Hello antiwar friends of UNAC and Supporters of the UNAC Conference, Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad, May 8-10, Seacaucus, NJ  (UNACconference2015.org). Our national conference is developing nicely with an exciting and Impressive array of speakers, panels and workshops.  Be sure to see the latest details on the conference website. We believe this national gathering of activists from a wide range of antiwar and social justice movements is not only timely, but critical to movement building in the U.S. today.  It has been a long time since a conference of this scope has been held.  While the U.S. government and military is busily expanding its wars for profit, at home, Washington is targeting communities of color, voting rights, women’s rights, unions, while militarizing the police and enforcing the surveillance state. By uniting all the struggles at home and abroad, we will connect activists from different movements to forge a common understanding and unity of purpose.  As we know through experience, we can’t rely on elections as the vehicle for peace and social change. Change can happen, but only if we join together as a mighty force and take action The conference looks good on paper but we will only be effective if large number of activists attend.  That is why we need your help and participation. This is what we ask you to do: Come to the conference.  Register now (whether you are able to pay now or not).  Presenters are asked to register as well.  If you can’t attend, please make a donation so that we can subsidize those who need financial help. Publicize the conference widely among your associates and organizations.  Ask your organizations to endorse and build the conference.  Organize transportation and subsidies. Put an ad in the Conference Journal.  (Details on the website.)  Add your name to the list of supporters. Join UNAC and support our coalition efforts.  There is a form to fill out on the UNAC website (UNACpeace.org) or write to us at UNACpeace@gmail.com. (If you would like to help in the organizing of the conference and learn more about UNAC’s current activities, you are invited to join the UNAC Coordinating Committee conference call on Sunday, March 29, 7:30.  Let us know if we should send you the call-in numbers. Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo Co-Coordinators Join Hatem Abudayyeh, Susan Abulhawa, Pam Africa, Abayomi Azikiwe, Ajamu Baraka, Media Benjamin, The Cuban 5, Lamis Deek, Steve Downs, Bernadette Ellorin, Glenn Ford, Sara Flounders, Bruce Gagnon, Teresa Gutierrez, Lawrence Hamm, Chris Hedges, Joe Iosbaker, Charles Jenkins, Antonia Juhasz, Chuck Kaufman, Kathy Kelly, Jeff Mackler, Christine Marie, Ray McGovern, Cynthia McKinney, Michael McPhearson, Malik Mujahid, Lucy Pagoada, Lynn Stewart, David Swanson, Clarence Thomas, Ann Wright, Kevin Zeese & many more at ... A national conference to connect all the issues: “Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad!” (to register now, click the link below) The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) invites you to attend the “Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad!” conference, to be held May 8-10, 2015, in Secaucus, N.J, just outside New York City. More and more, we can see how all the problems of the world are connected. The trillions of dollars being spent on wars-for-profit abroad could be used here at home to rebuild our cities, educate our youth, employ our jobless, repair damage to the environment – and try to make up for the endless suffering the Pentagon is inflicting on people around the world, most of them people of color, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with threatening us or anyone else. Some of the connections are even more striking. Some of the very same kinds of military equipment used in Iraq was seen this past summer on the streets of Ferguson, Mo. Surveillance drones developed for use by the military are now being used by domestic police departments. The endless “war on terror” is being used to justify taking away our civil liberties here at home. Wars for oil in the Middle East keep fossil fuels flowing, accelerating the climate change that threatens all humanity. This conference will be an opportunity to meet and network with activists from across the country and learn about the many struggles going on today, both at home and around the world. Speakers with decades of experience will be joined by members of the new generations of activists who are bringing fresh energy and ideas into the movement. Together, we will learn from and inspire each other. Most conferences cost many hundreds of dollars to attend, but UNAC organizers are doing their best to keep this one affordable for young activists and working people. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to expand your knowledge, make many new progressive friends and build the movement for fundamental social change.    Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad! For more information and to register for the conference, see:  www.unacconference2015.org To place an ad in the conference journal, see: http://www.unacconference2015.org/p/endorsers.html   UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COALITION (UNAC) P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054  ●  Ph:  518-227-6947 Email:  UNACpeace@gmail.com  ●  Web:  www.UNACpeace.org To view this email in your browser, please go to: http://nepajac.org/blast.html

Tax Day: A Time to Speak up for our Values

This year, Republicans control both houses of Congress. They are sharpening their knives to cut vital programs the country needs. At the same time, both Congress and the President are calling for increasing the Pentagon budget, going to war and spending billions to upgrade our vast nuclear weapons capability.

Meanwhile the highest income groups and corporate tax cheats merrily go their way instead of paying their fair share.

But there are voices everywhere in the country speaking up for common sense, peace, public programs that our families need, and a country we can be proud of. On Tax Day we will join our voices to theirs and insist on budget priorities and tax policies that match our values.

We need a Budget for All!

Tax Day Forum

Saturday, April 11, 2:00 pm

Old South Church

645 Boylston St, Boston

 

Mel King
Jimmy Tingle
Grace Ross
Sen. Jason Lewis
Sen. Jamie Eldridge
Rep. Jay Livingstone
Sen. Sal DiDomenico

Court Accepts DOJ's 'State Secrets' Claim to Protect Shadowy Neocons: A New Low By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept 27 March 15   truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here. At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself €œUnited Against Nuclear Iran€ (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging €œeconomic and psychological warfare€ against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by a roster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN €œanalyst€) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran. This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim €” advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos €” that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital €œstate secrets.€ The court€™s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else €” including the lawyers for the parties €” kept in the dark. In May 2013, UANI launched a €œname and shame€ campaign designed to publicly identify €” and malign €” any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the €œname and shame€ campaign destroyed his reputation. Up until that point, there was nothing unusual about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis€™s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case to proceed would damage national security. When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the €œstate secrets privilege,€ it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times€™s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that €œthe group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so­-called state­ secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.€ He quoted the ACLU€™s Ben Wizner as saying: €œI have never seen anything like this.€ Reuters€™s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ€™s involvement a €œmystery€ and said €œthe government€™s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.€ Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the €œstate secrets privilege,€ it is because they are a party to the lawsuit, being sued for their own allegedly illegal acts (such as torture or warrantless surveillance), and they claim that national security would be harmed if they are forced to defend themselves. In rare cases, they do intervene and assert the privilege in lawsuits between private parties, but only where the subject of the litigation is a government program and one of the parties is a government contractor involved in that program €” such as when torture victims sued a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen, for its role in providing airplanes for the rendition program and the Obama DOJ insisted (successfully) that the case not go forward, and the victim of U.S. torture was thus told that he could not even have a day in court. But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. At least based on what they claim about themselves, UANI is just €œa not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group€ that seeks to €œeducate€ the public about the dangers of Iran€™s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess €œstate secrets€? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or could it be that the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which happens to be illegal? What else could explain the basis for the U.S. government€™s argument that allowing UANI to be sued would risk the disclosure of vital €œstate secrets€ besides a desire to cover up something quite untoward if not illegal? What €œstate secrets€ could possibly be disclosed by suing a nice, little €œnot-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group€? We don€™t know the answers to those questions, nor do the lawyers for the plaintiffs whose lawsuit the DOJ wants dismissed. That€™s because, beyond the bizarre DOJ intervention itself, the extreme secrecy that shaped the judicial proceedings is hard to overstate. Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the €œstate secrets privilege,€ at least some information is made public about what they are claiming: which official or department is invoking the privilege, the general nature of the secrets allegedly at risk, the reasons why allowing the claims to be adjudicated would risk disclosure, etc. Some redacted version of the affidavit from the government official making the secrecy claim is made part of the case. Here, virtually everything has been hidden, even from the plaintiffs€™ lawyers. Not only did the U.S. government provide no clue as to what the supposedly endangered €œstate secrets€ are, but they concealed even the identity of the agency making the claim: was it the CIA, the Treasury Department, the State Department, some combination? Nothing is known about any of this, not even who is making the secrecy claim. Instead, the DOJ€™s arguments about why €œsecrecy€ compels dismissal of the entire lawsuit were made in a brief that only Judge Ramos (and not even the parties) gets to read, but even more amazingly, were elaborated on in secret meetings by DOJ lawyers in the judge€™s chambers with nobody else present. Were recordings or transcripts of these meetings made? Is there any record of what the U.S. government whispered in the ear of the judge to scare him into believing that National Security Would Be Harmed„¢ if he allowed the case to proceed? Nobody knows. The whole process is veiled in total secrecy, labeled a €œjudicial proceeding€ but containing none of the transparency, safeguards or adversarial process that characterizes minimally fair courts. This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit (see below). As a result of the DOJ€™s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge€™s ear that national security will be damaged if €” like everyone else in the world €” UANI must answer in a court of law for their conduct. And subservient judicial officials like Judge Ramos will obey the U.S. government€™s dictates and dismiss your lawsuit before it begins, without your having any idea why that even happened. Worse, in his written ruling, the judge expressly acknowledges that dismissal of the entire lawsuit at the start on secrecy grounds is what he calls a €œharsh sanction,€ and also acknowledges that €œit is particularly so in this case because Plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why€ (emphasis added). But he does it anyway, in a perfunctory 18-page opinion that does little other than re-state some basic legal principles, and then just concludes that everything the government whispered in his ear should be accepted. Just read for yourself what Judge Ramos said in defending his dismissal to see how wildly disparate it is from everything we€™re propagandized to believe about the U.S. justice system:  [see image at right] ...the Court has also held two ex parte, in camera meetings with the Government prior to its assertion of the privilege, during which the information as to which the privilege was being asserted was initially disclosed and discovered. What kind of €œjustice system€ allows a neocon €œadvocacy€ group to be immunized from the law, because the U.S. government waltzed into court, met privately with the judge, and whispered in secret that he had better dismiss all claims against that group lest he harm national security? To describe what happened here is to illustrate what a perverse travesty it is. Restis€™s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement this week: We are disappointed that some secret relationship between UANI and the government allows UANI to hide from disclosing that association or to defend what has now been proven to be its false and defamatory allegations directed at Mr. Restis and his company. We are mystified that the U.S. government has such a stake in this case that it would take such extraordinary steps to prevent full disclosure of the secret interest it has with UANI or others. And, we are concerned that, in our court system, such a result could occur on the basis of sealed, one-sided filings and meetings in which we were not allowed to participate. Even more critical is what this says about the Obama DOJ. One of the earliest and most intense grievances of civil libertarians during the Bush presidency was its radical abuse of the €œstate secrets privilege.€ That doctrine began as a narrowly crafted evidentiary rule whereby parties to litigation would be barred from using specific documents that could reveal sensitive national security secrets. But it morphed into the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb whereby the U.S. government could literally demand not that specific documents be excluded but that U.S. courts dismiss entire lawsuits before they began €” even when those lawsuits alleged criminal behavior by top U.S. officials €” on the ground that the subject matter of the lawsuit was too sensitive to be safely adjudicated. The Bush Justice Department used this weapon to prevent its torture, detention, rendition and surveillance victims €” even those everyone acknowledged were completely innocent €” from having a day in court. They would simply say that the treatment of the plaintiffs was classified, and that disclosure would risk harm to national security, and subservient U.S. federal judges (an almost redundant term) would dutifully dismiss the lawsuits before they even began. It literally removed high U.S. government officials from the rule of law: if you commit crimes or brutally abuse people, you will be immunized from legal accountability if you did it in a classified setting. When Obama was in the Senate and then running for President in 2007, he was highly critical of the Bush use of the €œstate secrets privilege€ to get rid of troublesome lawsuits. His official campaign website cited Bush€™s abuse of the privilege as a hallmark of excessive secrecy. But like so many of his purported views, this concern about the use of the €œstate secrets privilege€ was abandoned almost immediately upon his inauguration. His DOJ invoked the privilege to demand victims of Bush programs of torture, rendition, detention, and surveillance be denied any opportunity to be heard in court even when the U.S. government itself acknowledged they were innocent. Obama lawyers even invoked secrecy to argue that a lawsuit challenging the legality of their own targeted assassination program against a U.S. citizen could not be heard in court. As an early headline in the Obama-supporting TPM site recognized: €œExpert Consensus: Obama Mimics Bush On State Secrets. And it worked in virtually every case.

 

NUCLEAR FRAMEWORK AGREED WITH IRAN

The U.S., Iran and five world powers on Thursday reached a preliminary deal designed to contain Iran’s nuclear program, one that would restrict Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and subject it to international inspections, but which also would provide some sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic… “I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final deal, it will make our country and the world safer,” Obama said in a statement in the White House Rose Garden…  Obama struck a confident tone, directly engaging potential critics including Netanyahu and Republicans in Congress. Pointing to the possibility for military conflict should the talks ultimately fail, Obama said, “I welcome a robust debate.” That debate started immediately. Netanyahu, speaking several hours after the deal was announced, said “The concessions offered to Iran in Lausanne would ensure a bad deal that would endanger Israel, the Middle East and the peace of the world. Now is the time for the international community to insist on a better deal.”  More

 

State Department text of the Framework Agreement here

 

DON’T LET CONGRE$$ DERAIL THE US-IRAN DEAL! Tell Congress: Support Iran Nuclear Agreement  Tell your reps to support U.S. negotiators, oppose the hawks.   Statement from MASS PEACE ACTION here

 

Not surprisingly, the Congressional War Party, the Republicans, the Neocons, the Israel Lobby – and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel – are freaking out and are mobilizing all-out to block the agreement.

 

Why Congress should give a nuclear deal with Iran a chance

This agreement – which the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, plus Germany (known as the P5+1) and Iran hope to finalize by a deadline of June 30 – will undoubtedly make Americans and the world safer… The finalized agreement will include five major components:

• Decreasing the stockpile of material that could possibly be made into fissile material for 15 years. 
• Limiting the quantity (by two-thirds) and quality of centrifuges that could make highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear bomb for 10 years. 
• Reconfiguring the nuclear reactor (and securing its spent fuel) in the city of Arak so it won’t produce any weapons-grade plutonium. 
• Implementing unprecedented and exhaustive inspections and comprehensive monitoring for 20 years or more. 
• And lastly, implementing the lifting of specific sanctions on Iran that, if Iran breaks the deal, will snap back into place.

An agreement with Iran on its nuclear program is better than any imaginable alternative.   More

 

Skeptical Senate Puts New Iran Sanctions on Hold But Pushes Other Obstacles

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have won a three-month reprieve from the threat of additional Congressional sanctions on Iran with the announcement Thursday of a political framework for a nuclear agreement. The delay of the Kirk-Menendez bill doesn't mean the fight between the White House and Congress over Iran will wait until July -- quite the contrary. A bill written by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker that would mandate a Congressional review of any deal is still moving forward. The White House has warned that this legislation, too, would harm the negotiations… This week, Democratic Senator Mark Warner came out in support of the bill, bringing the rough whip count to 64 of the 67 needed votes to override Obama’s promised veto.  More

 

(More on the Iran Agreement below)

 

Follow Chelsea Manning @xychelsea Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. NEW: Chelsea's own Twitter account! Chelsea Manning now has her own personal Twitter account, @xychelsea! Since her imprisonment in Fort Leavenworth, KS, Chelsea has been speaking out in op-eds featured in The Guardian and The New York Times. Now, with her new Twitter account, you can hear updates from our heroic Wikileaks whistleblower on a more regular basis! Follow @xychelsea today for tweets written by Chelsea Manning herself! Chelsea Manning’s Twitter is made possible by the Chelsea Manning Support Network and communications with Fitzgibbon Media. Chelsea can continue to be a powerful voice for reform, but we need your help to make that happen. Help us support Chelsea in prison, maximize her voice in the media, continue public education, fund her legal appeals team, and build a powerful movement for presidential pardon. > > > Please donate today! < < <

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Don't Blame It On Rio-Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Notorious, starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1946    

No question that in the aftermath of their defeat in World War II certain Nazis, having seen the writing on the wall in time before the Soviets and then the Americans stormed Berlin, got themselves conveniently shuffled out of Germany by any means necessary with whatever they could bring out and landed wherever they could find some hospitable locale. (Yeah, let the Fuehrer take the pill, make the big gesture, but a lot of the others were happy to desert a sinking ship, to live another day.) Maybe find places with a little sun, a little nightlife to wait out the exile, places like Rio and Buenos Aires which fit the bill. Those who made their escape though, at least those who still had political fire and unabated dreams of empire, when to those locales to make preparations for the next Reich. And it is the smashing of such a budding network in Rio which is at the heart of the film under review, Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot, there is also a little love triangle to be taken care of as well, sorry.     

Here how love and intrigue combine to make this I believe Sir Alfred’s first serious romantic thriller. Alicia (played by, well, beautiful, Ingrid Bergman) playgirl daughter of a convicted Nazi spy who eventually committed suicide had been estranged from her father, despised what he had done. An American intelligence agency has gotten wind of that fact and sent Dev (played by, well, handsome, Cary Grant) to recruit her ultimately to flush out that Nazi network working out of Rio (although don’t blame, well, beautiful Rio for who shows up there). She balked at first but then relents under Dev’s charms, and her own sense of self-worth. Problem, big problem, always a big problem is that agent and handler, beautiful and handsome, fall in love while waiting for the new assignment to come in. That is sure to monkey up the works some way.           

And it does because Alicia’s assignment is to get information about whatever it is the bad boy Nazis are up to in their next round of wreaking havoc on the world. Her assignment: get close to one of the members of the circle, Alex (played by Claude Rains who always seems to be playing second fiddle to somebody for Ms. Bergman’s favors), who in the past had been smitten by Alicia. Well Alicia plays her part very well, too well since as part of getting close to Alex she is asked by Dev’s boss agent to marry him in order to get very close to what the network is up to (basically looking for minerals for bombs, atomic bombs, I would image given the time of the film, if anybody is asking). Of course that did not sit well with Dev since he had his doubts about Alicia and her, ah, virtues, given her notorious past.         

So Dev was in a snit and became at least formally cool to Alicia from there on in, leaving their relationship at a professional level. Well not quite “from here on in” because while trying to find out about what experiments were being performed under the cover of Alex’s home (okay, mansion) Alicia needed to get access to a wine cellar where it was suspected the nefarious work was being carried out. Which she got, by procuring the key to the wine cellar in a famous cinematic scene, but in the process the job got botched a little by, well, by Dev. By fair means or foul Alex thus found out the bitter truth that his wife was an American agent. That is a serious problem for him since, as in Germany, these Nazi thugs play rough with those who fall off the wagon. So Alex contrives (with his dear mother) to poison Alicia. No good, no good in the end anyway since Dev finally figured something had been wrong with Alicia and headed to Alex’s house, mansion, to save her. And he did, with a little help from Alex who really did love Alicia when the deal went down. Problem for Alex though was the rough boys were watching as he helped Alicia and Dev out the door. Out the door but out of luck as Dev left him in the lurch to face those rough boys. Do you want to bet they found him face down in some sleepy unnamed hollow with a couple of slugs in his head? So, yes, this really was a love story disguised as a thriller but any time the Nazis get their noses pushed around is okay by me. So, thanks Sir Alfred.                 

The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War –In Honor Of Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side-In The Beginning-The Massachusetts Sixth Volunteers

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I would not expect any average American citizen today to be familiar with the positions of the communist intellectuals and international working-class party organizers (First International) Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels on the events of the American Civil War. There is only so much one can expect of people to know off the top of their heads about what for several generations now has been ancient history.  I am, however, always amazed when I run into some younger leftists and socialists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. I, in the past, have placed a number of the Marx-Engels newspaper articles from the period in this space to show the avidity of their interest and partisanship in order to refresh some memories and enlighten others. As is my wont I like to supplement such efforts with little fictional sketches to illustrate points that I try to make and do so below with my take on a Union soldier from Boston, a rank and file soldier,Wilhelm Sorge.  

 

Since Marx and Engels have always been identified with a strong anti-capitalist bias for the unknowing it may seem counter-intuitive that the two men would have such a positive position on events that had as one of its outcomes an expanding unified American capitalist state. A unified capitalist state which ultimately led the vanguard political and military actions against the followers of Marx and Engels in the 20^th century in such places as Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. The pair were however driven in their views on revolutionary politics by a theory of historical materialism which placed support of any particular actions in the context of whether they drove the class struggle toward human emancipation forward. So while the task of a unified capitalist state was supportable alone on historical grounds in the United States of the 1860s (as was their qualified support for German unification later in the decade) the key to their support was the overthrow of the more backward slave labor system in one part of the country (aided by those who thrived on the results of that system like the Cotton Whigs in the North) in order to allow the new then progressive capitalist system to thrive.       

 

In the age of advanced imperialist society today, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we find that we are, unlike Marx and Engels, almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And we are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to be a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in the eyes of our forebears, and our eyes too.

 

Furthermore few know about the fact that the small number of Marxist supporters in the United States during that Civil period, and the greater German immigrant communities here that where spawned when radicals were force to flee Europe with the failure of the German revolutions of 1848 were mostly fervent supporters of the Union side in the conflict. Some of them called the “Red Republicans” and “Red 48ers” formed an early experienced military cadre in the then fledgling Union armies. Below is a short sketch drawn on the effect that these hardened foreign –born abolitionists had on some of the raw recruits who showed up in their regiments and brigades during those hard four years of fighting, the third year of which we are commemorating this month.

*************

 

I have spilled no little ink extolling the exploits of the now well-known Massachusetts 54^th (and later the 55^th) Volunteers-The first black regiment organized as such in the American Civil War commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and commemorated to this day by a famous frieze by Augustus Saint-Gauden across from the State House in Boston. Less well-known and also worthy of note was activity of the Massachusetts Sixth Volunteers who when summoned to defend the capital moved out in mid- April 1861. Here is a capsule summary of that story-   

 

The Sixth Massachusetts Volunteers...

 

      ...in 1861, the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia was formally organized. With war approaching, men who worked in the textile cities of Lowell and Lawrence joined this new infantry regiment. They were issued uniforms and rifles; they learned to drill. They waited for the call. It came on April 15th, three days after the attack on Fort Sumter. They were needed to defend Washington, D.C.. The mood when they left Boston was almost festive. When they arrived in the border state of Maryland three days later, everything changed. An angry mob awaited them. In the riot that followed, 16 people lost their lives. Four were soldiers from Massachusetts. These men were the first combat fatalities of the Civil War.

 

In early January 1861, as civil war approached, the men of Massachusetts began to form volunteer militia units. Many workers in the textile cities of Lowell and Lawrence were among the first to join a new infantry regiment, the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, when it was formally organized on January 21, 1861.

 

All through the winter and early spring, the men met regularly to drill. In March, they were issued uniforms and Springfield rifles and told to be ready to assemble at any time. When Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12th, the men of the Massachusetts Sixth knew their days of drilling were over.

Three days later, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months. They were ordered to Washington, D.C. to protect the capital and lead the effort to quash the "rebellion."

Years later the men from Lawrence and Lowell remembered their hurried visits to say good-bye to loved ones and gather supplies before meeting their regiment in Boston. One man from Lowell recalled, "I was working in the machine shop at the time . . . I got my notice at the armory that we were going in the morning. I hired a horse and buggy at a livery stable and drove to Pelham, N.H. where I bade farewell to my sister. I then drove to Tingsboro, as I wanted to see my brother who. . . came with me to Lowell. The mill bells were ringing as we reached Merrimack St."

 

The Sixth Massachusetts gathered with other regiments in Boston on April 16th. The Lowell Daily Courier published one soldier's letter home: "We have been quartered since our arrival in this city at Faneuil Hall and the old cradle of liberty rocked to its foundation from the shouting patriotism of the gallant sixth. During all the heavy rain the streets, windows, and house tops have been filled with enthusiastic spectators, who loudly cheered our regiment . . . The city is completely filled with enthusiasm; gray-haired old men, young boys, old women and young, are alike wild with patriotism."

Not everyone was celebrating. A corporal from Lowell was more subdued. He wrote to his wife at home, "My heart is full for you, and I hope we may meet again. I shall believe that we shall. You must hope for the best and be as cheerful as you can. But I know your feelings and can judge what they will be when you get this. . . ."

 

The Sixth Massachusetts Volunteers boarded trains the next day. One soldier reported, "Cheers upon cheers rent the air as we left Boston . . . at every station we passed anxious multitudes were waiting to cheer us on our way." In Springfield, Hartford, New York, Trenton, and Philadelphia, bells, fireworks, bonfires, bands, booming cannon, and thousands of supporters greeted the Massachusetts men as their train passed through.

 

The mood changed dramatically when the train arrived in Baltimore on the morning of April 19th. Although the state had not seceded from the Union, many Baltimoreans were sympathetic to the Confederate cause and objected strenuously to the presence of northern soldiers.

 

Steam engines were not allowed to operate in the city limits, so the regiment crossed the city in train cars drawn by horses. Most of the men made it before a growing mob threw sand and ship anchors onto the tracks. At that point, the soldiers had no choice but to disembark and begin marching.

The commanding officer ordered the men to load their weapons but not to use them unless fired upon. An anxious corporal sent a note to a friend, "We shall have trouble to-day and I shall not get out of it alive. Promise me if I fall that my body shall be sent home."

 

Four companies of men from Lowell and Lawrence were separated by the crowd from the rest of the regiment. As they attempted to make their way through the city, angry citizens began to shout insults. As one soldier later told a reporter, we "were immediately assailed with stones, clubs and missiles, which we bore according to orders. Orders came . . . for double quick march, but the streets had been torn up by the mob and piles of stones and every other obstacle had been laid in the streets to impede our progress. . . . Pistols began to be discharged at us, . . . Shots and missiles were fired from windows and house tops. . . . The crowd followed us to the depot, keeping up an irregular shooting, even after we entered the [railroad] cars."

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

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 they 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 his high tea. Jesus what a blasted night 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

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, artists, beautiful artists like Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes, prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s land, out of the devil’s claws, and like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves, dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge.        

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 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 ….            

The Promise of a Socialist Society

(Quote of the Week)

Workers Vanguard No. 1025	31 May 2013

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Promise of a Socialist Society

(Quote of the Week)

In the selection below, Friedrich Engels makes plain how proletarian revolution opens the road to an emancipated future in which the productive powers of humanity are unleashed for the benefit of all mankind.

Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them.

Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself....

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears.... Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

—Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)

 

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!