URGENT: Calls Again Needed to Save Mumia's Life!Stop the attempted murder of Mumia through medical neglect!Keep the pressure on! | ||
|
Please call these
numbers and any other
numbers you have for the Prison and the Governor.
(Dialling
code from UK for the USA is 001. Pennsylvania is five hours behind
London.)
John
Wetzel
Secretary, Department of Corrections ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov 717-728-4109 717-728-4178 Fax 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050
John Kerestes
Superintendent SCI Mahanoy 570-773-2158 x8102 570-783-2008 Fax 301 Morea Road, Frackville PA 17932
Susan
McNaughton
Public Information Office PA DOC Press secretary: 717-728-4025 smcnaughton@pa.gov | ||
|
Mumia's
Condition Grave
Take Action NOW! |
 | |
|
On
Friday, April 24, Mumia Abu-Jamal was visited by his
wife, Wadiya Jamal, who reported that his condition
has worsened.
She
saw him again on April 25 and he appeared even more gravely ill. Everyone is asked to call the prison
and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
immediately.
Please
continue to call on
throughout this week.
Mumia was
released from the prison infirmary three days ago even though he was in no
condition to be in general population. His request to be seen by independent
medical specialists was denied by the PA Department of Corrections. Yet he is in
need of 24-hour care and supervision. He is too weak and in this state he may
not be able ask for help.
| ||
|
Please
call the numbers listed. Along with Mumia's
name his prison number is AM 8335. Call
local news sources
in your area that would report on this crisis. Share this email with your contact
lists. Get out the information via any
social media you use especially Facebook and
Twitter using the hashtag #MumiaMustLive.
Demand
that prison officials call Mumia’s wife and his lawyer
Bret Grote to discuss his condition. Demand
that Mumia Abu-Jamal see a competent doctor of his
choice immediately, that he be taken to the hospital for emergency care and not
be left to go into a diabetic coma.
| ||
|
It
is clear that Pennsylvania prison officials are intent on carrying out their
plans to murder Mumia through medical neglect.
This
situation is urgent.
Every call matters. Every action matters. Call your friends, your neighbours. We must
speak out now before it’s too late.
For
more information:
Free
Mumia,
Move organization, Campaign
to Bring Mumia Home, International Action Center and Mumia’s Facebook.
| ||
|
| ||
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 96th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919) -Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm
Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then
Commentary
No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.
The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.
In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.
Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.
It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.
Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.
As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.
And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?
BOOK REVIEW
‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001
An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.
Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.
The Russian Revolution, and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working-class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.
Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.
I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social-democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".
However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.
Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then
Commentary
No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.
The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.
In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.
Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.
It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.
Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.
As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.
And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?
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:
To place an ad in the conference
journal, see:
UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR
COALITION (UNAC)
P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
● Ph: 518-227-6947
To view this email in your browser, please go to: http://nepajac.org/blast.html
On The
40th Anniversary Of The Fall Of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)-Vietnam At
The End- Yet Another Time To Try Men's Souls- The Detroit Vietnam Winter Soldier
Investigations-1971
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sometimes a picture is in fact
better than one thousand words. In this case the famous, or infamous depending
on one’s view, photograph of the last American “refugees” being evacuated by
helicopter from the American Embassy rooftop in Saigon (now, mercifully, Ho Chi
Minh City) tells more about that episode of American imperial hubris that most
books. That clinging mass of blurry figures dragging, fighting, pushing to get
that last out before the NVA swooped down in a flash and closed down the old
shop. Books that spent thousands of words talking about “domino theories, red
menaces, communist hegemony, and sticking it to the Soviets by a little proxy
war in far off rice fields.
Recently I reviewed Frank Snepp’s
book about Vietnam at the end of the war, Indecent
Interval , where I noted “as is the case with this little gem of a book,
ex- CIA man Frank Snepp’s insider account of that fall from the American side,
it is nice to have some serious analytical companionship to that photo
[helicopter rescues off the Embassy rooftop].
Moreover, a book that gives numerous details about what happened to who
in those last days in a little over five hundred pages. Naming names about who
the good guys and bad guys really were (from the American imperial perspective).
Especially now, as two or three later generations only see Vietnam through the
hoary eyes of old veterans, both military and radical anti-war, from that
period like me (a veteran in both senses) to tell the tale.”
And such histories, memoirs and
remembrances help to get a fix on that Vietnam episode in the lives of many of
the young in that time. Sometimes though the story of war, about what happened
before the whole edifice came crashing down, can be told another way, in a more
personal way. Who knows in one hundred years the book below may present the
more important story.
Yet Another Time To Try Men's Souls- The Detroit Winter
Soldier Investigations-1971
DVD Review
Winter Soldier, various soldier witnesses, Winterfest Productions, 1972
Winter Soldier, various soldier witnesses, Winterfest Productions, 1972
I am rather fond of invoking,
especially in writing of the American Revolution that we have just again
celebrated, Tom Paine’s little propaganda piece in defense of that revolution
which hails the winter soldiers of 1776 for staying at their posts when others either
ran away or became faint-hearted at the prospects of defeating the bloody
English. It is those efforts by those long ago winter soldiers that other
leftists and I have honored in the past and continue to honor today. We will
leave the hollow holiday rhetoric and mindless flag waving to the sunshine
patriots. Needless to say, given the title of the film under review, I am not
the only one who appreciates that description and the producers here, I
believe, have caught the essence of the spirit of those long ago winter
soldiers in this documentary about the rank and file soldier-driven
investigation in 1971 into the atrocities and horrors produced by the American
military in the Vietnam War.
It is an old hoary truism, if not
now something of a cliché, that war does not bring out humankind’s nobler
instincts. For a very recent example one need look no further back than at the
newspaper headlines of the past few years concerning various atrocities and
acts of torture committed by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, Iraq and Afghanistan are hardly the first time that the American
military has been exposed acting in less than its self-proclaimed ‘agent of
liberation’ role in its various imperial adventures. If one rolls the film of
history back to the last generation, for those who have forgotten or were not
around, Vietnam presents that same story. As against prior wars two things made
awareness that something had gone horribly wrong possible in Vietnam. First,
Vietnam was the first televised war and at some point it became impossible for
the military to hide everything that it was doing. Secondly, a small critical
mass of American military personnel, mainly those rank and file personnel who
actually carried out military policy, wanted to clear the air of their
complicity in that policy.
Needless to say, an investigation
into atrocities and torture is not something that the American military
establishment wished to have aired in public (and as the fate of this film
indicates raised hell to successfully keep it out of the major media markets of
the time). That establishment was much more comfortable with internal
governmental investigations or whitewashes of their actions as occurred,
ultimately, in the case of My Lai. However the traumatic reaction of a
significant element of the rank and file soldiery in Vietnam caused this
'unofficial' investigation to take place. For those who grew up, like this
reviewer, believing something of Lincoln’s expression that the American
democratic experience was the ‘last, best hope for mankind’ this was not pretty
viewing. For one, also like the reviewer, who was a soldier during the Vietnam
War period and who had friends and ‘buddies’ just like those that populate this
documentary AND DID SOME OF THE SAME THINGS it was doubly hard. But, dear
reader, for the most part what the citizen-soldiers- our brothers, sons and
other relatives- have to say here needed to be said.
Naturally in a documentary that
films an investigation into atrocities, torture and military standard operating
procedure (SOP) during the Vietnam War the interviewees are going to be a
little more articulate, a little more remorseful and a lot more angry than the
average soldier who went through Vietnam came home and tried to forget the
experience. These soldiers had an agenda- and that agenda was to get their
buddies- the troops still in Vietnam- home. Nevertheless one must be impressed
by the way they expressed themselves –sometimes haltingly, sometimes
inarticulately, sometimes from some depth that we have no understanding of.
Moreover, their testimony has the ring of truth. Not the SOP military truth but
this truth- humankind has a long way to go before it can, without
embarrassment, use the word civilized to describe itself. No, my friends, these
were not our soldiers but, they were our people-these were the winter soldiers
of the Vietnam War.
On
The 40th Anniversary Of The Fall Of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh
City)-Vietnam At The End-An Uncounted Causality Of War- The
Never-Ending Vietnam War Story
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sometimes a picture is in fact
better than one thousand words. In this case the famous, or infamous depending
on one’s view, photograph of the last American “refugees” being evacuated from
the American Embassy in Saigon (now, mercifully, Ho Chi Minh City) tells more
about that episode of American imperial hubris that most books. Recently I reviewed
Frank Snepp’s book about Vietnam at the end of the war, Indecent Interval , where I noted “as is the case with this little
gem of a book, ex- CIA man Frank Snepp’s insider account of that fall from the
American side, it is nice to have some serious analytical companionship to that
photo. Moreover, a book that gives numerous details about what happened to who
in those last days in a little over five hundred pages. Naming names about who
the good guys and bad guys really were (from the American imperial perspective).
Especially now, as two or three later generations only see Vietnam through the
hoary eyes of old veterans, both military and radical anti-war, from that
period like me (a veteran in both senses) to tell the tale.”
And such histories, memoirs and
remembrances help to get a fix on that Vietnam episode in the lives of many of
the young in that time. Sometimes though the story of war, about what happened
before the whole edifice came crashing down, can be told another way, in a more
personal way. Who knows in one hundred years the story below may be the more
important story.
THERE IS NO WALL IN WASHINGTON FOR KENNY-BUT, MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE
This space is usually devoted to
‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine
that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling
and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is
necessary. Let me tell the tale.
Recently I returned, while on some
unrelated business, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is
one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small,
cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better
things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor
in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted
off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those
just below them on the social ladder. While there I happened upon an old
neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at
least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking
over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had
grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth
of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a
boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very
close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until,
as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too
young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar?
The long and the short of it is that
he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from
down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both
thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class
neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not
academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the
alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny for a
number of valid medical reasons was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of
course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed
in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on
that Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately,
Kenny’s just begins.
Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard.
Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they
may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime
and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the
street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of
having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I
trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the
condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably
began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for
those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own.
Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over
three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons
won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Certainly not a happy story.
Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern
times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of
war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam
service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and
alcohol. And those who for other reasons could no adjust and found themselves
on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those
grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by
the loss of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe
there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.
"May Day" is celebrated around the world as
International Worker's Day to honor the struggle for workers
rights.
On May 1st, 1886, and in the days that followed, Chicago
police opened fire, attacking thousands of workers on strike. Every year since, workers across the globe
have stood together to unite all of our struggles – an injury to one, is an injury to
all!
This Friday, May 1st,
2015 we hope to
get as many different campaigns, groups of people and organizations as possible
out on the streets in defense of workers rights!
There is no doubt, this winter was one of the more
politically active seasons we have seen in Boston. We've seen large actions
supporting Black Lives Matter, No Olympics campaigns and the continued struggle
for $15 an hour. May Day is about bringing these causes together under the
banner of Solidarity. Whether the
ruling class is oppressing workers or using the police to disenfranchise whole
races of people,
May Day is our day to stand together and announce in
celebration; "Enough is Enough."
Join
Us this Friday, May 1, 2015
12PM Rally on the Boston Commons
2PM March to Haymarket Station
After the march to Haymarket, join the BMDC & get on the #111 bus to Chelsea!
4pm Gather at
Chelsea City Hall
4:30pm March from Chelsea to
Everett
5:30pm Rally at Glendale Park,
Everett
We hope to see you out in the trenches on May Day and please pass this along to friends as well!
Solidaridad,
The Boston May Day Committee
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
No medical execution of Mumia!
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URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!Mon. April 6 national call in: No medical execution of Mumia!SAVE THE LIFE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
STOP HIS EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
DON’T LET THE STATE MURDER ANOTHER BLACK LEADER!
SHUT IT DOWN FOR MUMIA!
Stopped from carrying out the death penalty against Mumia Abu-Jamal by a worldwide movement that spanned three decades, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has been attempting over the past three months to execute him by medical neglect.
On March 30, Abu-Jamal was rushed, unconscious, to the Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pa., suffering from diabetic shock, with a dangerously high blood sugar level of 779. After just two days of treatment in the hospital’s ICU, on April 1, Abu-Jamal was returned to the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa., into the hands of the very same doctors whose medical neglect and mistreatment nearly killed him.
Prison officials initially denied visits by family members, supporters and Abu-Jamal’s attorneys and only backed down after receiving thousands of calls. Those able to visit Mumia on April 3 reported he was extremely weak, had lost 80 pounds, and still had elevated blood sugar levels over 300. For lunch that day the prison fed him spaghetti, one of the worst foods to give a diabetic patient.
The murder of aging political prisoners by denying them inadequate health care has happened before. Earlier this year, MOVE 9 member Phil Africa died under suspicious circumstances at SCI Dallas. The lack of standard medical treatment impacts all prisoners, particularly those over 55.
We are demanding that the state of Pennsylvania cease and desist in their attempts to murder political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal:
●Allow daily visits by Mumia’s family, friends and attorneys. Their support and protection at this time of vulnerability should not be restricted.●Allow Mumia’s choice of specialist doctors to examine and schedule treatment for him -- NOW. Neither the prison staff at SCI Mahanoy nor the Schuylkill Medical Center has a diabetes specialist. There is precedent in Pennsylvania for this. Prisoner John E. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, was allowed care by private doctors during imprisonment. Mumia deserves the same.●Release Mumia’s medical records to his attorneys.●Release from prison all the elderly age 55 and over. Mumia will turn 61 on April 24.●Allowa full investigation of prison health care in Pennsylvania.●Mumia is innocent and should never have been incarcerated. We demand his immediate release.We are calling on everyone to participate in the following actions over the next few days:
●Twitter widely using the hashtags #mumiamustlive, #saveMumia and #Blacklivesmatter.●Call, fax and email the following state officials to raise the above demands:~ DOC Secretary John Wetzel: 717-728-4109; crpadocsecretary@pa.gov.
~ Gov. Tom Wolf: 717-772-5000; fax 717-772-8284; governor@pa.gov.
~ Prison Superintendent John Kerestes: 570-773-2158; contact.doc@pa.gov.
●MONDAY, APRIL 6: A car caravan will demand to see Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Superintendent John Wetzel at the DOC office: 1920 Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050 at 11 a.m. Cars leaving Philadelphia will gather at 7 a.m. on JFK Boulevard between 30th and 31st Streets (across from Bolt and Mega buses). If you can offer rides or need a ride, call or text Joe Piette at 610-931-2615 or email jpiette660@hotmail.com.●TUESDAY, APRIL 7: Press conference in Philadelphia at 11 a.m. outsideDistrict Attorney Seth Williams’ office at Juniper Street & South Penn Square (across from City Hall, near Macy’s).●FRIDAY, APRIL 10: Organize a demonstration in your city, on your campus, wherever you can get out word to stop this attempt to murder Mumia. We need to SHUT IT DOWN FOR MUMIA!
Mumia's family and supporters present demands to the Dept. of Corrections, Mechanicsburg, PA 4/3/2015
Video link by Power to the People Radio Program
https://youtu.be/1VSYaj9Ab8U
April 3 NYC emergency protest: No medical execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal!
https://youtu.be/-kAkhjJsNXQ
Video link by Peoples Video Network
Column written by Mumia Abu-Jamal 3/5/15“Ferguson, USA”With breathless news reports, the U.S. Deptartment of Justice’s Pattern and Practice Study paints a damning picture of a long, cruel and bitter train of maltreatment, mass profiling, police targeting and brutality against Black people in the Missouri town of Ferguson.
What may be even worse, however, is how the town’s police, judges and political leaders conspired to loot the community -- by fining them into more poverty, fines which today account for some 25 percent of the county’s budget.
Correctly, cops have been criticized for their juvenile emails and texts of racism and contempt against the local Black community and even Black leaders in Washington, D.C.
There is largely silence, however, over the role of judges, who used their robes to squeeze money from the community, with unfair fines and fees -- even using their jails as an illegal kind of debtor’s prison.
In 1869, during the reign of England’s Queen Victoria, a statute known as the Debtors Act was passed, which forever abolished imprisonment as punishment for debt.
In today’s Missouri, it’s still used to punish and exploit the poor. But, truth be told, it ain’t just Missouri.
Famed Rolling Stone writer, Matt Taibbi, in his 2014 book, The Divide, tells a similar tale, but from points all across America -- Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy, Gainesville, Georgia, Los Angeles, San Diego and beyond -- [where] poor people are being squeezed and squeezed by cops, by judges, by local governments -- to part with their last dime -- to support a system corrupt to the core.
Taibbi’s full title might give us some insight: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.
It’s the system -- one of exploitation or predation, ultimately of capitalism.
© ‘15maj
IAC Solidarity Center action alerts.
Our mailing address is:
IAC Solidarity Center
147 W 24th St
2nd FL
New York, NY 10011
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First
Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some
Remembrances-Artists’ Corner- William Orphren
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, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves,
dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav
Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with
lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night,
Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes,
circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep
space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like
poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz
puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real
dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated
military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells,
like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence
and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like,
Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to
the tether too.
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 ….
Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind
Sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words, a thousand words and more as in the case Howlin’ Wolf doing his Midnight creep in the photograph above taken from an album of his work but nowadays with the advances in computer technology and someone’s desire to share also to be seen on sites such as YouTube where you can get a real flavor of what that mad man was about when he got his blues wanting habits on. In fact I am a little hesitate to use a bunch of words describing Howlin’ Wolf in high gear since maybe I would leave out that drop of perspiration dripping from his overworked forehead and that salted drop might be the very thing that drove him that night or describing his oneness with his harmonica because that might cause some karmic funk. So, no, I am not really going to go on and on about his midnight creep but when the big man got into high gear, when he went to a place where he sweating profusely, a little ragged in voice and eyes all shot to hell he roared for his version of the high white note. Funny, a lot of people, myself for a while included, used to think that the high white note business was strictly a jazz thing, maybe somebody like the “Prez” Lester Young or Duke’s Johnny Hodges after hours, after the paying customers had had their fill, or what they thought was all those men had in them, shutting the doors tight, putting up the tables leaving the chairs for whoever came by around dawn, grabbing a few guys from around the town as they finished their gigs and make the search, make a serious bid to blow the world to kingdom come.
Some nights they were on fire as they blew that big note out in to some heavy air and who knows where it landed, most nights though it was just “nice try.” One night I was out in Frisco when “Saps” McCoy blew a big sexy sax right out the door of Chez Benny’s over in North Beach when North Beach was just turning away from be-bop “beat” and that high white note, I swear, blew out into the bay and who knows maybe all the way to the Japan seas. Well see we were all a little high so I don’t know about that Japan seas stuff but I sure know that brother blew that high white one somewhere out the door. But see if I had, or anybody had, thought about it for a minute jazz and the blues are cousins, cousins no question so of course Howlin’ Wolf blew out that high white note more than once, plenty including a couple of shows I caught him at later when he was not in his prime.
The photograph (and now video) that I was thinking of is one where he is practically eating the harmonica as he performs How Many More Years (and now like I say thanks to some thoughtful archivist you can go on to YouTube and see him doing his devouring act in real time and in motion, wow, and also berating “father” preacher/sinner man Son House for showing up drunk). Yes, the Wolf could blast out the blues and on this one you get a real appreciation for how serious he was as a performer and as blues representative of the highest order.
Howlin’ Wolf like his near contemporary and rival Muddy Waters, like a whole generation of black bluesmen who learned their trade at the feet of old-time country blues masters like Charley Patton, the aforementioned Son House who had had his own personal fight with the devil, Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil out on Highway 61 so he could get his own version of that high white note, and the like down in Mississippi or other southern places in the first half of the twentieth century. They as part and parcel of that great black migration (even as exceptional musicians they would do stints in the sweated Northern factories before hitting Maxwell Street) took the road north, or rather the river north, an amazing number from the Delta and an even more amazing number from around Clarksville in Mississippi right by that Highway 61 and headed first maybe to Memphis and then on to sweet home Chicago.
They went where the jobs were, went where the ugliness of Mister James Crow telling them sit here not there, walk here but not there, drink the water here not there, don’t look at our women under any conditions and on and on did not haunt their every move (although they would find not racial Garden of Eden in the North, last hired, first fired, squeezed in cold water flats too many to a room, harassed, but they at least has some breathing space, some room to create a little something they could call their own and not Mister’s), went where the big black migration was heading after World War I. Went also to explore a new way of presenting the blues to an urban audience in need of a faster beat, in need of getting away from the Saturday juke joint acoustic country sound with some old timey guys ripping up three chord ditties to go with that jug of Jack Flash’s homemade corn liquor (or so he, Jack Flash called it).
So they, guys like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Magic Slim, Johnny Shines, and James Cotton prospered by doing what Elvis did for rock and rock and Bob Dylan did for folk and pulled the hammer down on the old electric guitar and made big, big sounds that reached all the way back of the room in the Red Hat and Tip Top clubs lining the black streets of blustered America and made the max daddies and max mamas jump, make some moves. And here is where all kinds of thing got intersected, as part of all the trends in post-World War II music up to the 1960s anyway from R&B, rock and roll, electric blues and folk the edges of the music hit all the way to then small white audiences too and they howled for the blues, which spoke to some sense of their own alienation. Hell, the Beatles and more particularly the Stones lived to hear Muddy and the Wolf. The Stones even went to Mecca, to Chess Records to be at one with Muddy. And they also took lessons from Howlin’ Wolf himself on the right way to play Little Red Rooster which they had covered and made famous in the early 1960s (or infamous depending on your point of view since many radio stations including some Boston stations had banned it from the air originally).Yes, Howlin’ Wolf and that big bad harmonica and that big bad voice that howled in the night did that for a new generation, did pretty good, right.
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