***As The  50^th Anniversary Year Of The High School Class Of 1964 Rolls Along… “Forever Young” (Magical Realism 101)-Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

…an old man bundled up against the December weathers begins his eternal run along the Adamsville Beach shoreline, weather he has fought all his New England-born life, fought tooth and nail in some never-ending recreation of the man against nature epic that has stirred his life, weathers gone from ancient Maine shoreline, York Beach maybe, or Ogunquit, zero degree, forty-mile an hour winds blowing him hither and yon almost into the waiting arms of the steely white-capped Atlantic Ocean, the ocean from whence he came in his primordial chronology, to vapid spectral-like sweats in blown wind Death Valley and every weather in between but the seasonal weathers of his native New England worthy of the measure of his struggles.

This day, another windy, raw early winter shoreline run day and hence full gear against the elements, sweat pants (although they are not like in his youth actually called that name when you purchase them at some City Sport’s store, there they are called running togs to add to the glamour of the futile task, futile in the cosmic eternal never-ending fight against one’s own mortality), clad also with the classic running shorts of youth (although of less flimsy material than then which required a jockstrap to keep one’s male private parts private) outside of the togs in order to give him a look like the young studs do like to wear, except he will not let those shorts bag halfway down his ass like them and impede his running stride), a black tee-shirt, black now to comply with the royal command from his sweet bread lady companion ( and another as well from his new mistress but that conquest is a story best left for another time) that he like some Steve Job’s Job figure looked good in black. So black it is, and for him, for his vanity a tee-shirt not the old-time favored vee-neck in order to hide that turkey gobbler neck that not only women complain about and fear(think the late Nora Ephron please). A light-weight rain jacket that had done yeoman service on more rainy and windy days than that poor begotten jacket deserved, the AARP age-appropriate ubiquitous New Balance running shoes (complete with doctor-recommended re-enforced arch supports to cushion the hard blows of the asphalt he usually ran on, those damn supports acting like some metaphor to his life’s blows now in need of cushioning-no such luck in that department), and all of this topped off this day with an old seaman’s naval cap that had seen better days. Had seen days in stormy seas (on real oceans and in love’s unrequited oceans), had been on freighters to South America, had kept him out of harm’s way when those big gales blew hard and fast up in Maine, kept him from him from frostbite in Adirondack hills in zero degree weather and snow drifting hard. Yes, he is bundled up against the weathers this day.  

The old man had to laugh when he would yell out to his companion as he went out the door that he was going for a run (same if he was with that new mistress who we decided we would not speak of here). Run, who was he kidding, no, better, jog/shuffle these days, these days since the knee-replacement which has determined the stride he can reasonably take limited his range (or not take which what the orthopedist had ordered, no running, reason; how do you think you got that knee got in that condition, that bone rubbing against bone condition, in the first place. But the old man was never good at taking orders from anybody from parents to drill sergeants to well-meaning doctors, not when running, ah, jogging just made him feel good when lots of other things failed to do so.)

Who was he kidding again it was not just the knee problem, it was the age problem, or rather the age problem catching up with him, the years of drugs, cigarettes, and high and low- end whiskies, which had shrunken his stride so let’s call it jogging and be done with it. The shuffle part is that infernal beginning where he, tortoise-like, starts with baby steps in order to gauge his stride. A sight not worth seeing and a reason what normally he preferred, unlike this day, to run at dawn and in private. This day however he was running not at his usual pond runaround near his home but across town, across Boston, along his childhood growing up shoreline at Adamsville Beach. See he was on a mission, of sorts, a remembrance mission which these days always started with the old beach since most of the old hometown significant spots were gone, and all of his family ties been cast off.

His purpose this day to think through some thoughts provoked by the hard cold fact that in the upcoming year, in 2014, he would be commemorating his 50^th anniversary since graduation from old North Adamsville High and he was flooded with thoughts of the old days (aided by that new mistress who was an old classmate that he had connected with through a class website established by the reunion committee which was planning the reunion event in the fall of 2014). Despite some incessant badgering by that mistress/classmate to go to the reunion (and equal amounts of badgering by his long-time companion not to go) he was extremely hesitant to do so having had many bad childhood memories of the old town which he would have to work through.

So there he was as he began his run along the Causeway end of Adamsville Beach (by the CVS, formerly the First National, if you have not been in the old town in a while for those classmates who might read this sketch on that class website), huffing and puffing, head down and this day full of thoughts triggered by his up-coming 50^th anniversary class reunion. Thinking just then through those first huffs and puffs, arms pushing him forward, before his breathe got a little steadier as he picked up his stride of the irony of running along a section of his old high school cross-country course. The old course starting from the Squantum Street side of the high school down through Bayview Road and onto Adamsville Shore Boulevard that he was now jogging on up Atlantic Boulevard to Atlantic Street cutting over to Newbury and back where the course started, in the old days back with a sprint, of sorts. The course that he had run completely a few months before in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of his last run for the old cross-country team (yeah he was that sort of guy, a symbolic guy, old age or young).

As the old man passed Bayview Street into the heart of the beach anchored by the two yacht clubs, the North Adamsville Yacht Club and The Adamsville Boat Club, he thought about how this was where he and his companion, Brad Badger, futilely hung out, knowing that throughout history, summer school vacation history the only kind of history that counted on that beloved beach, that was where the frails, foxes, chicks, babes whatever you called them back in your generation day hung out (knowing too that those names were just familars for young women but what did he know then, or maybe care since all of them, all the boys full of hormonal lusts just wanted them to notice - and as he found out later they-those frails, foxes, chicks, babes, whatever just wanted to be noticed). The old man settling into his slow ponderous but determined pace laughed when he thought about how many ways his and boy, Brad, tried to get to first base and were rejected out of hand for what-being too poor, too raggedly, too-car-less or too plain to make the cut. Jesus, a lot of things he would like to over again, go back in time and redo, or better age to, but not that sixteen and sex hungry madness.

But that shuttered thought passed now, like it did when he got older and found that young women liked him, liked him for his smarts, his off-beat sardonic humor, and his ingrained sense of irony. As he ambled along  the old man began  thinking too of those mist of times Adamsville Beach days when he longingly looked out at the sea, its mucks, its marshes, hell, even it fetid smells and mephitic stinks, as if it could solve some riddle of existence. Found himself as fond of the old beach as the first time that he saw it as a very young child and his parents took him and brothers for a cheap workingman’s visit, complete with one of those too infrequent family barbecues over on Treasure Island (not its real name, not now anyway but what he, and every kid that he knew called the place).

Found that fondness still held him in its thrall although he had travelled many more beautiful beaches (thinking of Big Sur, much on his mind these days what with re-reading recently Jeanbon Keroauc’s Big Sur and remembrances of sweet Midwestern Angelica days when the sound of their love was drown out at Big Sur by the cascading crashing white-flecked wave, thinking too of LaJolla, Malibu, Acapulco and a hundred other delight beaches). And many more fierce beaches as he noted the tepid waves splashing lazily to the waiting shore (thinking of that time up in Nova Scotia when all hell broke loose and the sea almost washed him and his sweetie of the time whose name he could not remember off the rock they had placidly been sitting on or that really dangerous wind-swept night off the rocky beach at Scoodic Point up in Maine.

Thinking too now that he approached the mile mark on his journey of times when he was young and flexible and if not fast then able to run the distance in about half the time it would take him on this day. The days when he would run, run out of the house, run over on some sultry sweaty summer night to the oval at the high school and run until he was exhausted just to get that forty-two pounds of teen angst and alienation out of his system, run beyond exhaustion when he had some off-hand beef with his late mother.  Here was the ironic part, ironic this day when he just couldn’t seem to get a head of steam and the pace was slow-ish in the old days, the days when he ran for the high school red and black, the days when he was either good or horrible (not knowing until later that allergies kicking in accounted for some of the bad days). His fast, state championship fast,  running friend back then, Brad, said he had "the slows," well okay Brad had a point, then. What would his old long missing friend say to the pace this day.  

As he settled into a pace for his second mile (the length from the Causeway to Adams Shore was 2.7 miles one way and of course he was going round trip so a little over five miles altogether he began thinking about hanging out places in the old neighborhood, places like Harry’s Variety over on Sagamore Street trying to cadge pin-ball games from the rough and tumble corner boys (very rough and tumble led by Red Kiley, his cousin who gave no quarter and expected none when he and his corner boys went up against some other corner or did their midnight creep to keep them in clover); hanging  out at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor with his own corner boys led by  his be-bop daddy Frankie Riley known since junior high begging girls to play some latest song on the jukebox (and learning a very useful skill back then when he sweet- talked some girl into playing his song selections on her quarter); and, hanging out on sweaty summer nights on the front steps of North, no money in pocket, with that same Brad Badger, also penniless, speaking of dreams, small dreams of escape and big puffed-ball cloud dreams of success (success in getting out from under the frantic respective houses where the noise level of perdition started at one hundred decibels, success in getting out of the too small for big dreams North Adamsville night, success in working for oneself, for putting together some small independent contractor dream).

Remembering too, an old man’s harmless flash remembering, of standing in high school corridors (hell, junior high corridors if the truth be known) between classes day-dreaming of, well, you know, certain now nameless girls (okay, okay first names Diana, Joyce, Ruth, Cindy, Mary Beth, Joyell did I forget anybody), of giving furtive glances to a few which they totally ignored.  The art of the glance, the perfect glance, being of course a quick flash of the eyes and slight turn of the head as that certain she passed by and then turnaround to see if she turned around. Thinking too of how he had given that mistress/classmate many furtive glances which she totally ignored. And when the glances did not work with her how he surreptitiously checked out to see if she was “going steady” and told in no uncertain terms by guys he respected and to give him good intelligent in the matter that she was “unapproachable” (finding out only now that her home-life was so bad she just put on the ice queen act to keep from having to deal with any outsiders. But that was another story).

And remembrances of sitting in classes, maybe some dank seventh period study hall, wondering about what would happen Friday night when he and his corner boys cruised Adamsville  Beach looking, looking beyond hope it seemed for some girl to give him some small glance. HoJo’s on the strip a must stop on hot summer nights, make his cherry vanilla when he busted out, the Southern Artery (Marley’s, Pisa’s Tower of Pizza, Adventure Car-Hop, not the real names but memory fails), and in a pinch going “up the Downs” to Doc’s Drugstore, looking, looking for adventure, looking for some magic formula to wipe away the teen angst and alienation blues that crept up on him more than was good for him. Those flash thoughts got him through those next miles and back.

But get this, get this sweaty resolve. No, no way in hell, was he going to recreate that youthful bummer  by going to that reunion, somebody come by and smack him if he did (he would have to offer that mistress a trip to California in lieu, or some such arrangement, maybe let her go to the reunion by herself…                   

...an old woman begins to walk along the Adamsville Beach shoreline from the Adams Shore end having parked her car in the parking lot at what is now Creely Park named after some fallen Marine but when she was a child, when she still lived in the town called by every kid she knew Treasure Island the site of her too few family picnics while growing up. (Jesus, better not say that old woman thing, make that a mature woman, better yet to avoid any misunderstanding in a world, her world, where she had taken pains to prove her worth let’s just leave it at “a woman.”) She too bundled up against the December weathers, windswept weathers that she normally would not be out in not caring to challenge nature on its own turf, although she too knew of high gust Rocky Mountain white-outs, fast drifting snow weather, and ice patches too making four-wheel drive the beginning of wisdom; knew sea weather from sunny, sultry to wind-splashed against a too human seawall that she could barely see now across the bay from where she was walking having grown up as nature’s own “girl on the rocks,” the sea the only respite from holy hell father’s wrath and mother’s indifference, and from sullen hurricane swirls when she had lived on the islands with that second husband who promised the moon and she paid  weathers. So she too New England born and bred and from ancient Anglo-Saxon stock was no stranger to the wraths of Mother Nature, and the pleasures too when she relents.

Today she is bundled up in the seemingly obligatory AARP-worthy running suit fit for walkers too (bought at sensible store Kohl’s although she, having defied all the odds and predictions of failure that ran through her head and made a success of herself, made herself her own woman, for a long time could have afforded the upscale clothing fashionable among the yoga set before they enter the yoga state), the sensible walking shoes that she was required to wear ever since that foot operation a few years before required sensible shoes (in truth she always wore sensible shoes, under that same frugal rule of buying what was less expensive, if serviceable, practiced at that down at the heels household that she grew up in where everything was hand-me-downs from older beauty sister until she got too big to wear sister’s stuff and had to frugal buy at discount stores), a sleeveless purple vest (purchased on-line from L. L. Bean up in Maine a number of years before and while not fashionable still in good condition to face today’s weathers), and on her head a ski mask, well not a ski mask but a skullcap with eye slits that could be used for that purpose (or she chuckled when Frank made fun of her- for a bank robbery) if the weather got fierce that an ex-husband (not Frank the first one, Harry) had left behind.

Suitably dressed she walked, haltingly due to those poor feet which required a bit of slow step walking to work out the kinks, haltingly, but with head up (proper posture just like her mother taught her long ago was necessary for proper girls, proper girls seeking worthy husbands just like mother’s  mother had taught her back to it seemed some colonial times their name long-standing in North Adamsville although the family fortunes had been dissipated by a spendthrift father and so she of thrift, she of Kohl’s, she of sensible shoes), along Adamsville Beach from the Adams Shore end thinking thoughts triggered by her up-coming 50^th class reunion. So this day she walked if haltingly with purpose, with a thrill that come next fall she would once again be going to a class reunion to rekindle old North Adamsville memories usually held in the back of her mine between times.

Thinking thoughts this day about now nameless old flames and what had happened to them. Okay, okay names, Dave, Dave of the junior prom and some silly stuff after (and Dave of sad memorial over near the marina his named etched there as a town fallen in that hellish Vietnam War that wreaked her generation, name etched too in black marble down in Washington) , John, who wound up with Penny and married for fifty years now (he of that first attempted kiss but he gave up just when she was ready the next time and so she was called around the school “unapproachable),” Rich who lost interest way before she did (her first serious “crush” and the subject of many Monday morning before school lies in that mandatory girls’ lav talkfest), some guy whose name she could not remember, damn she could not remember, who gave her furtive glances in the hallway between classes and who always turned around after he passed her to see if she looked back, silly boy, didn’t  he know she was “unapproachable” (due not only to John disappointment but to that wickedly bad home-life which she wanted no one, absolutely no one, including her best girlfriend to know about) 

Funny too creeping in thoughts of old time flames about that first kiss sitting in the back seat of her girlfriend's boyfriend's  car with him, some old flame now also un-nameable (she had only dated him a couple of times and he was not from North so she absolved herself from not remembering but that hallway guy she should have remembered since they had gone to the same schools together for six years), at this very beach and about, she blushed as she thought of it, that first French kiss and how she felt awkward about it. Blushing as she thought about how her new flame (she refused to call him her boyfriend, Jesus, at their ages no way that sounded right, no way its sounded anything other than about sixteen year old school stuff and so flame, or in public “companion”), her new flame who she went to school with back in the day but who she did not know then reacted with a funny remark about how he wished it had been him back then when she mentioned the French kiss thing, made her feel nice when he commiserated with her on her plight.

Later in her walk, as she pulled her vest collar up as the wind stiffened, thoughts flashed by, funny thoughts, emerged about all the lies she told about those same steamy nights just to keep up with the other girls at talkfest time -the mandatory Monday morning before school girls '"lav" talkfest, boys had theirs' too she found out from a later flame after high school. Laughing now but then not knowing until much later that the other girls too were lying just to keep up with her. And of all the committees she had been on; dance committee (and she did not even go to her senior prom since, well, since no one asked her thinking she was all dated up, jeez); North Star (when she thought she was going to be a journalist rather than the professor she eventually became), Magnet (for another chance to write), whatever would keep her busy and make her a social butterfly. (And as she confessed to new flame since he was kindred to keep away from home as long as possible without father wraths for being late.)

Then a mishmash of  thoughts flooded her mind as she passed Kent Park near the now vanished bowling alleys of the girls’ bowling team and wondering, now wondering, why they kept the boys’ team separate (remembering too how she liked it, liked the sexy thrill of it when a boyfriend, a corner boy although she did not know that at the time and when she did she dumped him before her punitive father found out, took her to the Downs Bowling Lanes known as a hang-out for corner boys, drop-outs, drifters and midnight creepers, and for some back rooms where hanky-panky went on and drinking too although she timid refused his offer to take her back there); of reading in that cranky old Thomas Crane Public Library up the Square where she first learned to love books and saw them as a way to make a success of herself and had done so (falling in love with Russian novels, long drawn out and romantic novels with plenty of characters and action to fill her lonely got-to-get- out- of- the- house hours when her father was home afternoons-thinking it funny when her new flame started rattling off all the Russian names, rattling off the whole history of the Russian revolutions and of his mad monk hero the much vilified old Leon Trotsky murdered down in Mexico by some crazed Stalinist assassin); and, of hot sweltering  summer afternoons with the girls down at the beach trying to look, what did Harry call it, “beautiful,” for the guys, blushing when guys called her beautiful but refusing them when they asked for dates, innocent dates they called them (and she shy refusing to wear a bikini for fear that she was showing too much, fear too that her father might see her in that skimpy outfit and take a fit, or whatever he felt like doing).                

Somewhere between the Adamsville Boat Club and the North Adamsville Yacht Club the old man and the woman (you know who I mean) crossed paths. He, she, they gave each other a quick nod of generational solidarity and both thought they knew the other from some place but couldn’t quite place where. She had half a thought that they might have gone to high school together from the furtive glance he gave her (all slightly ajar eyes and tilt of the head her way) but he did not turn around when she turned her head to look at him jogging into the distance figure.  He thought he might have known her from over at Harvard when he took courses there for his master’s degree since she looked like one of those proper Yankee woman that populated the place, still do, and that despite his Irish mother’s warnings he was fatally attracted to but he was too unsure to give a second glance back.

Of this though there was no doubt. After they passed each other the old man’s pace quickened for a moment as he heard a phantom starter’s gun sounding the last lap of some race and the woman’s walk became less halting as she thought once again about that first kiss (whether it was the French kiss that stirred her we will leave to the reader’s imagination) as each reflected back to a time when the world was fresh and all those puffed-cloud dreams of youth lay ahead of them.        

Forever Young-lyrics by Bob Dylan 

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

Copyright © 1973 by Ram's Horn Music; renewed 2001 by Ram’s Horn Music

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !

Local Events

Hi Kevin, Although we have let you know about some of these opportunities before, we trust a reminder is okay.  As always, we edit for brevity. - JVP Boston As the cease-fire breaks down and the bombings resume, Boston continues to stand in solidarity with Gaza.  See below for upcoming events. Sunday, August 17 Special Report from the Occupied Territories 6 PM - Potluck 7 PM - Presentation Newton, MA Call Joan Ecklein at 617 244 8054 for directions(leave message.) Dear Kevin, Please join Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston at the upcoming events listed below. Note the Mass March for Gaza this coming Monday as well as the August 17th talk in Newton. Please let people you know in Newton and Brookline about this opportunity. --- Mass March for Gaza Monday, August 11 at 5:30pm City Hall Plaza, Boston a growing list of co-sponsors With over 1900 Palestinians killed already in the Israeli assault on Gaza, please join us in a march of solidarity with the Palestinian people to demonstrate against the US government's enabling role in the massacre, including the $3 billion in aid every year as well as its unconditional political support for the land siege and naval blockade that renders Gaza as the world's largest "open air prison." The march will also target Hewlett Packard (HP), one of the companies complicit in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and hence a target for the Palestinian called - and led - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Besides providing numerous  services to the IDF, HP developed and maintains the automated biometric access management system that controls the movement of Palestinians and specifically Palestinian workers through checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. Read more about HP at http://wedivest.org/c/57/hp#.U-I9UfldXGA. We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will then move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the rally and march begins around 5:30pm. https://www.facebook.com/events/812176275483913/ --- Special Report from the Occupied Territories                                 Sunday, August 17, 6:00 Potluck; presentation at 7:00. Newton. Call Joan Ecklein at 617 244 8054 for directions(leave message.) Cosponsored by: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Newton Dialogues on Peace and War, UJP Palestine Task Force, Massachusetts Peace Action "The Gaza  Crisis and Growing Palestinian Resistance: a First-hand view from the West Bank," A talk by Nora Murad. Nora has lived in the Occupied Territories for more than ten years and has close contacts with youth  in Gaza.  She was in Ramallah this July during the Israeli attack. She is a co-founder of the Dalia Association on the West Bank; Dalia provides material aid directly to community projects formulated and organized by local people. She has extensive first hand knowledge of the impact of the Occupation and grass roots resistance to it. She is also well connected to Gaza residents struggling to survive under horrific conditions. Nora is a writer and mother living in Palestine. Her blog: "The View From My Window in Palestine" (www.noralestermurad.com) addresses issues of development, international aid, and daily life under military occupation. Before she moved to Palestine in 2004, Nora was assistant professor of cross-cultural understanding at Bentley College. --- Jewish Voice for Peace Boston: Gathering Sunday, August 17th, 6-8 PM Make Shift Boston, 549 Columbus Ave Sad and angry about the news from Gaza?  Looking for ways to respond? In this time of mourning, action, and solidarity, join with JVP Boston to hear updates and plug into our work for Gaza in the short and long term.  Pizza will be provided, and we’ll end in a community mourning ritual. Both new and longtime activists welcome. Please RSVP Here With Sorrow and Resolve, Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston Contact Info: Jewish Voice for Peace 1611 Telegraph Ave, Suite 550 Oakland, CA 94612 510.465.1777 info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org Connect with Us: Become a 2014 JVP Member | Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | Forward Subscribe to our blog Muzzlewatch

Unsubscribe

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BostonUNAC" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bostonunac+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

No New U.S. War In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!  Stop The Bombing!

 

 

Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !

Monday In Boston: March for Gaza! End the Israeli Siege, No more US Tax Dollars, Boycott, March on HP

WE DEMAND:

• End the Israeli Siege of Gaza
• No more US tax dollars for Israel
• Boycott, Divestment  and Sanctions
• Join US to March on HP and let them know Occupation is a Crime

Hewlett Packard makes billions off the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

• HP supplies computers to the Israeli army, and manages  the Israeli Navy’s IT infrastructure, which has been criticized  for war crimes.
• HP manufactures and maintains  a computer system of Israeli biometric  ID cards (with fingerprints, retinal and facial data), which are labeled  with ethnicity and nationality. IDs are used to control  movement of Palestinians  going to and from work in Israel and even between their own villages.

The rally will start at the US Federal building in Boston to call for an end to US aid to Israel; the US a major supplier of weapons and money.  The march will proceed through downtown Boston to the Westin Hotel near the waterfront convention center, where Hewlett Packard is sponsoring a convention for HP employees.  Hewlett Packard is a major supplier of Israel and enabler of the occupation.
Sponsored by Boston BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), Jewish Voice for Peace Boston, United for Justice with Peace, Northeastern University Students for Justice in Palestine, Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Boston Alliance for Water Justice, Suffolk Law National Lawyer’s Guild, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, International Socialist Organization - Boston, Communist Party of Boston, Massachusetts Peace Action
Download the flyer as a PDF. 

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner -Wilfred Owen's The End  

The End

After the blast of lightning from the east,

The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;

After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,

And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,

Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth

All death will he annul, all tears assuage?-

Or fill these void veins full again with youth,

And wash, with an immortal water, Age?

When I do ask white Age he saith not so:

'My head hangs weighed with snow.'

And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:

'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.

Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,

Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.'

On The 40^th Anniversary Of The Resignation Of One Richard M. Nixon-Hunter S. Thompson's Songs Of The Doomed  

Markin comment on one Richard Milhous Noxious (oops-Nixon):

In politics, hard bourgeois politics, one needs a very high degree of amnesia in order to survive the crooked deals, the humiliating compromises, and the desperate need to trim around the edges of political opponents because who knows who you might need for your own deals, compromises and trimmings. History has been kinder to one Richard Milhous Nixon than he ever desired, kinder due to the above characteristics of bourgeois politics and its companion, revisionist history, by those who were old-time opponents and those who are younger who knew not what a truly treacherous and dangerous man he was, to friend and foe alike. That said, anybody who wants to “rehabilitate” that man should consult the series of articles that the late Hunter S. Thompson, “Doctor Gonzo,” wrote for Rolling Stone and which can be found in the compilation entitled The Great Shark Hunt before writing or uttering word one on the subject. Of course for me, and others, at the time the idea of impeachment for Nixon was not enough. What a number of us were calling for in those days, those 1974 days when the man was going under by virtue of his own hubris, was that he be tried by the victims of his massive bombings of Vietnam and other places in Southeast Asia. That would have been real justice and the right verdict of history on the man.  

***********

BOOK REVIEW

Songs Of The Doomed, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Pocket Books, New York, 1990

“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.

I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson’s career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time lines and for mass circulation media these pieces show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.

One should note that ‘gonzo’ journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way.

As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. His articles beginning in 1968 when Nixon was on his never ending “comeback” trail to his demise in the aftermath of the Watergate are required reading (and funny to boot). Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the ‘dark side’ of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.”

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel -Rally In Boston-Monday August 11th-City Hall Plaza-5:30 

 

 

PLEASE SEND TO YOUR LISTS -  THANKS Ann

We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.

Mass March for Gaza

As the Israeli assault on Gaza enters a month, with over 1900 Palestinians killed already, join us in a march of solidarity with the Palestinian people to demonstrate against the US government's enabling role in the massacre, including the $3 billion in aid every year as well as its unconditional political support for the land siege and naval blockade that renders Gaza as the world's largest "open air prison."

The march will also be targeting Hewlett Packard (HP), as one of the companies complicit in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and hence a target for the Palestinian called - and led - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Besides providing numerous other services to the IDF, HP developed and maintains the automated biometric access management system that controls the movement of Palestinians and specifically Palestinian workers through checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.

We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts 

 City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.

British solidarity with Palestinians

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !

Sunday, August 10, 2014

British solidarity with Palestinians

150,000 rally for Gaza in London on 9 August 

London sees its biggest ever demonstration in support of Palestinians - on solidarity in Egypt, see also this piece 'The road to Jerusalem goes through the Arab capitals - and it's a two-way street' by Hossam El-Hamalawy in Cairo.  Even today in Leeds, amidst torrential weather conditions, despite the fact that the planned demonstration had been postponed to next week, I was able to take this picture of a few brave souls who had turned up anyway to say 'Free Palestine!' 

Labels: Palestine

Woody Guthrie Lives....

 

 

 

In The 74^th Anniversary Year Of The Assassination Of Great Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky A Tribute- DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED-THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1929-1940

 

LEON TROTSKY AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, PART I

BOOK REVIEW

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1923-25), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975

If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.

Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.

Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.

While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the trio. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor (from an analogy with the period of the French Revolution where the radical regime of Robespierre and Saint Just was overthrown by more moderate Jacobins) and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.

The most important document in this volume is clearly and definitely Trotsky’s Lessons of October. Although there are a couple of other documents of interest- The New Course, his program to try to bring the agrarian and the industrial crisis into focus-and The Problems of Civil War- Trotsky’s contribution to the so-called “literary discussion” in the party far outdistances those documents in importance. When this document hit the press there was definitely gnashing of teeth by the ruling trio in the Kremlin- Why? Lessons of October is essentially a polemic against fainted-hearted, opportunist failure to appreciate both the rarity of a revolutionary moment and the necessity to have a sharp combat- tested organization to take advantage of that situation. Moreover, this polemic was a direct attack on Zinoviev and Kamenev for their position against insurrection at the time of revolution and on Stalin’s March, 1917 call for political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government.

George Bernard Shaw once called Trotsky the “Prince of Pamphleteers” and he certainly earns that title in Lessons of October. Alas, those who write the best polemics do not necessarily win the power. Those 200,000 plus politically immature or careerist new party members beholding to the increasingly Stalinist bureaucracy drafted under the “Lenin Levy” saw the writing on the wall differently. That was decisive. Nevertheless, Lessons of October is not just any political document- it is an essential document for the education of today’s militants. It bears reading, re-reading, and reading again. I know I always get something new out of it each time I read it.
*********

In Honor Of Leon Trotsky On The 74^th Anniversary Of His Death- For Those Born After-Ivan Smirnov’s Journey

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Ivan Smirnov came out of old Odessa town, came out of the Ukraine (not just plain Ukraine like now but “the” then), the good black earth breadbasket of Russian Empire, well before the turn of the 20^th century (having started life on some Mister’s farm begotten by illiterate but worthy and hard-working peasant parents who were not sure whether it was 1880 or 1881 and Mister did not keep very good records up in the manor house) although he was strictly a 20^th century man by habits and inclinations. Fashioned himself a man of the times, as he knew it, by developing habits favored by those who liked to consider themselves modern. Those habits included a love of reading, a love of and for the hard-pressed peoples facing the jack-boot (like his struggling never- get-ahead parents) under the Czar’s vicious rule, an abiding hatred for that same Czar, a hunger to see the world or to see something more than wheat fields, and a love of politics, what little expression that love could take even for a modern man stuck in a backward country. 

Of course Ivan Smirnov, a giant of a man, well over six feet, more like six, two, well-build, solid, fairly muscular, with the Russian dark eyes and hair to match, when he came of age also loved good food when he had the money for such luxuries, loved to drink shots of straight vodka in competition with his pals, and loved women, and women loved him. It is those appetites in need of whetting that consumed his young manhood, his time in Odessa before he signed on to the Czar’s navy to see the world, or at least  brush the dust of farmland Ukraine and provincial Odessa off his shoes as the old saying went. Those loves trumped for a time his people love (except helping out his parents with his wages), his love of liberty but as we follow Ivan on his travels we will come to see that those personal loves collided more and more with those larger loves. 

So as we pick up the heart, the coming of age, coming of political age, Ivan Smirnov story, he was no kid, had been around the block a few times. Had taken his knocks on the land of his parents (really Mister’s land once the taxes, rents, and dues were taken out) when he tried to organize, well, not really organize but just put a petition of grievances, including the elimination of rack-rents to Mister which was rejected out of hand and which forced him off the land. Forced him off under threat to his life. He never forgot that slight, never. Never forgot it was Mister and his kind that took him away from home, split his family up. So off he went to the city, and from there to the Black Sea Fleet and adventure, or rather tedium mixed with adventure and plenty of time to read.

Ivan also learned up close the why and wherefores of modern warfare, modern naval warfare. Knew too that come some minor confrontation the Czar’s navy was cooked.  As things worked out Ivan 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). And so Ivan came of war age and political age all at once.

More importantly after that debacle he applied for, and had been granted a transfer into in the Baltic fleet, the Czar’s jewel and defending of citadel Saint Petersburg, headquartered at later famous Kronstadt  when the revolution of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. Most seaman had gone over the rebels or stood on the sidelines, the officers mainly played possum with the Czar. He had gone wholehearted with rebels and while he did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over. That was where his love of reading from an early age came in, came and made him aware of the boiling kettle of political groupings trying to save Russia or to save what some class or part of a class had an interest in saving Russia for their own purposes. He knew, knew from his dismal experience on the land, that Mister fully intended to keep what was his come hell or high water. He also knew that Mister’s people, the peasantry like his family would have a very hard time, a very hard time indeed bucking Mister’s interests and proclaiming their own right to the land all by themselves. Hadn’t he also been burned, been hunted over a simple petition.

So Ivan from the first dismissed the Social Revolutionary factions and gave some thought to joining the Social Democrats. Of course being Russians who would argue over anything from how many angels could fit on the head of a needle to theories of capitalist surplus value that party organization had split into two factions (maybe more when the dust settled). When word came back from Europe he had sided with the Mensheviks and their more realistic approach to what was possible for Russia in the early 20^th century. That basic idea of a bourgeois democratic republic was the central notion that Ivan Smirnov held for a while, a long while, and which he took in with him once things got hot in Saint Petersburg in January of 1905.       

That January after the Czar’s troops, his elite bloody Cossack troops in the lead, fired on (and sabre-slashed) an unarmed procession led by a priest, damn a Russian Orthodox priest, a people’s priest who led the icon-filled procession to petition the Czar to resolve grievances, great and small, Ivan Smirnov, stationed out in the Baltic Fleet then after the reorganization of the navy in the wake of the defeat by the Japanese the year before had an intellectual crisis. He knew that great things were going to unfold in Russia as it moved into the modern age. He could see the modern age tied to the ancient agrarian age every time he had leave and headed for Saint Petersburg with its sailors’ delights of which Ivan usually took his full measure. He could see in the city within a city, the Vyborg district, the growing working-class district made up of fresh recruits from the farms looking for higher wages, some excitement and a future.

That was why he had discarded the Social Revolutionaries so quickly when in an earlier generation he might very well have been a member of People’s Will or some such organization. No, his intellectual crisis did not come from that quarter but rather that split in the workers’ party which had happened in 1903 far from Russia among the émigré intellectuals around who was a party member. He had sided with the “softs,” the Mensheviks, mainly because he liked their leader, Julius Martov, better than Lenin. Lenin and his faction seemed more intent on gaining organizational control, had more hair-splitters which he hated, and were more [CL1] wary of the peasants even though both factions swore faith in the democratic republic for Russia and to the international social democracy. He had sided with the “softs” although he saw a certain toughness in the Bolshevik cadre that he admired. But that year, that 1905 year, had started him on a very long search for revolutionary direction.           

The year 1905 had started filled with promise after that first blast from the Czarist reaction. The masses were able to gather in a Duma that was at least half responsible to the people, or to the people’s representatives. At least that is what those people’s representatives claimed. More importantly in the working class districts, and among his fellow sailors who more likely than not, unlike himself, were from some strata of the working class had decided to set up their own representative organs, the workers’ councils, or in the Russian parlance which has come down in the  history books the soviets. These in 1905, unlike in 1917, were seen as supplementary to other political organizations. As the arc of the year curved though there were signs that the Czarist reaction was gathering steam. Ivan had trouble organizing his fellow sailors to action. The officers of his ship, The Falcon, were challenging more decisions. The Potemkin affair brought things to a head in the fleets. Finally, after the successes of the Saint Petersburg Soviet under the flaming revolutionary Leon Trotsky that organ was suppressed and the reaction set in that would last until many years later, many tough years for political oppositionists of all stripes. Needless to say that while Ivan was spared the bulk of the reprisals once the Czarist forces regained control his career in the navy was effectively finished and when his enlistment was up he left the service.       

Just as well Ivan that things worked out as they did he had thought many times since then because he was then able to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think. Think and go about the business of everyday life like marriage to a woman, non-political but a comfort, whom he met through one of his fellow workers on the Neva quay and who would share his home and life although not always understanding that part of his life or him and his determination to break Russia from the past. In those days after 1905, the dogs days as everybody agreed, when the Czar’s Okhrana was everywhere and ready to snatch anyone with any oppositional signs Ivan mostly thought and read, kept a low profile, did as was found out later after the revolution in 1917, a lot of low-level underground organizing among the dockworkers and factory workers of the Vyborg district. In other words developing himself and those around him as cadre for what these few expected would be the great awakening. But until the break-out Lena River gold-workers strike in 1912 those were indeed dog days.     

 

 

And almost as quickly as the dog days of the struggle were breaking the war clouds over Europe were increasing. Every civilized nation was arming to the teeth to defend its civilization against the advancing hordes pitched at the door. Ivan could sense in his still sturdy peasant-bred bones that that unfinished task from 1905, that fight for the land and the republic, hell maybe the eight hour day too, was going to come to a head. He knew enough too 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.  Glad he had learned enough to earn a hearing, to spread the word.     

As the war clouds came to a head 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. 

Jesus, thought Ivan once the Czar declared his allegiance to the Entente, once he had gotten the Duma to rubber-stamp his war budget (except for a remnant of the Bolsheviks who were readied for Siberian exile), he could not believe that Plekhanov, the great Plekhanov, the father of the Marxist movement in Russia and mentor to the likes of Lenin, Martov, Dan, hell even flea-bitten free-lancer Trotsky, had declared for the Czar for the duration and half of Ivan’s own bloody Menshevik party had capitulated (the other half, the leadership half had been in exile anyway, or out of the country for some reason) this was going to be hell.

There would be no short war here, no quick victory over the land hungry Huns, nothing but the stench of death filling the air overcoming all those mobilization parades and the thrown flowers, the kissed girls, the shots of vodka to fortify the boys for the run to the front. The Czar’s house, double eagles and all was a house of cards or rather of sawdust like those villages old rascal Potemkin put up to fool Catherine in her time. Most of the peasant boys marching to the front these days would never see Mother Russia again, never get to smell the good Russian earth. Yes but if he had anything to say about it those who survived, those who would have to listen if not now ten sometime, would have their own piece of good Russian earth unlike their fathers who toiled on the land for Mister’s benefit for nothing. And went to early graves like his father.

And so in the summer of 1914 as if led by blinders Europe, along with solid phalanxes of its farm boys and factory workers, went to bloody stalemated war.

Went without Ivan just that minute declared too old to fight and relegated to the home guard. There would come a day, a day not too long in the future when the “recruiting sergeants” would be gobbling up the “too old to fights,” like Ivan the lame and the halt, any man breathing to fill the depleted trenches on the Eastern front. By then though Ivan would have already clamored to get into the ranks, get in to spread the new wave message about the meaningless of the fight for the workingman and the peasant and that the fight was at home not out in the trenches. But that was for the future, the music of the future. Ironically Ivan’s unit wound up guarding the Peter Paul Fortress for the Czar.  The same place that would see plenty of action when the time for action came.

The home guard was a loose operation, especially in Saint Petersburg, which entailed not much more than showing up for guard duty when the rotation called your turn and an occasion drill or assembly. The rest of the time, or most of it, Ivan spent reading, reading clandestinely the sporadic anti-war materials that were being smuggled in from various point in Europe by whatever still free exiles groups had enough gall and funds to put together those first crude sheets proclaiming the new dispensation. Ivan had time to think too during those first eighteen months or so of war. Thought about how right he had been that this “glorious little war” would not be over soon, would devour the flower of the European youth and if enough lived long enough chance the face of half-monarchial Europe. Thought about how, when, and where street organizers like him (he admitted long ago that he was not a “theory man” would get an opening to speak to the troops in order to end the mounting slaughter and the daily casualty lists.

 

 

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel -Rally In Boston-Monday August 11th-City Hall Plaza-5:30 

 

 

PLEASE SEND TO YOUR LISTS -  THANKS Ann

We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.

Mass March for Gaza

As the Israeli assault on Gaza enters a month, with over 1900 Palestinians killed already, join us in a march of solidarity with the Palestinian people to demonstrate against the US government's enabling role in the massacre, including the $3 billion in aid every year as well as its unconditional political support for the land siege and naval blockade that renders Gaza as the world's largest "open air prison."

The march will also be targeting Hewlett Packard (HP), as one of the companies complicit in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and hence a target for the Palestinian called - and led - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Besides providing numerous other services to the IDF, HP developed and maintains the automated biometric access management system that controls the movement of Palestinians and specifically Palestinian workers through checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.

We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts 

 City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.

No New U.S. War In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!  Stop The Bombing!

 

 

Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.