For The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”

 


An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

 

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

 

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

 

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example that I can recall- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).  

 

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, I argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! No Intervention In Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaign! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

 

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.  

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

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Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!

Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think, Great god will come from the skies,

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )

Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )

Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )

Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )

Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )

Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better: Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )

Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )

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We Don’t Want Your Ism-Skism Thing- Dreadlocks Delight- “One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers”- A CD Review

One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers, Bob Marley And The Wailers, UTV Records, 2001
 
Admit it, back in the late seventies and early eighties we all had our reggae minute, at least a minute anyway. And the center of that minute, almost of necessity, had to be a run-in with the world of Bob Marley and the Wailers, probably I Shot The Sheriff.Some of us stuck with that music and moved on to its step-child be-bop, hip-hop when that moved on the scene. Others like me just took it as a world music cultural moment and put the records (you know records, those black vinyl things, right?) away after a while. And that was that.

Well not quite. Of late the Occupy movement, the people risen, has done a very funny musical thing, at least funny to my ears when I heard it. They, along with the old labor song, Solidarity Forever, and, of course Brother Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land , have resurrected Bob Marley’s up-from-under fight song, Get Up, Stand Up to fortify the sisters and brothers against the American imperial monster beating down on all of us and most directly under the police baton and tear gas canister. And that seems, somehow, eminently right. More germane here it has gotten me to dust off those old records and give Brother Marley another hear. And you should too if you have been remiss of late with such great songs as (aside from those mentioned already) No Woman, No Cry, Jamming, One Love/People Get Ready (ya, the old Chambers Brother tune), and Buffalo Soldier. And stand up and fight too.

Posted 10th February 2012 by Markin

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In Honor Of The 144th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune –Jean-Paul Jacques Paget’s Dilemma

                                    

Home, home for a few hours reprieve, a little rest, and some precious bread, if young daughter Lilly had been able to obtain any at the market was all that was on Jean- Paul Paget’s mind as he left the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) on that late march evening. He had a few days before, as a proud and well known Proudhonist around the neighborhood been elected to the ad hoc committee of public safety for the neighborhood, for the section, and for the Paris Commune that had been established week before in the wake of the struggle between the Central Committee of the National Guard and the old, good riddance, Theirs government that had fled, fled tail between its legs, to Versailles and he hoped to oblivion. This day however had not been a good day, not at all, since there were still many hot disputes among the partisans about how to proceed next. All Jean-Paul knew was that he was opposed to the Central Committee of the National Guard trying to duck responsibility for defense of the revolution and that they, meaning not just the committee but all of Paris had to pitch in and try to get the damn Germans and their infernal army the hell away from Paris, far away. And that latter concern was not just a show of French nationalism before the wicked enemy on Jean-Paul’s part but a very practical consideration since his son Leon was being held by the Germans as a prisoner of war waiting parole.    

As Jean Paul meandered home and headed toward Rue Saint Catherine he could see his young son Jean Jacques sitting on a chair behind a makeshift barricade parapet, rifle in hand, defending the rue, the section, hell, all of Paris, against the surrounding Germans but, more importantly, any efforts by the Theirs bandits to try to cause a disruption in Paris. Jean- Paul had immense pride in Jean-Jacques (and Leon too, for that matter, although he had advised against going into the army, the national guard would have been a better place for a son of the people ), a lad of only fourteen, yet the leader of the young comrades who had erected the barricade Saint Catherine in a few hours. And in a talk that that the pair had had one night Jean Jacques, after listing all the “demands” he wished considered by the various committees, expressed his willingness to die for the Commune if it came to it. That stopped the old man for a moment, he was willing to die, no question, but to ask the young, the future, to do so was a separate serious question that he was not sure where he stood on.  Probably events and luck would sort that out.

After a couple of words with Jean-Jacques Jean-Paul went up the street to home still heated up by the argument that he had with others on the public safety committee, especially Varlin, a fellow Proudhonist, but others as well, about the role of the National Guard. Basically his view was that the Central Committee of the National Guard was necessary to keep a strong military posture when Thiers was still a threat, a distant threat but a threat nevertheless, and the Germans were hovering by. They, in turn, were trying to dissolve themselves into street militias and other ad hoc formations and not take central political responsibility for the defense of the Commune. Jean-Paul was not a military man but he remembered what had happened in the June days of 1848 when he was a lad not much older than Jean –Jacques and the practically defenseless Parisian working quarters ran with blood because they had no proper military formations to fight against the government onslaught. As he entered his house he had a queasy foreboding feeling, a something foul in the air feeling …           

New petition for Albert Woodfox launched today by Amnesty International; Please sign!
by Angola 3 News	12 Feb 2015
Urging people to sign the new petition launched today, Jasmine Heiss of Amnesty International USA declares: "Allowing Albert his freedom is the only just and humane action the state can take after decades of holding him in cruel and inhuman conditions. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal must ensure that the state stops standing in the way of Albert's freedom. Tell the Governor: Stop wasting valuable taxpayer resources. Help ensure Albert's release without further delay. It is imperative that justice delayed does not become justice denied. Albert has endured the unthinkable. It is unconscionable to hold him for a single day longer."
Click on image for a larger version Free Albert!
Click on image for a larger version LA State Capitol, April 17, 2012, AI petition delivered
Click on image for a larger version
Please take action here: http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2015/02/please-take-action-for-albert-wo We are excited to announce that Amnesty International has started a new petition in support of Albert Woodfox's February 6 bail request that he filed in response to the favorable Fifth Circuit Court ruling on February 3. The full text of an email sent out today by Amnesty, describing the campaign, is featured below. ---------------------------------------- Freedom is just around the corner (Written by Jasmine Heiss, Amnesty International USA) For more than four decades, Albert Woodfox has been held in solitary confinement: first in the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola Prison) and later in David Wade Correctional Center. Albert spends 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell - four steps long and three steps across - with no access to meaningful social interaction or rehabilitation. Last Friday, Albert's legal team filed for bail. With your help, he could finally walk free. Albert has been imprisoned for nearly 43 years for the second-degree murder of prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. He has been fighting to prove his innocence in a legal process tainted with flaws. No physical evidence ties Albert to the crime. Brent Miller's widow has said she believes that Albert is innocent. The Federal courts have overturned Albert's conviction three times. Despite all of this, the state of Louisiana has appealed three times and spent millions of dollars in legal fees during Albert's 40-year struggle for freedom. The state authorities seem hell-bent on keeping him behind bars. Allowing Albert his freedom is the only just and humane action the state can take after decades of holding him in cruel and inhuman conditions. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal must ensure that the state stops standing in the way of Albert's freedom. Tell the Governor: Stop wasting valuable taxpayer resources. Help ensure Albert's release without further delay. It is imperative that justice delayed does not become justice denied. Albert has endured the unthinkable. It is unconscionable to hold him for a single day longer. It's time for him to walk free. With hope for justice, Jasmine Heiss Senior Campaigner, Individuals at Risk Amnesty International USA
See also: http://www.angola3news.com http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_

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

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those 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 saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; 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, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea. Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.   

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….  

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An Aviator's Field Book Being the Field Reports of Oswald Blcke, from August 1, 1914 to October 28, 1916

by Oswald Boelcke

An Aviator's Field Book Being the Field Reports of Oswald Blcke, from August 1, 1914 to October 28, 1916 4.0 of 5 stars 4.00  ·  rating details  ·  7 ratings  ·  1 review

Excerpt: ...on his part, tried to stick behind me. It was a fine game. The one I was attacking twisted and spiralled to escape. I got him from behind and forced him to the 500-meter level. I was very close to him and quite surprised that he had stopped his twisting; but just as I was about to give him the finishing shots, my machine gun stopped. I had pressed down too hard Excerpt: ...on his part, tried to stick behind me. It was a fine game. The one I was attacking twisted and spiralled to escape. I got him from behind and forced him to the 500-meter level. I was very close to him and quite surprised that he had stopped his twisting; but just as I was about to give him the finishing shots, my machine gun stopped. I had pressed down too hard on the trigger Pg 108 mechanism, in the heat of the battle, and this had jammed. The second Frenchman now attacked me, and I escaped while I could. The second fight took place over our lines. The first Frenchman, as I learned later, had gotten his share. He was just able to glide to the French side of the Meuse, and here he landed, according to some reports; others say he fell. I am inclined to believe the former, but probably he could not pick a good spot in which to land, and so broke his machine. From Lieutenant R. I heard that the machine, as well as an automobile, that came to its aid, were set afire by our artillery. I learned further details from Lieutenant B. After landing, one of the Pg 109 aviators ran to the village, returned with a stretcher and helped carry the other one away. Things seem to have happened like this: I wounded the pilot; he was just able to make a landing; then, with the aid of his observer, he was carried off, and our artillery destroyed his machine. On the following day, the 13th, there was again great aerial activity. Early in the morning I came just in time to see a French battleplane attack a German above Fort Douaumont. I went for the Frenchman and chased him away ...more     

      

 

 

In Search Of Lost Time… Then-With 1960s School Days In Mind

 

Several years ago Sam Lowell, the locally well-known lawyer from the town of Carver about thirty miles south of Boston, wrote some small pieces about the old days in the town, the old (painful) days when he attended the then newly built Myles Standish Junior High School (such places are now almost universally called middle schools) where he and his fellow class- mates were the first to go through. In that piece he mentioned that he was not adverse, hell, he depended on “cribbing” words, phrases and sentences from many sources. One such “crib” was appropriating the title of a six-volume saga by the French writer Marcel Proust for one of those sketches, the title used here In Search of Lost Time as well. He noted that an alternative translation of that work was Remembrances of Things Past which he felt did not do justice to what he, Sam, was trying to get a across. Sam had no problem, no known problem anyway, with remembering things from the past but he thought the idea of a search, of an active scouring of what had gone on in his callow youth (his term) was more appropriate to what he was thinking and feeling.       

Prior to writing those pieces he had contacted through the marvels of modern technology, through the Internet, Google and Facebook a number of the surviving members of that Myles Standish Class of 1962 to get their take on what they remembered, what search that might be interested in undertaking to “understand what the hell happened back then and why” (his expression, okay). He got a number of responses   from people speaking of where they lived now, what they had done with their lives and so forth who also once Sam brought the matter up wanted to think back to those days. One of those classmates, Melinda Loring, after they had sent some e-mail traffic to each other, sent him via that same method (oh beautiful technology on some things) a copy of a booklet that had been put out by Myles Standish in 1987 commemorating the  25^th anniversary of the opening of the school. Sam thoughtfully (his term) looked through the booklet and when he came upon the page shown above where an art class and a music class were pictured he discovered that one of the students in the art class photograph was of him.        

That set off a train of memories about how in those days, days by the way when the community freely offered every student a chance to take art in school and outside as well unlike today when he had been informed that due to school budget cuts art is no longer offered to each student but is tied to some cumbersome Saturday morning classes at the out-of-the-way community center, when Mrs. Robert’s encouraged him to become an artist, thought he had talent (later at Carver High Mr. Henry thought the same thing and was prepared to recommend him to his alma mater the Massachusetts School of Art in the Back Bay of Boston).

Art for Sam had always been a way for him to express what he could not put in words, could not easily put in words anyway and he was always crazy to go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see some artwork by real professionals, especially the abstract expressionists that he was visually drawn to (and would leave after viewing feeling like he at best would be an inspired amateur). The big reason that he did not pursue that art career had a lot to do with coming up “from hunger,” coming up the hard way and when he broached the subject to his parents, mainly his mother, she vigorously emphasized the hard life of the average artist and told him that a manly profession (her term) was better for a boy who had come up from the dust of society. He wondered about that after seeing the photograph, wondered about the fact that after a lifetime of working the manly profession of the law all he could conclude was that there were a million good lawyers but far fewer good artists and maybe he could have at least had his fifteen minutes of fame in that field. He resolved to search for some old artwork stored he did not know where to see if that path would have made sense.     

Sam had had to laugh after looking at the other photograph, the one of the music room, where he spotted his old friend Ralph Morse who went on in the 1960s to some small fame in the Greater Boston area as a member of the rock group The Rockin’ Ramrods. That look too set off a train of memories about how in those days, days by the way when the community freely offered every student a chance to take music in school and outside as well like with art classes unlike today when he had been informed that due to school budget cuts music is no longer offered to each student but is also tied to some cumbersome Saturday morning classes at the out-of-the-way community center. However unlike with his art teachers Mr. Dasher the music teacher often went out of his way to tell Sam to keep his voice down since it was gravelly, and off-key to boot. At the time Sam did not think much about it, did not feel bad about having no musical sense. Later though once he heard folk music, the blues and some other roots music he felt bad that Mister Dasher had put a damper on his musical sensibilities. Not that he would have gone on to some career like Ralph, at least Ralph had his fifteen minutes of fame, but he would have avoided that life-long habit of singing low, singing in the shower, singing up in the isolated third floor where no one would hear him. The search for memory goes on….  

As The 12^th Anniversary Of The (Second, The 2003 One) Iraq War Is Upon Us -No New War In Iraq! Down With The War-Monger Obama 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

[No this writer is not lost in a time warp, nor  is he suffering from a senior moment in continuing to note the anniversary, the 12^th anniversary, of the ill-fated, ill-advised, ill, well, let’s just keep it as the previous two ills, of what seemed last year to be the end of the seemingly completed fiasco in Iraq. However although American troops have mainly been withdrawn many thousand American bought and paid for “contract” soldiers are still operating in that theater. Moreover the wreckage from the huge American footprint (bootprint, really) is still wreaking havoc on that benighted land from lack of electrical power to unexploded bombs to speak nothing of the current constant political turmoil between the myriad factions struggling for power. Then there is the question of those tens of thousands of soldiers who had been switched over within a heartbeat from benighted Iraq to benighted Afghanistan. The call for immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan of that last ten thousand troops if not drawing much support in these back- burner concern days is still a necessary call. Finally, if there is a modern example  of the follies of war, of a needless imperial adventure, of flat-out American imperial hubris to do something explosive (in more ways than one) then the ill-famed Iraq invasion started on March 19, 2003 should be etched in every leftist militant, hell, every thoughtful citizen’s brain. Yet President Obama seeks on his hands and knees if you can believe this new authorization to send the Iraq War into overtime with this alleged existential threat by ISIS or whatever initials those insane butcher terrorists are running to these days. Make no mistake we have no truck ISIS and whatever alphabet soup organizations spring from, are associated with, or are successor organizations to that one but to go along with the bloodied-handed imperialists who brought forth these demons who want to get more deeply involved in a sectarian conflict with no “good” sides is rich, very rich, indeed. No way. ]        

Here is part three of a little cautionary tale to commemorate this sad occasion (see this blog dated March 19 for part one, March 20 for part two): 

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Walking toward Union Square in his hometown of  New York City one brisk, blustery mid-March Saturday in 2006 Tim Reid was approached by an older man with a full grey-speckled beard and longish matching hair passing out leaflets for a  3rd anniversary of the Iraq war anti-war rally. As the older man tried to interest him in a leaflet Tim recognized him, Artie Feingold, as an old co-worker in the struggle against the first Iraq war under Bush’s father in an ad hoc anti-imperialist committee formed quickly to oppose that war. Tim sheepishly took the leaflet and as he did so out of some mist of time Artie also recognized him and started to engage in an effort to get Tim to stay for the rally.

The reason for Tim’s sheepishness and reluctance was that until very recently he had fully supported the Bush war policy. After a couple of years of being lied to from top to bottom by that administration, a couple of years of the whole damn U.S. military being unable to find any weapons of mass destructions that was the lynchpin to his support, the daily horrible carnage in the full-scale civil war going on in Iraq, and the increasing American casualty lists he had taken a few steps away from that support.   Tim was not sure that he wanted to engage Artie in his reasoning since he knew that Artie had moved from that ad hoc committee to one of the never-ending Marxoid groupings that canvassed the city and who reasons for separate existence (and in some cases existence at all) always evaded him. By the name of the organization on the leaflet he knew Artie was still a “believer” and that made him even more hesitant to enter a discussion. He at first moved away and then headed back to Artie not to argue so much since there now was less ground separating them but to explain his previous position a little.             

Artie, not having seen Tim in many years, was unaware that his politics had changed and so what Tim had to say startled him at first. Tim noted that his opposition to that first Iraq war, and if he recalled Artie’s too, had centered on opposition to a war fought for sheiks, one set of dictators , and oil against the acknowledged mad man Saddam Hussein. It was not our fight, not at all. Mercifully it was soon over and life continued on. This later war though Tim had thought had been fully justified in the new post 9/11world reality especially when the mad men were hitting New York City. Hitting, he admitted, the place where he and his kids were living, a fact that changed his view significantly since he felt he had to go to any lengths to protect his kids in a dangerous world. Besides he was sure that when, of all the Bush administration speakers, solid Colin Powell a man not easily to rattles and of sound judgment in military matters, had given the “green light” to those tales of weapons of mass destruction he was on board. After the initial “slam dunk” invasion Tim felt that the whole thing would be wrapped up and nation-building could go forward quickly. Then the whole thing turned to ashes, turned to ashes almost as quickly as the initial success. He felt sure though that that devious Hussein bastard’s hiding places would be found at some point.  Then nothing, nothing but casualty reports.    

Artie listened to Tim rather politely like in the intervening years he too had learned to be less hot-headed and argumentative and more thoughtful. He confessed that Tim’s story sounded very much like that of his parents who still lived over in Brooklyn and who had been early members of Students for Socialism in their youthful student days who went that extra mile with Bush on Iraq to save their beloved city. Then, naturally, Artie, good old Artie, tried to badger Tim a little into coming over to the rally for a little while anyway, maybe run into a few more old co-workers from the old days. Tim begged off, first using the excuse of having to deal with the kids and then, more truthfully, stated that he while he wasn’t on board the Bush bus any longer he was not sure that his opposition was deep enough to publicly express anti-wars sentiments. To Tim’s surprise Artie did not press the issue but left Tim with this-“Maybe next year for the fourth anniversary anti-war rally you will join us.” Tim did a double-take and then realized that what Artie had to say about another year of war might be very true. As he turned away toward home with the first chants of the day Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of U.S. Troops, Stop The War, and Bring The Troops Home burst into the old New York air some of the old juices began to flow in his veins…     

A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Blog

 A link below to link to the Steve Lendman Blog

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Over the years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog.  The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies. 

I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again this summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air.

A Jackman disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

An additional Jackman comment (Fall 2014):

The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still emerged in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference  (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank). 

Of course  I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion." on the question of the idea of depending on bourgeois society to reform itself. On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work.                  

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