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

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

 

 

 

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

The Struggle Continues …

Four  Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

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

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

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

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

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 

*A Mixed Bag Musical Potpourri-Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Rock And Rockabilly-Rory Block

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Rory Block In Concert.

Have Mercy, Rory

Angel Of Mercy, Rory Block, Rounder Records, 1994

I recently, in reviewing Rory Block’s fine “Gone Woman’s Blues CD, noted that I owed her one. Here is why. During the recently completed misbegotten presidential campaign season I took more heat that one could shake a stick at for using the title of one of country blues master Skip James’ “I’d Rather Be A Devil That To Be That Woman’s Man” for some political blogs that I wrote in regard to the Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party candidacy. For months I took it on the chin from my feminist friends as exhibiting some form of latent hostility to women, especially woman candidates for president. (By the way, that was a totally false accusation. I would have been more than willing to vote for Victoria Woodhull on the Woman’s Equality ticket in 1872.) There one day I remembered through the mist of time singer/songwriter Rory Block’s rendition of the James’ classic and which forms the headline to this entry. Thanks, Rory.

But thanks and kudos can only go so far. The present CD, “Angel Of Mercy”, leaves me cold. Rory, I believe, has always had two speeds. The natural blues one and the contemporary folk stylist one. That latter style is on display here and not to her benefit. Probably, and here I may get back into “hot water” politically, the main problem is that the lyrics of these songs do not “speak” to me. It could be age, it could be gender, it could be the wayward subjects but they just do not resonant with me. Not to worry though there are other Rory CDs that do “speak” to me and will get more a more positive review like the one given to “Gone Woman Blues”.

*A Mixed Bag Musical Potpourri-Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Rock And Rockabilly-Mance Lipscomb

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Mance Lipscomb in Concert.

Another T For Texas

Pure Texas Country Blues, Mance Lipscomb, Arhoolie Records, 2002



I have written on the subject of Texas country blues guitarist extraordinaire Mance Lipscomb in connection with a series of DVDs that the well-known guitarist and performer Stefan Grossman put out a number of years ago, “Masters Of The Country Blues”, that featured the greats of acoustic country blues like Son House, Bukka White, Reverend Gary Davis and, well Mance Lipscomb. Most of the others came out of the Mississippi Delta tradition which is a shade bit different from the Texas tradition of the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead Belly and, well, Mance Lipscomb. Lipscomb is probably a more versatile guitarist than the others, if for no other reason than he has a greater range of keys that he can play in and a somewhat unique picking style (at least it looks and sounds that way to me). Moreover, his vocals are a little smoother than the rough-edged sound of the old Mississippi plantation cotton fields. A perfect example of the difference is his ‘soft’ version of the classic “Corrina, Corrina. My favorite Lipscomb song though is “Ella Speed”. Needless to say it is about how she did her man wrong (although in the mix of these things it could just as easily be the other way around depending on who is singing).


"Bill Martin And Ella Speed"

Bill Martin he was long an' slender,
Better known by bein' a bartender.
Bill Martin he was long an' slender,
Better known by bein' a bartender.

Bill Martin he was a man whut had a very small hand
He worked ev'y night at de coffee stand.
Bill Martin he was a man whut had a very small hand
He worked ev'y night at de coffee stand.

He walked out for to borrow a gun'
Something Bill Martin had never done.
Ella Speed was downtown havin' her lovin' fun,
Long came Bill Martin wid his Colt 41.

De fust ball it entered in po' Ella's side,
De nex' ball entered in her breas',
De third ball it entered in her head;
Dat's de ball dat put po' Ella to bed.

All de young gals eome a-runnin'an'cryin',
All de young gals come a-runnin'an'a-cryin',
"It ain' but de one thing worry de po' gal's min'-
She lef' her two lil boys behin'."

De deed dat Bill Martin done'
Jedge sentence: "You gonna be hung."
De deed dat Bill Martin done'
Jedge sentence: "You gonna be hung."

They taken Bill Martin to de freight depot,
An' de train come rollin' by,
He wave his han' at de woman dat he love
An' he hung down his head an' he cry.

All you young girls better take heed'
Don' you do like po' Ella Speed;
Some day you will go for to have a lil fun
An'a man will do you like Bill Martin done.

As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues... Some Remembrances-The First Small Anti-War Cries Are Raised To Stop The Madness - Lenin's War Against War

As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues... Some Remembrances-The First Small Anti-War Cries Are Raised To Stop The Madness -

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged in the trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood.

Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.  

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve.)

Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already in the first year a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

 

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).

At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. Be ready to fight the operative words.

So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                   

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

 V. I.   Lenin

The Question of the Unity of Internationalists

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Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 41, May 1, 1915. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 188-191.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2003 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats:   Text • README

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The war has led to a grave crisis in the whole of international socialism. Like any other crisis, the present crisis of socialism has revealed ever more clearly the inner contradictions lying deep within it; it has torn off many a false and conventional mask, and has shown up in the sharpest light what is outmoded and rotten in socialism, and what its further growth and advance towards victory will depend on.

Practically all Social-Democrats in Russia realise that. the old divisions and groupings are, if not obsolescent, then at least undergoing a transformation. In the forefront is the division on the main issue raised by the war, viz., the division into “internationalists” and “social-patriots”. We have taken these terms from the editorial in Nashe Slovo No. 42, and for the time being shall not deal with the question of whether they should be supplemented by contrasting revolutionary Social-Democrats with national liberal-labour politicians.
It is not a matter of names, to be sure; the gist of the main present-day division has been correctly indicated in Nashe Slovo . The internationalists, it says, are “united in their negative attitude towards social-patriotism as represented by Plekhanov”. The editors call upon the “now disunited groups” “to come to an understanding and unite for at least a single act-expressing the attitude of Russian Social-Democrats towards the present. war and Russian social-patriotism”.
Besides this appeal through the press, the editors of Nashe Slovo have sent a letter to us and the Organising   Committee, proposing that, with their participation, a conference be called to discuss the matter. In our reply we spoke of the necessity “to clarify certain preliminary questions, so as to know whether we are at one in the main issue”. We stressed two such preliminary questions: (1) no declaration would help unmask the “social-patriots” (the editors naming Plekhanov, Alexinsky, and the well-known group of Petrograd liquidationist writers who support the XYZ journal[1] who “falsify the will of the advanced proletariat of Russia” (the expression used by the editors of Nashe Slovo); to unmask the social-patriots, a protracted struggle is necessary; (2) what grounds were there to count the Organising Committee among the “internationalists”?
On the other hand, the Organising Committee’s secretariat abroad sent us a copy of its reply to Nashe Slovo, which, in short, asserted that a “preliminary” selection of certain groups and the “exclusion of others” were out of the question; and that “invitations to the conference should be sent to the representatives abroad of all party centres and groups that attended ... the Brussels Conference of the International Socialist Bureau before the war” (letter of March 25, 1915).
Thus, the Organising Committee has declined on principle to confer with the internationalists alone, since it wishes also to confer with the social-patriots (the Plekhanov and the Alexinsky trends are known to have been represented at Brussels). The same spirit marked the resolution of the Social-Democrats gathered in Nervi (Nashe Slovo No. 53), which was adopted following Yonov’s report (and obviously expressed the views of this representative of the most radical and internationalist elements in the Bund).
This resolution, which is highly characteristic and valuable in helping us specify the “middle road” being sought by many socialists living abroad, expresses sympathy with Nashe Slovo’s “principles”, but at the same time expresses disagreement with Nashe S/ova’s stand, “which consists in creating organisational divisions, uniting internationalist socialists alone, and defending the necessity of splits within socialist proletarian parties that have historically come into being”. In the opinion of the gathering, Nashe Slovo’s “one-sided handling” (of these questions) is “highly   detrimental to clarification of problems connected with the restoration of the International”.
We have already pointed out that the views of Axeirod, the Organising Committee’s official representative, are social-chauvinist. Neither in the press nor in its correspondence has Nashe Slovo made any reply to this. We have pointed out that the Burid’s stand is the same, with a bias towards Germanophile chauvinism. The Nervi resolution has born this out in a manner which, if indirect, is highly significant: it has declared that unification of internationalists alone is harmful and schismatic. The question has been presented with a clarity that is most praiseworthy.
Still clearer is the Organising Committee’s reply, which expresses, not an oblique attitude towards the issue, but one that is straightforward and formal. We must confer, it says, not without the social-patriots, but with them.
We should be thankful to the Organising Committee for its letter to Nashe Slovo, confirming the correctness of our opinion of that body.
Does that mean that Nashe Slovo’s entire idea of uniting the internationalists has been wrecked? No, it does not. While there exist ideological solidarity and a sincere desire to combat social-patriotism, no failure of any conferences can check unity among internationalists. At the disposal of the editors of Nashe Slovo is the great instrument of a daily paper. They can do something immeasurably more businesslike and serious than calling conferences and issuing declarations; they can invite all groups, and themselves start: (1) to immediately evolve full, precise, unequivocal and perfectly clear definitions of the content of internationalism (it being a fact that Vandervelde, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lensch, and Haenisch also call themselves internationalists!), of opportunism, the collapse of the Second International, the tasks and the methods of combating socialpatriotism, etc.; (2) to rally forces for a severe struggle for certain principles, not only abroad, but mainly in Russia.
Indeed, can anyone deny that there is no other way towards the victory of internationalism over social-patriotism, and that there can be none? Half a century of Russian political emigration (and thirty years of Social-Democratic emigration)-have these not shown that all declarations,   conferences, etc., abroad are powerless, insignificant, and empty, unless they are supported by a lasting movement of some social stratum in Russia? Does not the present war also teach us that everything that is immature or decaying, everything that is conventional or diplomatic, will collapse at the first blow?
During the eight months of war, all Social-Democratic centres, groups, currents, and shades of opinion have held conferences with all and sundry, and have come out with “declarations”, i.e., made their opinions known to the public. Today the task is different, and closer to action: more distrust of resonant declarations and spectacular conferences; more energy in evolving precise replies and advice to writers, propagandists, agitators, and all thinking workers, written in a way that cannot but be understood; more clarity and purposefulness in mustering the forces for a long-term effort to give effect to such advice.
Much has been given to the editors of Nashe Slovo—after all, they are a daily paper!—and they will have much to answer for if they fail to carry out even this “minimum programme”.
A final remark: in May 1910, exactly five years ago, we made mention, in our press abroad, of a highly outstanding political fact, of “far greater significance” than the conferences and declarations of many very “powerful” Social-Democratic centres, i. e., the fact of the formation in Russia of a group of legalist writers working in the selfsame XYZ journal. What has been shown by the facts during these five years, so eventful in the history of the labour movement in Russia and the whole world? Have not the facts shown that in Russia we have a certain social nucleus to rally the elements of a national liberal-labour party (after the “European” pattern)? What are the conclusions forced on all Social-Democrats by the circumstance that, with the exception of Voprosy Strakhovaniya,^[2] we see, in Russia, the open expression only of this current, Nashe Dyelo, Strahhovaniye Rabochikh, Severny Gobs,^[3] Maslov and Plekhanov?
So we repeat: more distrust of resonant declarations, and more courage in facing grave political realities.

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Notes

[1] Lenin is referring to Nasha Zarya, a journal of the Menshevik liquidators.

[2] Voprosy Strakhovaniya (Problems of Insurance)—a Bolshevik legal journal, published at intervals in St. Petersburg from October 1913 to March 1918. It worked, not only for the achievement of workers’ insurance, but also for the Bolshevik “uncurtailed slogans” of an eight-hour day, confiscation of the landed estates, and a democratic republic. The Bolsheviks A. N. Vinokurov, N. A. Skripnik, P. I. Stuka, N. M. Shvernik and others contributed to the journal.

[3] Severny Gales (Voice of the North)—Menshevik weekly, publshed in Petrograd from January to March 1915.

Day and Night-Italian Style –Frederico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963)-A Film Review

Day and Night-Italian Style –Frederico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

8 ½ , starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Claudia Cardinale, written and directed by Frederico Fellini, 1963  

I have admittedly been on a tear lately watching (or in some cases re-watching) some foreign films that were all the rage among college students and young professionals in the 1960s and 1970s. Recently in reviewing Francois Truffaut’s Day For Night, a film like the one under review, Frederico Fellini’s 8 ½, which both dealt with making films (or as here not making them) I noted the following that applies here as well:       

“In the old days, the stretch between the early 1960s and early 1970s, around Harvard Square on the days, or rather nights, when you were not listening to folk music at one of the myriad coffeehouses around the Square or stretched out on Cambridge Common listening to some up and coming young rock and roll talent blast away you would in the interest of having a cheap date based on  your low side funds wind up taking your consort to the Brattle Theater or some such place (sometimes local churches or the various houses at Harvard also ran films) to watch a film. Not usually one of the then current American Hollywood productions, a place which seemed to be in a trough in the movie-making cycle, but some film noir revival with entries like The Maltese Falcon or To Have Or Have Not or foreign, mainly French films, like those of Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut (at one time friends but because of differences about the film under review that friendship was busted up). At that time anything by a French director like this one by Truffaut, Day for Night, was an automatic go see, whether it was up to snuff or not.”   

What went for the French directors applied as well to the Italian film-maker Fellini, especially after his early film La Dolce Vita blew us away with it cinematography and its meandering message about the “sweet life” that many of us were seeking then (although our forte was drugs, sex and rock and roll not among the high society types though). And so when we were older, old enough to go see Fellini films on our own in revivals, which we were not permitted to see earlier  since the good Fathers at Sacred Heart warned us off such fare we would grab a date and go to the Brattle and check it out.   

If Truffaut’s Day for Night was about the craft of film-making Fellini’s film is centered elsewhere with what one critic at the time called the travails of Guido’s director’s block and the facts of his life at that point which had helped him freeze up in trying to create something for the screen that could be produced and produced increasingly under time pressures (the film director is played by Marcello Mastroianni here). So we get, maybe more than we want to get, a full view of Guido’s life, his on again off again relationship with his estranged wife, with his mistress, recollections of childhood (a scene we all could appreciate of Guido as a youth dancing with a prostitute and then being punished by the good Fathers at his boarding school for such behavior-very familiar), a visit to a Cardinal, and all the attempts to appease Guido, or goad, him by bringing the film crew to his hotel to make the damn film. In the end something got produced, some sexual problems got resolved, and some of the greatest scenes and close-ups in film got produced. And Mastroianni was masterful in his role as Guido, was on a roll as an actor in those days. I never liked this one as much as my first Fellini film La Dolce Vita but it was close behind as a great film.        

On The 500th Anniversary Of The Passing Of Great Painter Hieronymus Borsch

On The 500^th Anniversary Of The Passing Of Great Painter Hieronymus Borsch

Josh Breslin comment:

Back in the day, back in the later part of the 1960s day when guys like Peter Markin, Sam Lowell, Jimmy Jenkins, Frankie Riley and a few other guys whom I don’t remember headed west to see what was happening in California, what the fuss was all about we were crazy for reproductions of Hieronymus Borsch’s intricate, highly symbolic and to our eyes weird paintings. Now we were all corner boys from North Adamsville who could have under other circumstances given a rat’s ass about art, paintings, or painters. Would have passed on such weirdness.   

Except in the wild world of the 1960s when anything was possible, for a while anyway before the tide ebbed and we had to fight a rear-guard action that we are still fighting to this day, we had through Markin who had headed out there first wound up on Captain Crunch’s merry –prankster-like yellow brick road bus which travelled up and down the West Coast for a few years searching, well, searching for something, for that good night or dreamland. And along that well-travelled road we all had as many drug experiences from pot (marijuana) to LSD, mescaline  and peyote buttons as any other travelling members of 1960s “youth nation.”  

Well, you may ask how does the bus, the drugs, the fuss of the 1960s, fit in with a 1500s masterful mad daddy painter of exotic panels and scenes. Here is where it fits, okay. Captain Crunch had a girlfriend, Susan Stein, road moniker Mustang Sally, who had graduated from Michigan in 1960 as an art major. She had prior to our time festooned the yellow brick road bus with several prints by Borsch. And we, all of us who travelled on that wicked highway, would when high, very high late at night would talk endlessly about what we “saw” in Brother Borsch’s paintings. And I for one hope they will be doing it when the 600^th anniversary of the mad monk’s death rolls around. Hats off!        

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ “Eddie My Love” (1956) - A 60th Anniversary, Of Sorts- Billy’s View

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ “Eddie My Love” (1956) - A 60th Anniversary, Of Sorts- Billy’s View

 

A YouTube film clip of the Teen Queens performing the classic Eddie My Love.

By Frank Jackman

 

This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hardworking, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally, specifically songs that some future archeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived, and what we listened to back in the day, back when rock and roll let us breathe a little before they, the other side okay, clamped down and we fell into an ebb tide we are still fighting a rearguard action against.  

I might have mentioned this before elsewhere but it bears repeating here back in the day the lord and king of the be-bop rock and roll night around my way, around where I grew up in the low-down Acre section of North Adamsville was one William James Bradley, Billy to one and all. For a long time he was my friend, best friend if anybody is asking, until eventually disappointment at being rooked by the real world, being cast aside in his fight to become the next Elvis at least in his mind, he did like a lot of low-rent Acre guys did once they recognized that the cards were stacked against them and quickly got attracted to a life of crime, serious crime like armed robberies and such.

But that was later when all the things he cared about fell through.  In our time, my time, his time everybody around the Acre, everybody that counted, meaning those young enough to be devotees of rock and roll and old enough to wonder what all the lyrics meant would listen to whatever Billy who really did have a serious knowledge on the subject as well as a sense of humor and irony about what was coming down had to say about the latest platters to hit the radio stations and record shops (this record shop business well before Amazon downloads and ITunes). Many nights Billy and I would go back and forth about particular songs and what they meant. Mainly I was clueless then about the girl thing having no sisters while Billy had three and a couple of girlfriends even when he was young. The sketch below is my attempt to reconstruct what Billy had to say about the classic record Eddie, My Love. Listen up.      

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)

The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

 

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

 

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long

 

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

 

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

 

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

 

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

 

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

 

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

**********

Billy here, William James Bradley, if you don’t know already. To “the projects” born but you don’t need, or at least you don’t absolutely need to know that to get the drift of what I have to say here. I am here to give my take on this latest song, Eddie My Love, that just came out and that the girls are going weepy over, and the guys are saying “that a boy, Eddie.” At least that’s what the wiser guys I hang around with say when they hear the record played on the radio. Except, of course, sappy Jackman. Frankie Jackman if you don’t know, my best friend at Adamsville Elementary School (or maybe best friend, he has never told me one way or the other what it was with us from his end, but sappy as he may be at times, he is my best friend from my end) who thinks Eddie should be righteous and return to his forlorn girl. What is he kidding? Eddie keep moving wherever you are, and keep moving fast. And please, please don’t go within a mile of a post office.

 

Why do I hold such an opinion and what gives me the “authority”, some authority like the pope of rock and roll, or something to speak this way? Well, first off, unlike Frankie, I take my rock and roll, my rock and roll lyrics seriously, hell, I have written some myself. Also I have some talent in this field and have won vocal competitions (and dance ones too), although there have been a few more I should have won. Yah, should have won but the fix was in, the fix was in big time, against project kids getting a break, a chance to make something out of the jailbreak music we are hearing. I’ll tell you about those bad breaks some time but now I am hot to straighten everybody out, even Frankie, on this one. Jackman pays attention to, too much attention to, the “social” end of the question, looking for some kind of teenage justice in this wicked old world when there ain’t none. Get it, Frankie.

 

Look, I can read between the lines of this story just like anybody else, any pre-teenage or teenage anybody else. Parents, my parents, Frankie’s parents, Ozzie and Harriet, whoever, couldn’t get it if you gave them that Rosetta Stone they discovered to help them with old time Egyptian writing and that we read about in Mr. Barry’s class. No way. But Billy, William James Bradley, who will not let any grass grow beneath his feet, is wise, very wise to the scene. Hey, it’s not rocket science stuff; it’s simply the age old summer fling thing. Eddie, handsome, money in his pocket, super-charged car under his feet, gas in the tank, and an attitude that he is king of the known world, the known teenage world, sees this cutie, makes his play, they have some fun, some teenage version of adult fun for any not wise kids, school days come and he is off to his next cutie. Yah, he said he would write and, personally, I think that was a mistake. A quick “I'll be in touch,” and kiss on the cheek would have been smarter.

 

See Eddie, love ‘em and leave ‘em Eddie, is really a hero. What did this teen queen think was going to happen when Eddie blew into town? Love, marriage and here comes the teen queen with a baby carriage. Please. Eddie, Eddie your love ain’t got no time for that. And that old threatening to do herself in or whatever she means by “my next day might be my last,” is the oldest trick in the book, the oldest snare a guy trick that is. Yah, maybe someday when things are better, and guys don’t have that itch, that itch to move on, and maybe can settle down in one place and have plenty of dough, plenty of ambition, and the old wicked world starts taking care of its own better. Whoa… wait a minute, I’m starting to sound like Frankie. Jesus, no. Eddie just keep moving, okay. Billy’s pulling for you.

The Not So Sweet Life-Billy Crystal’s America’s Sweethearts (2001)-A Film Review

The Not So Sweet Life-Billy Crystal’s America’s Sweethearts (2001)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

America’s Sweethearts, starring Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack, Julia Roberts, 2001   

 

Quite unintentionally, I think, I have been on something of tear reviewing films about film-making (or in the case of one mostly of not making a film). This is the third straight such film review. Of course the others were two films which have been long considered classics of movies about film-making; Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night, his homage to his craft, and Frederico Fellini’s  8 ½ about what happens when a director runs out of ideas about making a film. The film under review, Billy Crystal’s America’s Sweethearts, will never be mistaken for a classic about the trials and tribulations of getting a film in the can. Despite a high profile cast of talented actors this one fails, falls flat.

Blame the weather in the Northeast this summer, hot and humid. Blame trying to take a break from heavy-duty high-toned film classics of the genre like those films mentioned above. What the heck, blame it on being hooked in by the all-star cast who in other film vehicles have won plenty of accolades for their performances. But I sat through this one grinding my teeth.   

Here’s where this one was both too predictable by the script as the story line played out and frankly was not that funny except in spots despite funnyman Billy Crystal’s efforts as actor in the film and the writer of the script. America’s sweethearts, Gwen (played by fetching Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Eddie (played by all-purpose actor John Cusack) who not only have successfully acted together but are married as well, who due to their run of hits had been crowned with a title that many previous real acting couples like Fairbanks and Pickford, Powell and Loy, have had bestowed on them, have had a falling out. A big time falling out once Gwen slipped over the line and has an affair with one of the bit actors in their last fateful film. A film that for a couple of reasons has not been released but mainly because the director has been holding the film hostage for his own reasons (mostly when all is said and done that the thing was a stinker, was nothing but a formula piece and that the sweethearts had run out of steam).         

Naturally the studio boss was going crazy since the studio had spent plenty of money banking on Gwen and Eddie being able to produce one more block-buster. So Lee (Crystal’s role), a publicist had been sent out by the frantic boss to make the thing go. But Eddie, who thought he still loved Gwen had a breakdown over the split, had no desire in his condition to go out and promote the film to the critics, to go on the press junket that is a staple of the release of every film, good, bad, or ugly. Lee eventually by fair means or foul got the pair on the junket trail. Got a little help on the Gwen side from her sister and personal assistant, Kiki (played by fetching Julia Roberts who during parts of the film was bizarrely cast as overweight-what are you kidding me didn’t Billy see Mystic Pizza and Pretty Woman). Yeah, but see Kiki had it bad for Eddie, had that secret crush but had held back because, well, because Sis was nothing but an airhead and thought everything in the world revolved around her.        

So the tensions and comedy such as they were got played out on the press junket being held a swanky hotel. Eddie finally “got religion” on the need to move on from perfidious Gwen, finally “got religion” on Kiki whom he took under the sheets and eventually wound up walking arm and arm with her in the sunset despite his ambivalence about not so sweet Gwen. But that outcome was telegraphed almost from the minute Kiki showed up on the screen early in the film. In the end the director showed up with said film, or a film, a film exposing the hypocrisy and duplicity of the main characters. Yawn, a waste of a talented cast on a thin idea and few funny lines.