This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Another Philip Marlowe Passes-James Garner At 86
James Garner, Witty, Handsome Leading Man, Dies at 86
James Garner, the wry and handsome leading man who slid seamlessly between television and the movies but was best known as the amiable gambler Bret Maverick in the 1950s western “Maverick” and the cranky sleuth Jim Rockford in the 1970s series “The Rockford Files,” was found dead of natural causes at his Los Angeles home on Saturday night, the police said. He was 86.
Mr. Garner, who smoked for most of his life, even after open-heart surgery in 1988, had suffered a stroke in 2008.
He was a genuine star but as an actor something of a paradox: a lantern-jawed, brawny athlete whose physical appeal was both enhanced and undercut by a disarming wit. He appeared in more than 50 films, many of them dramas — but as he established in one of his notable early performances, as a battle-shy naval officer in “The Americanization of Emily” (1964) and had shown before that in “Maverick” — he was most at home as an iconoclast, a flawed or unlikely hero.
An understated comic actor, he was especially adept at conveying life’s tiny bedevilments. One of his most memorable roles was as a perpetually flummoxed pitchman for Polaroid cameras in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in droll commercials in which he played a vexed husband and Mariette Hartley played his needling wife. They were so persuasive that Ms. Hartley had a shirt printed with the declaration “I am not Mrs. James Garner.”
His one Academy Award nomination was for the 1985 romantic comedy “Murphy’s Romance,” in which he played a small-town druggist who woos the new-in-town divorced mom (Sally Field) with a mixture of self-reliance, grouchy charm and lack of sympathy for fools.
Even Rockford, a semi-tough ex-con (he had served five years on a bum rap for armed robbery) who lived in a beat-up trailer in a Malibu beach parking lot, drove a Pontiac Firebird and could handle himself in a fight (though he probably took more punches than he gave), was exasperated most of the time by one thing or another: his money problems, the penchant of his father (Noah Beery Jr.) for getting into trouble or getting in the way, the hustles of his con-artist pal Angel (Stuart Margolin), his dicey relationship with the local police.
“Maverick” had been in part a sendup of the conventional western drama, and “The Rockford Files” similarly made fun of the standard television detective, the man’s man who upholds law and order and has everything under control. A sucker for a pretty girl and with a distinctly ’70s fashion sense — he favored loud houndstooth jackets — Rockford was perpetually wandering into threatening situations in which he ended up pursued by criminal goons or corrupt cops. He tried, mostly successfully, to steer clear of using guns; instead, a bit of a con artist himself, he relied on impersonations and other ruses — and high-speed driving skills.
Every episode of the show, which ran from 1974 to 1980 and more often than not involved at least one car chase and Rockford’s getting beaten up a time or two, began with a distinctive theme song featuring a synthesizer and a blues harmonica and a message coming in on a newfangled gadget — Rockford’s telephone answering machine — that underscored his unheroic existence: “Jim, this is Norma at the market. It bounced. Do you want us to tear it up, send it back or put it with the others?”
In his 2011 autobiography, “The Garner Files,” written with Jon Winokur, Mr. Garner confessed to having a live-and-let-live attitude with the caveat that when he was pushed, he shoved back. What distinguished his performance as Rockford was how well that more-put-upon-than-macho persona came across. Rockford’s reactions — startled, nonplused and annoyed being his specialties — appeared native to him.
Mr. Garner came to acting late, and by accident. On his own after the age of 14 and a bit of a drifter, he had been working an endless series of jobs: telephone installer, oil field roughneck, chauffeur, dishwasher, janitor, lifeguard, grocery clerk, salesman and, fatefully, gas station attendant. While pumping gas in Los Angeles, he met a young man named Paul Gregory, who was working nearby as a soda jerk but wanted to be an agent.
Years later, after Mr. Garner had served in the Army during the Korean War — he was wounded in action twice, earning two Purple Hearts — he was working as a carpet layer in Los Angeles for a business run by his father. One afternoon he was driving on La Cienega Boulevard and saw a sign: Paul Gregory & Associates. Just then a car pulled out of a space in front of the building, and Mr. Garner, on a whim, pulled in. He was 25.
Mr. Gregory, by then an agent and a theatrical producer, hired him for a nonspeaking part in his production of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” which starred Henry Fonda, John Hodiak and Lloyd Nolan. It opened in Santa Barbara and toured the country before going to Broadway, where it opened in January 1954 and ran for 415 performances. Mr. Garner said he learned to act from running lines with the stars and watching them perform, especially Fonda, another good-looking actor with a sly streak.
“I swiped practically all my acting style from him,” he once said.
Mr. Garner claimed to have stage fright and no desire to act in the theater. He later played Lieutenant Maryk (the Hodiak role) in a touring company of the play that starred Charles Laughton, but afterward would almost never appear onstage again. Still, it was the serendipitous stop on La Cienega that changed his life.
“The only reason I’m an actor is that a lady pulled out of a parking space in front of a producer’s office,” he wrote in “The Garner Files.”
James Scott Bumgarner was born in Norman, Okla., on April 7, 1928. His paternal grandfather had participated in the Oklahoma land rush of 1889 and was later shot to death by the son of a widow with whom he’d been having an affair. His maternal grandfather was a full-blooded Cherokee. (Mr. Garner would later name his production company Cherokee Productions.)
His first home was the back of a small store that his father, Weldon, known as Bill, ran in the nearby hamlet of Denver. His mother, Mildred, died when he was 4. When he was 7, the store burned down and his father left James and his two older brothers to be raised by relatives; when his father remarried, the family reunited, but James’s stepmother was abusive, he said in his memoir, and after a violent episode at home, he left.
He worked in Oklahoma, Texas and Los Angeles, where his father finally resettled. He went briefly to Hollywood High School but returned to Norman, where he played football and basketball, to finish. In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, he was drafted.
Mr. Garner’s first Hollywood break came when he met Richard L. Bare, a director of the television western “Cheyenne,” who cast him in a small part. That and other bit roles led to a contract with Warner Bros., which featured him in several movies — including “Sayonara” (1957), starring Marlon Brando and based on James Michener’s novel set in Japan about interracial romance — and sliced the first syllable from his last name.
His first lead role was in “Darby’s Rangers” (1958) as the World War II hero William Darby, a part he was given after Charlton Heston walked off the set in a dispute with the studio over money. At about the same time he was cast as the womanizing gambler Bret Maverick, the role that made him a star.
Alone among westerns of the 1950s, “Maverick,” which made its debut in 1957, was about an antihero. He didn’t much care for horses or guns, and he was motivated by something much less grand than law and order: money. But you rooted for him because he was on the right side of moral issues, he had a natural affinity for the little guy being pushed by the bully, and he was more fun than anyone else.
“If you look at Maverick and Rockford, they’re pretty much the same guy,” Mr. Garner wrote. “One is a gambler and the other a detective, but their attitudes are identical.”
In a Maverick-like (or Rockford-like) move, Mr. Garner left the series in 1960 after winning a breach-of-contract suit against Warner Bros. over its refusal to pay him during a writers’ strike. He did not return to series television for a decade.
He found steady work in movies, however. In “The Children’s Hour” (1961), an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play, he played a doctor engaged to a schoolteacher (Audrey Hepburn) accused of being a lesbian. He appeared uncomfortable in that earnest role, but he was winning and warm in “The Great Escape” (1963), the World War II adventure about captured Allied fliers plotting to break out of a German prison camp, as Bob Hendley, the resourceful prisoner known as the Scrounger.
In 1964 he starred with Julie Andrews in “The Americanization of Emily,” which he called his favorite of all his films. He played the personal attendant of a Navy admiral, a fish out of water and the voice of the movie’s pacifist point of view.
Written by Paddy Chayefsky, it included perhaps the longest and most impassioned speech of his career: “I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham,” he said, in part. “It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.”
In 1966, he starred as an avenging frontier scout in the violent western “Duel at Diablo” and as a high-speed driver in “Grand Prix,” a film that sparked his interest in auto racing. He drove in the Baja 1000 off-road race several times, and he drove the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 in 1975, 1978 and 1985.
He also appeared in romantic comedies, including three in 1963: “The Thrill of It All” and “Move Over, Darling,” both with Doris Day, and “The Wheeler Dealers,” opposite Lee Remick. There was also a comic western, “Support Your Local Sheriff” (1969), and a follow-up, “Support Your Local Gunfighter” (1971). Other notable films included “Victor/Victoria” (1982), in which he was reunited with Ms. Andrews and played a man who falls in love with a woman even though she has been masquerading as a man.
Mr. Garner was often injured on the job; during the Rockford years, he had several knee operations and back trouble. More seriously, in 1988, he had a quintuple bypass operation, which cost him his job as spokesman for the beef industry.
After surgery, he made a vigorous return to work. He appeared in the television films “My Name Is Bill W” (1989), starring James Woods as a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and “Barbarians at the Gate” (1993), based on the best-selling book about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco; in “My Fellow Americans” (1996), a comic adventure in which he and Jack Lemmon played feuding former presidents who find themselves framed by the sitting president and end up together on the lam; and in the romantic film “The Notebook” (2004).
He also reprised his Rockford character in several television movies and appeared in the movie version of “Maverick” (1994) as Marshal Zane Cooper, a foil to the title character, played by Mel Gibson.
Of Mr. Garner’s other forays into series television, “Nichols” was said to have been his own favorite. A dark comic western set in Arizona in the early 20th century that was produced by Cherokee in 1971, it starred Mr. Garner as a retired soldier who becomes sheriff of his hometown. When NBC canceled it after one season, Mr. Garner was so incensed that he had his character killed in the final episode.
He later had recurring roles on a number of shows, including “Chicago Hope,” “First Monday” and “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter”; in the short-lived animated series “God, the Devil and Bob,” he was the voice of God.
Mr. Garner disdained the pretentiousness of the acting profession. “I’m a Methodist but not as an actor,” he wrote in “The Garner Files.” “I’m from the Spencer Tracy school: Be on time, know your words, hit your marks, and tell the truth. I don’t have any theories abut acting, and I don’t think about how to do it, except that an actor shouldn’t take himself too seriously, and shouldn’t try to make acting something it isn’t. Acting is just common sense. It isn’t hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.”
Nor did he sit still for the dog-eat-dog business side of Hollywood. In the early 1980s he again sued his employer, this time Universal, which he accused of cheating him out of his share of profits on “The Rockford Files.” Universal settled the case in 1989, reportedly paying him more than $14 million.
Mr. Garner, a lifelong Democrat who was active in behalf of civil rights and environmental causes, always said he met his wife, the former Lois Clarke, in 1956 at a presidential campaign rally for Adlai Stevenson, though in “The Garner Files” Mrs. Garner said they had actually met at a party earlier. She survives him, as do their daughter, Greta, known as Gigi; and Mrs. Garner’s daughter from a previous marriage, Kimberly.
Persuasively ambivalent as a hero of westerns, war movies and detective stories, Mr. Garner’s performances may have reflected his feelings about his profession.
“I was never enamored of the business, never even wanted to be an actor, really,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “It’s always been a means to an end, which is to make a living.”
Correction: July 20, 2014 An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the co-author of James Garner’s 2011 autobiography, “The Garner Files.” He is Jon Winokur, not Vinokur. It also erroneously included a survivor. Mr. Garner’s brother Jack died in 2011.
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
for July 4th-singing John Lennon-against blind patriotism
by Michael Borkson
03 Jul 2014
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The American Way
Hi peaceful people, For all of you who can't get into the blind patriotism of July 4th and the wars it causes, my cover of the many covered song "Imagine": http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12845039
Some relevant quotes: Ben Franklin-"there has never been a good war or a bad peace". Thomas Jefferson-"when the people fear the government, there is tyranny-when the government fears the people, there is liberty". British philosopher Samuel Johnson, 1775-"patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". let's all celebrate freedom from war and social injustice- the real freedom, Michael Borkson Boston, Mass.(the birthplace of the revolution)
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
"Defend the Palestinians" - Protests Across Europe Oppose the Israeli War Machine
by Leftist
10 Jul 2014
Protests sweep across Europe against Israeli aggression . Thursday, 10 July 2014 13:24
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Concerned people in a number of European cities have staged peaceful protests against Israel's aggression in the Gaza Strip, which so far has resulted in the killing of several dozen Palestinians, Felesteen newspaper reported.
In Spain, the Palestine Solidarity Forum organised a protest in Madrid, during which the participants appealed to Israel to immediately stop its aggression against the Gaza Strip. The protesters read out a statement reminding the international community that 9 July marked the tenth anniversary of the International Court of Justice's decision on the Apartheid Wall erected by Israel inside the occupied Palestinian territories, declaring it illegal.
The protestors demanded "to freeze the partnership agreement between Israel and the European Union; to abolish all forms of military and security cooperation; and to stop all Spanish companies' activities in Israel to avoid becoming a war criminal".
In Barcelona, a pro-Palestine group organised a similar protest attended by several representatives of political parties and nearly a thousand people, who all condemned the Israeli raids on Gaza. The protestors demanded a stop to all forms of cooperation between the city's autonomous authority and Israel over the latter's "aggressiveness".
The Spanish Foreign Ministry has warned its citizens planning to travel to Israel or Palestine to take full caution.
Meanwhile, nearly a hundred people organised a protest in front of the European Parliament's headquarters in Brussels to condemn the continued Israeli attacks. The protesters declared that, "the Israeli actions, including random shelling without any distinction between civilians or military personnel and the killing of children and women, are war crimes which Israeli officials should be tried for."
The protesters chanted slogans against Israel, including "Israel is a terrorist" and "Boycott Israel", and appealed to the governments of the European Union and Belgium to take rapid political action to stop Israeli's aggression against Gaza.
In Istanbul, the Palestine Solidarity Association organised a similar protests in Oglu Beck Street, waving Turkish and Palestinian flags. The organisers said that the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are being killed in cold blood.
Similar protests have also been held in London, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Glasgow, Derry, Galway, Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin, The Hague, Athens, Valencia, Rome, Turin, Florence and Geneva, with many more protests planned in the coming days. A selection of photographs of the protests across both Europe and North America are being published on the website of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
The Israeli Air Force launched on Tuesday multiple raids on different parts of the Gaza Strip, so far resulting in the killing of at least 77 Palestinians, including women and children, and nearly 500 being injured, according to Palestinian medical sources.
On Israel-Palestine and BDS - Choose Effective Tactics - Noam Chomsky
by Noam Chomsky
14 Jul 2014
Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.
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The misery caused by Israel’s actions in the occupied territories has elicited serious concern among at least some Israelis. One of the most outspoken, for many years, has been Gideon Levy, a columnist for Haaretz, who writes that “Israel should be condemned and punished for creating insufferable life under occupation, [and] for the fact that a country that claims to be among the enlightened nations continues abusing an entire people, day and night.”
He is surely correct, and we should add something more: the United States should also be condemned and punished for providing the decisive military, economic, diplomatic and even ideological support for these crimes. So long as it continues to do so, there is little reason to expect Israel to relent in its brutal policies.
The distinguished Israeli scholar Zeev Sternhell, reviewing the reactionary nationalist tide in his country, writes that “the occupation will continue, land will be confiscated from its owners to expand the settlements, the Jordan Valley will be cleansed of Arabs, Arab Jerusalem will be strangled by Jewish neighborhoods, and any act of robbery and foolishness that serves Jewish expansion in the city will be welcomed by the High Court of Justice. The road to South Africa has been paved and will not be blocked until the Western world presents Israel with an unequivocal choice: Stop the annexation and dismantle most of the colonies and the settler state, or be an outcast.”
One crucial question is whether the United States will stop undermining the international consensus, which favors a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized border (the Green Line established in the 1949 ceasefire agreements), with guarantees for “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.” That was the wording of a resolution brought to the UN Security Council in January 1976 by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, supported by the Arab states—and vetoed by the United States.
This was not the first time Washington had barred a peaceful diplomatic settlement. The prize for that goes to Henry Kissinger, who supported Israel’s 1971 decision to reject a settlement offered by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, choosing expansion over security—a course that Israel has followed with US support ever since. Sometimes Washington’s position becomes almost comical, as in February 2011, when the Obama administration vetoed a UN resolution that supported official US policy: opposition to Israel’s settlement expansion, which continues (also with US support) despite some whispers of disapproval.
It is not expansion of the huge settlement and infrastructure program (including the separation wall) that is the issue, but rather its very existence—all of it illegal, as determined by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice, and recognized as such by virtually the entire world apart from Israel and the United States since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who downgraded “illegal” to “an obstacle to peace.”
One way to punish Israel for its egregious crimes was initiated by the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom in 1997: a boycott of settlement products. Such initiatives have been considerably expanded since then. In June, the Presbyterian Church resolved to divest from three US-based multinationals involved in the occupation. The most far-reaching success is the policy directive of the European Union that forbids funding, cooperation, research awards or any similar relationship with any Israeli entity that has “direct or indirect links” to the occupied territories, where all settlements are illegal, as the EU declaration reiterates. Britain had already directed retailers to “distinguish between goods originating from Palestinian producers and goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements.”
Four years ago, Human Rights Watch called on Israel to abide by “its international legal obligation” to remove the settlements and to end its “blatantly discriminatory practices” in the occupied territories. HRW also called on the United States to suspend financing to Israel “in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements,” and to verify that tax exemptions for organizations contributing to Israel “are consistent with U.S. obligations to ensure respect for international law, including prohibitions against discrimination.”
There have been a great many other boycott and divestment initiatives in the past decade, occasionally—but not sufficiently—reaching to the crucial matter of US support for Israeli crimes. Meanwhile, a BDS movement (calling for “boycott, divestment and sanctions”) has been formed, often citing South African models; more accurately, the abbreviation should be “BD,” since sanctions, or state actions, are not on the horizon—one of the many significant differences from South Africa.
Defend Palestinians Against Zionist Onslaught on Gaza!
by Spartacist
15 Jul 2014
Israel Out of the Occupied Territories!
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Workers Vanguard No. 1049 - 11 July 2014
Israel’s latest terror bombing of its Gaza concentration camp.
To those at the helm of Zionist Israel, their repeated attacks on Gaza are just “mowing the grass,” a “sort of maintenance,” as a former military commander put it. Indeed, the current assault, a projected long-term offensive dubbed “Operation Protective Edge,” is standard procedure for the rulers of capitalist Israel, a Zionist garrison state founded on the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
The pretext for the current wave of Zionist terror was the June 12 abduction of three teenage yeshiva students hitchhiking in the occupied West Bank and the discovery of their bodies 18 days later. Although no evidence has been revealed about who committed the killings, Israel’s rulers effectively delivered a verdict of collective guilt on the Palestinian population. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out more than 2,400 raids on homes, medical offices and schools and arrested some 600 Palestinians, killing at least seven, while also bombing dozens of sites in Gaza prior to the current attack. Now, the mobilization of 1,500 infantry and police reservists and plans to call up an additional 40,000 IDF reservists threaten a major bloodbath of Palestinians. Meanwhile, most of impoverished Gaza’s ambulances will not be running due to lack of fuel and its hospitals have declared a state of emergency. The working class internationally must stand in defense of the besieged Palestinians against the Zionist terror machine!
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly declared the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas guilty of the killings of the three Israelis, even though Hamas, which runs Gaza, never claimed responsibility. As calculated, his pronouncement touched off a round of terror by fascistic West Bank settlers and other reactionary Jewish mobs directed against Israeli Arabs as well as Palestinians. The chauvinist frenzy culminated in the abduction and hideous murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir of East Jerusalem. Seized by ultra-Zionists on July 2, the youth was later found burned to death, touching off angry protests by Palestinians in the West Bank and in some Israeli cities that continue to rage. Anger was further stoked by a brutal police attack on Muhammad’s American cousin, 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir, at a protest in East Jerusalem.
The ever-expanding Zionist settlements in the West Bank have increasingly ghettoized the native Palestinian population, from the walls surrounding the territory to the “bypass roads” and military zones that are off-limits to them. The very existence of these settlements is a constant reminder to the Palestinians of their dispossession. All Israeli troops and settlers out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem!
Gaza is all but defenseless against the Zionist military juggernaut, sealed off by the sea and by its borders with Israel as well as Egypt, whose military regime is hostile to Hamas. While Hamas forces can at most launch crude rocket attacks, the Zionists are armed to the teeth, including with the Near East’s only nuclear arsenal. As Israeli forces bombed the Gaza ghetto from the air and sea, today’s Haaretz printed a statement by President Obama lauding the $3 billion annual U.S. military aid to the Zionist regime for “making Israel safer” and serving to “save lives.” With breathtaking cynicism, he went on to declare his support for the Palestinians’ “right to self-determination” while intoning that any Palestinian government must be pledged to “nonviolence” and recognition of Israel! In opposing its “own” capitalist rulers and their military alliances, the U.S. working class must oppose all U.S. aid to Israel. As supporters of just causes, we Marxists do not equate the violence of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressors.
We take a side militarily with Hamas against the Zionist terror campaign, while giving not the least political support to these Islamic reactionaries or to Palestinian bourgeois nationalism. We fight to bring the class axis to the fore. National emancipation for the Palestinians requires the proletarian overthrow of the Israeli capitalist rulers and also those of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, which are home to millions of Palestinians. The Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab populations are interpenetrated peoples, laying rival claims to the same territory. Under capitalism, the exercise of the national rights of one necessarily comes at the expense of the right of self-determination of the other. Only in a socialist federation of the Near East can conflicting claims over land and resources be equitably resolved, and all discrimination on the basis of language, religion and nationality be done away with.
Israel is a class-divided society, with workers exploited by the capitalist ruling class. The hard but necessary task of breaking through the chauvinism that poisons the consciousness of Jewish working people is not made any easier by the criminal, indiscriminate bombings carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian forces against Israeli civilians, which drive the Jewish population further into the arms of their rulers. What must be done is to forge revolutionary Marxist parties in Israel/Palestine and throughout the Near East, in opposition to all forms of nationalism and religious fundamentalism and committed to the struggle for socialist revolution on a world scale.
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
19 Jul - 200 Protest at Park Street - ``Stop the Israeli War Machine - Defend the Palestinians!``
by Frog Pond
19 Jul 2014
As the Israeli army targets the Gaza Ghetto - Boston protests.
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19 Jul - 200 Protest at Park Street -
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19 Jul - 200 Protest at Park Street -
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19 Jul - 200 Protest at Park Street -
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19 Jul - 200 Protest at Park Street -
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19 Jul - 200 Protest at Park Street -
Boston - Over two hundred people turned out to another of the almost daily demonstrations against the Israeli war on the Gaza Ghetto. Leftists, Muslims, Palestinian Americans, and others came together to voice support for the Palestinian people in the face of one of the most heavily armed military machines in the world. The defense of a defenseless people.
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
Bostonians March for End to Violence in Israel/Palestine
by Jewish Voice for Peace Boston
10 Jul 2014
Boston, MA - Hundreds of students, faith leaders, and activists from 15 local organizations marched today to protest Israel’s escalation of violence against Palestinians, citing 52 killed and 450 injured in Gaza in just the last two days. They picketed the downtown Boston locations of three companies they say are complicit in the violence: TIAA-CREF, Veolia, and Macy’s.
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Photo by Marilyn Humphries
At Park Street, Claire Gilbert from Grassroots International opened up the event by declaring that “The wrenching events unfolding in Israel and Palestine are not random; they are part of the system of occupation itself.”
The protest’s tone remained solemn in honor of the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost since mid-June. Karlene Griffiths, a pastor in formation in the United Church of Christ who recently returned from a delegation to Palestine, led a moment of silence and a reading of names. “We weep, we mourn, we move forward and we fight,” Griffiths said.
The crowd then marched to Macy’s, where they called for a boycott of Sodastream products produced in an illegal settlement, then to the Boston offices of Veolia Energy, whose parent company operates a light rail serving illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.
“Veolia is not above the law,” said Andre Francois of the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, who is working locally to oppose Veolia’s union-busting. “No more abuses in Palestine or Boston.”
The final stop was at the offices of pension fund TIAA-CREF, where the demonstrators called for disinvestment from companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and prison contractor G4S.
“As we all witnessed Israeli jets bombing Palestinian civilian areas this week, Israeli troops storming Palestinian refugee camps and cities, and the killing of Palestinian civilians, I am reminded how complicit the US government, US corporations, and American taxpayers are in the human rights abuses committed by Israel,” declared Thomas Abowd, a professor at Tufts University and a shareholder of TIAA-CREF.
National Week of Action calls for Divestment from Occupation
This demonstration was one of 15 taking place across the country as part of the “We Divest National Week of Actions,” marking the progress of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to hold Israel accountable for violations of Palestinian human rights.
Protesters held signs emblazoned with corporate logos of companies targeted by BDS, detailing their role in Israel’s occupation and victories of campaigns against them. One sign read, “Veolia dumps settlement waste on Palestinian land. In 2013, TIAA-CREF dumps Veolia from its social choice fund.”
Other speakers included Dina Jacir, a Palestinian-American co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine at Hampshire College; Holly Bicerano, a student at Boston University; Maria Peniche, an immigration activist who related her experience crossing the US/Mexico border to that of Palestinians; and Jason Lydon of the prison abolitionist organization Black and Pink, who condemned mass incarceration in the United States and in Israel.
Sponsoring organizations: American Friends Service Committee; Grassroots International; Jewish Voice for Peace Boston; United for Justice with Peace; National Lawyers Guild, Suffolk Law; Cambridge Bethlehem People to People Project, American Jews For A Just Peace; Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights; Boston Feminists For Liberation; Boston College Students for Justice in Palestine; Boston Alliance for Water Justice; First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain; Black and Pink; Ads Against Apartheid; Boston BDS
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
Copley Sqare: Hundreds Demonstrate to "Defend the Palestinians!"
by x
19 Jul 2014
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Hundreds of members of the “#Boston4Gaza” movement turned out in front of the library on Copley Square calling for an end to the Israeli assault. Signs and buttons expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people.
"Stop the Israeli War Machine!"
From a bullhorn one speaker addressed the crowd. “This is what’s come to the Jewish culture in Israel — we’ve lost our ground. We’ve lost our morals. We’ve lost our values and our humanity,” said Malkah Feldman of Cambridge. “I will do everything in my power to restore that humanity to the Jewish community.”
A ten miles away in Newton, Israeli supporters from across Greater Boston poured into the Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill to show their support. Some carried “Stand with Israel” signs and Israeli flags. The ceremony opened with the sound of a siren and Jewish Community Relations Council director Jeremy Burton reminding the audience that when that sound goes off in Israel, residents have seconds to take cover.
“Ladies and gentlemen, each of the 13,000 rockets and missiles fired at Israeli civilians by Hamas over the last nine years has been intended to kill innocent Israelis or injure innocent Israelis or terrorize innocent Israelis,” said Jeff Robbins of the Anti Defamation League New England. Others told of family members in Israel under siege and asked congregants for prayer.
“But sometimes praying isn’t enough,” said Suffolk Construction CEO John Fish. “These brutal attacks on innocent people are blatant acts of terror, and like any nation that inhabits this earth, Israel has every right to defend herself and her people from terrorism.”
..........
For its many supporters in the west, Israel is being unfairly singled out for criticism. As the country’s former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami angrily said to me in an interview for al-Jazeera English in 2013: “You are trying to turn Israel into a special case.”
According to the likes of Ben-Ami, there are much more vile regimes, and more violent groups, elsewhere in the world. Why pick on plucky Israel? What about the Chinas, Russias, Syrias, Saudi Arabias, Irans, Sudans and Burmas? Where are the protests against Isis, Boko Haram or the Pakistani Taliban?
There are various possible responses to such attempts at deflection. First, does Israel really want to be held to the standards of the world’s worst countries? Doesn’t Israel claim to be a liberal democracy, the “only” one in the Middle East?
Second, isn’t this “whataboutery” of the worst sort? David Cameron told those of us who opposed the Nato intervention in Libya in 2011: “The fact that you cannot do the right thing everywhere does not mean that you should not do the right thing somewhere.” Well, quite. And the same surely applies to criticism of Israel – that we cannot, or do not, denounce every other human-rights-abusing regime on earth doesn’t automatically mean we are therefore prohibited from speaking out against Israel’s abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. (Nor, for that matter, does the presence of a small minority among the Jewish state’s critics who are undoubtedly card-carrying anti-Semites.)
Trying to hide Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians behind, say, Syria’s barrel bombs, China’s forced labour camps or Russia’s persecution of gays won’t wash. After all, on what grounds did we “single out” apartheid South Africa in the 1980s for condemnation and boycott? Weren’t there other, more dictatorial regimes in Africa at the time, those run by black Africans such as Mengistu in Ethiopia or Mobutu in Zaire? Did we dare excuse the crimes of white Afrikaners on this basis?
Taking a moral stand inevitably requires us to be selective, specific and, yes, even inconsistent. “Some forms of injustice bother [people] more than others,” wrote Peter Beinart, the author of The Crisis of Zionism, in December 2013. “The roots of this inconsistency may be irrational, even disturbing, but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t act against the abuses they care about most.”
Third, Israel is “singled out” today, but by its friends and not just by its enemies. It has been singled out for unparalleled support – financial, military, diplomatic – by the western powers. It is indeed, to quote Ben-Ami, a “special case”.
Which other country is in receipt of $3bn a year in US aid, despite maintaining a 47-year military occupation in violation of international law? Which other country has been allowed to develop and stockpile nuclear weapons in secret?
Which other country’s prime minister could “humiliate” – to quote the newspaper Ma’ariv – a sitting US vice-president on his visit to Israel in March 2010, yet still receive 29 standing ovations from Congress on his own visit to the US a year later? And which other country is the beneficiary of comically one-sided resolutions on Capitol Hill, in which members of Congress fall over each other to declare their undying love and support for Israel – by 410 to eight, or 352 to 21, or 390 to five?
Indeed, which other country has been protected from UN Security Council censure by the US deployment of an astonishing 42 vetoes? For the record, the number of US vetoes exercised at the UN on behalf of Israel is greater than the number of vetoes exercised by all other UN member states on all other issues put together. Singling out, anyone?
Fourth, the inconvenient truth is that we in the west can happily decry the likes of, say, Assad or Ayatollah Khamenei yet we can do little to influence their actual behaviour. Have sanctions stopped Assad’s killing machine? Or Iran’s nuclear programme? In contrast, we have plenty of leverage over Israel – from trade deals to arms sales to votes at the UN. Israel is our special friend, our close ally.
Yet when Israel started bombing Gaza this month, claiming it was acting in response to incoming rocket fire and was trying to kill Hamas operatives, Cameron merely “reiterated the UK’s staunch support for Israel” and “underlined Israel’s right to defend itself”. And the hundreds of Palestinian dead? Didn’t they have a right to self- defence? There was not a word from our PM. This, ultimately, is the fundamental difference when it comes to comparing Israel’s abuses with those of other “rogue” nations. We single out Israel because, shamefully, we are complicit in its crimes.
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
Video/Photos-Boston Protests Israel War On Gaza
by anti-war guy
19 Jul 2014
Click on image for a larger version
Boston, Mass.-July 19, 2014: About 300 protesters turned out at Park St. in Boston today July 19 to speak out against Israel's brutal attack on Gaza's Palestinians. A very emotional and spirited protest with speakers on the plight of Palestinians,loud and energetic chants of "Free Free Palestine" and ending with a mock "die-in" with the names of some of the hundreds of Palestinians killed read aloud.There was a small handful of pro US/pro Israel hecklers there which the Boston police seperated from our demonstration. The protest today was sponsored by a wide coalition of Boston activists-Jewish Voices For Peace, UJP, ANSWER, Boston IAC, Committee For Peace And Human Rights, UNAC, as well as many others. Here are the video and photo links that I took today: Short 6 min. video: http://youtu.be/T9z0EQITxEE
Chelsea Manning to get sex change treatments at military lockup, not civilian prison
The Pentagon said Wikileaker Chelsea Manning will undergo some basic gender reassignment treatments while at Leavenworth instead of being moved to a federal civilian prison for her therapies.
-/AFP/Getty ImagesU.S. Army Private First Class Chelsea Manning has been seeking sex change treatments for a year.
Under Pentagon approval, national security WikiLeaker Chelsea Manning is set to start undergoing sex change treatments in military prison and won't be transferred to a civilian prison, officials said.
The transgender ex-intelligence analyst will begin receiving early-stage gender reassignment treatments at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where she's serving 35 years for leaking a trove of sensitive state secrets to the whistleblower site in 2010 and 2011.
The decision comes as federal prison officials said they were rejecting the U.S. Army's bid to move Manning to a civilian jail, where she would reportedly get better treatment for gender dysphoria.
The condition makes her feel as though she's a woman trapped in a man's body, she's said.
The treatments were likely to include psychological counseling and a loosening of jail regulations that would allow her to wear women's underwear.
Hormone treatments were also on the table — something Manning has asked for since announcing after her 2013 conviction that she wanted to live as a woman and be called Chelsea, not Bradley.
Leavenworth is an all-male prison.
The decision to treat the 26-year-old disgraced soldier, approved by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, raised questions about whether she would eventually be moved to a women's jail.
Earlier this year, the Army began working on a proposal to transfer Manning to a facility run by the Bureau of Prisons, which provides gender reassignment treatments. Army prisons don't offer such therapies.
Manning's request for the treatments was the first ever by a military inmate.
But Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, fought to keep her in the military prison, saying she wouldn't be safe in a civilian lockup.
Coombs praised the Army's decision to treat his client.
"It has been almost a year since we first filed our request for adequate medical care," Coombs told The Associated Press. "I am hopeful that when the Army says it will start a 'rudimentary level' of treatment that this means hormone replacement therapy." With News Wire Services
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning. Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to “make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison cell. I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden. The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers. Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process. Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning. Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to “make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison cell.