Vatican encyclical: “War always does grave harm to the environment”

Posted by Doug Weir on Jun 19, 2015 in Blog, Legal, News, Policy | No Comments

The Vatican’s latest encyclical ‘Care for Our Common Home’ has triggered much rejoicing from the environmental movement, and justifiably so, coming as it does in the run up to the latest round of climate change negotiations. But in questioning the global economic order and its depredations on the planetary environment, Pope Francis has also sought to communicate a wide range of problems that have blocked progress on environmental protection. There will be much interest in the repercussions from what many may view as a radical agenda for global environmental reform.

Humanitarian environmentalism

On chemical pollution and waste, Francis observes that: “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth”. [21] But, in common with the rest of the text he underscores the connection between contamination and the health of the poor and vulnerable, by noting that even in locations known to be polluted: “frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected” and “both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest”. This has often proved the case in peacetime, where those with the least social and political capital have been forced to live or work in proximity to hazardous sites. It has also proved true following conflict, where the barriers to effective data collection on environmental risks are higher, and effective governmental response may be wholly absent.

Pope Francis bemoans the absence of political leadership on environmental protection, calling for effective regulatory approaches to ensure that we are not overwhelmed by the technological and economic interests of the few: “The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable; otherwise, the new power structures based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice.” [53]

Pope Francis, humanitarian environmentalist.

On the need for clear boundaries

While it is written in general terms, it’s not hard to find parallels with the current state of protection of the environment during conflict. Indeed a good example emerged this week in the Pentagon’s newly published Law of War Manual. Beyond the comparatively narrow remit of the ENMOD Convention and its ban on the use of environmental modification as a weapon of war, the manual questions the validity of the derived customary rules of articles 35 and 55 of Additional Protocol I:

Article 35(3) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I: It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.

Article 55(1) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I: Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage. This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population.

The new Pentagon manual states that: “The United States has not accepted these provisions and has repeatedly expressed the view that these provisions are ‘overly broad and ambiguous and ‘not a part of customary law.’”. This view runs counter to that of a large number of militaries. It also appears to be retrograde step as the US’s 1993 US Operational Law Handbook did acknowledge the rule. The objections of the US and UK appear to be framed around the legality of the use of nuclear weapons, subsuming the wider question of methods and means into the impact of a single type of weapon. While the usefulness of the provisions is regularly challenged by legal scholars, it is typically driven by specific concerns over the ambiguous nature of the long-term, widespread and severe thresholds, not by the legality or otherwise of specific weapons.

The ease with which states sidestep even the most modest of requirements to protect the environment chimes with Pope Francis’ view that more robust systems of protection are necessary, although he is particularly scathing of current global responses and international conferences, which he argues are weakened by short sighted special interests, ensuring that:“the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.”[54] Needless to say, this will resonate with many in the environmental field.

Although the overarching focus of the encyclical is climate change, with only a few specific references to weapons or the environmental impact of war, the links between natural resources and conflicts do get a special mention: “It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars, albeit under the guise of noble claims…Politics must pay greater attention to foreseeing new conflicts and addressing the causes which can lead to them.” [57]

The interconnectedness of things

Natural resources and conflicts are just one of a number of areas where environmentalists will be pleased that Francis has underscored the interconnectedness of environmental issues. However in promoting his brand of humanitarian environmentalism, he also gives thought to the need to protect the environment for its own sake, setting this out through a detailed consideration of Christian scripture. He also challenges the deep-seated idea that humanity has dominion over the Earth and is free to use it as it wishes: “Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.” [67]

The TRWP’s Aneaka Kellay asking whether post-conflict environmental response could be improved through new regulatory approaches at the UNEP/OCHA Environmental Emergencies Forum.

Francis advocates for a new ‘ecological culture’ that reflects this interconnectedness, but cautions that it: “…cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources.”The TRWP recently attended the UNEP/OCHA Environmental Emergencies Forum in Oslo and was impressed with the projects being planned and implemented globally to reduce the health and environmental risks from industrial accidents and natural disasters. There was much talk of building resilience, but less on tackling the root causes of such emergencies. While such global efforts were perhaps beyond the scope of the meeting, Francis identifies this elephant in the room by arguing that: “To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.” [111]

The encyclical challenges humanity’s dislocation from nature, particularly the refusal, or inability, to consider the environmental impact of society’s policies and actions, something that seems particularly relevant to the current failure to properly monitor the environmental and health legacy of conflict. Francis argues that this feeds humanity’s sense of dominion over nature: “Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself.” [117]

Global regulatory norms are needed

Turning again to the need for regulation, Pope Francis praises the environmental movement and its work to get green issues on the global agenda, but again regrets the failure of political will that has obstructed progress. He praises the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, its principles, agendas and declarations. He also welcomes the international agreements on hazardous wastes, the ozone layer and the trade in endangered species but regrets that Rio’s “accords have been poorly implemented, due to the lack of suitable mechanisms for oversight, periodic review and penalties in cases of non-compliance. The principles which it proclaimed still await an efficient and flexible means of practical implementation.” [167] He argues in favour or more international agreements that are enforceable, while respecting state sovereignty, arguing that:“Global regulatory norms are needed to impose obligations and prevent unacceptable actions.” [173] Perhaps conflict and the environment is one such area ripe for progress?

It is not the message of the encyclical that will surprise environmentalists, the arguments made are well trodden and explored, what makes this different is the messenger. Coming as it does from the head of the Catholic church seems like a notable departure and, while many of a more conservative bent will see this as a radical and terrifying agenda, it may also serve to reinforce the notion that radicalism is subjective and that sooner or later views can be mainstreamed, if and when the conditions allow it.

Doug Weir managed the Toxic Remnants of War Project

 

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CIW, Fair Food allies to rally outside Kroger annual shareholder meeting Thursday in Cincinnati! Rally to call on country’s second largest food retailer to join the country’s most respected social responsibility program for the protection of farm labor rights in its supply chain; Also: CIW education team in South Carolina pays respects at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston… On Thursday, June 24th, in Cincinnati, Ohio, local clergy, students, and residents with the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center and Ohio Fair Food will join the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for a demonstration outside the 2015 Kroger’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders.  Together, they will call on the supermarket giant to join its competitors Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Fresh Market in supporting the award-winning Fair Food Program. Last year’s shareholder meeting event ended in an impromptu march on Kroger headquarters after the company made the extraordinary decision to turn away a delegation representing the CIW and their Ohio allies — despite the fact that the delegation members held proxies authorizing them to speak on behalf of shareholders not in attendance at the meeting [...] [...] CIW education team pays respects at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston… Meanwhile, the CIW’s worker-to-worker education team continues to make its way up the east coast, as the expansion of the Fair Food Program reaches South Carolina’s coastal tomato industry. But while the task at hand — informing workers on participating Low Country tomato farms of their rights under the Fair Food Program — is of utmost importance, events in Charleston this week shook the country as a whole and transcended the education team’s mission. Accordingly, the team members decided to set aside their work yesterday to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church and pay their respects to the victims of last Wednesday’s horrific shooting... Make sure to check out these important updates from Cincinnati as well as Charleston over at the CIW website!

You are subscribed to the CIW Mailing List. To unsubscribe, please email us at workers@ciw-online.org.  Coalition of Immokalee Workers • PO Box 603, Immokalee, FL 34143 • (239) 657-8311 • workers@ciw-online.org

The Latest FromThe United National Anti-War Coaltion

UNACpeace@gmail.com           518-227-6947             www.UNACpeace.org Charleston Shootings Expose Systemic Racism in the United States It is systemic racism that killed the nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina just as it is systemic racism that killed Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and other Black victims, perhaps as many as two per day in 2015.  The mainstream media and the politicians will deny this and claim it is the act of a lone, crazy individual or due to the lack of gun control laws, not the system that has accepted South Carolina flying the confederate flag at its Capitol. The shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church was reminiscent of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four children in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, prior to the end of Jim Crow in the South.  Has the U.S.  moved back to that period in our history?  Are the killings of Blacks today any different than the lynchings of several decades ago?  Just as the Birmingham bombers of 1963 were initially not prosecuted by the racist justice system, not one cop has been convicted for the many killings of unarmed Blacks, some caught on video. [Read more...] Join the Million People's March Against Police Brutality, Racial Injustice, and Economic Inequality July 25, 2015, Lincoln Monument, Newark, NJ With the recent killings of members of the AME Church in Charleston, SC, we need to redouble our efforts to join and help organize support for this important march and rally.  UNAC is helping to organize a national conference call for Tuesday, June 30 at 9:00 PM EST with People's Organization for Progress chairman, Lawrence Hamm.  Dial 712-432-6100 to join the call, when asked, use 41853116# as the pass code. There will be a mass organizing meeting for the march in New York City during the first week of July.  Please check back to the UNAC web site for details when they are available (http://UNACpeace.org) For more information: http://njpop.org/wordpress/ Join the Facebook event at: https://www.facebook.com/events/418074548350082/ UNAC supports the International Peoples' Tribunal being organized by BAYAN, USA, a coalition of Filipino groups along with other organizations.  The tribunal will take place in Washington, DC, July 16 - 18.  The Tribunal will hear testimony about crimes against the Filipino people by President Benigno S. Aquino and the U.S. Government as represented by President Barack Obama. For information on the proceedings, the Jurors, the cases to be heard, the human rights and social justice

Rally: Stop US bombing in Iraq/Syria and Bring Troops Home

When: Tuesday, June 30, 2015, 5:00 pm to 7:15 pm

Where: Harvard Square MBTA entrance • Cambridge

President Obama recently announced that he is sending 450 more U.S. troops to Iraq. These new troops join 3,050 troops already in Iraq and a number of U.S. warships. They are setting up a U.S. military base on Iraqi soil. We have been bombing Iraq since 1991 with a new escalation last August. These actions are called war. Further escalations no doubt lie just down the road.
The US has spent trillions and killed hundreds of thousands, including more than 4,500 US dead  in the decades of war on Iraq. That war destroyed the infrastructure of the country and opened the door to the murderous group called ISIS.   It is a catastrophic disaster for the people of Iraq.
Successive administrations keep the wars going. But war is not the answer to the complicated disasters now occurring in the middle east. ISIS is using our weapons it keeps stealing from the Iraqi army that we keep training and arming.
In addition to arming and fueling conflict in the middle east, the US is moving heavy tanks to border states with Russia and making threatening moves with regard to China (South China sea) in an ominous escalation and reviving of hostilities not seen since the end of the cold war.
Saudi Arabia uses weapons it purchases from the U.S. to commit massive atrocities from the air against the civilian population of Yemen.
Join United for Justice with Peace to protest these dangerous escalations. The rally will take place in Harvard Square and will begin at 5pm. After the rally we will join the 70 days 4 peace vigil at University Lutheran Church on Winthrop St. from 7:00-7:16pm. 

 

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Nuclear Weapons: Are They Legal?

When: Thursday, July 16, 2015, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Where: Framingham Public Library • 49 Lexington Street • Framingham

 

by Prof. Elaine Scarry, Ph.
Harvard Prof. Elaine Scarry is the author of “Thermonuclear Monarchy”.  She argues that the power of one leader to obliterate millions of people with a nuclear weapon deeply violates our constitutional rights, undermines the social contract, and is fundamentally at odds with democracy. After Dr. Scarry’s talk we will offer action steps you can take to move our elected representatives towards nuclear negotiations and nuclear abolition.

Sponsored by MAPA and MetroWest Peace Action  

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Upcoming Events: 

POSTPONED: Vietnam War: Reflections, Resistance and Implications	Mon Jun 29	7:00pm	encuentro 5	Boston
Rally: Stop US bombing in Iraq/Syria and Bring Troops Home	Tue Jun 30	5:00pm	Harvard Square MBTA entrance	Cambridge
Nuclear Weapons: Are They Legal?	Thu Jul 16	6:30pm	Framingham Public Library	Framingham
70 Years: Never Again	Thu Aug 6	1:00pm		Across Massachusetts
Peace and Planet: Poetry and Performance	Sun Aug 9	6:00pm	Out of the Blue Gallery	Cambridge

Once Again- All Honor To The Waldensian Heretics! (Or For Sticklers Followers Of Peter Waldo)- A Smidgen Of Justice Finally!

Once Again- All Honor To The Waldensian Heretics! (Or For Sticklers Followers Of Peter Waldo)- A Smidgen Of Justice Finally!

Sometimes in the cyberspace, the blogosphere, hell, maybe in life you can’t win. Recently, very recently, I posted a short mention in this space honoring the old time formerly heretical grouping persecuted, no more than persecuted, almost exterminated by the Roman Catholic Church, the Waldensians (alternatively Waldenese which is the way they were presented in Western Civ class and which I like better since Waldensian makes me think they might be followers of Henry David Thoreau, a different kind of Protestant later or even better so nobody can mistake them, followers of the pious 12^th century ex-merchant Peter Waldo although that Waldo part has problems too). To make some kind of historical amends (although as far as I know no dough from the Vatican coffers) the Roman Catholic Church’s leader, Pope Francis, had asked, maybe begged for all I know since he did it in foreign language (not English anyway) and his gestures may be subject to some differences of interpretation, the small scattered Waldensese community of formerly heretical “premature” Protestants for forgiveness. Particularly for the egregious acts a 15^th century former pope’s bull (that is what they call the thing when the pope orders something done, or not done, I am not making it up or trying to be sarcastic so do not sent comments on this please), get this Innocent VIII by name, telling every true believer in the apostolic works of the Church to smite them down like vermin. And they did.        

Here is where I got into trouble or rather in two types of trouble from a couple of separate commenters who got hot under the collar about how they interpreted what I said as a some kind of “smack down” of the Roman Church and/or its leader (the word one commenter actually used as in “smacked down Pope Francis”). This from a person who said she was a “lapsed Catholic” whatever that is, and as if that was some kind of talisman for what she accused me of doing.

The reason for that negative comment was that I had mentioned that this Roman Catholic Church, or rather its bureaucracy, is a little slow on the uptake when it comes to trying to right various crimes in its long and sometimes seedy past although I notice they zip right along with this making saints out of whole cloth business especially of former popes. Take Galileo and his simple proposition that the earth was not flat and that the earth went around the sun like we all learned in about second grade. It took another bull ( I think) a few years back to get the Church to recognize that maybe Galileo was right or at least they should have treated him better.

Now comes the case of the Waldenese, a small grouping not doing anything to hurt mighty Rome back in the days from about the 12^th to the 16^th century when they had plenty to say in Europe and elsewhere about who was to believe in what doctrine or face what kind of hell on earth at the stake for their misbegotten ways. Maybe Rome was a little off from its glory “caesaro-papist” days but they could put serious hurt on dissenters, no question. Now a few centuries later all is forgiven. At that rate serious current “errors” like the dive the Vatican took on trying to save the Jews during World War II or more recently the sexual ravaging of their innocent youth by very disturbed and nasty priests should be “rectified” by some Pope Innocent LXIII sometime after 2400. So, no, I did not “smack down” the current pope but just stated what was what.      

The more serious comment, or at least I took it more seriously, was one of cultural relativism I suppose. The commenter a “non-lapsed Catholic” from what I could gather blasted me (at least he did not use the ‘smack down” term, mercifully) for putting today’s standard of religious tolerance back to that time, a time when the Church was in danger from every corner. You could not have a group, even an isolated group not bothering anybody whom Rome saw as a threat doing whatever they pleased. This thought is what galled the commenter most when I wrote “Get this too though Waldo and his gang thought that everybody would be just as well off if there was not a clergy separate from the congregation, that everybody could  be a priest (maybe women too?). And you wonder why Rome had the stakes piled up high and the flames on big time.” He went off about the need for a clergy to mediate between God and the congregation, that the mediation should be by a man since the original followers (of Jesus) were men, and indiscriminate giving of alms and other such communal actions were, well, “communistic.” So you can see where he was going.      

Look I suggested that everybody who was interested check with the very informative article in the on-line Wikipedia if you didn’t have time to go to the library (or the expense of ordering a book on the subject from Amazon) to brush up on exactly what these people were up to and why Rome’s nose got bent out of shape about the matter. It is usually fruitless to argue religion but a doctrine of giving alms to the poor, leading a simple life, having the religious ceremony done in the vernacular, buying into the idea of the priesthood of all believers, giving up of the ceremonial body and blood (bread and wine) idea (called transubstantiation, I think) and forgetting about that Church raking in the dough money-maker purgatory look very simple, look very pre-organized Church to me. So cultural relativism or not that Catholic commenter seems to have missed out on the Reformation, maybe more. I’ll stick with old Waldo on this one.      

Here is the original post and you decide whether I was being blasphemous, sacrilegious, or a heathen:

You have probably heard the news lately that the Roman Catholic Church’s Pope Francis has asked the Waldenese community of hearty and alive irreverent Protestants to accept the church’s forgiveness for attempting to exterminate their forbears in the late 15^th century by order of the then pope, get this, Pope Innocent VIII (eight, right). And they almost succeeded, with now a small remnant still living in small enclaves in various spots around the world. By the way doing nobody harm just like when they were started by a renegade merchant named, well, Waldo, who  thought that piety, poverty and doing good works were worthy endeavors. Get this too though Waldo and his gang thought that everybody would be just as well off if there was not a clergy separate from the congregation, that everybody could  be a priest (maybe women too?). And you wonder why Rome had the stakes piled up high and the flames on big time. Well, I know everybody studied this group in Western History class in passing, I know I did, as precursors of the Protestant Reformation and martyrs to the cause of enlightenment so I will just leave a link to Wikipedia on the subject for you to look at-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians        

Here is my problem though and maybe not so much a reflection on the current pope as on the church bureaucracy and inertia but isn’t several hundred years later for forgiveness and reconciliation in the case of Galileo just a little too late to do those fallen martyrs any good. What took so long? This may be a Tweeter Pope but you guys have got to push harder to come into the 18^th century, the age of enlightenment. Okay.   

Peter Waldo

Light glows in the darkness

 

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

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the hide-bound Academy filled with its rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short, nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted 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 laying 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 as 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 ….           

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Robert Seth Hayes

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Albert Woodfox

Workers Vanguard No. 1065	3 April 2015

State Vendetta Continues

Free Albert Woodfox Now!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

 

On February 12, class-war prisoner Albert Woodfox was indicted once again for the fatal stabbing of Louisiana prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. Woodfox has seen this frame-up conviction overturned three times before, only to find himself entombed in solitary confinement in the notorious Angola prison.

Last November, a federal appeals court upheld the 2013 federal district court decision granting habeas corpus relief, overturning his conviction on the grounds of racist grand jury rigging. On March 2, Woodfox briefly emerged from the prison hell that has been his home for over 40 years to attend a hearing in federal district court seeking bail pending his retrial. Determined that this patently innocent fighter for black rights rot in solitary until he dies, the prosecution told the federal court judge who granted Woodfox’s habeas petition that this was a state court matter—and that the judge should just butt out. The judge made no ruling on Woodfox’s bail application, keeping him behind bars.

After they organized a Black Panther Party chapter at Angola prison, Woodfox and fellow inmates Herman Wallace and Robert King, known as the Angola Three, were put in the crosshairs by their jailers. Woodfox and Wallace were framed up for stabbing the prison guard. King was falsely convicted of killing a fellow inmate a year later. Wallace died from liver cancer in October 2013, only three days after his release from prison. In an act both sadistic and vindictive, the State of Louisiana responded to the court order releasing Wallace by indicting him again the day before his death. King was released in 2001 and has been active in the fight to free Woodfox.

As for Woodfox’s conviction, there was not a shred of physical evidence linking him to the murder, and it was later revealed that the key prosecution “eyewitness” was bribed for his testimony at trial. So transparent was the frame-up that prison guard Miller’s widow, Leontine Rogers, believes Woodfox to be innocent and has joined in the call to release him. In 2008, Angola prison warden Burl Cain declared that even if Woodfox were not guilty, he would still keep him in solitary because “I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism.”

The persecution of Woodfox highlights the ongoing capitalist state vendetta against onetime members of the Black Panther Party—the best of a generation of black activists who sought a revolutionary road to black liberation. Thirty-eight members of the Panthers were killed by the cops and FBI, and hundreds more were framed up and imprisoned on bogus charges. Panther leaders Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) and Dhoruba bin Wahad among others spent decades behind bars before their release, while Mumia Abu-Jamal and Panther supporters Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter have between them spent over 120 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

Now 68 years old, Woodfox has spent decades confined in a two-by-three-meter cell 23 hours a day. According to his lawyers, he suffers from hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia—conditions no doubt caused and/or exacerbated by decades of vindictive and inhumane treatment. We reiterate our call for Woodfox’s immediate freedom and encourage our readers to take up his cause.

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found (the now late) Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of class-war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that comes to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

All Honor To The Waldenese Heretics! A Smite Of Justice Finally!

Peter Waldo

Light glows in the darkness

You have probably heard the news lately that the Roman Catholic Church’s Pope Francis has asked the Waldenese community of hearty and alive irreverent Protestants to accept the church’s forgiveness for attempting to exterminate their forbears in the late 15^th century by order of the then pope, get this, Pope Innocent VIII (eight, right). And they almost succeeded, with now a small remnant still living in small enclaves in various spots around the world. By the way doing nobody harm just like when they were started by a renegade merchant named, well, Waldo, who  thought that piety, poverty and doing good works were worthy endeavors. Get this too though Waldo and his gang thought that everybody would be just as well off if there was not a clergy separate from the congregation, that everybody could  be a priest (maybe women too?). And you wonder why Rome had the stakes piled up high and the flames on big time. Well, I know everybody studied this group in Western History class in passing, I know I did, as precursors of the Protestant Reformation and martyrs to the cause of enlightenment so I will just leave a link to Wikipedia on the subject for you to look at-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians        

 Here is my problem though and maybe not so much a reflection on the current pope as on the church bureaucracy and inertia but isn’t several hundred years later for forgiveness and reconciliation in the case of Galileo just a little too late to do those fallen martyrs any good. What took so long? This may be a Tweeter Pope but you guys have got to push harder to come into the 18^th century, the age of enlightenment. Okay.   

 

Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind

Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind

 

 
 
 

A while back, a few months ago now I think I mentioned in a sketch about how I came to learn about the music of Woody Guthrie I noted that it was hard to pin just exactly when I first heard his music since it pre-dated my coming to the folk minute of the 1960s where the name Woody Guthrie had been imprinted on lots of work by the then “new breed” protest/social commentary troubadour folk singers like Bob Dylan (who actually spent time in Woody’s hospital room with him when he first came East from Hibbing out of Dinktown in Minneapolis and wrote an early paean called Song To Woody on his first or second album), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (who made a very nice career out of being a true Woody acolyte and had expected Dylan who had subsequently moved on, moved very far on to more lyrical work), and Stubby Tatum (probably the truest acolyte since he was instrumental in putting a lot of Woody’s unpublished poems and art work out for public inspection and specialized in Woody songs, first around Harvard Square and then wherever he could get a gig, which to say the least were not among the most well know or well thought out of Woody’s works. After some thought I pinpointed the first time I heard a Woody song to a seventh grade music class, Mr. Dasher’s class whom we innocently then called Dasher the Flasher just for rhyming purposes but which with today’s sensibilities about the young would not play very well and would probably have him up before some board of inquiry just because a bunch of moody, alienated hormonally-crazed seventh graders were into a rhyming fad that lasted until the next fad a few weeks or months, when he in an effort to have us appreciate various genre of the world music songbook made us learn Woody’s This Land Is Your Land. Little did we know until a few years later when some former student confronted him about why we were made to learn all those silly songs he made us memorize and he told that student that he had done so in order to, fruitlessly as it turned out, break us from our undying devotion to rock and roll, you know, Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Wanda, Brenda, Bo, Buddy, the Big Bopper and every single doo wop group, male or female. If anybody wants to create a board of inquiry over that Mister Dasher indiscretion complete with a jury of still irate rock and roll will never die-ers you have my support.   

In thinking about Woody the obvious subsequent question of when I first heard the late Pete Seeger sing, a man who acted as the transmission belt between generations, I came up against that same quandary since I know I didn’t associate him with the first time, the first wave of performers, I heard as I connected with the emerging folk minute of the early 1960s. That folk minute start which I do clearly remember the details of got going one Sunday night when tired of the vanilla rock and roll music that was being play in the fall of 1962 on the Boston stations I began flipping the small dial on my transistor radio settling in on this startling gravelly voice which sounded like some old-time mountain man, some old time Jehovah cometh Calvinist avenging angel, singing Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (who turned out to be folk historian and seminal folk revival figure Dave Von Ronk, who as far as I know later from his politics had no particular religious bent,if any, but who sure sounded like he was heralding the second coming. I listened to a few more songs on what turned out to be a folk music program put on every Sunday evening between seven and nine at the request of some college kids in the area who were going crazy for roots music according to the DJ.          

After thinking about it for a while I realized that I had heard Pete not in solo performance but when he was with The Weavers and they made a hit out of the old Lead Belly tune, Good Night, Irene (a song that in the true oral tradition has many versions and depending on the pedigree fewer or more verses, Lead Belly’s being comparatively short). In those days, in the early 1950s I think, The Weavers were trying to break into the popular music sphere and were proceeding very well until the Cold War night descended upon them and they, or individual members including Pete were tarred with the red scare brush.

Still you cannot keep a good man down, a man with a flame-throwing banjo, with folk music DNA in his blood since he was the son of the well-known folk musicologist Charles Seeger who along with the father and son Lomaxes  did so much to record the old time roots music out on location in the hills and hollows of the South, and with something to say to those who were interested in looking back into the roots of American music before it got commercialized (although now much of that early commercial music makes up the key folk anthology put together by Harry Smith and which every self-respecting folkie performer in the early 1960s treated like a bible. Pete put a lot of it together, a lot of interests. Got the young interested in going back to the time when old cowboys would sing themselves to sleep around the camp fire out in the prairies, when sweat hard-working black share-croppers and plantation workers down South would get out a Saturday jug and head to the juke joint to chase the blues away, and when the people of the hills and hollows down in Appalachia would Saturday night get out the jug and run over to Bill Preston’s old seen better days red-painted barn and dance that last dance waltz to that weeping mountain fiddle.

Stuff like that, lots of stuff like that to fill out the American songbook. But Pete also put his pen to paper to write some searing contemporary lyrics just like those “new breed” protest folk singers he helped nurture and probably the most famous to come out of that period, asking a very good question then, a question still be asked if more desperately than even then, Where Have All The Flowers Gone.  Now a new generation looks like it too is ready to pick up the torch after the long “night of the long knives” we have faced since those days. 

The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.

I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]

For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.

That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.

Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.

Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.

The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).

Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)

So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).

America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.

Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.

[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]


Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.

And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.

All Honor To Denmark Vesey-In Memory Of The Charleston A.M.E. Victims

All Honor To Denmark Vesey-In Memory Of The Charleston A.M.E. Victims

As everybody hopefully knows by now the Charleston A.M.E. has a long and storied history around the balck liberation struggle going back to slavery times (in another building which along the way was burned down before its current incarnation). Below is a link to a program featuring the martyred Denmark Vesey who had his own ideas about how to end slavery. He might very well have a word or two to say about the South Carolina Confederate flag of slavery. In fact I know he would.    
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/18/415465656/denmark-vesey-and-the-history-of-charleston-s-mother-emanuel-church