***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys-Harry's Variety

A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing his song Jersey Girl that formed part of the inspiration for this post.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Riding down the old neighborhood streets a while back, the old North Adamsville working class streets, streets dotted with triple-deckers housing multiple families along with close-quarter, small cottage-sized single family houses like the one of Tim Murphy’s own growing to manhood time in the early 1970s. He reflected as he drove on how little the basic structure of things had changed with the changing of the ethnic composition of those streets. Sure many of the houses had been worked on, new roofs, new siding, maybe a deck add-on for the ritualistic family barbecue (barbecues that his family on the infrequent occasions that they actually had one were taken at Treasure Island a picnic area that provided pits for the grill-less like his from hunger family on the site), maybe an add-on of a room if that home equity loan came through (or the refinance worked out). The lawns, manicured or landscaped like some miniature English garden, reflected some extra cash and care that in his time was prohibited by the needs to fix up the insides first or save money for emergencies like the furnace blowing out in mind-winter. In all the tradition of keeping up appearances as best you could had been successfully transferred to the new inhabitants (keeping up appearances being a big reason work was done back then in those old judgmental Irish streets, maybe now to for all he knew).

Whatever condition the houses were in, and a few as to be expected when there are so many houses in such a small area were getting that run-down feel that he saw more frequently back in the day by those not worried by the “keeping up appearances” ethos, the houses reflected, no, exclaimed right to their tiny rooftops, that seemingly eternal overweening desire to have, small or not, worth the trouble or not, something of one’s own against the otherwise endless servitude of days. Suddenly, coming to an intersection, Tim was startled, no, more than that he was forced into a double-take, by the sight of some guys, some teenage guys hanging, hanging hard, one foot on the ground the other bent holding up the infernal brick wall that spoke of practice and marking one’s territory, against the oncoming night in front of an old time variety store, a mom and pop variety from some extinct times before the 7/11 chain store, fast shop, no room for corner boys, police take notice, dark night.

Memory called it Kelly’s (as almost every local institution was called from that small dream of ownership and out of hard manual labor variety store to the Dublin Grille bar that transfixed many a neighborhood father, including his father Michael Murphy to the shanty born, or else had an Italian surname reflecting the other major ethnic group, and at times mortal enemies). Today the name is Chiang’s. From the look of them, baggy-panted, latest fashion footwear name sneakered, baseball cap-headed, all items marked, marked with the insignia (secretly, and with no hope of outside decoding) signifying their "homeboy" associations (he would say gang, meaning of course corner boy gang, but that word is charged these days and this is not exactly what it looked like, at least to the public eye, his public eye) they could be the grandsons, probably not biological because these kids were almost all Asians speckled with a couple of Irish-lookers, shanty Irish-lookers, of the ghost be-bop night guys that held Tim in thrall in those misty early 1970s times.

Yeah, that tableau, that time-etched scene, got Tim to thinking of some long lost comrades of the schoolboy night like the hang-around guys in front of Harry’s Variety several blocks away (Harry O’Toole, the most “connected” guy in the neighborhood after Jimmy Mulvey who ran the Dublin Grille, since he ran the local “book”), although comrades might not be the right word because he had been just some punk young kid trying to be a wannabe, or half-wannabe, corner boy and they had no time for punk kids and later when he came of age he had no time for corner boys being unlike his older brothers, Red and Digger, a serious student and not a hell-raiser like them giving Martha Murphy nothing but the miseries. (He gave Ma Murphy his own miseries later but that was when all of society, all youth nation society, was going through a sea-change and he just travelled in that stream to her angers and dismays, especially his wardrobe and physical appearance.)

Yeah, that scene got Tim to thinking of the old time corner boys who ruled the whole wide North Adamsville night (and day for those who didn’t work or go to school, which was quite a few on certain days, because most of these guys were between sixteen and their early twenties with very jittery school and work histories better left unspoken then, or else if you wanted to make something of it they would oblige you with some fists). Yeah, got Tim thinking about where the white tee-shirted, blue-jeaned, engineer-booted, cigarette-smoking, unfiltered of course (Luckies the “coffin nails” of choice, sneering (learned from watching, closely watching and repeatedly Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause at the retro- Strand Theater up on Main Street), soda-swilling, Coke, naturally, pinball wizards held forth daily and nightly, and let him cadge a few odd games when they had more important business, more important girl business, to attend to. Either a date with some hot “fox” sitting in some souped up car looking like the queen of the Nile or putting their girls to “work,” pimping them in other words. Tim had been clueless about that whole scene until much later, that pimping scene, he had just assumed that they were “easy” and left it at that. Hell he had his own sex problems, or really no sex problems although if he had known what he found out from Red and Digger he might have paid more attention to those “loose women.”

Yeah, Tim got to thinking too about Harry’s, old Harry’s Variety over there near his grandmother’s house (on his mother’s side, nee Riley) over there in that block on Sagamore Street where the Irish workingman’s whiskey-drinking (with a beer chaser), fist-fighting, sports-betting after a hard day’s work Dublin Grille was located. Harry’s was on the corner of that block. Now if you have some image, some quirky, sentimental image, of Harry’s as being run by an up-and-coming just arrived immigrant guy, maybe with a big family, trying to make this neighborhood store thing work so he can take in, take in vicariously anyway, the American dream like you see running such places now forget it. Harry’s was nothing, like he had said before, but a “front.” Old Harry, Harry O’Toole, now long gone, was nothing but the neighborhood “bookie” known far and wide to one and all as such. Even the cops would pull up in their squad cars to place their bets, laughingly, with Harry in the days before state became the bookie-of-choice for most bettors. And he had his “book”, his precious penciled-notation book right out on the counter. But see punk kid Tim, even then just a little too book-unworldly didn’t pick up on that fact until, old grandmother, Jesus, Grandmother Riley who knew nothing of the world and was called a saint by almost everybody, everybody but husband Daniel Riley when he was in his cups “hipped” him to the fact.

Until then Tim didn’t think anything of the fact that Harry had about three dust-laden cans of soup, two dust-laden cans of beans, a couple of loaves of bread (Wonder Bread, if you want to know) on his dust-laden shelves, a few old quarts of milk and an ice chest full of tonic (now called soda, even by New Englanders) and a few other odds and ends that did not, under any theory of economics, capitalist or Marxist, add up to a thriving business ethos. Unless, of course, something else was going on. But what drew Tim to Harry’s was not that stuff anyway. What drew him to Harry’s was, one, his pin ball machine complete with corner boy players and their corner boy ways, and, two, his huge Coca Cola ice chest (now sold as antique curiosities for much money at big-time flea markets and other venues) filled with ice cold, cold tonics (see above), especially the local Robb’s Root Beer that Tim was practically addicted to in those days (and that Harry, kind-hearted Harry, stocked for him).

Many an afternoon, a summer’s afternoon for sure, or an occasional early night, Tim would sip, sip hard on his Robb’s and watch the corner boys play, no sway, sway just right, with that sweet pinball machine, that pin ball machine with the bosomy, lusty-looking, cleavage-showing women pictured on the top glass frame of the machine practically inviting you, and only you the player, on to some secret place if you just put in enough coins. Of course, like many dream-things what those lusty dames really gave you, only you the player, was maybe a few free games. Teasers, right. But Tim had to just watch at first because he was too young (you had to be sixteen to play), however, every once in a while, one of the corner boys who didn’t want to just gouge out his eyes for not being a corner boy, or for no reason at all, would let him cadge a game while Harry was not looking. When he thought about it though, now anyway, Harry was so “connected” (and you know what he meant by that) what the hell did he care if some underage kid, punk kid, cadged a few games and looked at those bosomy babes in the frame.

Yeah, and thinking about Harry’s automatically got Tim thinking about Daniel (nobody ever called him that, ever) “Red” Hickey, the boss king of his schoolboy night at Harry’s. Red, the guy who set the rules, set the style, hell, set the breathing, allowed or not and when, of the place. He didn’t know if Red went to some corner boy school to learn his trade but he was the be-bop daddy (at least all the girls, all the hanging all over him girls, called him that) because he, except for one incident that Tim will mention below, ruled unchallenged with an iron fist. At least Tim never saw his regular corner boys Spike, Lenny, Shawn, Ward, Goof (yes, that was his name the only name Tim knew him by, and he liked it, that is Goof like his moniker), Bop (real name William) or the Clipper (real name Kenny, the arch-petty Woolworth’s thief of the group hence the name) challenge him, or want to.

Yeah, Red, old red-headed Red was tough alright, and has a pretty good-sized built but that was not what kept the others in line. It was a certain look he had, a certain look that if Tim went to the trouble of describing it now would go way overboard  describing it as some stone-cold killer look, some psycho-killer look but that would be wrong because it didn’t show that way. But that was what it was. Tim thought he had better put it this way. Tommy Thunder, older brother of his junior high and high school best friend and a corner boy king in his own right, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, a big bruiser of a legendary North Adamsville football player and human wrecking machine who lived a few doors up from Harry’s went out of his way not to go near the place. See, Red was that tough.

Red was like some general, or colonel or something, an officer at least, and besides being tough, he would “inspect” his troops to see that all and sundry had their “uniform” right. White tee-shirt, full-necked, no vee-neck sissy stuff, no muscle shirt half-naked stuff, straight 100% cotton, American-cottoned, American-textiled, American-produced, ironed, mother-ironed Tim was sure, crisp. One time Goof (sorry that’s all he knew him by, really) had a wrinkled shirt on and Red marched him up the street to his triple-decker cold-water walk-up flat and berated, berated out loud for all to hear, Goof’s mother for letting him out of the house like that. And Red, old Red like all Irish guys sanctified mothers, at least in public, so you can see he meant business on the keeping the uniform right question.

And like some James Dean or Marlon Brando tough guy photo, some motorcycle disdainful, sneering guy photo, each white tee-shirt, or the right sleeve of each white tee-shirt anyway, was rolled up to provide a place, a safe haven, for the ubiquitous package of cigarettes, matches inserted inside its cellophane outer wrapping, Luckies, Chesterfields, Camels, Pall Malls, all unfiltered in defiance of the then beginning incessant cancer drumbeat warnings, for the day’s show of manliness smoking pleasures.

And blue jeans, tight fit, no this scrub-washed, fake-worn stuff, but worn and then discarded worn. No chinos, no punk kid, maybe faux "beatnik," black chinos, un-cuffed, or cuffed like Tim wore, and Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, king of the faux beatnik junior high school night, including among his devotees Tim, a little too bookish Tim, who was as tough a general, colonel, or some officer anyway, as corner boy Red was with his guys. Frankie example: no cuffs on those black chinos, stay home, or go elsewhere, if you are cuffed. Same kingly manner, right? Corner boys blue-jeaned and wide black-belted, black always, black-belt used as a handy weapon for that off-hand street fight that might erupt out of nowhere, for no reason, or many. Maybe a heavy-duty watch chain, also war-worthy, dangly down from those jeans. Boots, engineer boots, black and buckled, worn summer or winter, heavy, heavy-heeled, spit-shined, another piece of the modern armor for street fight nights. Inspection completed the night’s work lies ahead.

And most nights work, seemingly glamorous to Tim’s little too bookish eyes at the time, was holding up some corner of the brick wall in front or on the side of Harry’s Variety with those engineer boots, one firmly on the ground the other bent against the wall, small talk, small low-tone talk between comrades waiting, waiting for… Or just waiting for their turn at that Harry luscious ladies pictured pinball machine. Protocol, strictly observed, required “General Red” to have first coin in the machine. But see old Red was the master swayer with that damn machine and would rack up free games galore so, usually, he was on that thing for a while.

Hey, Red was so good, although this is not strictly part of the story, that he could have one of his several honeys right in front of him on the machine pressing some buttons and he behind pressing some other buttons Red swaying and his Capri-panted honey, usually some blond, real or imagined, blonde that is depending on the bottle, swaying, and eyes glazing, but he thought he had better let off with that description right now, as he was getting a little glassy-eyed himself at the thought, and because like he said it was strictly speaking not part of the story.

What is part of the story is that Red, when he was in the mood or just bored, or had some business, some girl business, maybe that blond, real or imagined, just mentioned business would after Tim had been hanging around a while, and Red  thought he was okay, give him his leftover free games.

Now that was the “innocent” part of Red, the swaying pinball wizard, girl-swaying, inspector general part. But see if you want to be king of the corner boy night you have to show your metal once in a while, if for no other reason than the corner boys, the old time North Adamsville corner boys might be just a little forgetful of who the king hell corner boy was, or as Tim will describe, some other corner boy king of some other variety store night might show up to see what was what.

Tim must have watched the Harry’s corner boy scene for a couple of years, maybe three, the last part just off and on, but he  only remembered once when he saw Red show “his colors.” Some guy from Adamsville, some tough-looking guy who, no question, was a corner boy just stopped at Harry’s after tipping a couple, or twenty, at the Dublin Grille. He must have said something to Red, or maybe Red just knew instinctively that he had to show his colors, but all of a sudden these two were chain-whipping each other. No, that’s not quite right, Red was wailing, flailing, nailing, chain-whipping this other guy mercilessly, worst, if that is possible. The guy, after a few minutes, was left in a pool of blood on the street, ambulance ready. And Red just walked way, just kind of sauntering away.

Of course that is not the end of the Red story. Needless to say, no work, no wanna work Red had to have coin, dough, not just for the pinball machine, cigarettes, and soda, hell, that was nothing. But for the up-keep on his Chevy (Chevy then being the “boss” car, and not just among corner boys either), and that stream of ever-loving blond honeys, real or imagined blonde depending on the bottle, he escorted into the seashore night. So said corner boys did their midnight creep around the area grabbing this and that to bring in a little dough. Eventually Red “graduated” to armed robberies when the overhead grew too much for little midnight creeps, and graduated to one of the branches of the state pen, more than once. Strangely, his end came, although Tim only heard about this second hand, after a shoot-out with the cops down South after he tried to rob some White Hen convenience store. There is some kind of moral there, although Tim thought he would be damned if he could figure it out. Red, thanks for those free games though.

Socialism and Rational Economic Development

Workers Vanguard No. 1053 3 October 2014 TROTSKY LENIN Socialism and Rational Economic Development (Quote of the Week) Nearly 140 years ago, Friedrich Engels, cofounder with Karl Marx of scientific socialism, explained that it will take the revolutionary overturn of the anarchic capitalist system for mankind to finally exert conscious control over economic life. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons.... It required the labour of thousands of years for us to learn a little of how to calculate the more remote natural effects of our actions in the field of production, but it has been still more difficult in regard to the more remote social effects of these actions.... The men who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries laboured to create the steam-engine had no idea that they were preparing the instrument which more than any other was to revolutionise social relations throughout the world. Especially in Europe, by concentrating wealth in the hands of a minority and dispossessing the huge majority, this instrument was destined at first to give social and political domination to the bourgeoisie, but later, to give rise to a class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat which can end only in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of all class antagonisms.—But in this sphere too, by long and often cruel experience and by collecting and analysing historical material, we are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our production activity, and so are afforded an opportunity to control and regulate these effects as well. This regulation, however, requires something more than mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order. —Friedrich Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” (1876)

Down With the Monarchy and the United Kingdom!-For a Federation of Workers Republics in the British Isles!Behind Scotland’s No Vote on Independence Frank Jackman comment:   Although I understand the rational for a neutral stand on this referendum I would have liked to in the privacy of the ballot booth voted "yes" just to tweak the British Lion one more time.   Workers Vanguard No. 1053	3 October 2014

Down With the Monarchy and the United Kingdom!-For a Federation of Workers Republics in the British Isles!Behind Scotland’s No Vote on Independence

 

LONDON—In a hotly contested referendum on 18 September, voters in Scotland rejected independence by 55 per cent to 45. In the run-up to the vote, the British government in Westminster was alarmed by a poll showing a majority for independence. What is credited with persuading Scots to remain in the “United Kingdom” were the intervention by Scottish Member of Parliament (MP) Gordon Brown, the Labour Party former prime minister who stressed the economic risks that independence would bring, and the unqualified offer of more powers to the Scottish parliament.

Despite the result, the kingdom is increasingly disunited, as indeed are the parties on the winning side. The vote saved the political career of Conservative prime minister David Cameron, but he faces a revolt by the right wing of his own party, which blames him for the fact that the Scottish nationalists came close to overturning the 307-year-old Union of England and Scotland. In part to appease this wing, which opposes any concessions to Scotland, the morning after the vote, Cameron declared that the promised changes in the Scottish parliament will be linked to restricting Scottish MPs in Westminster from voting on “English questions.” Even by the standards of Westminster’s disdain for Scotland, Cameron’s backsliding was breathtaking.

In unleashing a torrent of English chauvinism, Cameron is also playing to the ultra-chauvinist UK Independence Party, which is pushing for a British exit from the European Union (EU). Cameron has promised a referendum on EU membership if the Conservatives win next year’s general election.

The British rulers increasingly view Scotland as simply a net cost to the treasury. At the same time, sections of finance and banking capital in the City of London, which dominates British capitalism, feared the fallout of a vote for independence. The largest net exporter of financial services, insurance and pensions in the world, Britain gets a third of its $67 billion financial trade surplus from business within the EU, a trade bloc lorded over by the top European powers. The City financiers are thus worried about the possibility of Britain exiting the EU. (Some U.S.-based investment banks are considering moving their European headquarters to Ireland in case Britain does leave.) Concerned that Scottish independence would increase this likelihood, sectors of the City urged Scotland to remain in the UK.

Cameron’s proposal for “English votes for English laws” in Westminster was also a missile launched at the Labour Party. With more Scottish MPs than any other party, Labour could find itself unable to get its legislation passed in the House of Commons. Labour’s base in Scotland is so angry over the party’s trampling on the interests of working people that many rust-belt areas that were once rock-solid Labour territory—including Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, as well as Dundee, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire—voted for independence even while many people despise the Scottish nationalists. One trade-union leader quipped that the referendum was a “near-death experience” not just for the United Kingdom but for the Labour Party as well.

Millions of people—not only in Scotland, but also in Wales and the former industrial areas of northern England—would have been delighted to see Scotland vote for independence, simply to inflict a resounding defeat on the despised Cameron and also on Westminster. Many people who voted for independence viewed their vote as a rejection of government attacks on health care, education and welfare. Among 16- and 17-year-olds, who typically see no difference between Labour and the Tories, sentiment was strongly for independence. On the other hand, many working-class people, understandably fearing economic insecurity and mistrusting the nationalists, stuck with “the devil you know” and voted no.

Scottish nationalist leader Alex Salmond is a populist who is equally at home talking up his support for the National Health Service as he is in talks with bankers and in his (frequent) meetings with the “Dirty Digger,” newspaper baron Rupert Murdoch. Salmond’s version of independence is meagre, based on forming a defence force out of the Scottish regiments in the British army, while remaining subordinate to the British crown and keeping the pound sterling as the currency. The credibility of the independence campaign was undermined when the governor of the Bank of England insisted that in the event of independence, currency union with England would be incompatible with Scottish sovereignty.

The Scottish nationalists have benefited from the absence of a leadership of the working class that is willing to wage a class-struggle fight against austerity. Overwhelmingly, the reformist left has been lulling working people into support for the bourgeois nationalists, selling the lie that life would be better in an independent capitalist Scotland. What is needed is to forge a new working-class leadership based on the perspective of socialist revolution to overthrow capitalist rule.

The article reprinted below, dated 13 September, originally appeared in Workers Hammer No. 228 (Autumn 2014), newspaper of the Spartacist League/Britain, under the title, “Down With English Chauvinism! No Illusions in Scottish Nationalism! For Workers Republics.” Upholding the right of Scotland to self-determination, the SL/B did not advocate either a yes or a no vote on independence. With 85 per cent of the electorate casting a vote, the referendum truly was an exercise in self-determination. The outcome confirms the point that self-determination also implies the right not to separate, as the Scots have chosen, at least for now. Under working-class rule, resolution of the various national questions in Britain and Ireland would be relatively easily achieved. Our programme is for a federation of workers republics in the British Isles.

*   *   *

As the 18 September Scottish referendum approaches, polls indicate that a majority might vote yes. A vote for independence is the last thing Prime Minister David Cameron expected when he agreed to the referendum two years ago. For several years, around a third of the population of Scotland supported independence. But the attitude of the English bourgeoisie towards Scotland, which lies somewhere between contempt and hatred, has driven more Scottish people towards separation. The more the London government issues dire warnings against Scottish independence, the more the polls swing towards a yes vote. By now Cameron can barely show his face in Scotland for fear of driving even more people into the independence camp.

The Tories had precious little support in Scotland to begin with—the party famously has fewer Scottish Members of Parliament than there are giant pandas in Edinburgh Zoo—that is, one Tory MP to two pandas. Much more significant in terms of the outcome of the referendum is the Labour Party’s refusal to offer any meaningful opposition to Tory attacks on welfare and to the privatisation of the National Health Service. Obviously, the Tories can’t win Scotland, but they might help lose it for Labour, the party with the largest number of Scottish MPs in Westminster. Labour’s accommodation to Tory austerity may well be the deciding factor in the outcome of the referendum.

The pro-UK “Better Together” campaign is a hapless coalition of Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour. Its chief spokesman, Labour’s Alistair Darling, was Chancellor of the Exchequer during the 2008 banking crisis. Darling negotiated a bailout for Britain’s colossal banking sector, for which Britain’s working people have been forced to pay ever since. With the “Better Together” campaign offering voters only more of the same—aside from last-minute promises to grant more powers to the Scottish parliament, not to mention another royal baby—an audience member at a televised debate asked Darling: if we would be better together, why are we not better now?

Support for the yes campaign has also grown as a measure of defiance of the incessant outpouring of vile English chauvinism emanating from the London press and political pundits. Even before the referendum deal had been agreed, the Daily Mail railed against Scotland’s first minister and Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond. One headline blared: “If Mr Cameron fails to stand up to the devious, slippery Alex Salmond, the end of the Union will be his wretched legacy” (26 January 2012). Another Mail article pontificated that “the Union of England, Scotland and Wales” is nothing less than “history’s greatest success story” (29 January 2012). When polls showed a slight majority for the yes campaign, the Sun’s English edition (8 September) ran the vile anti-Scottish headline “Jocky Horror Show,” while the Guardian (8 September) headline trumpeted: “Last Stand to Keep the Union.” To judge by the hysteria in the bourgeois press, one might think that the SNP is about to re-enact the 1745 uprising by the Jacobites (followers of Charles Edward Stuart, the son of a Catholic pretender to the British throne) that aimed to overthrow the Protestant ascendancy and threatened the 1707 union of the Scottish and English parliaments.

As Marxists we oppose the whole edifice known as the “United Kingdom”—comprising the monarchy, the House of Lords and the established (Protestant) churches and incorporating the Orange statelet in Northern Ireland. The Westminster parliament embodies the privileged status accorded to banking and finance capital in London and the South East of England by the ruling class, which is contemptuous of the now de-industrialised areas of northern England as well as of Scotland and Wales. Doubtless there are many people in Northumbria, Lancashire and the Midlands who would like to go with Scotland to escape Westminster rule.

We support the right of self-determination for Scotland and Wales, which includes the right to form independent states. In itself, the referendum does not pose an issue of principle and we do not advocate either a yes or a no vote. Our programme is for a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles. Within such a federation, we do not predetermine what Scotland’s status will be—an independent workers republic, an autonomous region or any other status that is compatible with working-class rule.

As Marxists, we have long upheld the right of self-determination for Scotland. But, as distinct from nationalists, who support separation in all cases, whether or not we advocate independence depends on the depth of national antagonisms between the working people of the different nations. In the case of Scotland today the evidence is contradictory. While the polls indicate a rise in support for independence, opposition to separation remains high, estimated at well over 40 per cent in the population as a whole. As regards the trade unions, the Scottish TUC issued a statement at the Britain-wide annual TUC Congress in Liverpool on 8 September which said: “The STUC and unions representing the majority of union members in Scotland have democratically decided not to recommend either a YES or NO vote.”

The high level of opposition to Scottish separation testifies to the degree of assimilation that exists, in the absence of decisive differences of language or religion, between the Scottish and English—as well as the Welsh—nations. By contrast, in Canada we call for Quebec independence in order to remove the roadblock of national antagonisms that divides the workers of English Canada and Quebec, poisoning prospects for united class struggle against capitalism. In Scotland, the reformist left groups are solidly for a yes vote. Their perspective has nothing to do with the Leninist approach of trying to get the national question off the agenda. Instead, they shamelessly promote illusions in the bourgeois-nationalist SNP as the means to resist the Tory government.

Our approach to the national question is guided by the need to minimise the barriers to working-class unity. As proletarian internationalists, we give no support whatsoever to nationalism, whether it be the great power chauvinism of the oppressor countries or the nationalism of the oppressed. We vehemently oppose the British chauvinism and racism which is being whipped up by the UK Independence Party (UKIP), who are feeding off relentless attacks on immigrants’ rights imposed previously by Labour and now by the Tories. The reactionary Orange Order plans a march in Edinburgh to bang its drums for the Union. Given the Orangemen’s history of violent provocations against the oppressed Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, their support for the pro-UK campaign will be more likely to entice Scots of Irish Catholic background to vote yes.

We oppose Scottish nationalism and warn against illusions that an independent capitalist Scotland will shelter working people from the chill winds of capitalist austerity, or that it will provide an opt-out from British imperialism and its wars. As an opposition to British imperialism, the SNP is not about to set the heather ablaze. Rather these nationalists are committed to preserving “a strong, new relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK.” Furthermore, the SNP’s “new” Scotland will bow to the monarchy, the cornerstone of that reactionary edifice known as the “United Kingdom.” In the SNP’s words, “the Queen will be our Head of State, the pound will be our currency and you will still be watching your favourite programmes on TV.” Such toadying to the Crown would shame even the likes of robber-baron Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born 19th-century U.S. steel magnate who opposed “kings and queens and privilege in all its forms” and said: “A king is an insult to every other man in the land.” The minimum condition for any semblance of sovereignty for Scotland must be a break with the English monarchy and the establishment of its own currency.

When it comes to the foreign policy of an “independent” Scotland, the SNP can best be described as “junior imperialists in waiting.” The nationalists are committed to maintaining Scotland’s membership of the major Western imperialist clubs—the NATO military alliance and the European Union. Earlier this year, Alex Salmond expressed his support to NATO’s current vendetta against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The SNP leader declared his support for the NATO-installed, fascist-infested regime in Kiev, saying that he had “no hesitation in condemning Russia’s activities in the Ukraine [and] the illegal annexation of the Crimea” (bbc.co.uk, 11 May). Support for such forces is consistent with the SNP’s enthusing over the Nazi-loving Baltic nationalists who were fomenting counterrevolution in the Soviet Union more than two decades ago.

While there is much opposition to NATO membership in Scotland, illusions in the EU are common. Just as the single European currency is instrumental in the impoverishment of poorer countries such as Greece within the EU, a currency union with England would cede control over Scotland’s interest rate, spending and monetary policy to the Bank of England, making a mockery of Scottish sovereignty. We are opposed in principle to the EU, the imperialist conglomerate which was founded as an economic adjunct to NATO against the Soviet Union and remains the vehicle with which the European capitalists jointly exploit the European workers, while its more powerful imperialist members lord it over the weaker states.

The yes campaign’s popularity in Scotland does not rest primarily on the SNP’s attitude towards the EU, or its position on currency union. As one punter [man on the street] said, the problem is not what currency to use, but how to obtain enough of it. The SNP has skillfully positioned itself as the only viable alternative to Tory rule in Scotland, building on their record in 2011 when they defied the polls to win a majority in the Scottish parliament. Back then, the SNP’s electoral victory did not indicate a vote for independence. Rather the SNP built its reputation among voters with a range of populist policies, including free prescriptions, free personal care for the elderly and a freeze on the council tax, in addition to refusing to impose university tuition fees. These minimal measures don’t begin to reverse the cuts to welfare provision of recent decades, but in the absence of a viable alternative coming from Labour, people turn to the SNP.

The growth of the SNP is also a product of the refusal of the trade-union leadership to mount any effective class struggle against Tory government austerity—itself a product of their abiding ties to Labour and to the capitalist order. The treachery of the trade-union leadership was clearly shown in October last year at Grangemouth, Scotland’s only oil refinery. The union was set up for attack by the Labour Party leadership, which instigated a witch hunt against Stephen Deans, who was then a senior shop steward at Grangemouth and also chair of the local Labour Party branch. Labour leader Ed Miliband ordered a police investigation of the branch, over alleged corruption in the selection of a parliamentary candidate. And although not a shred of evidence was found, the oil bosses continued to hound Deans. On the eve of a strike by workers in the plant in defence of their union representative, oil boss Jim Ratcliffe threatened to close Grangemouth petrochemical facility. Rather than fight, the leadership of Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, called off the strike before it began. They signed a deal which included a three-year pay freeze, a no-strike agreement and an end to the final-salary pension plan—and hailed the outcome as a victory.

For the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, “saving jobs” means the workers must make sacrifices to keep the company viable. Alex Salmond, who helped broker the Grangemouth deal, bragged that the plant would now have a “bright future.” At the time we wrote: “Some future. Grangemouth—one of Scotland’s few remaining industrial complexes, where the trade union has now been crippled and workers cowed into submission—indeed prefigures the kind of future the working class can expect in [a] capitalist Scotland, independent or otherwise” (Workers Hammer No. 225, Winter 2013-2014 [reprinted in WV No. 1035, 29 November 2013]).

Foot Soldiers for Pro-NATO Nationalists

The reformist left in Scotland, notably the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), has found its niche, selling the independence campaign to working-class areas of Scotland where the nationalists have difficulty penetrating. Tommy Sheridan demagogically put it: “You vote for independence and you will never have to endure another Tory government in Scotland” (published in Socialist Review, July/August 2014). The SSP’s Colin Fox, who sits on the Yes Scotland Advisory Board, does a hard-sell for a capitalist Scotland, saying: “The referendum offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure self-determination for Scotland, to establish a left of centre social democratic state and free five million Scots from the yoke of British imperialism” (The Case for an Independent Socialist Scotland [no date]).

In contrast to these reformists, as far back as 1992 we cut through the SNP’s populist façade in a single sentence that holds up well today. Our article said:

“Although today the SNP uses a lot of populist rhetoric, seeking to shake off its ‘Tartan Tory’ image, the bottom line for these bourgeois nationalists is that they want to become the exploiters in their own right of the Scottish workers, and are fishing around for a larger imperialist power to become their sponsor.”

—“Tory Ravages, Labour Perfidy Fuel Scottish Nationalism,” Workers Hammer No. 128, March-April 1992

In the tradition of Lenin’s Bolsheviks, we stand for equality for all nations, as opposed to reformists, who divide the world into “good” and “bad” nations. The good nations are oppressed, and only they deserve the right to self-determination. Thus the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for example does not call for the right of self-determination for the Russians in Crimea, because of Russia’s great power status. But the good/bad nations theory presents obvious problems when applied to Scotland, which for reformists is “tainted” by its involvement in the Empire.

According to leading SWPer Alex Callinicos, the Scottish people “have not suffered national oppression at the hands of the UK state.” By their own logic, the SWP ought to deny Scotland the right to self-determination. But, Callinicos points out, the pro-independence campaign is drawing in the crowds. Indeed, Tommy Sheridan’s speaking tour “had up to 12,000 working class people packing out meetings all over Scotland to hear the left case for independence.” So what is a poor opportunist to do? Jumping on the independence bandwagon, the SWP conjures up a scenario wherein independence for Scotland would be a blow against British imperialism. An article by Keir McKechnie in Socialist Review (July/August 2014) gushes that, “independence for Scotland would diminish Britain’s role as the junior partner to US imperialism, seriously weakening both sides of the so called ‘special relationship’.” More than that, “the removal of Trident nuclear submarines from the Clyde would be a massive blow to Britain’s position as a leading nuclear state and a real threat to the ability of the US to use Britain as a launch pad for its missiles in Europe.”

The notion that Scottish independence would be a blow against British imperialism begs the question, why in the world would the Scottish “NATO nationalists” lead an “anti-imperialist” struggle? The only evidence McKechnie cites is the SNP’s commitment to getting rid of Trident nuclear submarines—a commitment the SWP takes as good coin. Since counterrevolution in the Soviet Union in 1991-92, Scotland’s nuclear submarine and Trident missile base at Faslane no longer occupy the same strategic importance for NATO as its bases did during the anti-Soviet Cold War. In this post-Soviet context the SNP felt emboldened to loosen Scotland’s ties with England.

In the days of the Empire, the Scots played a very valuable role as junior partners to the English rulers. The 1707 treaty allowed Scottish companies access to England’s colonial and domestic markets; Scots were represented in the East India Company out of proportion to their numbers in the population and, in the Caribbean, as historian Tom Devine noted: “The sugar, tobacco and cotton produced by these slave-based economies were absolutely central components in Scottish overseas commerce for most of the eighteenth century” (“Did Slavery Make Scotia Great?”, 2011). Scottish regiments played a major part in the British subjugation of India and other overseas territory which “was acquired and defended in the final analysis by the musket and the cold steel of sword and bayonet” (Tom Devine, Scotland’s Empire, 2003). The Scots also made significant contributions to Britain’s industrial revolution, including in the sciences and engineering. However, with the decline of British imperialism the English ruling class no longer needs Scotland.

In the period following World War II, when Britain was faced with a dramatic shrinkage of its role in the world economy, the Labour government elected in 1945 undertook extensive nationalisations of industry to help British capitalism compete in the world market. The ruling class also conceded welfare reforms such as the National Health Service as a sop to the working class. These reforms consolidated support for (old) Labour among the working class throughout Britain and enabled it to become the dominant party in Scotland (and in Wales). Thus, in the post-war period, Labour became part of the glue that held the “United Kingdom” together.

The strains on the Union increased significantly with the attacks on welfare provision and privatisations of the era of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Particularly during this period, the British capitalist rulers strengthened finance capital at the expense of manufacturing. The defeat of the Britain-wide miners union in the 1984-85 strike paved the way for the atomisation of the working class.

A key point in the alienation of the Scots was the Thatcher government’s imposition in 1989 of the hated Poll Tax in Scotland a year before the rest of the country. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the Scots overwhelmingly voted Labour in elections, only to be faced with Tory governments in Westminster. By the time Labour finally did get elected in 1997, under Tony Blair, the party was indistinguishable from the Tories on key questions such as hostility to the trade unions and support for banking and finance. In that sense the advent of New Labour was pivotal in driving the working class in Scotland to support the nationalists.

Since the Spartacist League/Britain was founded in 1978 we have consistently upheld the right of self-determination for Scotland. We recognise that the right of self-determination also implies the right not to separate, an option we have argued for in the past. We wrote: “we are for the right of self-determination, but call on the Scottish people to exercise that right by choosing to stay in the same state as the other peoples of Britain” (Spartacist Britain No. 1, April 1978). The Scottish (and Welsh) sections of the proletariat have often played a vanguard role in Britain-wide class struggle. Marxists do not have a positive programme on the national question. How we apply the right to self-determination depends on how best to further the class struggle.

Scottish nationalism was and is conditioned not by opposition to British imperialism, but by its decline. The SNP became a factor on the political scene in the 1970s with the slogan, “it’s Scotland’s oil.” When North Sea oil came on stream, the British capitalist rulers looked upon it as the solution to the country’s economic woes. The Thatcher regime promoted North Sea oil and gas as the country’s main source of energy while gutting the coal industry, largely as a political move to destroy the militant miners union. But even at its most productive, when revenues poured into the City of London, North Sea oil did not fundamentally improve British capitalism’s position relative to that of its rivals. North Sea oil has now passed its peak. With the cost of exploration and extraction growing, oil companies are shifting their investments to more lucrative areas of the world.

Faced with a further decline in oil profits, the British ruling class increasingly views Scotland as a net economic drain. By contrast, Catalonia, which is demanding a referendum on independence from Spain, is the most economically advanced part of that country. Sentiment to cut the ties with Scotland is quite widespread among the English population too. Nowadays, chauvinist ranting about the cost of subsidising Scotland is no longer confined to the right-wing press. As Scottish journalist Iain Macwhirter recently noted, “you would think the liberal Guardian would be an exception,” but its readers share the assumption “that Scotland has been living off English taxpayers money and finally been found out” (heraldscotland.com, 14 August).

The devastation of manufacturing jobs in Scotland, as elsewhere in Britain, is the result of decades of treachery by Labour, old and new, and class collaboration. Today, all that the SSP and their ilk have to offer working people is the “bright future” promised by the SNP in an independent capitalist Scotland. One doesn’t have to be a revolutionary Marxist to see through some of the SNP’s rhetoric: when a BBC interviewer recently asked two people from the Shetland Isles—one of whom was a yes voter and the other a no voter—whether the oil belongs to Britain, Scotland or the Shetlands, both retorted: it belongs to the oil companies!

A capitalist Scotland does not have a bright future. In any event, the fundamental task will remain: building a leadership that is committed to proletarian socialist revolution, centrally in England, and to the overthrow of the entire system of Westminster parliamentary rule. The programme of the Spartacist League/Britain is to win the workers to the perspective of building a party capable of leading the struggle to bring down capitalist rule and the establishment of a federation of workers republics in the British Isles.

“Anti-Terror” Show Trial Victim-Court Orders More Prison Time for Jose Padilla Workers Vanguard No. 1053	3 October 2014

“Anti-Terror” Show Trial Victim-Court Orders More Prison Time for Jose Padilla

 

On September 9, U.S. district judge Marcia Cooke resentenced Jose Padilla to 21 years in prison. Padilla was the victim of a 2007 show trial in which he was railroaded to prison on flimsy “terrorist” conspiracy charges, having already suffered nearly four years of detention as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” Following the trial, Cooke sentenced Padilla to 17 years behind bars. “Too lenient,” cried the Feds, who appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. In 2011, that court sent the case back to Cooke for harsher sentencing. Bowing to the higher court’s order, Cooke added the time he had been detained without charges, extending his release date to some time in 2026—if ever.

A U.S. citizen who had converted to Islam, Padilla was effectively stripped of his citizenship rights in the name of the “war on terror.” He was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in May 2002 as a “material witness” in a September 11 grand jury investigation. Weeks later, Padilla was accused of planning to set off a “radioactive bomb” and disappeared into a Navy brig in South Carolina. There he was subjected to extreme sensory deprivation, hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long periods of time, drugged, deprived of sleep and threatened with imminent execution. While undergoing this torture, Padilla was forbidden to meet with his family and, for almost two years, had no access to lawyers.

In the lead-up to the resentencing, the Justice Department extorted a promise by Padilla’s lawyers not to introduce in the court proceedings any records of his years of torture. In return, the government agreed not to seek a life sentence, promising to ask for no more than a 30-year hit. Nevertheless, the government has announced that it may appeal the latest sentence yet again.

Padilla’s case is of vital importance because it exemplifies the government’s insistence that when the “war on terror” is invoked, basic rights of U.S. citizenship go by the wayside. By those lights, anyone labeled a terror threat can simply be disappeared. What this ultimately means was seen in the case of Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen blown away in a 2011 drone missile attack in Yemen on orders from the Obama White House. So much for the supposed constitutional right to confront and answer allegations against the accused. In Padilla’s case, when the government finally moved him from military to civilian custody in 2005 and filed ludicrous “conspiracy” charges against him, it was to head off an anticipated Supreme Court decision ordering his release. In this way, the Bush White House sought to preserve the legal precedent giving the government the right to declare U.S. citizens “enemy combatants” and to lock them up indefinitely.

The conspiracy indictment of Padilla made no mention of the chimerical “radioactive bomb” or any single specific terrorist attack or plot, in the U.S. or anywhere else. Instead, Padilla and co-defendants Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi were accused of conspiracy to support “violent jihad” around the world by raising money for Islamic charities or traveling abroad. In the words of the federal prosecutor, the accusations involved an “inchoate crime” rather than a “completed operation.” In plain English, Padilla’s “crime” was to harbor animosity towards the U.S. imperialists, the greatest force for terror on the planet.

From the beginning, the persecution of Padilla represented an escalation in the attacks on basic civil liberties—the right to counsel and trial, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment—that are at the core of the “war on terrorism.” Employed in the first instance against immigrants and others caught up in the terror scare, the enhancement of the government’s repressive arsenal will be used to suppress the struggles of black people, other oppressed sectors and the multiracial working class, the only force with the social power to sweep away capitalist rule.

In 2002 and 2003, the Spartacist League and the Partisan Defense Committee submitted amici curiae briefs in Padilla’s defense, challenging his detention without charges as a fundamental attack on the rights of citizenship and due process supposedly guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We stated:

“The case of Jose Padilla tests the very existence of the fundamental rights of due process—liberty of the individual from the arbitrary, discriminatory power of the state—and the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. It poses the evisceration of the rights and privileges of citizenship embodied in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution and secured on the battlefield of the Civil War and in class and social struggle over the past hundred and more years. If the imperial President is upheld, Padilla’s detention threatens to become the Dred Scott case of our time, a declaration that ‘Citizens have no rights that the government is bound to respect’.”

It is in the interests of all workers, minorities and defenders of civil liberties to demand an end to the persecution of Jose Padilla. Free him now!

Imperialist Warmongers Strike Again-Down With Bombing of Syria!U.S. Out of the Near East! As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing”    Beat The War Drums-Again- Stop The Escalations-No New U.S. War In Iraq- No Intervention In Syria! Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!  Stop The U.S. And French Bombings! –Stop The Arms Shipments … Frank Jackman comment: As the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama, abetted by the usual suspects in the House and Senate as well as internationally, orders more air bombing strikes in the north and in Syria,  sends more “advisers” to “protect” American outposts in Iraq, and sends arms shipments to the Kurds, supplies arms to the moderate Syrian opposition if it can be found to give weapons to, guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue as a kneejerk way to resolve the conflicts in this wicked old world might very well be excused for disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation. And all the time saying the familiar (Vietnam era familiar updated for the present)-“we seek no wider war”-meaning no American combat troops. Well if you start bombing places back to the Stone Age, cannot rely on the Iraqi troops who have already shown what they are made of and cannot rely on a now non-existent “Syrian Free Army” which you are willing to get whatever they want and will still come up short what do you think the next step will be? Now not every event in history gets exactly repeated but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those old time vets might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case. No New War In Iraq –Stop The Bombings- No Intervention In Syria!  *** Here is something to think about:   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. Workers Vanguard No. 1053

3 October 2014

Imperialist Warmongers Strike Again-Down With Bombing of Syria!

U.S. Out of the Near East!

 

On September 23, President Obama initiated air strikes supposedly designed to surgically excise the cancer of ISIS from the areas it occupies in Syria. In a shift of opinion spurred by the filmed beheadings of American newsmen by ISIS, a majority in this country now supports such strikes, although widespread opposition to a boots-on-the-ground military intervention still exists. As projected by Obama, the “surgery” will take several years, and with 1,600 or so U.S. troops now in Iraq it is all but assured that many more will follow.

Many have pointed out that Obama’s war rationale mimics George W. Bush’s invocation of the evil Saddam Hussein as the justification for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. U.S. wars fought in the name of combating terror have had as their result hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani corpses and the proliferation of torture centers like Abu Ghraib. The Obama White House has expanded the field of murderous U.S. forays through drone and missile strikes from Somalia and Yemen to Pakistan, promising many more victims with the intervention into Syria.

U.S. interventions have shredded the social fabric of much of the Near East, thus providing a petri dish for the growth of myriad Islamic terrorist outfits throughout the area. Two such groups, the toothpaste terrorists of the (conveniently unearthed) Khorasan group and the Nusra Front, targeted for drive-by attacks during the initial air raids, are more or less direct links to Al Qaeda, which spun off ISIS itself. Forerunners of Al Qaeda were trained and funded by the CIA as it assembled a reactionary horde to oppose the Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Obama—with some assistance from the British and French imperialists, who maintain interests in the Near East—projects weaving together the “good” terrorists opposed to ISIS with the forces of friendly Arab states, many of which have been/are backers of ISIS, to exterminate the threat du jour. The only criterion for membership in this club seems to be that its participants have conflicting interests in the region. A measure of the unintended consequences of this operation is that it is backed by today’s (or is it yesterday’s?) enemy, President Assad of Syria. But as we noted in “U.S. Out of Iraq! No Intervention in Syria!” (WV No. 1051, 5 September), Assad’s approval may backfire on him given that the U.S. maintains its opposition to his rule. It is the duty of the American working people to oppose any and all U.S. imperialist intervention in Syria, and everywhere else.

Despite the absence of non-delusional policy objectives in the U.S. military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, its purpose, like all the wars of U.S. imperialism, is to enforce and perpetuate its domination of the planet. This was nicely captured by the New York Times (24 September) report that Obama’s sermon to the UN left “little doubt that the United States would act as the ultimate guarantor of an international order.”

In addition to the millions of those slaughtered by U.S. imperialism in its wars are the other victims of the decaying capitalist order, both abroad and in this country. Working people in the U.S. have seen their wages slashed and/or their benefits gutted with no prospects of any real economic revival to reverse the bloodletting of the deep and prolonged recession. Black people continue to be gunned down by the killer cops, with the events in Ferguson revealing the real face of racist capitalist America. Dissatisfaction with those who govern is rampant, matched only by the despair of those who are governed. What is needed is a surge of class struggle and social protests, which will provide the basis for building a revolutionary internationalist working-class party with the purpose of overturning the profit-gorged U.S. imperialist order.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner  

_PRO PATRIA_


England, in this great fight to which you go
  Because, where Honour calls you, go you must,
Be glad, whatever comes, at least to know
      You have your quarrel just.

Peace was your care; before the nations' bar
  Her cause you pleaded and her ends you sought;
But not for her sake, being what you are,
      Could you be bribed and bought.

Others may spurn the pledge of land to land,
  May with the brute sword stain a gallant past;
But by the seal to which _you_ set your hand,
      Thank God, you still stand fast!

Forth, then, to front that peril of the deep
  With smiling lips and in your eyes the light,
Steadfast and confident, of those who keep
      Their storied 'scutcheon bright.

And we, whose burden is to watch and wait,--
  High-hearted ever, strong in faith and prayer,--
We ask what offering we may consecrate,
      What humble service share.

To steel our souls against the lust of ease;
  To bear in silence though our hearts may bleed;
To spend ourselves, and never count the cost,
      For others' greater need;--

To go our quiet ways, subdued and sane;
  To hush all vulgar clamour of the street;
With level calm to face alike the strain
      Of triumph or defeat;

This be our part, for so we serve you best,
  So best confirm their prowess and their pride,
Your warrior sons, to whom in this high test
      Our fortunes we confide.

_Owen Seaman_

_August 12, 1914_

The Defense Of The Cuban Revolution Begins With The Defense Of The Cuban Five-Free The Last Of Them Now!

 

 

The following is being passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee (2008). Please note the link to the National Committee to Free the Five below to find more information about the Cuban Five. As always here is a case where defense of the Cuban revolution begins concretely with the defense of the Five- Libertad Ahora!

http://freethefive.org/

The Cuban Five have now been incarcerated for almost ten years. Three Cuban citizens and two U.S. citizens who infiltrated and monitored violent anti-communist exile groups in Florida in order to stop terrorist attacks against Cuba, these men were arrested in 1998 under the Clinton administration on bogus charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder, as well as lesser charges like failing to register as agents of a foreign power. After being tried in Miami, a den of counterrevolutionary gusano (worm) activities, Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years; Antonio Guerrero and Ram6n Labanino to life plus ten and 18 years, respectively; Fernando Gonzalez to 19 years; and Rene Gonzalez to 15 years. They are held in federal maximum security prisons, separated by hundreds of miles from loved ones, their lawyers and each other. As Marxists, we demand immediate freedom for the Cuban Five, whose heroic actions were in defense of the Cuban Revolution against U.S. imperialism and its counterrevolutionary agents.

From the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, to the repeated attempts on Fidel Castro's life, to the ongoing starvation embargo, the U.S. imperialists, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, have never ceased in their drive to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. In 2002, Ana Belen Montes, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer, was sentenced to 25 years for passing military information to the Cuban government.

In their drive to restore capitalism in Cuba, the U.S. rulers have trained terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who engineered the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people. In the 1990s, as the Cuban government began to promote tourism, gusano groups launched a campaign of bombings that targeted hotels and airport buses in an attempt to cripple the economy. Posada has admitted to masterminding bombings of tourist spots in Havana in 1997 that killed an Italian businessman. We say: Send Posada and Bosch back to Cuba to be tried by their victims!

It was in the context of such terrorist activity that gusano activities were being monitored by the Cuban Five, three of whom were veterans of Cuba's military campaign in Angola that in the 1970s and '80s fought the U.S.-sponsored invasion by the South African apartheid regime. In June 1998, the Cuban government shared its intelligence on gusano terrorist activity with the FBI. In September of that year, the FBI arrested the Cubans instead of the CIA's "ex"-employees.

The government built its case on "conspiracy to commit espionage" charges, conspiracy charges being the hallmark of political witchhunts when the government has no evidence that an actual crime has been committed. Months after their arrest, "conspiracy to commit murder" was tacked on to the charges against Gerardo Hernandez in connection with the deaths of four pilots from the Brothers to the Rescue gusano outfit. The latter were shot down by the Cuban air force in 1996 after repeatedly and provocatively flying into Cuban airspace in a brazen challenge to the country's air defenses.

Held in Miami, the trial was engulfed in anti-communist hysteria and intimidation of anyone not toeing the gusano line on Cuba. The judge refused five defense requests for a change of venue. During jury selection, potential jurors asked to be excused, fearing the consequences of rendering an "unsatisfactory" verdict. The impaneled jurors' license plates appeared on nightly news broadcasts. The prosecution claimed that Guerrero, who worked as a janitor at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West, had endangered secret U.S. military plans by watching aircraft take off and land in training exercises. As Guerrero's lawyer pointed out, the information he gathered "could've been published in the Miami Herald." So inflamed was the atmosphere that the jury even convicted Hernandez of conspiracy murder charges that the prosecution itself had already concluded would be an "insurmountable hurdle" to prove!

In 2005, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta threw out the 2001 convictions and ordered a new trial in a new venue because of the "pervasive community prejudice" in Miami. The Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales appealed for a rehearing by the full court, which reinstated the convictions in August 2006. Last August, another three-judge panel heard oral arguments in the case that this time focused on the bogus murder and espionage charges and the gross prosecutorial misconduct.

The brutality these five men endure in prison is designed to break them and echoes the treatment of other class-war prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Before their trial even started, the Cuban Five spent 17 months in solitary. Between their convictions in June and their sentencing in December 2001, they spent 48 days in the hole. In 2003 as they worked on their first appeal, they were sent to solitary and denied communication with the outside world, even their lawyers.

Every family visit involves an arduous and arbitrary visa process. Sometimes a relative waits out the precious time they are allotted and never gets to see their loved one. Adriana Perez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez, has been repeatedly denied a visa. Olga Salanueva, wife of Rene Gonzalez, was deported on phony spy charges in 2000.

In combatting the degenerate end-products of a decaying capitalism, the Cuban Five have performed a service not only in defense of Cuba but for working people throughout the hemisphere and around the world. Free the Cuban Five! Defend the Cuban Revolution

******

The Defense Of The Cuban Revolution Begins With The Defense Of The Cuban Five-Free The Last Of Them Now!

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin  (American Left History Blog, July 2006)

END THE U.S. BLOCKADE!-U.S. OUT OF GUANTANAMO!

This year marks the 53rd anniversary of the Cuban July 26th movement, the 47th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban Revolution and the 39th anniversary of the execution of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara by the Bolivian Army after the defeat of his guerilla forces and his capture in godforsaken rural Bolivia. I have reviewed the life of Che elsewhere in this space (see blog, dated July 5, 2006). Thus it is fitting to remember an event of which he was a central actor. Additionally, the Cuban Revolution stood for my generation, the Generation of '68, and, hopefully, will for later generations as a symbol of revolutionary intransigence against United States imperialism.

Let us be clear about two things. First, this writer has defended the Cuban revolution since its inception; initially under a liberal- democratic premise of the right of nations, especially applicable to small nations pressed up against military forces of the imperialist powers, to self-determination; later under the above-mentioned anti-imperialist premise and also that it should be defended on socialist grounds, not my idea of socialism- the Bolshevik, 1917 kind- but as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist revolution nevertheless. That prospective continues to be this writer’s position today. Secondly, my conception of revolutionary strategy and thus of world politics has for a long time been far removed from Fidel Castro’s (and Che’s) strategy, which emphasized military victory by guerrilla forces in the countryside, rather than my position of mass action by the urban proletariat leading the rural masses in such situations. That said, despite those strategic political differences this militant can honor the Cuban revolution as a symbol of a fight that all anti-imperialist militants should defend.

Let me expand on these points, the first point by way of reminiscences. I am old enough to have actually seen Castro’s Rebel Army on black and white television as it triumphantly entered Havana in 1959. Although I was only a teenager at the time and hardly politically sophisticated I, like others of my generation, saw in that ragtag, scruffy group the stuff of romantic revolutionary dreams. I was glad Batista had to flee and that ‘the people’ would rule in Cuba.

Later, in 1960 as the nationalizations occurred in response to American imperialist pressure, I defended them. In fact, as a general proposition I was, hazily and without any particular thought, in favor of nationalizations everywhere. In 1961, despite my then deeply felt affinity for the Kennedys, I was pleased that the counterrevolutionaries were routed at the Bay of Pigs. Increased Soviet aid and involvement in the economic and political infrastructure of beleaguered Cuba? No problem. The Cuban Missile Crisis, however, left me and virtually everyone in the world, shaking in our boots. Frankly, I saw this crisis (after the fact) as a typical for the time Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union with Cuba as the playground. Not as some independent Cuban ploy. In short, my experiences at that time can be summed up by the slogan- Fair Play for Cuba. So far, a conclusion that a good liberal could espouse as a manifestation of a nation’s, particularly a small nation’s, right to self-determination. It is only later, during the radicalization of the Vietnam War period that I moved beyond that position.

Now to the second point and the hard politics. If any revolution is defined by one person the Cuban revolution can stand as that example. From its inception it was Fidel’s show, for better or worse. The military command, the strategy, the political programs, and the various national and international alliances all filtered through him. On reflection, that points out the basis problem and my major difference with the Fidelistas. And it starts with question of revolutionary strategy. Taking power based on a strategy of guerilla warfare is fundamentally difference from an urban insurrection led by a workers party (or parties) allied with, as in Cuba, landless peasants and agricultural workers responsible to workers and X (fill in the blank for whatever allies apply in the local situation) councils. And it showed those distortions then and continues to show them as the basis for decision making –top down. It is necessary to move on from there.

Believe me, this writer as well as countless others, all went through our phase of enthusing over the guerrilla road to socialism. But, as the fate of Che and others makes clear, the Cuban victory was the result of exceptional circumstances. Many revolutionaries stumbled over that hard fact and the best, including Che, paid for it with imprisonment or their lives. In short, the Bolshevik, 1917 model still stands up as a damn good model for the way to take power and to try to move on to the road to socialism. Still, although I have made plenty of political mistakes in my life I have never regretted my defense of the Cuban Revolution. And neither should militants today. As Che said- the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution- and to defend them too. Enough said. U.S. HANDS OFF CUBA! END THE BLOCKADE! U.S. OUT OF GUANTANAMO!

Emergency Forum: Medea Benjamin on our New Wars in Syria and Iraq (LOCATION CHANGE)

Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 7:00 pm
Harvard Science Center D • 1 Oxford St • Cambridge • Harvard T  *** NEW LOCATION! ***

How should we respond to the new US war in Iraq and Syria and the dangers this war may unleash in our violent world? 

The U.S. attacks on Syria launched Sept. 22 are a disastrous setback for peace, for the rule of law, and for sound U.S. foreign policy.  Why did the US launch them, how can we stop them,  and what are the nonviolent alternatives we should advocate?

How do we build on the convergence of peace, social justice and climate groups that created the gigantic climate march in New York on September 21?

This new emergency in the Middle East drives home once again the need for the climate movement, the peace movement, and the movements for social and racial justice to create a mass movement around the inter-related crisis of climate, peace, vast social inequality and democracy.
No one is better qualified to address these questions than Medea Benjamin (who, it just so happens, has recently returned from her trip to Iran)
Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange.  Benjamin is the author of eight books. Her latest book is  Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, and she has been campaigning to stop the use of killer drones. Her work for justice in Israel/Palestine includes taking numerous delegations to Gaza after the 2008 Israeli invasion, organizing the Gaza Freedom March in 2010, participating in the Freedom Flotillas. New York Newsday describes her as "one of America's most committed -- and most effective -- fighters for human rights".
Don’t miss this opportunity at this especially dangerous moment to hear this leading thinker and activist for peace and social justice.
Sponsored by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Students for a Just Foreign Policy
Endorsed by United for Justice with Peace and Massachusetts Peace Action
Additional Boston Area Talks by Medea Benjamin
Tuesday, Oct. 21, noon - Northeastern University
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 7pm - Wellesley College - panel with Catia Confortini and Eric Wasileski
Wednesday, Oct. 22, 4pm - Suffolk University
Thursday, Oct. 23, noon - Clark University, Worcester - Activists United
Thursday, Oct. 23, 4pm - Brandeis University - Student Peace Alliance
For Details on additional events: 617-354-2169, info@masspeaceaction.org

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

Must-see new video puts the Fair Food Program at center stage! New video a preview of things to come this fall as the Fair Food Program gets ready for prime time… It has been quietly taking shape in Florida’s fields for four seasons now, laying a foundation, building its track record, and reinforcing its gains.  Through the painstaking efforts of over 30,000 farmworkers, 30 farms, a dozen major retail food brands, and more than two dozen dedicated human rights defenders, the award-winning Fair Food Program has helped usher in a new day for Florida farmworkers, and in the process has reshaped an industry from “the worst to the best” workplace environment in US agriculture. And now, the Fair Food Program is getting ready for its close-up... Don't miss this brand new video -- and a preview of other exciting developments for the Fair Food Program -- at the CIW website!

Instilling Hope in Gaza: The Legacy of Dr. Eyad el Sarraj

When: Tuesday, October 28, 2014, 7:00 pmWhere: First Parish in Cambridge • (corner of Mass Ave and Church Street) • Harvard Square • Cambrige

 The Gaza Mental Health Foundation presents:

Instilling Hope in Gaza: The Legacy of Dr. Eyad el Sarraj
A Memorial Tribute

Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 7 PM
First Parish in Cambridge, Harvard Square (corner of Mass Ave and Church Street)

 

Featuring:

• NOAM CHOMSKY, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• JESS GHANNAM, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at the University of California at San Francisco
• SARA ROY, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
• NANCY MURRAY, Co-founder, Gaza Mental Health Foundation , Gaza Mental Health Foundation
• BILL SLAUGHTER, President, Gaza Mental Health Foundation

Dr. Eyad el Sarraj (1943-2013) was the first psychiatrist in the Gaza Strip and a renowned campaigner for peace with justice who recognized the vital connection between mental health and human rights. The founder in 1990 of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), he received the first human rights award given by the US Physicians for Human Rights, among many other international honors. His courage, decency, independence of mind, and vision of a better world made him a beacon of moral conscience and hope for those Israelis seeking peace with Palestinians and Palestinians struggling with both the occupation and their own ruinous political divisions.
Nearly a year after his death on December 17, 2013, “Instilling Hope in Gaza” will examine the conditions in the Gaza Strip that shaped his life and work, how the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme is today forging ahead with his work, and what more can be done to build on his legacy in the years ahead.
Suggested donation at the door: $10 - or more! Funds will support the work of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.
Host: The Middle East Education Group at First Parish Cambridge. Co-sponsors: American Friends Service Committee - New England Region, Boston Coalition  for Palestinian Rights, Grassroots International, Harvard School of Public Health, Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston, Physicians for Human Rights, United for Justice with Peace.
 

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.