the national committee of the party, to clamp down on those who were trying to
make the party live up to its promises and try to make a stand against any
German, any Kaiser moves toward war over the incident at Sarajevo. The way
Heine put it was that if war was to come and he hoped that it would not the
Social-Democracy must not be thrown into the underground again like in the old
days under Bismarck. Hugo had spent two years in the Kaiser’s jail back then
for simply trying to organize his shop and get them to vote for the party then
outlawed. The radical stuffing had come out of Hugo though and all he wanted
was not to go back to jail now for any reason. Fritz cursed those damn
anarchists again, cursed them more bitterly since they were surely going to
disturb his peace.
Fritz Klein was beside himself when he heard the news, the
Social-Democratic parliamentary caucus on August 4th had overwhelming
to support the Kaiser’s war budget (and because overwhelming each member was
duty-bound to vote en bloc the way the majority vote went and did so despite
the pleas of Karl Liebknecht), to give him the guns, ammunition and whatever he
needed to pursue the war aims that were just beginning to unfold. Fritz had not
expected the party to be able to stop the war preparations, or once the war
clouds got too ominous, to stop the mobilizations, but he did expect that the
parliamentary delegation (which was under its own discipline and not the
party’s) would not cravenly grant the Kaiser’s every war supply. All those
brave peacetime proclamations about the brotherhood of man and international
working-class solidarity were now so much paper in the wind. He sat for a
moment in disgust and disbelief that now Europe would be in flames for who knew
how long before he knew he would have to explain to the party stalwarts the
whys and wherefores of the budgetary decision. And have to explain why he and
his comrades would soon be loading rifles instead of bags of flour somewhere
near the Atlantic Ocean. For a flash he hoped for a short war but in his gut he
knew the fates were fickle and that the blood of the European working-class
youth would be spilled without question and without end.
********
Jacques Rous (and yes he traced his family roots back to the
revolution, back to the “red” priest who he was named after who had led some of
the plebeian struggles back then that were defeated by those damn moderate cutthroats
Robespierre and Saint Just) had long been a leader the anarchist delegation in
his Parisian district, had been in a few fights in his time with the damn city
bourgeoisie, and had a long, very long memory of what the Germans had, and had not
done, in Paris in ’71,in the time of the bloodedly suppressed Commune. Also Jacques
had long memories of his long past forbears who had come from Alsace-Lorraine
now in German hands. And it galled him, galled him that there were war clouds
gathering daily over his head, over his district and over his beloved
Paris.
But that was not what
was troubling Jacques Rous in the spring of 1914. He knew, knew deep in his
bones like a lot of his fellow anarchists, like a lot of the guys in the small
pottery factory he had worked in for the past several years after being laid
off from the big textile factory across the river that if war came they would
know what to do. Quatrain from the CGT (the large trade union organization to
which he and others in the factory belonged to) had clued them in, had told
them enough to know some surprises were headed the government’s way if they
decided to use the youth of the neighborhoods as cannon fodder. What bothered
Jacques was not his conduct but that of his son, Jacques too named in honor of
that same ancient red priest who was the lifeblood of the family. Young Jacques
something of a dandy like many youth in those days, something of a lady’s man
(he had reportedly a married mistress and somebody else on the side), had told
one and all (although not his father directly) who would listen one night that
he planned to enlist in the Grenadiers just as soon as it looked like trouble
was coming. Old Jacques wondered if other fathers were standing in fear of such
rash actions by their sons just then.
Old Jacques could see the writing on the wall, remembered
what it was like when the German
threatened to come back in ’70 and then came the last time. Came and left the
Parisian poor to eat rats or worse when they besieged the city, old Thiers fled
to Versailles, and Paris starved half-aided by those Germans and he expected
the same if not worse this time because that country was now unified, was now
filled with strange powerful Krupp cannon and in a mood to use it now that one
of the members of their alliance had had one of its own killed in Sarajevo and
all Europe was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He believed that the
anarchists of Paris to a man would resist the call to arms issued by the
government. Quatrain, the great leader ever since Commune days, almost
guaranteed a general strike if they tried to mobilize the Parisian youth for
the slaughter. Yeah Quatrain would stand tall. Jacques though had personal
worries somebody had seen his son, also Jacques, heading with some of his “gilded”
friends toward the 12th Grenadier recruiting office in the Hotel de
Ville ready to fight for bloody bourgeois France, for the memory of Napoleon,
for the glory of battle. And he old Jacques knowing from some skimpily- held
barricades back in ’71 just how “glorious” war was fretted in the night against
his blood.
Damn, the Germans were on the march again, yesterday it was
Belgium and old Jacques knew in his heart where the bloody Kaiser was heading
next. Hell knew it since those bloody May weeks in ’71 when the Germans acted
as “honor guard” for the damn Thiers reaction once they broke out of Versailles
so he was prepared to defeat his section to the death if it came to that, came
to shedding an old man’s blood. What
worried Jacques, had worried him all spring was young Jacques cavalier attitude
toward the impeding slaughter, his disregard for any of the principles that the
old man had tried to instill in him from his youth. Had in May joined the 47th
Grenadiers who were now stationed in a forward position in the border area
between France and Belgium. Sure young Jacques looked the gallant like all the
Rouses but that last look, that unknowing look that old Jacques detected in his
young son before he saw him off told plenty about the fears to come. The fear
that no matter how far apart they had drifted, father and son, they were
kindred, they were French at this dismal hour.
*******
George Jenkins dreamed the dream of many young men out in
the heartland, out in the wheat fields of Kansas a dream that America, his
America would keep the hell out of what looked like war clouds coming from
Europe in the spring of 1914 (although dreams and dreamers were located not
just on the farms since George was not a Kansas farm boy but a rising young
clerk in Doc Dell’s Drugstore located in the college town of Lawrence). George
was keenly interested in such matters and would, while on break or when things
were slow, glance through the day later copy of the New York Times or Washington
Post that Doc provided for his more worldly customers via the passing
trains. What really kept George informed though was William White’s home-grown Emporia Gazette which kept a close eye
on the situation in Europe for the folks.
And with all of that information here is what George
Jenkins, American citizen, concluded: America had its own problems best tended
to by keeping out of foreign entanglements except when America’s direct
interests were threatened. So George naturally cast skeptical eyes on
Washington, on President Wilson, despite his protestations that European
affairs were not our business. George had small town ideas about people minding
their own business. See too also George had voted for Eugene V. Debs himself,
the Socialist party candidate for President, and while he was somewhat
skeptical about some of the Socialist Party leaders back East he truly believed
that Brother Debs would help keep us out of war.
Jesus, those damn Europeans have begun to make a mess for
themselves now that some archduke, Jesus, an archduke in this day and age (and
George Jenkins thanked some forgotten forebear for getting his clan out of
Europe whenever he did so and avoided that nonsense about going to the aid of
somebody over a damn archduke). Make no mistake George Jenkins had no sympathy
for anarchists and was half-glad a couple of years ago when the Socialist Party
booted the IWW, the damn Wobbies, out if that is what they did and the beggars
didn’t just walk out. Although he had an admiration for Big Bill Hayward and
his trade union fights that is all it was-admiration and policy could not be
made on that basis. So no he had no truck with anarchists but to go to war over
an archduke-damn. Still George was no Pollyanna and kept abreast of what was
going on and it bothered him more than somewhat that guys like Senator Lodge
from Massachusetts and others from the Northeast were beating the war drums to
get the United States mired in a damn European war. No way, no way good solid
Midwesterners would fall for that line. And so George watched and waited.
Watched too to see what old Debs had to say about matters. George figured that
if the war drums got loud enough then Brother Debs would organize and speak up
to keep things right. That was his way.
George, despite his membership in the American Socialist
Party and devotion to its presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1912 when he
travelled all over Kansas on weekends trying to drum up votes among the small
hard-pressed farmers and small town people whom he was kindred with, had
somewhat neglected what was happening among his fellow European socialists in the
big-tent Second International. All he knew was that at least since the turn of the
century when so many countries were getting industrialized and were to prove
they counted making war cloud noises that the International was committed to
stopping the madness of war anyway they could. He could not say though he was shocked,
naïve shocked anyway, when all of Europe mobilized for war and the German Social-Democrats
had led the way and voted the Kaiser’s war budget without a murmur (as far as he
knew). Hadn’t this country gone crazy with war hysteria when the Maine went down and Teddy and the boys
gave old hombre Spain a bloody nose in return. And received heros’ welcomes and
glad tidings when they returned. Thankfully the war clouds in America were not
fierce yet, but he knew once they came, as he feared they would those small
farmers and small town people would not receive him with open arms like in
1912.
********
Ivan Smirnov was no kid, had been around the block a few
times in this war business. Had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass
kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his
crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if
the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but
overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval
war game). More importantly he had been in the Baltic fleet when the revolution
of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each
officer had to choice sides. He had gone with rebels and while he did not face
the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin
his naval career was over.
Just as well Ivan had thought many times since he was then able
to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think.
And what he was thinking in the spring of 1914 with some ominous war clouds in
the air that that unfinished task from 1905 was going to come to a head. Ivan
knew enough about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know
that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and
good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future
peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought
out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly
head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there
was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a
kid.
As the war clouds thickened after the killing of the
archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his
bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to
the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal
was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West,
Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the
Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the
other day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan
hoped for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the
Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had definitely
separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war fever just
because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that the party
wished to emulate in Russia.
He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the
Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was
happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the
bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young
workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms
from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible.
Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committee men in Russia and among their
Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yea this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s
tunnel vision, with great events working in the world.
********V. I. Lenin
A German Voice on the War
Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 34, December 5, 1914. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 92-93.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 92-93.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README
“In a single night the aspect of the world has changed... . Everyone puts the blame on his neighbour, everyone claims to be on the defensive, to act only in a state of urgent defence. Everyone, don’t you see, is defending only his most sacred values, the hearth, the fatherland... . National vainglory and national aggressiveness triumph... . Even the great international working class obeys national orders, workers are killing one another on the battlefields... . Our civilisation has proved bankrupt... . Writers of European fame are not ashamed to come forth as ragingly blind chauvinists... . We had too much faith in the possibility of imperialist madness being curbed by the fear of economic ruin... . We are going through an undisguised imperialist struggle for mastery of the world. There is no trace anywhere of a struggle for great ideas, except perhaps the overthrow of the Russian Minotaur ... the tsar and his grand dukes who have delivered to the hangmen the noblest men of their country... . But do we not see how noble France, the bearer of ideals of liberty, has become the ally of the hangman tsar? How honest Germany ... is breaking its word and is strangling unhappy neutral Belgium? ... How will it all end? If poverty becomes too great, if despair gains the upper hand, if brother recognises his brother in the uniform of an enemy, then perhaps something very unexpected may still come, arms may perhaps be turned against those who are urging people into the war and nations that have been made to hate one another may perhaps forget that hatred, and suddenly unite. We do not want to be prophets, but should the European war bring us one step closer to a European social republic, then this war, after all, will not have been as senseless as it seems at present.”
Whose voice is this? Perhaps one coming from a German Social-Democrat? Far from it! Headed by Kautsky, the German Social Democrats have become “wretched counter-revolutionary windbags”,[2] as Marx called those Social-Democrats who, after the publication of the Anti-Socialist Law, behaved “in accord with the circumstances”, in the manner of Haase, Kautsky, Südekum and Co. today.
No, our quotation is from a magazine of petty-bourgeois Christian democrats published by a group of kind-hearted little churchmen in Zurich (Neue Wege, Blätter für religiöse Arbeit,[1] September, 1914). That is the limit of humiliation we have come to: God-fearing philistines go as far as to say that it would not be bad to turn weapons against those who “are urging people into the war”, while “authoritative” Social-Democrats like Kautsky “scientifically” defend the most despicable chauvinism, or, like Plekhanov, declare the propaganda of civil war against the bourgeoisie a harmful “utopia”!
Indeed, if such “Social-Democrats” wish to be in the majority and to form the official “International”(= an alliance for international justification of national chauvinism), then is it not better to give up the name of “Social-Democrats”, which has been besmirched and degraded by them, and return to the old Marxist name of Communists? Kautsky once threatened to do that when the opportunist Bernsteinians[3] seemed to be close to conquering the German party officially. What was an idle threat from his lips will perhaps become action to others.
Notes
Thursday, June 26, 2014
***A 1950s Atlantic Fourth Of July –With That Girl With The
Brown Faraway Eyes In Mind
A YouTube film clip of Jimi Hendrix performing the Stars-Spangled Banner at Woodstock,
circa 1969. Yeah, I know that is way after the time of this sketch and of our
graduation but is there any better evocation of the national anthem for our
generation than sweet boy Jimi’s?
Probably like in your growing up
neighborhoods during the 1950s some group put together a Fourth of July event
for kids and adults alike in order to rightly celebrate American independence
in a festive form. That was true in the old Atlantic neighborhood in the 1950s
where my junior high school friend Frankie Riley held forth. Also where I held
forth, although indirectly. I did not know Frankie then since my family lived
down in the Germantown projects for most of that decade but we would come up to
Atlantic where my grandparents lived on Young Street on the Fourth from a very
early age. So, once again, this is mainly a Frankie Riley story but it
definitely could have been mine as well.
I should note Frankie did not remember a lot of specific information about
those days and so he went on to a North Quincy-related site asking for
information which he received and has been placed here as part of the sketch. Frankie
did not ask permission to use names so I have fictionalized them here. If you
have anything else to add please feel free to comment.
********
Frankie, Frankie Riley, couldn’t quite
remember exactly when he heard his first Fourth of July fire-cracker, or seen
and heard his first fireworks for that matter. He got it all mixed and confused
together with his recollections of two-bit carnival times, which also included,
at least sometimes, setting off fire-crackers or fireworks displays. But it
must have been early, very early, in his life at a time when he, and his mother
and father and two brothers, two brothers just then, would visit his
grandparents’ house on the Fourth coming down from Walker Street. And the
beauty of where those grandparents lived was that it was a bee-line directly
across the street from Welcome Young Field on Sagamore Street. Sagamore Street
of now blessed memory.
One thing Frankie was sure of though as
he thought about Sagamore Street days was that he was going to need help in
relating the details of what happened because, frankly, he was confused and
mixed up about more than just when he first saw and heard fire-crackers and
fireworks displays. But for just that moment he was going to fly on his own.
And while depending on his own memories, such as they were, he also knew, knew,
flat-out what he wasn’t going to be talking about. Nix, to the tattoo of
marching drums, some yankee doodle threesome all bed-sheet patched up from
wounds suffered at the hands of the bloody British but still carrying, carrying
proudly, the brand new American flag all aflutter, and tattooing that beat up
drum and playing the fife to kingdom come. That was standard fare at these
Fourth celebrations but that battered patriot thing was not his Fourth,
although he had to admit it might have been somebody’s.
No also to an overblown description of
some Hatch Shell Fourth, streams of humanity stretched out as far as the eye
could see along the Charles River, sweating in the July suns, searching for
cool, for water, for shade against the madness and waiting, patiently or
impatiently as the case may have been, for the night cools, and the big boom
symphony Overture of 1812 finale. Again, frankly, that was not his
thing, although he knew just by the numbers that it was certainly somebody
else’s. And while he was at it he would not go on and on about the too quickly
over fireworks displays the directly succeeded that big boom overture. All of
that, collectively, was too much noise, sweat, heat, swelter, and just plain
crowdedness for what he wanted to remember about the Fourth. Instead he wanted
to lower the temperature a little, lower the noise more, and lessen the
logistics, the picnic basket, cooler, blankets, umbrellas, child’s toys
logistics, and return to those Sagamore streets of his 1950s youth when Welcome
Young Field in North Quincy’s Atlantic
section (why it was called that particular name he never really did get except
Sagamore Street Grandma Riley always called it one-horse Atlantic so it had to
mean something) was the center of the universe, and if not, it should have
been.
Frankie knew that, probably like in
your neighborhood in the old days, every year in late June the local older
guys, mainly guys from the Red Feather and some scattered fathers, including
Joseph Riley, Senior, Frankie's father and denizen of the Red Feather, would
put together a kitty, collecting contributions and seeking donations from local
merchants to put together a little “time” for the kids on the 4th of July. Now
this Dublin Grille was the favored watering hole (and maybe the only one close
enough to be able to “drop in for glass” and also be able to walk home
afterwards when that glass turned into glasses) for all the working-class
fathers in the neighborhood. And nothing but a regular hang-out for all the
legions of single Irish guys who were still living at home with dear, sweet
mother. Said mother who fed (and fed on time), clothed, darned socks, holy
socks worn out from hard living on the Welcome Young softball field, and
whatnot for her son (or, more rarely, sons) who was too afraid of woman, or a
woman’s scorn at late night Dublin Grille antics, to move out into the great
big world. But come late June they, the fathers and occasional older brothers,
were kings among men as they strong-armed neighbors and merchants alike for
dough and goods.
What Frankie was not clear on (and he was
looking for help here) was the details of the organization of this
extravaganza, how the money was gathered, what merchant provided what goods,
where did the lads get the various Fourth fixings. However he could surely
speak to the results. As these things go it was pretty straight forward, you
know; foot races of varying lengths for various age groups, baby contests,
beauty contests, some sort of parade, pony rides and so forth. But that is only
the frame. Here is the real story of the day. Here is what any self-respecting
kid lived and died for that day:
Tonic (you know, soda, pop) and ice
cream. And not just one tonic or one ice cream but as much as you could hoard.
Twice during the day (Frankie thought maybe about 10:00AM and 1:00PM) there
would be what one can only describe as a free-for-all as everybody scrambled to
get as many bottles of tonic (you know, soda) and cups of ice cream as they
could handle. Here is the secret to the success that Frankie’s older brothers, Joseph
and Tommy, and he had in grabbing much more than their fair share of the
bounty. Go back to that part about where Grandma and Grandpa lived. Yah, right
on the corner of Welcome Young Field on Sagamore Street. So, the trio would
sprint with one load of goods over to their house and then go back for more
until they had filled up the back-door refrigerator.
Just thinking about it now Frankie
thought, “Boy that was work, as we panted away, bottles clanking in our
pockets, ice cream cups clutched in every hand.” But then, work completed, they
could savor their one tonic (read: soda) and one ice cream cup that they showed
for public consumption just like the nice boys and girls. There were other
sounds of the day too like the cheering for your friends in the foot races, or
other contests, the panting and the hee-haws of the ponies. As the sun went
down it went down to the strains of some local pick-up band of the era in the
tennis court as the dancing started. But that was adult time. Our time was to
think about our day's work, our hoard and the next day's tonic and ice cream.
Ah....
Frankie’s call for
remembrance help was heeded. Below is the traffic, mostly unedited, giving
other information about those Atlantic Fourth of July celebrations.
Richard Mackey:
Frankie it was, like you said,
organized by the guys at the Dublin Grille, guys like my father and yours, and
my older brother, Jimmy, in his thirties at the time, who, as you also said,
was afraid to go out in the world and lived at home forever with dear, sweet mother
(and she was sweet, too sweet). He never married, never missed a softball game,
never had a dirty, unsown sock, or missed a free glass of beer (Pabst Blue
Ribbon, if you remember that brand). Jimmy and his buddies, his softball
buddies, did a lot of the leg work when he was younger and then they kind of
took over the show as the older guys, like my father and yours, had too much to
do or something and handed it over to them.
They had a truck, maybe rented or maybe
from one of the grocery stores, with a loud speaker that would go up and down
the streets and had some of the older kid (15 or 16 years old ) going door to
door for donations. I don’t know about the strong-arming part, but maybe.
Probably not the neighborhood families so much as the merchants. Remember those
were hard-nosed corner boys days and Jimmy was a serious corner boy when things
got tight. I know Jimmy used to “set up” his buddies at the bar a lot during
that collecting time and he never worked all that much.
The day [Fourth of July] started at
around 8:00 am and ended with the talent show in the tennis court. I think Mr.
Burke won every year that I can remember for his "crazy legs dancing.” Joe
Gilliam, who worked at Estrella’s Market on Newbury Ave, was part of the group
that set the whole celebration up. He was a friend of Jimmy’s as well so maybe
that is where they got the tonic and ice cream from. The last one I remember
was around 1975, because I had my oldest son there.
Frankie Riley:
That Joe Gilliam Richard Mackey mentioned lived, with his dear
sweet Irish-brogued mother, forever, never married, never missed a softball
game, never had a dirty, unsown sock, and never missed a free beer
(Knickerbocker, if you remember that brand) directly across the street from my
grandparents, Daniel and Anna Riley, on Sagamore Street. That house is the
place where we stashed our loot (the tonic and ice cream). Joe, when he worked
for Estrella's, would also take my grandfather, disabled from a stroke and a
retired North Adamsville fireman, riding around with him when he delivered
orders. My grandfather was a, to be kind, difficult man to deal with so Joe
must have had some charm.
Sticky Fingers McGee:
The earliest recollection I have of the
July 4th festivities at Young Field was when I returned to Atlantic in July
1945, when I was six, after being away for a couple years. I seem to remember
that they had foot races and other activities. I remember running one of the
races which was close between me and another kid, Spider Jones. They declared
Spider the winner, but I threw a fit. Nothing big, just a little shoving, no
fists or anything like that. It was just a race, okay. I still think that I won
that race and if they had had proper equipment like a camera for photo finishes
at the finish line I could have proved that I won. After writing that last
thing I guess I still haven’t yet learned to take a loss gracefully but like I
said the camera would not have lied.
Later, in the 50's maybe, I remember
hearing a girl who sang like Theresa "Tessie" Brewer at the Young
Field tennis courts. I think somebody said she was the sister of one Joseph
“Babe” Baldwin (Class of 1958) who later became one of North's best all-round
athletes. That's all I remember of the Atlantic 4th celebrations, and I'm not
totally sure of the accuracy of those memories. The years continue to cloud
some memories.
Frank Riley:
Sticky, glad to see you haven’t
mellowed with age, at least according to fellow class-mate Jimmy Callahan.
Jimmy says hello and to tell you that Spider Jones had you by a mile in that
race. He was right at the finish line when you exploded. (He says you did punch
Spider, by the way). As for the forget memories part we all know that
well-traveled path. Although your memory for some flea-bitten thirty-yard dash
for some crumb-bum dollar prize gives me pause on that one.
Irene Devlin:
Hi
Back in the 50's the first 9 1/2 years
of my life was on the top floor of a three-decker on Sagamore St., and Welcome
Young was where we spent every day. We all waited for the Fourth. Richard
[Mackey] is right about the truck. My grandfather, George Kelley, and my uncles
would ride on the back of the flatbed truck going up and down the streets
playing their musical instruments while others collected donations. We would
throw change to the people collecting. On the big day we would line up early in
the morning with our costumes on. Buddy Dunne and Elliot Thompson had a lot to
do with getting everything together along with a lot of the guys from the
Dublin Grille. On our way down Sagamore Street from Newbury Ave heading to
Welcome Young everyone would get a shiny quarter for marching. I do remember
going to Harry’s Variety Store (later owned by my Uncle Harry Kelley) for free
ice cream and "tonic."
The rest of the day would be filled
with games and shows, and yes the tennis court would be converted to a stage
for the day and night activities.
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