A View From The Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

In Boston only, QUESTION 5 would enact the Community Preservation Act (CPA) in the city, which would allocate a small real estate tax surcharge (with matching state funds) to finance affordable housing, preserve open space and historic sites, and develop outdoor recreational opportunities.  More information at Yes for a Better Boston. DPP’s neighborhood allies like New England United for Justice (NEU4J) and Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA) support this measure as a (very modest) measure to address the housing crisis. NEU4J is organizing door-to-door canvasing, which it invites DPPers to join. 

 

DPPers opposed Statewide Question 2, which would, if passed, allow for an exponential expansion of publicly-funded but privately-run Charter Schools, and which represents an attack on public education and public school teachers (and their unions).  QUESTION 2 IS BAD FOR OUR SCHOOLS:  it would allow the state to approve 12 new Commonwealth charter schools every year forever, eventually draining billions of dollars from our schools. Charter school proponents have millions of dollars from hedge funds and corporate backers, including the chair of the state board of education. People power needs to stand up for children in our public schools.

Sign up to volunteer at https://saveourpublicschoolsma.com/.

 

Big money pours into Massachusetts to undercut public schools

This Election Day, Massachusetts voters will be voting on whether to lift the state’s cap on the number of charter schools allowed to open. A recent poll showed 48 percent of voters opposed to lifting the cap and planning to vote no on question two, while 41 percent were in favor. Dozens of local school committees, along with the state Democratic party, have already voted to oppose the measure. 

But despite this widespread opposition, there’s a very real chance the measure will pass, for one simple reason: money. Wealthy opponents of public education are pouring money into the state. Walmart heirs Jim and Alice Walton have given a combined $1.8 million. Hedge funders and bankers have given hundreds of thousands of dollars more. In fact, the pro-charter camp has put $11 million into this fight, much of it from out of state… As if to drive the point home what kind of a fight this is, the charter backers have hired the ad firm that did the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads.    More

 

The NAACP Moratorium On Charters Really Matters To Our Public Schools

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples, the nation’s oldest and most highly recognized civil rights organization, called for a national moratorium on charter schools this summer. Soon after, a bipartisan chorus of charter supporters cried foul attempting to present the so- called choice offered by charters, as well as other attributes of corporate education reform, as the next logical step in the Civil Rights Movement. It is all the more curious when many of the same people, like Trump, have been mostly silent on other issues impacting communities of color. They offer no support for the contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement. But, they can hardly contain their indignation when efforts are made on behalf of communities of color to block corporate education reform measures like high stakes testing and unregulated publicly financed charters.  More

 

Media Ask Which Candidate Can Better Exploit Our Irrational Fear

The media’s tendency to focus on horserace issues—who’s up and who’s down, what the cosmetics are of an event rather than the substance—is routinely derided by media critics, and mocking it has become something of an election year tradition. But one 2016 topic in particular, terrorism, has become the hot horserace topic of the year in a way that goes beyond the silly to the potentially damaging…  Something missing from these reports is any discussion of the relative danger of terrorism. The reporters begin with the premise that voters are afraid of it, never challenging the underlying rationality of those fears.   The reality is that terrorism remains, objectively, a very minor threat. (One is 82 times more likely to be killed falling out of bed than by a terrorist.) But by framing the issue as an urgent danger, with two candidates “dueling” over opposing ways of addressing this menace, the media further inflate terrorism’s importance.   More

 

Hillary Clinton is taking the black vote for granted, says America’s first elected black governor

Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder thinks Hillary Clinton has blundered by trying to turn the presidential election into a referendum on Donald Trump. “When I ran for office, I never mentioned my opponent’s name. I always said, ‘Vote for me for these reasons,’” the 85-year-old Democrat said during an hour-long interview here yesterday. “Even today, she still needs to develop a message.”  Wilder, who in 1990 became the first elected black governor in U.S. history, said he knows many African Americans, especially millennials, who may not vote. “A lot of Democrats tell me they don’t see the need,” he lamented. “It’s not so much that people are turned off by Hillary as it is that they’re not turned on by anybody.”  …“You cannot win this election without the African American vote,” he added. “Hillary obviously has the necessary qualifications. … But tell me how what you’ve done relates to what (the black community) needs.”   More

 

A View of Small-Town Decay and Support for Trump

When Rothwell matched his company’s voluminous polling and opinion data with demographic information, Zip Code by Zip Code, he found that the highest levels of Trump support came from places where health was poor and economic mobility stagnant. Within these places, the most intense support for the casino mogul came from those people who are doing comparatively well economically: the insurance agents, the wives of contractors…  If you were applying a moral gloss, you might say that these are responsible people in irresponsible places. If you were not, you might just say they were lucky in places where many others were not. The conservative language of inequality is not yet mature, in part because it is muddied by racial and national resentments, but it exists, as an intense sense of precariousness.  More

 

Colin Kaepernick on death threats: if I'm killed 'you've proved my point'

Kaepernick’s stance has prompted many other athletes to show their support. Several other NFL players have sat, knelt, or raised fists during the Star-Spangled Banner, and World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe has chosen to kneel before US international soccer games. Scores of high school and college players have also picked up the cause.  But Kaepernick has not received universal support. Donald Trump said “maybe [Kaepernick] should find a country that works better for him”, while failed presidential nominee Ted Cruz said: “To all the athletes who have made millions in America’s freedom: stop insulting the flag, our nation, our heroes.”  Kaepernick said he was the target of racial slurs and other insults before last Sunday’s NFL game at Carolina.   “There’s a lot of racism in this country disguised as patriotism and people want to take everything back to the flag but that’s not what we’re talking about,” he said on Tuesday.   More

 

Hate Crimes Against American Muslims Most Since Post-9/11 Era

The trend has alarmed hate crime scholars and law-enforcement officials, who have documented hundreds of attacks — including arsons at mosques, assaults, shootings and threats of violence — since the beginning of 2015.  While the most current hate crime statistics from the F.B.I. are not expected until November, new data from researchers at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes against American Muslims were up 78 percent over the course of 2015. Attacks on those perceived as Arab rose even more sharply. Police and news media reports in recent months have indicated a continued flow of attacks, often against victims wearing traditional Muslim garb or seen as Middle Eastern.   More

 

How corporations rig the rules to dodge the taxes they owe

In recent years, corporate profits have reached record highs, and so too has the amount of untaxed profits U.S. corporations have stashed offshore: $2.4 trillion. And it is estimated corporations could owe as much as $700 billion on those profits. In short, corporations are dodging more and more of their tax responsibilities.  While the statutory tax rate on corporate income is 35 percent, estimates of the rate corporations actually pay put the effective rate at about half the statutory rate. Driving this divergence between what corporations are supposed to pay and what they actually pay is a combination of offshore profit shifting and tax avoidance. Multinational corporations pay taxes on between just 3.0 and 6.6 percent of the profits they book in tax havens.  More

 

Elizabeth Warren Just Gave Hillary Clinton a Big Warning

Warren’s speech, delivered at the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, cast the upcoming presidential election in stark economic terms. She described the tax-slashing, deregulatory approach laid out by Donald Trump and contrasted it to a laundry list of populist economic policies embraced by Hillary Clinton… But towards the end of her remarks, Warren noted that “personnel is policy,” and continued:   “When we talk about personnel, we don’t mean advisors who just pay lip service to Hillary’s bold agenda, coupled with a sigh, a knowing glance, and a twiddling of thumbs until it’s time for the next swing through the revolving door, serving government then going back to the very same industries they regulate. We don’t mean Citigroup or Morgan Stanley or BlackRock getting to choose who runs the economy in this country so they can capture our government. No.”    More

 

Clash Between Saudis and 9/11 Families Is Escalating in Washington

On Monday a constellation of lobbyists for Saudi Arabia, which has spent more than $5 million this past year to buy influence in Washington, called a crisis meeting to try to stop legislation allowing the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the Saudi government for any role in the plot. On Tuesday the 9/11 families, represented in their multibillion-dollar lawsuits by lawyers including Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel with deep relationships in Washington, demonstrated outside the White House to pressure President Obama not to veto the legislation, as he has vowed to do…  The four-page-long bill, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, unanimously passed the House and Senate, and has major national security and diplomatic consequences for the United States. It would alter a 1976 law giving other countries immunity from lawsuits in the United States and force them to face federal lawsuits if they are found to have played any role in a terrorist attack that kills Americans on United States soil.    More

 

9/11 Victims Family Member:

OBAMA, DON’T SHIELD THE SAUDIS!

JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, S.2040) is a well-thought out, powerful piece of anti-terrorism legislation. It does exactly what it says — it brings all those who fund terrorism to justice… One effective way to stop terrorists is to attack them at the root of their enterprise: their terrorist funding… It goes without saying that the largest benefactor of terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is the incubator for global jihad. Saudis build madrassahs where fiery Imams like the late Anwar Awlaki preach hate, print and distribute school books that teach violence against infidels, and pay large sums of protection money to terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.  Notably, the Saudi role in radical jihad does not stop at underwriting terrorism — it carries into logistical support of individual attacks, as well. This logistical role is how the Saudis are linked to the 9/11 attacks.   More

 

US Air Force Grounds F-35s It Just Declared Ready for War

On Aug. 2, the Air Force said 10 F-35s at Hill Air Force Base in Utah were ready for war. Forty-four days later, those planes have been grounded in the latest embarrassing setback for the most expensive project in Pentagon history…   The grounding order affects 57 aircraft, some of which belong to Norway, officials said. Fifteen of them are operational jets, the 42 others are in various states of production.  The grounding interrupts a general wave of progress for the $400 billion [actually $1 trillion!] program, which made its debut at the Farnborough Air Show in England this summer and has been getting rave reviews from pilots. (In 2014, an engine fire caused the previous high-profile grounding and scotched the plane’s first planned trip to Farnborough.)  More

 

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

GARETH PORTER: How the Pentagon sank the US-Russia deal in Syria - and the ceasefire

Another US-Russian Syria ceasefire deal has been blown up. Whether it could have survived even with a US-Russian accord is open to doubt, given the incentives for al-Qaeda and its allies to destroy it. But the politics of the US-Russian relationship played a central role in the denouement of the second ceasefire agreement.  The final blow apparently came from the Russian-Syrian side, but what provoked the decision to end the ceasefire was the first ever US strike against Syrian government forces on 17 September.  That convinced the Russians that the US Pentagon had no intention of implementing the main element of the deal that was most important to the Putin government: a joint US-Russian air campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militant group and al-Qaeda through a “Joint Implementation Centre”. And it is entirely credible that it was meant to do precisely that.   More

 

Was it Mutiny? U.S. Rulers Split Over Syria

Last weekend’s American air attack on Syrian Army positions at Deir al-Zor that killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers and resulted in a temporary victory for ISIS forces was a blatant bid by the Pentagon and the CIA to sabotage any prospect of cooperation between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria. In a very real sense, it is a mutiny against a lame duck president who, certainly since 2013, has attempted to achieve regime change in Syria without allowing the jihadists to take power in Damascus.  The mutineers include civilian and military elements of the Pentagon -- probably including Obama’s own Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter – the CIA and other intelligence services (but not the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose analysts warned of the rise of ISIS in 2012). They are encouraged and emboldened by the prospect that a President Hillary Clinton will declare a “no fly zone” over Syria – a move that would necessitate, under U.S military doctrine, an all-out attack on all of that country’s aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons systems, resulting in a war with Russian forces.   More

 

SYRIAN PROPAGANDA WAR, Chapter XXXIX. . .

The one-sided media coverage of the breakdown of the US-Russia agreement for a partial ceasefire continues daily.  Of course it is difficult to ascertain the facts in any case, but the MSM seldom makes any pretense of objectivity, even if the biases are often difficult to notice by a general public woefully misinformed and long fed on a diet of US government – Democratic, in this case – propaganda.  If you want to hear a different point of view, unfiltered by MSM “reportage” you can watch an English-language interview with Bashar al-Assad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTIXZGSPl4c (text here: http://sana.sy/en/?p=88686 if you prefer).  Of course, Assad heads a regime guilty in its own ways of many crimes.  And, his assertions, like those on all sides in this war, should not be taken as automatic truth. However, instead of reading second-hand contempt in our press, it is worthwhile to listen and judge for yourself.

 

On another front in the propaganda war, the liberal magazine The Nation published an appeal by supposed Syrian secular democrats appearing to condemn all outside interference in Syria.  The well-informed and generally astute blogger Asad AbuKhalil commented:

 

The signatories to this statement, like Sadiq Al-Azm, have been advocates of NATO intervention from the very beginning and most of the writers here work in Gulf regimes media, which have been calling for MORE--not less--US intervention in Syria.  Burhan Ghalyun is even one of the signatories.  Their protest is not against US military intervention in Syria but against US agreement with Russia over the cease-fire

 

And amid the relentless MSM focus on opposition zones under siege by Syrian government forces, we rarely hear about or are encouraged to empathize with the victims on the other side – these villages, among many others, and 150,000 civilians trapped by Daesh/ISIS in government-held Deir-ez-Zor, scene of a US air attack against the defenders.

 

Punishing siege drags on for two Shiite villages in Syria

Dozens of towns have been all but destroyed in the 5 1/2-year conflict over Syria’s future, but this has been a different kind of suffering. A punishing siege imposed by Islamist rebels has cut off these two sister towns in northwest Syria for the last 18 months, leaving them at the mercy of truck bombs, mortar barrages, and the terrifying staccato of sniper fire.  The two towns lie in Idlib province, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region southwest of Aleppo. In March 2015, the entire province was overrun by a powerful jihadist coalition known as the Army of Conquest. The exception was Fuah and Kefraya, two Shiite villages whose roughly 17,000 residents have remained, even under a devastating blockade, loyal to the government. For most, there has seemed to be little choice: Shiite Muslims are seen as apostates by Islamist hard-liners, and the Army of Conquest has threatened to wipe them out.   More

 

Senate Approves Massive Saudi Arms Deal, "Indifferent to Yemen's Misery"

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to dismiss a bipartisan bill that would have blocked a massive $1.15 billion weapons shipment to Saudi Arabia, to the dismay of peace groups and rights advocates who have called on the U.S. to end its support for the brutal Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen.  The bipartisan resolution to block the weapons sale failed 71-27, with two senators not voting… "The very fact that we are voting on [this resolution to block the arms sale] today sends a very important message to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia that we are watching your actions closely and that the United States is not going to turn a blind eye to the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children," Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said during the floor debate.   More

 

--Massachusetts Senators Warren and Markey were among the 27 votes to support stopping the sale.

--Arms makers celebrate. . .  see here

 

Israel used to routinely oppose and lobby against arms sales to Saudi Arabia.  Not anymore!  Reflecting its new de facto alliance with the Saudi monarchy, Israel (and AIPAC) was silent on this issue, and all of its staunchest Congressional supporters of both parties supported the sale.

 

For the first time, Saudi Arabia is being attacked by both Sunni and Shia leaders

The Saudis step deeper into trouble almost by the week. Swamped in their ridiculous war in Yemen, they are now reeling from an extraordinary statement issued by around two hundred Sunni Muslim clerics who effectively referred to the Wahhabi belief – practiced in Saudi Arabia – as “a dangerous deformation” of Sunni Islam. The prelates included Egypt’s Grand Imam, Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar, the most important centre of theological study in the Islamic world, who only a year ago attacked “corrupt interpretations” of religious texts and who has now signed up to “a return to the schools of great knowledge” outside Saudi Arabia.  This remarkable meeting took place in Grozny and was unaccountably ignored by almost every media in the world…  Although they did not mention the Kingdom by name, the declaration was a stunning affront to a country which spends millions of dollars every year on thousands of Wahhabi mosques, schools and clerics around the world.   More

 

Ending the Iran-Saudi Cold War

It is understandable for Saudi leaders to feel vulnerable. Saudi Arabia is a young state that by itself is not capable of competing with Iran, given its population of roughly 20 million native citizens, upwards of 15 percent of whom are Shia Muslims that face routine discrimination... Saudi leaders have two choices before them. The first is to continue down their current path of pursuing aggressive, unilateralist foreign policies and preconditioning dialogue on quixotic notions of Iran having zero role in its neighborhood. This approach has been exemplified by the Saudis bombing Yemen with impunity, crushing pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, refusing to recognize the post-war democratic Iraqi government for six years, aiding and abetting terrorism (as attested by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump), and countering the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, to name but a few destabilizing policies.   More

 

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE . . . and the U.S.

 

“88 senators press Obama to uphold US policy to veto one-sided UN resolutions”  Chances are you would not have heard about this unless you were a regular reader of the Israeli press – or a visitor to AIPAC’s web site. The bipartisan letter begins with the usual pious nod to “the two-state solution” but the meat of it is to pressure Pres. Obama to oppose any realistic pressure on Israel to negotiate in good faith and promise a veto on any “interference” from the UN.  Among the signers were Massachusetts senators Warren and Markey.  Bernie Sanders and a handful of other Senators declined.  Ironically, some prominent Republican senators --  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Nebraska’s Ben Sasse – also refused to sign because the letter supported a two-state solution, which they and rightwing Republican donors like Sheldon Adelson, oppose.  Some useful commentary here.

 

There is an old joke based on a supposed conversation with the late Israeli Prime Minister (and war criminal) Ariel Sharon.  “Why doesn’t Israel become the 51^st US state,” Sharon was asked. “Because then we would have only two senators,” he replied.

 

The Biggest Israel Aid Deal in History Will Bolster Occupation and the U.S. Defense Industry

The White House has described the recent $38 billion promised aid package to Israel, apportioned each year as $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million in missile defense assistance over the course of 10 years, as an “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” A better description would have been the White House’s unshakable commitment to Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s quarterly earnings. U.S. “military assistance,” more accurately understood as a circular flow through which U.S. weapons firms profit off the colonization of Palestinian land and Israeli destabilization of the surrounding states, is a long-term structuring element of the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.”   More

 

81% of Americans Oppose $38 Billion Pledge to Israel

An IRmep poll fielded by Google Consumer Surveys reveals 80.8 percent of the US adult Internet user population says they would redirect the proposed spending toward other priorities. Caring for veterans (20.7 percent) was their top priority, followed by education spending (20.1 percent) and paying down the national debt (19.3 percent). Rebuilding US infrastructure was favored by 14.9 percent, while funding a Middle East peace plan received 5.8 percent of support. Only 16.8 percent said the $38 billion of pledged foreign aid should be spent on Israel.  More

 

When $38 billion is “not enough”. . .

US aid to Israel takes a partisan turn

Seven lawmakers signed on to legislation from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would provide an extra $1.5 billion in missile defense and direct assistance to Israel's military next fiscal year. They object to the White House's efforts to short-circuit unsolicited annual aid hikes by Congress as well as the elimination of a 26% carve-out for Israel's domestic defense industry instead of US weapons-makers… The Obama administration portrays its effort to restrict congressional add-ons as a way to streamline budgeting and avoid recurring spending fights. As part of the package, Israel signed a letter vowing to return congressional appropriations beyond the MOU's agreed-upon amount during the next two fiscal years.  Earlier this year, the White House threatened to veto the House Defense spending bill for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, in part because it allocates $601 million for Israel missile defense, $455 million more than the Pentagon's request. The request for additional funding was made by the government of Israel, according to the report accompanying the Senate's version of the bill.   More

 

U.S. donors gave settlements more than $220 million in tax-exempt funds over five years

Private U.S. donors are massively funding Israeli settlements by using a network of tax-exempt nonprofits, which funnelled more than $220 million (about 850 million shekels) to Jewish communities in the West Bank in 2009-2013 alone, a Haaretz investigation has found.

The funding is being used for anything from buying air conditioners to supporting the families of convicted Jewish terrorists, and comes from tax-deductible donations made to around 50 U.S.-based groups.  Thanks to their status as nonprofits, these organizations are not taxed on their income and donations made to them are tax deductible – meaning the U.S. government is incentivizing and indirectly supporting the Israeli settlement movement, even though it has been consistently opposed by every U.S. administration for the past 48 years.   More     (More of this extensive Haaretz report here.)

 

The GOP’s Jewish Donors Are Abandoning Trump

In 2012, 71 percent of the $240 million that Jewish donors gave to the two major-party nominees went to President Obama’s re-election campaign; 29 percent went to Mitt Romney’s campaign, according to our analysis of campaign contributors, which used a predictive model to estimate which donors are Jewish based on their names and other characteristics. This ratio of support mirrors how Jewish voters cast their ballots in 2012… But in 2016, of the $372 million given to presidential campaigns so far by Jewish donors, 94 percent went to Democrats and just 6 percent went to Republicans. This is particularly interesting, since this figure includes donations to all of Trump’s primary opponents. If we ignore the primary losers and just focus on the nominees, 96 percent of all contributions went to Clinton… In raw dollars, Jewish donors have already given Clinton nearly double the amount they gave to Obama through the whole 2012 cycle. But donations to Trump amount to a third of what was given to Romney.   More

 

Two Years after Gaza War, Not a Single War Crime Indictment

Two years after the Israeli military offensive on Gaza, dubbed “Operation Protective Edge,” more than half of the civilian structures destroyed during the war have yet to be reconstructed, and Palestinian residents of the coastal strip are still finding bones amongst the ruins. And two years after that devastating offensive, Israeli authorities are again proving what previous experience with the Israeli system has long made clear: Israel is unwilling to conduct genuine, independent investigations into suspected war crimes, and does not hold those responsible to account, as required by international law.  At total of 2,251 Palestinians were killed during the 2014 war, most of them civilians, including 299 women and 551 children. More than 18,000 civilian structures were destroyed, including hospitals and essential infrastructure.   More

 

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	Friday, September 23, 2016 International Peace Day! Wedneday, September 21st, was International Peace Day!.  Veterans For Peace collaborated with Campaign Nonviolence to commemorate Peace Day, which resulted in over 780 actions across the country! As veterans we see the connection between the endless wars abroad, our bloated military industrial complex, and the inequities it brings to the poor and marginalized all over the world.  It is not enough that we veterans see and understand the interconnectedness.  If we want to abolish war we must help our fellow citizens here at home see the same connection.  We need to understand that dropping more bombs, killing innocent civilians in Muslim countries and the resort to military solutions is robbing the world’s children of health care, education and meaningful jobs to build a safer and more secure future. We believe that as people see and understand this connection, they will stand up with us against war.  We can then work together to put in place the building blocks necessary to build a sustainable and peaceful future. < Full Statement Here > Back to Top VFP Supports Colin Kaepernick Recently Colin Kaepernick has been in the national news for refusing to stand during the singing of the United States national anthem before the start of National Football League preseason games. His choice to remain seated or kneeling is to protest police misconduct and violence faced by Black people and other people of color. He has been maligned, accused of being unpatriotic and disrespecting active duty service members and veterans. Veterans For Peace also recognizes that just as Kaepernick has the right to stand or not stand for the national anthem, people have the right to criticize the way he has chosen to express himself. But to question his patriotism and use smear tactics to quiet him is in direct contradiction to the spirit of the right to freedom of expression. His act of protest is a political act to register his discontent with the actions of his government. It is a nonviolent act that demands positive change for a better future for all of us. It is exactly the kind of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect and as veterans we applaud his use of his rights for the cause of equality and justice; rights and ideals that we are told we served to defend. < Full Statement Here > Back to Top VFP Travels to Okinawa Recently a Veterans For Peace (VFP) delegation had six members from different chapters around the US traveled to Okinawa to join the local resistance to oppose the expansion of two US military bases. The delegation consists of a diverse team of war veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Also, three of the members are former US Marines who were stationed on Okinawa during their service. Click here to read member Will Griffin's reflection.  Also check out VFP members in action against US military bases! Back to Top Member Highlights! VFP members travel to Standing Rock.  Check out member Craig Wood's reflection and members Martin Bates and Janie Stein's beautiful pictures. Advisory Board Member Ann Wright is about to embark on the Women's Boat to Gaza.  Check out her latest update and follow her journey!  Help Veterans Stop the Privatization of the VA Hospital System!  Please sign the petition! Back to Top New National Office Positions Shelly Rockett has recently become our new Business Manager.  She's taken over Virginia's responsibilities. Colleen Kelly has recently become our Communications Coordinator.  Please make sure to send updates for the E-Blast and the website to her!  She's looking forward to getting to know all the great work VFP members are involved in!  Email her at colleen@veteransforpeace.org Back to Top		In This Issue: International Peace Day! VFP Supports Kaepernick Okinawa Member Highlights New Communications Coordinator Solidarity With Standing Rock MFSO: Repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force New VFP Tour to Cuba Black Lives Matter T-Shirts in Store Now Save the Dates: Upcoming Events Solidarity With Standing Rock! Veterans For Peace stands in solidarity with the historic resistance at the Camp of the Sacred Stones in North Dakota. We join our Indigenous sisters and brothers in opposing the construction of an oil pipeline by the Dakota Access company that threatens drinking water and sacred burial grounds. We acknowledge that the courageous stand of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and many allied tribes is being carried out by caretakers of the earth who are protecting and defending their ancestral lands and the water that runs through it for current and future generations. The continued assault against the sacred land and water as well as the destruction and desecration of sacred sites is an atrocity and must be stopped. The United States must honor its treaties and recognize Indigenous rights. We strongly condemn the violence being used against the resistance and believe it to be both a crime and a human rights abuse. <Full Statement Here> Back to Top MFSO: Sign The Petition! Military Families Speak Out is organizing to stop blank checks for endless war!  Please sign the petition. Help Rep. Barbara Lee to get congress to repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs. Repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force – the flawed blank check that authorizes the president to wage war, anywhere at any time. It’s been fifteen years of endless war. Now is the time for the U.S. Congress to repeal the overly broad 2001 and 2002 AUMFs. Sign Rep. Barbara Lee's petition to Congress telling them to repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs – blank checks for endless war. Back to Top New Veterans for Peace Tour to Cuba We will be leading our 4th VFP tour to Cuba in December 2016. All VFP members and supporters are invited to share solidarity with our Cuban neighbors and fellow Vets. Please look over the tour (scroll to December Tour) and contact me if you are interested. Contact: Jim Ryerson: jimryerson@earthlink.net Back to Top Black Lives Matter T-Shirts Now Available! The VFP Store now has Black Lives Matter T-shirts!  We know that militarization at home and militarization abroad are interconnected. Working for peace abroad means working for peace at home. Get Yours Today! Back to Top Save the Dates: Upcoming Events Sep 23-25 - World Beyond War Conference: No War 2016: Real Security Without Terrorism in Washington, DC Sept 26 - Tour of VFP Authors Advocating Peace in Southern CA Sept 26 - International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons Sep 2016 - Ann Wright and Diane Wilson sail on Women's Boats to Gaza Oct 7-10 - First SOAW bi-national convergence at the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona Oct 11-26  - 2016 Maine Peace Walk - Stop the War$ on Mother Earth in various cities in Maine Nov 11 - Armistice Day in your city Back to Top

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*Keeping The Blues/Folk Lamp Burning- The Music of Les Sampou-"Borrowed And Blue"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Les Sampou Doing "Home Again".

CD Review

Borrowed And Blue, Les Sampou, McNando Records, 2001

The substance of this review was originally used in the review of Les Sampou’s “Borrowed And Blue” album. I have revised that review and most of the points made apply to the other three CD’s reviewed in this space as well.

The name Les Sampou most recently came up in this space, in passing, as part of a review of blues/folk stylist/ songwriter Rory Block’s work. I made the point there that Rory (and Les, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and precious few others) were performing a great service by keeping the female blue singer tradition alive (and, for that matter, male-witness the songs covered by all four). And along the way doing the same for the more amorphous contemporary folk tradition with their own fair share of masterful songwriting efforts. Since I placed Les Sampou in such august company it was, thus, only a matter of time before I got around to giving her a few kudos of her own. The following paragraph from the Rory Block review can serve here for Les as well:

“But more than that, thanks for this great album of country blues classics some famous, some a little obscure and known only to serious aficionados but all well worth placing in the album with the quirky little Rory Block treatment that makes many of the songs her own. Oh, did I also mention her virtuoso strong guitar playing. Well, that too. I have gone on and on elsewhere in this space about the old time women blues singers, mostly black, like Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. I have also spilled some ink on more modern, mainly white, women blues singers like Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and a local talent here in Boston, Les Sampou, and their admirable (and necessary) efforts to carry on this proud tradition. Rory belongs right up there with these women.”

As For “Borrowed And Blue” here is the ‘skinny’:

Yes, indeed Les Sampou can take pride in this album. Mississippi Fred McDowell lives. Her incredibly strong slide guitar playing makes some of Les's old classics like “Chinatown” and “Sweet Perfume” just jump out of the album. She also does a nice job on Blind Willie McTell's “Statesboro Blues” and Mississippi John Hurt’s “Richland Women Blues”. I could go n but I hope you get the drift. Les can DO the blues. Just think of this. What if Les had had the opportunity, like Bonnie Raitt, to learn and travel with the old master McDowell? Wow. Definitely Les's best album. How about doing McDowell's classic “You've Got To Move” on the next album? (An album, by the way, that is supposed to come out in the Fall of 2009. Watch for it.)

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

 

 Frank Jackman comment:

 

One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.

        

To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).

 

Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.  

 

Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.         

*Keeping The Blues/Folk Lamp Burning- The Music of Les Sampou-"Les Sampou"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Les Sampou.

CD Review

Les Sampou, Les Sampou, Rounder Records 1993

The substance of this review was originally used in the review of Les Sampou’s “Borrowed And Blue” album. I have revised that review and most of the points made apply to the other three CD’s reviewed in this space as well.

The name Les Sampou most recently came up in this space, in passing, as part of a review of blues/folk stylist/ songwriter Rory Block’s work. I made the point there that Rory (and Les, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and precious few others) were performing a great service by keeping the female blue singer tradition alive (and, for that matter, male-witness the songs covered by all four). And along the way doing the same for the more amorphous contemporary folk tradition with their own fair share of masterful songwriting efforts. Since I placed Les Sampou in such august company it was, thus, only a matter of time before I got around to giving her a few kudos of her own. The following paragraph from the Rory Block review can serve here for Les as well:

“But more than that, thanks for this great album of country blues classics some famous, some a little obscure and known only to serious aficionados but all well worth placing in the album with the quirky little Rory Block treatment that makes many of the songs her own. Oh, did I also mention her virtuoso strong guitar playing. Well, that too. I have gone on and on elsewhere in this space about the old time women blues singers, mostly black, like Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. I have also spilled some ink on more modern, mainly white, women blues singers like Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and a local talent here in Boston, Les Sampou, and their admirable (and necessary) efforts to carry on this proud tradition. Rory belongs right up there with these women.”

As For “Les Sampou” here is the ‘skinny’:

There are a lot of ways to be “in” the contemporary folk scene. One way is to write some topical songs of love, longings for love, maybe, a little politics thrown in and maybe some snappy thing about the vacuity of modern life. Yes, that is the easy stuff and Les can, if the occasion calls for it, summon up some very powerful lyrics to make those points. Witness “Broken Pieces” and the almost self-explanatory “Hanging By A Thread”. But, something more is going on here. This is a woman who has been through the emotional wringer, and survived. Listen to the heartrending “Happy Anniversary” and the slightly, just slightly, more hopeful “Same Fine Line”. You can’t fake that stuff.

*Keeping The Blues/Folk Lamp Burning- Les Sampou's "Fall From Grace"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip On Les Sampou.

CD Review

Fall From Grace, Les Sampou, Flying Fish CD, Rounder Records, 1996

The substance of this review was originally used in the review of Les Sampou’s “Borrowed And Blue” album. I have revised that review and most of the points made apply to the other three CD’s reviewed in this space as well.

The name Les Sampou most recently came up in this space, in passing, as part of a review of blues/folk stylist/ songwriter Rory Block’s work. I made the point there that Rory (and Les, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and precious few others) were performing a great service by keeping the female blue singer tradition alive (and, for that matter, male-witness the songs covered by all four). And along the way doing the same for the more amorphous contemporary folk tradition with their own fair share of masterful songwriting efforts. Since I placed Les Sampou in such august company it was, thus, only a matter of time before I got around to giving her a few kudos of her own. The following paragraph from the Rory Block review can serve here for Les as well:

“But more than that, thanks for this great album of country blues classics some famous, some a little obscure and known only to serious aficionados but all well worth placing in the album with the quirky little Rory Block treatment that makes many of the songs her own. Oh, did I also mention her virtuoso strong guitar playing. Well, that too. I have gone on and on elsewhere in this space about the old time women blues singers, mostly black, like Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. I have also spilled some ink on more modern, mainly white, women blues singers like Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and a local talent here in Boston, Les Sampou, and their admirable (and necessary) efforts to carry on this proud tradition. Rory belongs right up there with these women.”

As For “Fall From Grace” here is the ‘skinny’:

I will make the same point I made in reviewing the “Les Sampou” album because that same spirit pervades this effort. There are a lot of way to be “in” the contemporary folk scene. One way is to write some topical songs of love, longings for love, maybe, a little politics thrown in and maybe some snappy thing about the vacuity of modern life. Yes, that is the easy stuff and Les can, if the occasion calls for it, summon up some very powerful lyrics to make those points. Witness “Holy Land ” and “Home Again”. But, something more is going on here. This is a woman who has been through the emotional wringer, and survived. Listen to the heartrending “Weather Vane” and the slightly, just slightly, more hopeful “Ride The Line”. An extraordinary track is “Flesh And Blood” about the all too real traumas of youthful sexual identity. You can’t fake that stuff.

*Keeping The Blues/Folk Lamp Burning- Les Sampou's "Sweet Perfume"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Les Sampou Doing "Oil And Water Don't Mix".

CD Review

Sweet Perfume, Rounder Records, 1993

The substance of this review was originally used in the review of Les Sampou's "Borrowed And Blue" album. I have revised that review and most of the points made apply to the other three CD's reviewed in this space as well.

The name Les Sampou most recently came up in this space, in passing, as part of a review of blues/folk stylist/ songwriter Rory Block's work. I made the point there that Rory (and Les, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and precious few others) were performing a great service by keeping the female blue singer tradition alive (and, for that matter, male-witness the songs covered by all four). And along the way doing the same for the more amorphous contemporary folk tradition with their own fair share of masterful songwriting efforts. Since I placed Les Sampou in such august company it was, thus, only a matter of time before I got around to giving her a few kudos of her own. The following paragraph from the Rory Block review can serve here for Les as well:

"But more than that, thanks for this great album of country blues classics some famous, some a little obscure and known only to serious aficionados but all well worth placing in the album with the quirky little Rory Block treatment that makes many of the songs her own. Oh, did I also mention her virtuoso strong guitar playing. Well, that too. I have gone on and on elsewhere in this space about the old time women blues singers, mostly black, like Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. I have also spilled some ink on more modern, mainly white, women blues singers like Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and a local talent here in Boston, Les Sampou, and their admirable (and necessary) efforts to carry on this proud tradition. Rory belongs right up there with these women."

As For "Sweet Perfume" here is the `skinny':

I will make the same point I made in reviewing the "Les Sampou" album because that same spirit pervades this effort. There are a lot of way to be "in" the contemporary folk scene. One way is to write some topical songs of love, longings for love, maybe, a little politics thrown in and maybe some snappy thing about the vacuity of modern life. Yes, that is the easy stuff and Les can, if the occasion calls for it, summon up some very powerful lyrics to make those points. Witness "Holy Land " and "String Of Pearls". But, something more is going on here. This is a woman who has been through the emotional wringer, and survived. Listen to "Chinatown" and "Sweet Perfume". You can't fake that stuff.

*****Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-James P. Cannon

*****Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-James P. Cannon

 Click below to link to the James Cannon Internet Archives 

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/

From The Pen Of Josh Breslin

Back in the early 1970s after they had worked out between themselves the rudiment of what had gone wrong with the May Day 1971 actions in Washington, D.C. Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris began some serious study of leftist literature from an earlier time, from back earlier in the century. Those May Day anti-Vietnam War actions, ill-conceived as they in the end turned out to be, centered on the proposition that if the American government would not close down the damn blood-sucking war then they, those thousands that participated in the actions, would close down the government. All Sam, Ralph and those thousands of others got for their efforts was a round-up into the bastinado. Sam had been picked off in the round-up on Pennsylvania Avenue as his group (his “affinity group” for the action) had been on their way to “capture” the White House. Ralph and his affinity group of ex-veterans and their supporters were rounded-up on Massachusetts Avenues heading toward the Pentagon (they had no plans to capture that five-sided building, at least they were unlike Sam’s group not that naïve, just surround it like had occurred in an anti-war action in 1967 which has been detailed in Norman Mailer’s prize-winning book Armies Of The Night). For a time RFK (Robert F. Kennedy) Stadium, the home of the Washington Redskins football team) had been the main holding area for those arrested and detained. The irony of being held in a stadium named after the martyred late President’s younger brother and lightening rod for almost all anti-war and “newer world” political dissent before he was assassinated in the bloody summer of 1968 and in a place where football, a sport associated in many radical minds with all that was wrong with the American system was lost on Sam and Ralph at the time and it was only later, many decades later, as they were sitting in a bar in Boston across from the JFK Federal Building on one of their periodic reunions when Ralph was in town that Sam had picked up that connection.

Sam, from Carver in Massachusetts, who had been a late convert to the anti-war movement in 1969 after his closest high school friend, Jeff Mullin, had been blown away in some jungle town in the Central Highlands and was like many late converts to a cause a “true believer,” had taken part in many acts of civil disobedience at draft boards, including the one in hometown Carver, federal buildings and military bases. From an indifference, no that’s not right, from a mildly patriotic average young American citizen that you could find by the score hanging around Mom and Pop variety stores, pizza parlors, diners, and bowling alleys in the early 1960s, he had become a long-haired bearded “hippie anti-warrior.” Not too long though by the standards of “youth nation” of the day since he was running a small print shop in Carver in order to support his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1965 and which exempted him from military service. Not too short either since those “squares” were either poor bastards who got tagged by the military and had to wear their hair short an appearance which stuck out in towns like Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Berkeley and L.A. when the anti-war movement started embracing the increasingly frustrated and anti-war soldiers that  they were beginning to run across or, worse, cops before they got “hip” to the idea that guys wearing short hair, no beard, looked like they had just taken a bath, and wore plaid short-sleeved shirts and chinos might as well have a bulls-eye target on their backs surveilling the counter-cultural crowd.

Ralph, from Troy, New York, had been working in his father’s electrical shop which had major orders from General Electric the big employer in the area when he got his draft notice and had decided to enlist in order to avoid being an 11B, an infantryman, a grunt, “cannon fodder,” although he would not have known to call it that at the time, that would come later. He had expected to go into something which he knew something about in the electrical field at least that is what the recruiting sergeant in Albany had “promised” him. But in the year 1967 (and 1968 too since he had extended his tour six months to get out of the service a little early) what the military needed in Vietnam whatever else they might have needed was “cannon fodder,” guys to go out into the bushes and kill commies. Simple as that. And that was what Ralph Morris, a mildly patriotic average young American citizen, no that is not right, a very patriotic average young American citizen that you could also find by the score hanging around Mom and Pop variety stores, pizza parlors, diners, and bowling alleys in the early 1960s, did. But see he got “religion” up there in Pleiku, up there in the bush and so when he had been discharged from the Army in late 1969 he was in a rage against the machine.

Sure he had gone back to the grind of his father’s electrical shop but he was out of place just then, out of sorts, needed to find an outlet for his anger at what he had done, what had happened to buddies very close to him, what buddies had done, and how the military had made them animals, nothing less. (Ralph after his father retired would take over the electric shop business on his own in 1991 and would thereafter give it to his son to take over after he retired in 2011.)

One day he had gone to Albany on a job for his father and while on State Street he had seen a group of guys in mismatched military garb marching in the streets without talking, silent which was amazing in itself from what he had previously seen of such anti-war marches and were just carrying a big sign-Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and nobody stopped them, no cops, nobody, nobody yelled “commie” either or a lot of other macho stuff that he and his hang out guys used to do in Troy when some peaceniks held peace vigils in the square. The civilian on-lookers held their tongues that day although Ralph knew that the whole area still retained a lot of residual pro-war feeling just because America was fighting somewhere for something. He parked his father’s truck and walked over to the march just to watch at first. Some guy in a tattered Marine mismatched uniform wearing Chuck Taylor sneakers in the march called out to the crowd for anybody who had served in Vietnam, served in the military to join them shouting out their military affiliation as they did so. Ralph almost automatically blurred out-“Big Red One” and walked right into the street. There were other Big Red One  guys there that day so he was among kindred. So yeah, Ralph did a lot of actions with VVAW and with “civilian” collectives who were planning more dramatic actions. Ralph always would say later that if it hadn’t been for getting “religion” on the war issue and doing all those political actions then he would have gone crazy, would have wound up like a lot of guys he would see later at the VA, see out in the cardboard box for a home streets, and would not until this day have continued to support in any way he could, although lately not physically since his knee replacement, those who had the audacity to march for the “good old cause.”                           

That is the back story of a relationship has lasted until this day, an unlikely relationship in normal times and places but in that cauldron of the early 1970s when the young, even the not so very young, were trying to make heads or tails out of what was happening in a world they did not create, and were not asked about there were plenty of such stories, although most did not outlast that search for the newer world when the high tide of the 1960s ebbed in the mid-1970s. Ralph had noticed while milling around the football field waiting for something to happen, waiting to be released, Sam had a VVAW button on his shirt and since he did not recognize Sam from any previous VVAW action had asked if he was a member of the organization and where. Sam told him the story of his friend Jeff Mullin and of his change of heart about the war, and about doing something about ending the damn thing. That got them talking, talking well into the first night of their captivity when they found they had many things in common coming from deeply entrenched working-class cultures. (You already know about Troy. Carver is something like the cranberry bog capital of the world even today although the large producers dominate the market unlike when Sam was a kid and the small Finnish growers dominated the market and town life. The town moreover has turned into something of a bedroom community for the high-tech industry that dots U.S. Interstate 495.) After a couple of days in the bastinado Sam and Ralph hunger, thirsty, needing a shower after suffering through the Washington humidity heard that people were finding ways of getting out to the streets through some side exits. They decided to surreptiously attempt an “escape” which proved successful and they immediately headed through a bunch of letter, number and state streets on the Washington city grid toward Connecticut Avenue heading toward Silver Springs trying to hitchhike out of the city. A couple of days later having obtained a ride through from Trenton, New Jersey to Providence, Rhode Island they headed to Sam’s mother’s place in Carver. Ralph stayed there a few days before heading back home to Troy. They had agreed that they would keep in contact and try to figure out what the hell went wrong in Washington that week. After making some connections through some radicals he knew in Cambridge to live in a commune Sam asked Ralph to come stay with him for the summer and try to figure out that gnarly problem. Ralph did, although his father was furious since he needed his help on a big GE contract for the Defense Department but Ralph was having none of that.    

So in the summer of 1971 Sam and Ralph began to read that old time literature, although Ralph admitted he was not much of a reader and some of the stuff was way over his head, Sam’s too. Mostly they read socialist and communist literature, a little of the old IWW (Wobblie) stuff since they both were enthrall to the exploits of the likes of Big Bill Haywood out West which seemed to dominate the politics of that earlier time. They had even for a time joined a loose study group sponsored by one of the myriad “red collectives” that had sprung up like weeds in the Cambridge area. Both thought it ironic at the time, and others who were questioning the direction the “movement” was heading in stated the same thing when they were in the study groups, that before that time in the heyday of their anti-war activity everybody dismissed the old white guys (a term not in common use then like now) like Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and their progeny as irrelevant. Then everybody was glued to the books.

It was from that time that Sam and Ralph got a better appreciation of a lot of the events, places, and personalities from the old time radicals. Events like the start of May Day in 1886 as an international working class holiday which they had been clueless about despite the  May Day actions in Washington, the Russian Revolutions, the Paris Commune, the Chinese Revolutions, August 1914 as a watershed against war, the Communist International, those aforementioned radicals Marx, Lenin, Trostky, adding in Mao, Che, Fidel, Ho whose names were on everybody’s tongue (and on posters in every bedroom) even if the reason for that was not known. Most surprising of all were the American radicals like Haywood, Browder, Cannon, Foster, and others who nobody then, or almost nobody cared to know about at all.

As they learned more information about past American movements Sam, the more interested writer of such pieces began to write appreciation of past events, places and personalities. His first effort was to write something about the commemoration of the 3 Ls (Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht) started by the Communist International back in the 1920s in January 1972, the first two names that he knew from a history class in junior college and the third not at all. Here is what he had to say then which he recently freshly updated. Sam told Ralph after he had read the piece and asked if he was still a “true believer” said a lot of piece he would still stand by today:       

“Every January, as readers of this piece are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. [Sam did so for a few years but as the times changed, he expanded his printing business and started a family he gave that up.] That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist Party and American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon.

Note on inclusion: this year’s honoree does not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levelers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

**********

BOOK REVIEW

SPEECHES FOR SOCIALISM- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party. [Cannon died in 1974.]

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.

This volume is a compendium of Cannon’s speeches over most of his active political life beginning with his leadership role in the early American Communist Party and his secondary role in the Communist International. Some of the selections are also available in other parts of the series mentioned above. I would also note here that in contrast to his "Notebook of an Agitator" the pieces here tend to be longer and based on more general socialist principles. The socialist movement has always emphasized two ways of getting its message out- propaganda and agitation. The selections here represent a more propagandistic approach to that message. Many of the presentations hold their own even today in 1972 [and in 2015] as thoughtful expositions of the aims of socialism and how to struggle for it. I particularly draw the reader’s attention to "Sixty Years of American Radicalism" a speech given in 1959 in which Cannon draws a general overview of the ebbs and flows of the socialist movement from the turn of the 20th century until then. At that time Cannon also predicted a new radical upsurge which did occur shortly thereafter [the blazing 1960s of Sam, Frank and my youth.] but unfortunately has long since ended.

Cannon’s speech correctly marks the great divide in the American socialist movement at World War I and the socialist response American participation in that war and subsequently to the Russian Revolution. Prior to that time socialist activity was a loose, federated affair driven by a more evolutionary approach to ultimate socialist success i.e. reformism. That trend was symbolized by the work of the great socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. While that approach had many, ultimately, fatal flaws it did represent a solid attempt to draw a class struggle line for independent (from the capitalist parties) political action by the working class.

Drawing on those lessons the early Communist Party, basing itself on support of the Russian Revolution, became dominant on the American left by expanding on that concept. That is, until the mid-1930’s after it had already long been an agency under orders from Moscow in support, by one means or another, of the Rooseveltian Democratic Party, a capitalist party. That was fatal to long term prospects for independent working class political action and Cannon has harsh words for the party’s policy. He also noted that the next upsurge would have to right that policy by again demanding an independent political expression for the working class. Unfortunately, when that radical upsurge did occur in the 1960’s and early 1970’s the party that he formed, the Socialist Workers Party, essentially replicated in the anti-Vietnam War movement and elsewhere the Communist Party’s class collaborationist policy with the remnants of American liberalism.

Obviously, as a man in his sixties Cannon was no longer able or willing to fight against that policy by the party that he had created. Thus, the third wave of radicalism also ebbed and the American Left declined. Nevertheless this speech is Cannon’s legacy to the youth today. [2015] A new upsurge, and it will come, must learn this lesson and fight tooth and nail for independent political expression for the working class to avoid another failure.

A View From The Left-The University Of The Left

A View From The Left-The University Of The Left

Frank Jackman comment:

Almost all authoritative educational professionals who are interested in updating the now much worn out view of American and world history in an age when racial, ethnic, gender and sexual minorities have fully demonstrated their rights to be written back into history agree that the old views were pretty damn poor. And that despite the push for inclusion too many school systems public and private have not caught up with the times. Now there is no guarantee that the history of the Left aside from the above-mentioned minority struggles will get any better treatment in the new books so checkout this University of the Left and see what floats for you-and what doesn’t