In Boston    

 

DAYS OF ACTION AGAINST THE NEW US WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST!

Tuesday, November 11 12:00 pm Park Street Station Boston Rally followed by the Armistice Day Parade of Veterans for Peace

Saturday, November 15 1:00 pm Park Street Station Boston Rally and march to Downtown Crossing with a mock drone and die-in

Stop the Bombing in Syria and Iraq

Bring the troops home now

Stop sending weapons into the region which are leading to so much bloodshed

Support humanitarian aid, through neutral institutions, for victims of the conflict

Support self-determination and the demilitarization of the area

 

Tuesday, November 11

ARMISTICE / VETERANS DAY PARADE AND VIGIL

We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets.
1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace Event.

Parade at noon; rally 3:00 pm

Faneuil Hall • Boston

Attention Veterans & Peace Activists

Please Join Veterans For Peace and The Leftist Marching Band for
Armistice / Veterans Day Peace Parade and Peace Event

 Houses of Worship throughout Massachusetts will Ring Bells for Peace at 11:00 am, November 11th

Armistice Day / Veterans Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event

Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace. 

Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song

 

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DORCHESTER VOTERS SEND A MESSAGE:

“Get Big Money Out of Politics”

Big Money in the elections also has its effects – on both parties, as I wrote a few years ago in the Dorchester Reporter.  Large donors bolster the Republican Party while keeping the Democrats on a short, Neo-Liberal leash. That’s why modern “Liberalism” is mostly defined by supporting individual rights but avoids (with a few exceptions like Elizabeth Warren) populist economic themes. Voters understand the role of money in politics, but have few means of expressing their opinion or effecting change. An exception was the advisory question that was placed on the ballot in part of Dorchester by the work of DPP in collaboration with “MOVE TO AMEND”:

We the People, Not We the Corporations

The ballot question called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to saying that corporations are not people and money is not a form of speech – it must be regulated in political campaigns.

Two-thirds of voters agreed!

 

QUESTION 5-12th Suffolk

 Total  Number of Precincts 15

  Total Votes 6779

 Number of Uncast Votes (blanks) 3541

 YES 4604 67.92%

 NO   2175 32.08%

 

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ELECTION 2014: Two Americas, Two States of Massachusetts

You’ve all been watching and reading about “The Republican Landslide” in this election, but few commentators note how unreal this is as any kind of broad democratic (small “d”!) expression.  For one thing, any political shift is magnified by our winner-take-all electoral system, where the winning side takes office – and the losing side, no matter how small the margin, gets nothing.   This effect has become even more lopsided in recent years as Republican state legislatures – building on demographic trends --  have distorted the electoral maps to concentrate the Democratic electorate into fewer districts, allowing for more safe, majority conservative Congressional seats.  In 2012, Democratic Congressional candidates actually got more votes nationwide, even as the Republican solidified their majority in the House of Representatives.

 

Then there is the intentionally unrepresentative system of two Senate seats for every state, regardless of population.  The states that “turned over” this year to produce a Republican majority – North Caroline, Iowa, Montana, Colorado, Arkansas, South Dakota and West Virginia – have 14 Senators representing a combined population of 24 million;  California alone has 38 million residents, but only two Senators.  This is no accident.  The framers of the US Constitution were at pains to limit popular sovereignty and to protect the control of elites in the various states, along with their undue influence on the Federal government.  It was also a means to offer protection and guarantees for the continuation of slavery.

 

Meanwhile, the Democrats, especially in the contested states, ran tepid, relatively conservative campaigns that did little to stir enthusiasm among the voters and allowed the Republican message about the economy to resonate without serious challenge. The Right mobilized its base with a barely-disguised undercurrent of racism and a well-funded, relentless campaign of fear-mongering over “terror,” Ebola and supposed “threats to the border.” At the same time, Republican legislatures have also enacted voting regulations aimed at suppressing the natural Democratic-leaning vote. As a result, the electorate across the country this year was much whiter and older than in 2012 – and more Republican-leaning. The overall turnout was just 37%.

 

However, when there was a clear-cut populist option, such as raising the minimum wage or voting for paid sick leave, these measures all passed.  A look at the Massachusetts electoral result for Question 4 (Earned Sick Leave) also shows a clear geographic, racial and class map: the measure passed handily in the cities and towns of the eastern and western parts of the state, losing in the wealthier suburbs and mostly white rural towns.

 

So in short, we have two separate Americas voting every two years. We have one that is more representative, that includes about 60 percent of voting age adults. Then we have one where we can barely get a third of voting age adults to turn out, and is much whiter and older than the country. And Democrats can win easily with the one, and Republicans can win easily with the other.  More

 

A Big Night For Minimum Wage Increases

Voters in five states endorsed minimum wage increases Tuesday. Significantly, minimum wage initiatives carried the day even in states where Republicans won statewide offices. In Arkansas, for example, Republican Tom Cotton won a hard-fought victory over incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. Yet a ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $7.50 won the support of nearly two-thirds of voters. Similarly, voters in Nebraska and South Dakota approved minimum wage hikes even as they elected or re-elected Republicans in Senate and gubernatorial races.  More

 

Beyond Mid-Election Babble: What's the Alternative?

The right-wing Republican sweep of Congress testifies to a massive memory and educational deficit among the US public and a failure among progressives and the left regarding how to think about politics outside of the established boundaries of liberal reform. The educative nature of politics has never been more crucial than it is now and testifies to the need for a new politics in which culture and education are as important as economic forces in shaping individual and social agency, if not resistance itself… The biggest challenge facing those who believe in social justice is to provide an alternative discourse, educational apparatuses, vision and modes of identification that can convince the US public that a real democracy is worth fighting for, and that such struggles need to begin immediately before the elected oligarchs and the financial interests they serve close down any hope of a future in which matters of justice and equality prevail.  More

 

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The Wars Abroad, the Wars at Home

 

Martin Luther King: “The bombs that are falling [overseas] are exploding in our cities”

 

BPD Petitions - Please Sign & Share!

Many of you have already signed the ACLU petition to the BPD calling for three key reforms. The petition is now online here: End Racially Discriminatory Police Practices in Boston (for residents of Boston) and Support the Movement to End Racially Discriminatory Police Practices in Boston (for people who aren’t residents of Boston).  We encourage you to sign one of these two petitions and share widely among friends and supporters!

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

Concerned About ISIS, but Also About Endless War? Back Limits on the Use of Force

In response to the US bombing of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters in Iraq and Syria, which Congress has never explicitly approved, members of Congress long concerned about presidents and Congresses skirting the constitutional role of Congress in deciding when the United States will use military force have introduced H. Con. Res. 114, "Urging Congress to debate and vote on a statutory authorization for any sustained United States combat role in Iraq or Syria."  When Congress returns from recess after the election in November, it will still not have debated and voted on a sustained US combat role in Iraq or Syria, even though a "sustained combat role" is obviously what the Pentagon is doing and plans to do. Polls have shown that the majority of Americans think that Congress should debate and vote. Members of Congress can show that they back the public's desire for a Congressional debate and vote by supporting H. Con. Res. 114.  More

 

Please strongly encourage your Congressional Reps to sign on to proposed House Resolution 114.

THREE MA REPS are co-sponsors: CLARK, MCGOVERN & TSONGAS!  

thanks for your continued advocacy!  SIGN PETITION

 

Obama to seek new war powers from Congress

President Barack Obama said Wednesday he would work with Congress on new war powers to fight Islamic State militants and expressed cautious optimism about whether the international face-off over Iran's nuclear program will be resolved — two issues that could prove harder for the White House to maneuver with Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill.  More

THE PRESSURE TO ESCALATE

From the beginning, the president had repeatedly and insistently taken one thing off that famed “table” in Washington on which all “options” reputedly sit: the possibility that there would ever be American “boots on the ground” in Iraq -- that is, military personnel sent directly into combat.  This, in effect, represented what was left of Obama’s previous proud claim that he had gotten us out of Iraq never to return.  Assumedly, it also represented a bedrock formulation in a situation that otherwise seemed to be in a constant state of flux.  In a way that has been rare in the history of American civilian-military relations, Dempsey and others in the Pentagon simply refused to accept this.  No matter what the commander-in-chief’s bottom line may have been, they evidently saw the future quite differently and didn’t hesitate to say so. …Under the pressure of a powerful national security state (and the various complexes that have grown to gigantic proportions around it), in a Washington in which beating the drums for war has become a reflexive act and Republican hawks may well rule the roost.  More

 

How Many Muslim Countries Has the U.S. Bombed Or Occupied Since 1980?

Barack Obama, in his post-election press conference yesterday, announced that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria—the one he began three months ago. If one were being generous, one could say that seeking congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did in the now-collapsed country of Libya. When Obama began bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed by the U.S. during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines). I also previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had become the fourth consecutive U.S. President to order bombs dropped on Iraq.   More

 

DRONE-STRIKE FEMINISM

Of all the justifications the Obama administration has employed to sanctify yet another war on Iraq, none have been more disingenuous than the portrayal of the latest US bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, aka ISIL) as a feminist rescue mission… But if airstrikes are warranted because ISIS is engaged in sexual violence, then the governments of the nations the US has appointed to spearhead its anti-ISIS coalition may need to be bombed as well—namely, the Iraqi, Egyptian and Saudi regimes… The voices of women-led Iraqi civil society groups are completely absent from the establishment media. You won't see any mention in the corporate press of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which, along with its sister organization MADRE, strongly opposes US airstrikes and holds the US responsible for creating and perpetuations the sectarian violence that fueled ISIS's rise to power.  More

 

The Middle East’s Unholy Alliance

They’ve been referred to as “moderates” and even the “Axis of Reason”. Now, America’s friends in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are in talks to form a joint military force to intervene throughout the Middle East and “deal with extremists in the region.” … For its purposes, the United States is today closely aligned with the reactionaries of our time. In the face of free and fair electoral victories by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. has tended to rationalize their decision to side with the ancien régime as being in defense of liberal values… Rather than relying upon an old order which is both brutal, corrupt, and unlikely to survive in the long term, the United States should take the farsighted and principled position of committing itself to democracy in the region – even if it doesn’t always like who wins.  More

 

But fighting them in Syria!

Obama Coordinating With Iran In Islamic State Fight, Growing Evidence Suggests

Adding to mounting evidence that President Barack Obama's administration sees Iran as something of a partner in its fight against the Islamic State, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Obama wrote to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month about the campaign against the Islamic State.  The WSJ reported last week that the U.S. had assured Iran that it would not be targeting the forces of its ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, as it began striking targets in Syria.Like that news, the latest revelation will likely stir consternation among many of Obama's current partners in this campaign. From Arab nations that have launched their own strikes against the militant group to moderate U.S.-backed Syrian rebels who are presently besieged by Iranian forces aiding the Syrian regime, key Obama allies see collaborating with Iran as unacceptable because of the country's unwavering support for Assad.    More

 

Obama Wrote Secret Letter to Iran’s Khamenei About Fighting Islamic State

President Barack Obama secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence. The letter appeared aimed both at buttressing the campaign against Islamic State and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal. Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say.   More

 

Syrian rebels armed and trained by US surrender to al-Qaeda

Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda. The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles. But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province. The development came a day after Jabhat al-Nusra dealt a final blow to the SRF, storming and capturing Deir Sinbal, home town of the group's leader Jamal Marouf.   More

 

A Syrian Speaks Out. . .

Why arming the rebels will fuel Syria's inferno

Aleppo is a microcosm of Syria. The suffering here is just as real and horrible as it is everywhere else. It does not distinguish friend from foe or regime loyalist from opposition supporter. It affects us all. Ironically, this shared suffering might be the only thing that unites Syrians now, but I believe they are also united by an urgent desire to stop the suffering and end the war and killing that is causing it… Those who justify the continuation of our death and suffering either do so on the premise of liberating our lives from tyranny or on the premise of protecting it from extremism. Both are lies, of course, but they do have one truth in common as we jokingly note here: They all want to “liberate” our lives from this earthly world… Arming the rebels is de facto arming the extremists, period.  More

 

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 Diplomacy with Iran More Necessary than Ever

 

If Nuclear Negotiations With Iran Fail, US Will Be to Blame

Nuclear negotiations between Iran and P5+1 – the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany – have entered their critical stage. The original Geneva interim agreement expired last July, but both sides agreed to extend the deadline for reaching a comprehensive agreement to November 24. Much progress has been made, but some difficult issues have remained unresolved… At a symposium in Washington on October 23, Wendy Sherman, Under Secretary of State who leads the US negotiation team with Iran, asserted that, "We hope the leaders in Tehran will agree to the steps necessary to assure the world that this program will be exclusively peaceful. If that does not happen, the responsibility will be seen by all to rest with Iran." Given all the concessions that Iran has made, given US excessive demands on Iran, and given the fact that, in effect, the US is trying to impose a new and illegal interpretation of Iran’s obligations under the NPT and its SG Agreement and the meaning of "peaceful nuclear program," it will be the US that will be blamed for the failure of the negotiations, not Iran.  More

 

Let Diplomacy Work with Iran!

One month from now, we could be celebrating a historic nuclear deal with Iran. This is our chance to solve one of America’s greatest security concerns without dropping a single bomb. But that's not stopping some in Congress from trying to kill the deal before its even finalized. A deal with Iran is within reach, but time is short. Take Action!
Please urge your Members of Congress to support this historic opportunity.

 

Israel, Iran, and the Republican Victory

The Republicans’ Senate victory offers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu new hope for outmaneuvering President Barack Obama on Iran; in the coming weeks, he could use a Republican-led Congress to sabotage negotiations with the Islamic Republic on its nuclear program. But the victory would be short lived. By scuttling the talks, Netanyahu could empower Iran’s hardliners… With Republicans now in control of Congress, Israel’s concerns will fall on more receptive ears. But that could spell more trouble than Israel expects. If the P5+1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) and Iran reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by the November 24 deadline, any continued effort to oppose the agreement would no longer be just toughness on Iran. It would also be directly against the United States.  More

 

Israeli policy on Iran is threat to its 'special relationship' with America

American interests are far more threatened by Netanyahu’s Iran positions than by his reluctance to make peace with the Palestinians: the direct costs to America of Israeli settlement expansion and peace process intransigence over the past six years pale in comparison to the potential costs of a hot American war with another Middle Eastern country (especially a country whose regional power outstrips by orders of magnitude any actor the US has fought over the past decade).  For example, an eminent bi-partisan panel of experts from the Iran Project warned last year that the “unintended consequences” of an American attack on Iran could lead to the US being bogged down in an “all-out regional war”.

More

 

 

Rasmea Defense Committee statement Report on Trial Day 4: Rasmea & her defense finish strong on last day of trial! On the coldest morning all week, supporters gathered early outside the federal courthouse in Detroit on the final day of the trial for Rasmea Odeh.  Each day of the trial, security officers have closed the main courtroom before it was full. Today, supporters squeezed into the seats early, ensuring no one would miss the chance to stick by the beloved Palestinian community icon, on trial for allegedly gaining U.S. citizenship unlawfully because of answers she gave on her naturalization documents.  In an unnecessary attempt at intimidation, a number of U.S. Marshals and Department of Homeland Security agents were seated in front of friends and family of Rasmea, including close to twenty members of the Arab Women’s Committee that she founded in Chicago. The morning began with a defense motion for a “directed verdict”—which basically asked the judge to throw out the case against Rasmea because the government failed to prove that Rasmea “knowingly lied” at any point in the immigration process.  Judge Gershwin Drain denied the motion, and Rasmea took the stand to continue her testimony. There was a palpable tension when U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel rose to begin his cross-examination.  For more than half an hour, he tried to trip Rasmea up with questions, asking the same ones repeatedly, and often interrupting her, prompting Judge Drain to admonish him at least twice.  In spite of this, Rasmea remained calm and clear, frustrating Tukel’s attempt to undermine her credibility or trap her into misspeaking.  As a survivor of vicious Israeli physical and sexual torture, her legendary strength was in full effect in the courtroom. Throughout the trial, Rasmea’s defense has been hindered by countless unjust rulings from Judge Drain, including his refusal to allow evidence about either the torture that forced Rasmea into a confession and a 10-year sentence as a political prisoner, or the chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that caused her to block out that time in her life when she answered the questions on the naturalization form.   Nevertheless, her attorneys put on a strong show, explaining that Rasmea never knowingly gave false information.  Her initial immigrant visa application was completed by her brother, because Rasmea could not read or write in English at the time.  The naturalization form she filled out 10 years later was unclear and the questions at issue were easily misunderstood. And in Rasmea’s citizenship interview, no one had ever asked her about arrests or convictions in other countries. While we are hopeful this legal defense is enough to win over the jury, we also know that the government’s case, an immigration charge, is nothing but a pretext. Rasmea is under attack because she is Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim; because U.S. law enforcement is going after our successful Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid; and because she embodies the proud and steadfast Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberation, and the Right of Return. As the jury begins deliberations on Monday, Rasmea’s supporters will be there as well, to hear the verdict and to rally with her.  Join us at 8 AM Eastern Standard Time at the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit, 231 W. Lafayette Blvd.  Another large delegation of Chicagoans are returning to Rasmea’s side after the weekend, emboldened by her thank you speech after the trial: “I [tried] to be…strong and to [re]present the Palestinians and every one of you here in a strong way.  It's very important Monday [for] all of us here to say ‘yes, we are together, and we are fight[ing] for our rights.” Stay tuned to uspcn.org and stopfbi.net for more information about transportation from Chicago and other cities.

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend  Copyright © 2014 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved. Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists! Our mailing address is: Committee to Stop FBI Repression PO Box 14183 Minneapolis, MN 55414

Damn-As Obama Escalates With 1500 Additional Troops-  

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 Allied 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! 

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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.

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

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….            

THE KAISER AND BELGIUM


He said: "Thou petty people, let me pass.
  What canst thou do but bow to me and kneel?"
But sudden a dry land caught fire like grass,
  And answer hurtled but from shell and steel.

He looked for silence, but a thunder came
  Upon him, from Liège a leaden hail.
All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame
  Till at her gates amazed his legions quail.

Take heed, for now on haunted ground they tread;
  There bowed a mightier war lord to his fall:
Fear! lest that very green grass again grow red
  With blood of German now as then with Gaul.

If him whom God destroys He maddens first,
Then thy destruction slake thy madman's thirst.

_Stephen Phillips_

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

 

 

 

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

The Struggle Continues …

Four  Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

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

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

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

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

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

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

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

There is no question that now that her trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, that a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and  nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that Chelsea Manning's case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity and has several legal moves going from action to get the  necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to sign on to the Amnesty International petition above to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.          

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to not leave “our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time.

No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.             

On Sunday October 12^th Chelsea Manning was honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade with a banner calling for her freedom as they marched in the annual Honk parade which goes through Somerville, Ma into Harvard Square for the Octoberfest. The banner drew applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30   

 

From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of The 97^th Anniversary Of The Russian October Revolution- Leon Trotsky On The Lessons Of The Russian Revolution

 

Workers Vanguard No. 968

5 November 2010

In Honor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

For New October Revolutions!

(From the Archives of Marxism)

 

November 7 (October 25 by the calendar used in Russia at the time) marks the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the workers’ seizure of power in Russia gave flesh and blood reality to the Marxist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state, culminating in its counterrevolutionary destruction in 1991-92, the October Revolution was and is the international proletariat’s greatest victory; its final undoing, a world-historic defeat. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) fought to the bitter end in defense of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, while calling for workers political revolutions to oust the parasitic nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies that ruled these states. This is the same program we uphold today for the remaining workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Having been expelled from the USSR in 1929 by Stalin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life in exile. In November 1932, he gave a speech to a Danish social-democratic student group in Copenhagen. He outlined the political conditions and the social forces that drove the Russian Revolution, stressing the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party. Illuminating the worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution and its place in history, Trotsky underlined the necessity of sweeping away the decaying capitalist order and replacing it with a scientifically planned international socialist economy that will lay the material basis for human freedom.

The ICL fights to forge workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to lead the struggle for new October Revolutions around the globe.

* * *

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise....

Without the armed insurrection of November 7, 1917, the Soviet state would not be in existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from Heaven. A series of historical prerequisites was necessary for the October revolution.

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant social weight of the proletariat.

To these organic pre-conditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance:

6. The Revolution of 1905 was the great school, or in Lenin’s words, the “dress rehearsal” of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created for the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party....

In the year 1883 there arose among the emigres the first Marxist group. In the year 1898, at a secret meeting, the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was proclaimed (we all called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In the year 1903 occurred the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the year 1912 the Bolshevist fraction finally became an independent Party.

It learned to recognize the class mechanics of society in struggle, in the grandiose events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated cadres equally capable of initiative and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested leadership.

Thus stood the Party in the year 1917. Despised by the official “public opinion” and the paper thunder of the intelligentsia press, it adapted itself to the movement of the masses. Firmly it kept in hand the control of factories and regiments. More and more the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by “nation,” not the privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then Bolshevism became in the course of the year 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September 1917, Lenin, who was compelled to keep in hiding, gave the signal, “The crisis is ripe, the hour of the insurrection has approached.” He was right. The ruling classes had landed in a blind alley before the problems of the war, the land and national liberation. The bourgeoisie finally lost its head. The democratic parties, the Mensheviks and social-revolutionaries, wasted the remains of the confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy of ineffectual compromise and concession to the bourgeois and feudal property-owners. The awakened army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed nationalities at the periphery rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the most important workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets the Bolsheviki were dominant. The workers and soldiers demanded action. The ulcer was ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with the insurrection. Woe to the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its laws and its rules.

The Party carried through the October insurrection with cold calculation and with flaming determination. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without victims. Through the victorious Soviets the Bolsheviki placed themselves at the head of a country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe....

Let us now in closing attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year 1917, in a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval—that belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in past centuries on the territories of Holland, England, France, almost all of Continental Europe—takes its place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaims and opens the domination of the proletariat. It was world capitalism that suffered its first great defeat on the territory of Russia. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke, and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, Socialist organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical labor. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and dark forces which have grown up behind his back. He will build up his economy freely, that is, according to a plan, with compass in hand. This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, Socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces. Since then, the natural sciences, hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated nature down to its most secret depths. By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgment on the nucleus of the atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of the alchemists, and turn manure into gold and gold into manure. Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now rules ever more courageously the industrial will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to other men blindly, almost like the bee or the ant. Belatedly and most undecidedly he approached the problems of human society. He began with religion, and passed on to politics. The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism and rationalism in a domain which had been ruled by dead tradition. From the church, critical thought went on to the state. Born in the struggle with absolutism and the medieval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of parliamentarism. Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

But between nature and the state stands economic life. Technology liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements—earth, water, fire and air—only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature, to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves with the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and—every man and every woman, not only a selected few—become a full citizen in the realm of thought.

—“Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution” (Militant, 21 January 1933)

 

In Defense Of The October Russian Revolution Of 1917- Comrade Markham’s Tale-Take One

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

Comrade Markham had been born a “red diaper baby.” I will explain what that means in a minute but first to that Comrade Markham moniker. That name is the only name I have known him by ever since I ran into him at an anti-war planning session over in Cambridge a couple of years back, back in the fall of 2012, when we were trying, people like Comrade Markham, the guys from Veterans for Peace, guys and gals from some socialist groups and the usual Quakers, traditional peace activists who always sign on to these efforts, to organize against the latest governmental war cries. Although the previous decade or so had seen anti-war mobilizations, great and small, mainly small, this session was planning a rally to oppose President Obama’s then latest attempt to intervene in the civil war in Syria. Comrade Markham, then eighty-seven years old and still trying to change this wicked old world for the better rather than sitting in some assisted living hellhole wasting away, had introduced himself to the group under that moniker and although I had not seen him around before, had no sense of his history then, others greeted and addressed him by that name without a snicker.

 

Of course as I found out later that moniker was not his real name but had been the one that he had used in his long-time membership in the old American Communist Party, not the current version which is kind of out in limbo, but the one that we who came of age in the 1960s had cut our teeth on as the great “red menace,” who were taking “Moscow gold,” taking Stalin and his progeny’s gold,  in order to undermine the American way of life and so we had to be ever vigilant in the red scare Cold War night. He had used the name so long that he knew no other to be called and in my associations with him as he told me his story that is what I always called him. Someday I suppose we will find out his real name but his story, an unusual American story, is what matters and what will be forever his memorial.

 

But back to that “red diaper baby” designation I promised to tell you about. Now I had heard that designation before, back in the late 1960s when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was cutting a big swath through the political landscape, especially among students. A fair number of the emerging leaders had had parents who belonged to the Communist Party or some other left-wing organization and were not like many of us the first generation of radicals in our families. Thus the red diaper baby designation which in some cases gave those who had grown up in that political milieu an unwarranted standing based on some usually long past affiliation by their now bourgeois parents. What made Comrade Markham unique in my experience is that he was a red diaper baby from parents who had helped establish the Communist Party in America back around 1920 (or one of the two but that story of the hows and whys of two are beyond what I want to tell you about here except in passing).

 

That thread of history intrigued me, his whole story intrigued me as I pieced it together, and so after a couple of those planning sessions I asked him to sit down with me wherever he liked and tell me his story. We did so in several sessions most of them held in the Boston Public Library where he liked go and check out books, magazines and newspapers about the old days, about the time of his activist political prime. What I did not expect to get was an almost chemically pure defense of the Soviet Union, of the Soviet experience, through thick and thin until the end in 1990 or so. That is why his story appears here as a running personal commentary on this 97^th anniversary year of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

 

It is probably hard today at least three generations removed from the time of the great Russian October Revolution of 1917 to understand, to understand in depth the strong pro-revolutionary feeling that that event brought forth in the world- the first fitful workers’ state, a state for the international working-class to call its own, to defend against all the international reaction. Of course that strong pro-revolutionary response also has its opposite effect on the international bourgeoisie which was ready to move might and main to break the back of the revolution and did so, actively, one way or another, supporting one native anti-revolutionary faction or another, or intervening directly. (The international bourgeoisie had as its allies as well some of the reformist leaderships and better off segments of the Western working class who were as fearful of revolution as any bourgeois). This was the heady atmosphere in which Comrade Markham’s parents, known in the party as Comrade Curtis and Comrade Rosa (after the late martyred Polish revolutionary liked after the failed Spartacist uprising in Germany in late 1918, Rosa Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution), moved in the early days of the party formed here in America.         

 

See Curtis and Rosa had a long socialist past, had grown up respectively in a Kansas farm belt and a Chicago steel belt, had worked individually to build the pre-World War I Socialist Party in their respective places of birth and had met in Chicago when Curtis moved there to work on the 1912 presidential campaign for the revered Eugene V. Debs (who amassed over one million votes that years, a watershed year for socialist votes, gathered in large part by activists like Curtis and Rosa who worked overtime for his election). They had been aligned with the left-wing of the party in most of its internal debates and votes, especially as President Woodrow Wilson and his administration started beating the war drums to go to the aid of the Allies in the utterly stalemated World War I as the flower of the European youth had laid down their heads for no apparent reason, and segments of the party wanted to support those efforts or to “duck” the issue. So they were strongly for him and his supporters when Debs decided to outright oppose the war entry publicly in 1917. Naturally they were rounded up and went to jail for a time (at this time they also got married in order to be able to visit whichever one was in jail at any given time) and became more closely associated with the left-wing that was forming to defiantly oppose American entry into the war but also a myriad of policies that the right-wing leadership (socialist right-wing not generic right-wing) had imposed on the party.