*****Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-Elegy For Tom Waits

An Encore -Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-Elegy For Tom Waits

From the pen of the late Peter Paul Markin who fell by the wayside, fell to his notoriously monstrous “wanting habits” accumulated since childhood looking too hard, looking to hard in the wrong places down among the weeds in Mexico, looking for train smoke and dreams if you really thought about the matter, looking for his own heart of Saturday night-RIP, Brother,RIP.     

****** 



If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of today’s bourgeois-driven push, bourgeois a better term than capitalist or imperialist if you are in America since it gives a better view of the unhindered social norms, the ethos rather than the sheer grab for filthy lucre; you know grab goods, grab the dough, grab every cheap-jack convenience like it was God’s own gold, grab some shelter from the storm, the storm that these days comes down like a hard rain falling, to get ahead in this wicked old world have to step back and take stock, maybe listen to some words of wisdom, or words that help explain how you got into that mess then you have come to the right address, the address of Mister Tom Waits if you missed the headline or missed who is writing this thing. (Or better "wrote" since this piece is being edited posthumously by Zack James who found this and three companion pieces in the attic of Josh Breslin's Olde Saco family house in Olde Saco, Maine when they were looking to dispose of whatever could be disposed of in preparation for selling the place so Josh and Lana could move into smaller quarters and Josh told him the long and at the end the sad story about Josh's and Markin's meeting out in San Francisco in the summer of love 1960s times and about Markin's awful fate down in Mexico. That story drove Zack to the editing job in order that a genuine mad monk writer could some forty years after his death receive a small recognition of his ambitious talent.) 



Okay, okay on that bourgeois-driven today thing once I describe what was involved maybe it didn’t just start of late. Maybe the whole ill-starred rising went back to the time when this continent was, just like F. Scott Fitzgerald said way back in the 1920s when he made up the Jazz Age and reeled back in dismay once he saw how those coupon-clippers devoured all good sense and sober ethos, just a fresh green breast of land eyed by some hungry sailors, some hungry Dutch sailors who took what they wanted back the homeland and made a grave attempt to fatten their own chests. Just check out any Dutch master painting to see what I mean.



Going back to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys and their city on the hill but you best ask Max Weber about that since he tried to hook these world-wise and world weary boys were no longer worrying about novenas and indulgences against some netherworld to the wheel of the capitalist profit. Profit (grab the dough, grab the goods, grab stuff cheap) for "you at the expense of me" system with the new dispensation coming out like hellfire from Geneva and points east and west. The eternal story of the short end of the stick if you aren’t ready for sociological treatises and rely on guys like Tom Waits to wordsmith the lyrics to set you right about what is wrong. But you get the point.



If all that to-ing and fro-ing (nice touch, right) leaves you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city (edge city where you danced around with all the conventions of the days, danced around the get ahead world, grab the dough, grab the goods, grab stuff cheap,  with blinkers on before you got stuck in the human sink that you have still not been able to get out of) where big cloud outrageous youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, damn did you take risks, thought nothing of that fact either, landed on your ass more than a few times but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done stick around and listen up. Yeah, so if you are wondering,  have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed off your sainted wheels, and gotten yourself  into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, now faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half-forgotten, the wisp of the dream, the eternal peace dream, the figuring out how to contain that fire, that wanting habits fire in your belly dream sisters and brothers), and need some solace (need some way to stop the fret counting the coffee cups complete with spoons to measure that coffee out as the very modernist poet once said making his modern statement about the world created since the turn of the 19th century that while away your life). Need to reach back to roots, reach back to roots that the 1950s golden age of America, the vanilla red scare Cold War night that kicked the ass out of all the old to make us crave sameness, head down, run for cover, in order to forget about those old immigrant customs, made us forget those simple country blues, old country flames, Appalachia mountain breeze coming through the hills and hollows songs, lonely midnight by the fire cowboy ballads, Tex-Mex big ass brass sympatico squeezes Spanish is the loving tongue, Irish desperate struggles against John Bull  sorrows and cautionary tale Child ballads, plucked out early by a professor over on Brattle Street back when the Brahmins very publicly ruled the roost, or Cajun Saturday night stewed drunks that made the people feel good times, reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter [oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay-Zack James] and remember what it was like when men and women sang just to sing the truth of what they saw and heard.



If the norms of don’t rock the boat (not in these uncertain times like any times in human existence were certain, damn, there was always something scary coming up from the first man-eating beast to the human race-eating nuclear bombs, brother even I Iearned early that it was a dangerous world, yeah, learned very early in the Adamsville projects where you got a very real taste of danger before you got too much older than five or six), the norms of keep your head down (that’s right brother, that’s right sister keep looking down, no left or rights for your placid world), keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual (that ritual looking more and more like the firing squad that took old Juan Romero’s life when he did bad those days out in Utah country), and excuses, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, very dark-skinned like some deathless, starless night disturbing your sleep, begging, I swear, begging you to put that gun in full view on the table, speaking some unknown language, maybe A-rab or I-talian, maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang and that fresh green breast of land  and that city on a hill that drove them cross-eyed and inflamed or ask Max Weber, he footnoted the whole thing, put paid to any idea of otherworldly virtue), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half-forgotten remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume up another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.



If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else’s sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side of the fence. And I have the list of brothers and sisters who took that wrong road, like that time Jack from Carver wound up face down in some dusty back road arroyo down Sonora way when the deal went bust or when she, maybe a little kinky for all I know, decided that she would try a needle and a spoon, I swear, or she swore just for kicks and she wound up in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse working that sagging bed to perdition and worse losing that thing she had for sex once she started selling it by the hour. Hey, sweet dreams baby I tried to tell you when you play with fire watch out.



So if you need to sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, those who had gotten it taken away from them like some maiden virginity, those who just didn’t get it frankly in this fast old world taken in by some grifter’s bluster), those who never had anything but lost next to their names, those who never had a way to be lost, dopesters inhaling sweet dream snow in solitary hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor drunk stiff out of his room rent for kicks (how uncool to drink low-shelf whiskeys or rotgut wines hell the guy deserved to be rolled, should feel lucky he got away with just a flipped wallet), out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote (the sweet dreams of ten million years of ghost warriors working the layered canyon walls flickering against the campfire flames and the sight of two modern warriors shirtless, sweaty, in a trance, high as kites, dancing by themselves like whirling dervishes   ready to do justice for the white man's greed until the flames flickered out and they fell in a heap exhausted) if that earth angel connection comes through (Aunt Sally, always, some Aunt Sally coming up the stairs to ease the pain, to make one feel, no, not feel better than any AMA doctor without a prescription pad), creating visions of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night, hipsters all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving, fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card Monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japan seas), the drift-less (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses, hell, call them flop houses, afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them” too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.



If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore–mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup, New Mexico Southern Pacific  trestle (the old SP the only way to travel out west if you want to get west), some Hoboken broken down pier (ha, shades of the last page of Jack Kerouac’s classic), the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, some gringa for a change of pace, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just let that one pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, big book academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world (the big mass of world sweated field braceros, sharecroppers, landless peasants and now cold-water flat urban dwellers fresh from the played out land, or taken land) then Tom Waits is your stop.



Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record [CD or download okay-Zack] and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living.



See he ain’t looking for all haloed saints out there, some Saint Jerome spreading the word out to the desert tribes, out on the American mean streets he has pawed around the edges, maybe doesn’t believe in saints for all I know, but is out looking for busted black-hearted angels all dressed in some slinky silk thing to make a man, a high-shelf whiskey man having hustled some dough better left unexplained that night going off his moorings feeding her drinks and she a liquor sponge (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless, gin mill when she split, after she split her take with the bartender who watered her drinks, hell, the thing was sweet all she needed to do when he leaned into her was grab his sorry ass and get the damn wallet). Looking too, a child of the pin-up playboy 1950s, for girls with Monroe hips (hips swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and enflaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells by descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys for promising the world for one forbidden night), got real, and got left for dead with cigar wrapping rings. Yeah, looking for the desperate out there who went off the righteous path and wound up too young face down in some forsaken woods who said she needed to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten. 




Tom Waits once you get the habit gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Okie/Arkie Dove Linkhorns and Frankie Machines of the world who had to keep moving just for the sake of moving something in the DNA driving that whirlwind, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores (their forbears thrown out of Europe for venal crimes and lusts, pig-stealing, deer-pouching, working the commons without a license, highwaymen, ancient jack-rollers, the flotsam and jetsam of the old world, damn them, the master-less men and women, ask old Max about them too), having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, far from it, the wretched of the earth and their kin, the ones who the old blessed Paris communards were thinking of when they hanged a sign saying “Death to Thieves” from the Hotel de Ville balcony, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If you want to hear about those desperate brethren then here is your stop as well.



If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear to the scratchy earth and some occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Hey, let’s leave it at this- if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.

A View From The Left-Haiti-UN Admits Causing Cholera Epidemic-UN Troops Out!

Workers Vanguard No. 1095	9 September 2016

Haiti-UN Admits Causing Cholera Epidemic-UN Troops Out!

Last month the United Nations finally acknowledged what scientists, journalists and Haitians themselves have known from the beginning: the ongoing cholera epidemic was caused by UN troops. Since the disease first appeared in Haiti six years ago following a catastrophic earthquake, it has killed over 10,000 Haitians and infected hundreds of thousands of others. Threatening unspeakable human costs, the infection rate continues to climb. Not included in the UN’s halfhearted admission was the extent of evasion, destruction of evidence and outright lies used by Haiti’s UN overlords to cover up the fact that they spread the scourge.

The UN occupation force in Haiti was initially put in place by the U.S. and other imperialist forces in 2004 following the coup they orchestrated against the bourgeois populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Known as the MINUSTAH “stabilization mission,” the role of these troops has always been to put down social protest and enforce repression against the beleaguered and impoverished Haitian masses. UN forces have repeatedly terrorized the vast Cité Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince, including in December 2006 when they massacred scores of residents who were demanding the return of Aristide and the withdrawal of foreign military forces. During the mass hunger riots in 2008, UN troops fired on crowds protesting rising food prices, killing several. We demand: All UN troops out now!

After the 2010 earthquake, MINUSTAH was bolstered by troops from Nepal, a country where cholera was rampant. The so-called “peacekeeping” troops, who were not medically screened, allowed untreated sewage from their camp to flow into a fresh water source, infecting locals en masse. UN officials then obstructed any investigation, prohibiting examination of UN soldiers and sanitation at the camp while falsely claiming that sealed septic tanks were emptied by a contractor. Various accounts from journalists of sewage spills and overflowing latrines going directly into a river used for drinking, bathing and washing were routinely dismissed as spurious. For their part, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abetted the UN’s cover-up, claiming that pinpointing the source of the outbreak was “not productive.”

So what caused the UN’s apparent about-face? In April, an internal UN report—commissioned back in 2010—substantiating the unsanitary conditions at the base was leaked to the media. This leak was followed by an August 8 report by a longtime UN advisor stating categorically that the epidemic “would not have broken out” if not for the UN’s role. Soon after, the deputy spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a tepid confession in an email to the New York Times regarding the UN’s “involvement” in the cholera outbreak, promising a “new set of UN actions” to address the issue. Fat chance. Despite previous promises, the UN has implemented no major water or sanitation projects on the island since the epidemic began.

As though to underscore the cynicism of the whole affair, just a day after the long-awaited acknowledgment, a U.S. federal appeals court blocked a class-action lawsuit filed years ago on behalf of thousands of Haitian cholera victims. By affirming the UN’s immunity from being sued, the decision allows the UN to avoid having to pay $40 billion or more in damages to the families of those whose lives were destroyed by the disease. Defending the UN’s immunity were none other than lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department.

The UN is a den of imperialist thieves and their victims, which Washington routinely uses as a “humanitarian” front for its adventures and occupations abroad. In a 2008 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, former U.S. ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson called MINUSTAH “an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [U.S. government] policy interests,” namely, suppressing “resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces.” It was to reinforce this bloody UN occupation force, as well as to prevent an exodus of poor Haitian migrants to the U.S., that Barack Obama sent 20,000 troops to the island in 2010.

Overseeing the White House’s response to the earthquake was Obama’s secretary of state at the time, Hillary Clinton. Under the guise of a “relief effort,” the incursion was designed to perpetuate U.S. imperialist domination over the region. Meanwhile, an interim recovery commission headed by Bill Clinton, then UN special envoy to Haiti, is notorious for having squandered millions of dollars of aid money, leaving Haiti in a shambles. Foreign investors benefited handsomely from the building of luxury hotels, while construction of housing projects for displaced residents was shoddy or simply abandoned.

The Clintons’ long history in Haiti, including via the Clinton Foundation, has earned them the justified wrath of Haitians. Several protests of Haitian expatriates at both the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s headquarters in New York City—not to mention during this summer’s Democratic Convention—have accused the couple of defrauding the country to the benefit of wealthy donors and the Clintons’ cronies. Haitians remember when, as president in 1994, Bill Clinton deployed thousands of Marines to Haiti to quell growing turmoil. The popular Aristide—who had been ousted in a coup in 1991—was restored on the condition that he agree to a drastic austerity program, privatization of state-owned industry, massive layoffs in the public sector and the virtual abolition of import tariffs. Clinton’s trade policies, which he later flippantly called a “mistake,” devastated Haiti’s rice production and caused its economy to collapse.

Popular hostility to the U.S. and to UN occupying forces on the island has been ever-present in the last several years, no doubt deepened by the UN’s whitewashing of its role in the cholera epidemic. While outbreaks of cholera were prevalent in the 1800s before the invention of modern sanitation systems, the presence of the infectious disease today is yet another marker of the criminality and irrationality of the capitalist order. Cholera is one of the prime examples of diseases of the poor, preventable with basic public health measures like controlling sewage and purifying water. Moreover, even in advanced cases, the infection can be treated in over 99 percent of patients with timely medical attention and simple, cheap rehydration solution—a mixture of sugar, salts and water. But in the hideous backwardness of urban slums and remote villages of the Third World, safe water, waste disposal and medical care are largely out of reach.

A century ago, in a preface to his work Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin described imperialism as “a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries.” There is no clearer picture of this than in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, where two centuries of looting by the U.S. and France, not to mention repeated American invasions to install and prop up brutal tinpot dictatorships, have left the populace with a crumbling infrastructure and utterly exposed to the ravages of disease.

Haitian workers in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere can serve as a vital bridge linking the struggle for national and social emancipation in Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean with the fight for socialist revolution in the North American imperialist heartland. A workers revolution in the U.S. would extend massive aid programs to rebuild the countries in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and elsewhere that the imperialists have plundered and destroyed. Only through overturning the capitalist system and establishing a planned, collectivized economy on a world scale will the basis be laid for dealing with hunger and sickness through overcoming material scarcity.

Listen Up!-From The Women And Men Who Know First Hand The Bloody Face Of War-The Military Families Against War

Listen Up!-From The Women And Men Who Know First Hand The Bloody Face Of War-The Military Families Against War  

By Frank Jackman

I have often, very often lately, had occasion to mention that during these seemingly endless wars of the early 2000s that those soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air personnel who have one way or the other gotten “religion” on the question of war and peace have more “street cred” on in the anti-war streets than those civilians like these days even an old veteran like myself who whatever their righteous anger cannot convey to the public. I often take the example from my own generation, the Vietnam War veterans, specifically those who worked with and around Vietnam Veterans for Peace (VVAW) like John Kerry before he headed for the main change and became the front man for every imperialist endeavor since, when they took to the streets got the muted admiration (or at least silence) from the most rabid pro-war chicken-hawks. Remembering those famous silent marches through the streets of every major town and the Capitol with the battered, bruised, hurt, scarred, mentally and physically leading the way crying out to the high heavens for an end to the madness, an end to the death tolls, for bringing the troops home and for letting the next generation live without the threat of warrior deaths hanging over their heads.             

If the wounded warriors turned anti-warriors of the endless wars that have plagued this country for this whole century thus far in every place where the American government has decided to put its ugly nose have “street cred” when the deal goes down that holds as true for the organizations of anti-war military families who have lost loved ones to the false policies of that same crazed government. Many times they do not appear on the streets like the grizzled veterans of the myriad conflicts but everybody damn well give a listen to what they have to say because unlike the chicken-hawks and their hangers-on these families have suffered the loss of their sons and daughters to the beast military machine. Yeah, listen up, listen up carefully.     

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

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.         

Stop The Endless Wars-Listen To The Gals And Guys Who Have Been There-Veterans For Peace-VFP

Stop The Endless Wars-Listen To The Gals And Guys Who Have Been There-Veterans For Peace-VFP

By Frank Jackman

Recently I wrote a comment in this space about “street cred,” anti-war street cred in that case placing the anti-war organization Military Families Speak Out directly in the front line of those who have earned that honor, earned it big time as those of us, even many veterans like myself could expect out in those mean sullen anti-war streets. In that comment I had placed Military Families in the same company as those from my generation, my war generation, the Vietnam War, who too “got religion” on the questions of war and peace and who ran into the streets in the late 1960s and early 1970s to put muscle into that understanding. I noted that there was no more stirring sight in those days than to see a bunch of bedraggled, wounded, scarred, ex-warriors march in uniform or part uniform as the spirit moved them, many times in silent or to a one person cadence, in places like Miami and Washington with the crowds on the sidelines dropping their jaws as they passed by. Even the most ardent draft-dodging chicken hawk in those days held his or her thoughts in silence in the face of such a powerful demonstration.       

That was then and now is now. Now that spirit of military-borne   resistance resides a greying, aging, illness gathering relatively small group of veterans who have formed up under the dove-tailed banner of Veterans for Peace (VFP). While that organization is open to all who adhere to the actively non-violent principles stated below who are veterans and supporters the vast bulk of members are from the Vietnam era still putting up the good fight some forty plus years later. Still out on the streets with their dove-tailed banners flailing away in some off-hand ill-disposed wind stirring those crowds on the sidewalk once again. Still having that very special “street cred” of those who had have to confront the face of war in a very personal way. Listen up.

   

Keep Space for Peace Week Oct 1-8

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Final Space Week Events List

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October 1-8, 2016

 

Keep Space for Peace Week

International Week of Protest to

Stop the Militarization of Space

 

 

No Missile Defense

Stop Drones Surveillance & Killing

Stop the Endless Wars

No to NATO

End Corporate Domination of Foreign/Military 
Policy

Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Deal with climate change and global poverty

 

 

 



Alice Springs, Australia (Oct 
  1) National 
  Conference Pine Gap: Serving US 
  Militarism for 50 Years – Time for Independence? Panels include: Pine Gap 
  & US Base in Darwin, Security Threat to Australia?; War with China?; Mass 
  surveillance; Nuclear and Drone warfare; Arms Manufacturers; Regional Arms 
  race threat to peace. The Chifley, Alice Springs Resort, 8:30 am – 5:00 
  pm,  aspatt2016@gmail.com    

Alice 
  Springs, Australia (Oct 2) Joint 
  Cavalcade to gates of US Spy base at Pine Gap 9:00am - 12:00pm, 
  aspatt2016@gmail.com   

Andover, Massasschusetts (Oct 6) Vigil 
  in front of Raytheon, 7am - 8am, 350 Lowell St.  Friends Meeting 
  Lawrence, Merrimack Valley People for Peace. Contact: brian@quirk.ws 
  

978 685 1389.







Bath Iron Works, Maine (Oct 
  1) Vigil across from 
  administration building on Washington Street (Navy Aegis destroyers outfitted 
  with “missile defense” systems built at BIW) 11:30-12:30 am   Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm 
  (207) 763-4062

Berlin, Germany (Sept 30 – Oct 
  3) ‘Berlin Congress 
  'Disarm! for a Climate of Peace: Creating an Action Agenda’ at Technical 
  University. Sponsored by IPB, WILPF, Pax Christi and others.    https://www.ipb2016.berlin/event/ipb-world-congress-berlin/ 

Berlin, Germany (Oct 
  8) Nationwide 
  demonstration Down with Weapons! 
  Cooperation Instead of NATO Confrontation, Disarmament Instead of Welfare 
  Cuts http://friedensdemo.org/aufruf-zur-demonstration-am-08-10-2016-in-berlin/ 

Caracus, Venezuela (Oct 
  6) Protest by 
  International Solidarity Committee (COSI), roso_grimau@yahoo.es  
   

Chandrapur, Mahrashstra State, India 
  (Oct 7) Power 
  Presentation on Space for Peace at Shantaram Pothdukhe Law College 
  

USAF Croughton, England (Oct 
  1) March & Rally 
  at U.S. satellite communication and intelligence base. (Space communications, 
  drones, bomber guidance, missile defence and command & control 
  functions.)  12-3 pm. Oxfordshire 
  Peace Campaign, oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk 

Fort Meade, Maryland (Oct 8) 
  The Pledge of 
  Resistance-Baltimore will go to the National Security Agency to protest 
  illegal surveillance and its involvement in drone strikes at 11 AM.  We will be promoting a pardon for 
  Edward Snowden.  Rides will be 
  available. Contact Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski at Verizon dot 
  net

Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South 
  Korea (Oct 1-2) Distribution of leaflets 
  about space week during the Jeju Peace festival  armha2013@gmail.com 

Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea 
  (Oct 7) A Concert in 
  remembrance of US invasion of Afghanistan at Gangjeong Peace Center, Gangjeong 
  village  armha2013@gmail.com 

Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South 
  Korea (Oct 1 to 8) Picketing, educating, 
  expressing solidarity with space week at Navy base where ‘missile defense’ 
  systems will be ported onboard US Aegis destroyers  armha2013@gmail.com 

Gimcheon, South Korea (Oct 
  1-8) Nightly 
  candlelight vigil against US deployment of THAAD ‘missile defense’ system near 
  their community.  

Port Louis, Mauritius (Oct 1-2) LALIT 2nd Action 
  Conference called “Diego Garcia: 50 Years’ Occupation & Banishment, 50 
  Year’s Struggle”.  Topics include: 
  The secret history of the U.S. Military Base on Diego 
  Garcia and its role as a key installation in the Air Force’s Satellite Control 
  Network.  Contact: 
  raj8@intnet.mu   

Digapahandi, Orissa State, India (Oct 
  4) Seminar at Bijoy 
  Patnak, Government Women's College, Mr. Haraprasad Rath, Organiser  ratha.haraprasad@gmail.com 

Digapahandi, Orissa State, India (Oct 
  6) Demonstration and 
  Discussion at Chaamundi College, Mr. Haraprasad Rath, Organiser  ratha.haraprasad@gmail.com 

Fairbanks, Alaska (Oct 
  8) F-35 is a theft! 
  Direct action at Eielson Air Force Base. The protest will focus on our local 
  governments' addiction to militarism as a tool for economic development with a 
  special focus on the plan to station two squadrons of F-35s here. Contact: 
  907-687-6606 or mulford.rob@gmail.com  

Fresno, California (Oct 
  7) Tabling & 
  leafletting at CSUF Cineculture Film Class ilsasso2003@yahoo.com 

RAF Fylingdales, North Yorkshire, 
  England (Oct 1) 
  Demonstrate against US Missile Defence and space-based warfare, 12-3 pm, 
  Yorkshire CND  info@yorkshirecnd.org.uk     

King of Prussia, Pennsylvania (Oct 
  8)  Brandywine Peace Community will 
  hold  an anti-war 'REACH-OUT' to 
  our neighbors.  Lockheed Martin, 
  230 Mall Boulevard (corner of Mall and Goddard Boulevards, behind the King of 
  Prussia Mall) Noon – 2 pm. Lockheed Martin is the world's #1 war (including 
  killer drones) and nuclear weapons profiteer.  Nuclear weapons and use are still the 
  central threat of U.S. global empire.  
  Music by Tom Music. Come with a whole lotta noise and love for people 
  and the planet in the face of the presidential election madhouse. For more 
  information: call (610) 544-1818, www.brandywinepeace.com/events.  

Kiruna, Sweden (Oct 
  8) Women for Peace 
  will organize a manifestation in the centre of town against drones. 
  evannakristin@gmail.com    

Kirtland AFB, New Mexico (Oct 
  1) Protest at Gibson 
  @ Truman Street SE from 10 am to Noon. Kirtland does Research & 
  development on directed energy beam weapons, lasers, microwave, rail guns and 
  others technologies in the war to defend freedom and liberty for American 
  corporations.  They want to put 
  big killer lasers on aircraft soon. In addition KAFB operates a special 
  satellite control system for global war that also enables drone attacks around 
  the world on a moment’s notice.  
  Kirtland houses one of the largest offensive cyber warfare centers that 
  hacks into other nation’s computer systems. Sponsored by Stop War Machine and 
  others. citizen@comcast.net    

Maine Peace Walk (Oct 
  11-26) Stop the War$ 
  on Mother Earth, Penobscot Nation on Indian Island to Kittery Naval Submarine 
  shipyard in Kittery, More info at  http://vfpmaine.org/

Menwith Hill, England (Oct 
  4) Demonstration at 
  U.S. NSA/NRO Spy Base in Yorkshire.  
  Sponsored by CAAB   mail@caab.corner.org.uk   

Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota (Oct. 
  5) At the weekly 
  peace vigil on a bridge spanning the Mississippi River between Minneapolis/St. 
  Paul, Women Against Military Madness will hold signs about stopping the 
  provoking of Russia and China. From 5:00-6:00 p.m. during rush hour 
  traffic.  On Oct. 8 a coalition of 
  peace groups in the Twin Cities will rally with a focus on Afghanistan because 
  it is the 15th anniversary of the U.S. war on that country; there is sure to 
  be an anti-drone presence.  
  beaudmj@gmail.com 

Nagpur, India (Oct 2) Dharna (Squatting 
  Demonstration)  J. Narayana Rao, 
  Coordinator jnrao193636@gmail.com 

New Haven, Connecticut (Sept 
  30) Community vigil 
  and leafleting in front of New Haven City Hall; 12 noon, organized by the 
  Greater New Haven Peace Council  
  amistadmarder@gmail.com 

Niscemi, Sicily (Oct 2) Protest march at US space 
  warfare communications base by No MUOS campaign sadhusan@virgilio.it 

Novara, Italy (Oct 2) Protest near the Cameri Air Base 
  where F-35 planes are provided operating support throughout Europe, the 
  Mediterranean and the Middle East.  
  Protest organized by No MUOS and No F-35.  sadhusan@virgilio.it 

Regina, Canada (Oct 
  8) Panel discussion 
  against Canada joining the U.S. ballistic missile "defence" system. The venue 
  is Meeting Room 208, Research and Innovation Center, University of Regina at 2 
  p.m. Speakers include: David Gehl, Dr. Stephen Moore, and Dr. William Stahl. 
  Sponsors: Regina Peace Council, Making Peace Vigil, and PeaceQuest Regina. 
  Info contact: Ed Lehman 306-718-8010 or edrae1133@gmail.com 

San Francisco, California (Oct. 
  9) Bay Area CODEPINK 
  Monthly Peace Walk on the Golden Gate Bridge.  Stop Drone Surveillance 
  & Killing: Shut Down Beale AFB & Shut Down Creech AFB. Noon-2pm, Rally 
  & March on the Bridge.   ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net     


Santa Rosa, California (Oct 
  10) Lynda Williams, 
  SRJC Physics Faculty presenting ‘The Gold Rush in Space: The Risks of Mining 
  Asteroids’, Noon – 1:00 pm in Newman Auditorium, Emeritus Hall, Santa Rosa 
  Junior College lyndalovon@gmail.com 

Seattle, Washington (October; Dates 
  TBD) Leafleting 
  against the Trident nuclear weapons system, at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and 
  communities around Puget Sound. Contact Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent 
  Action (gzcenter.org) at info@gzcenter.org 

Seongju, South Korea (Oct 
  1-8) Nightly 
  candlelight vigil against US deployment of THAAD ‘missile defense’ system near 
  their community.  

Sunnyvale, California (Sept 26) Vigil at Lockheed-Martin 
  (Fifth Street & L-M Way) at noon.  
  Lockheed profits from war. Its web site lists over 400 products 
  designed to meet the needs of today's “warfighter.” These range from Hellfire, 
  PAC­3 and Javelin missiles the F16, 22, 35 and 117 fighters, military 
  satellites, integrated defense systems, and dispensers for cluster bombs. 
  Sponsored by Pacific Life Community. ehmke@stanford.edu 

Syracuse, New York (Oct 
  4) Special "Keep 
  Space for Peace Week" Street Heat outside Hancock Air National Guard Base (a 
  training center for drone operators and a site for piloting drones over 
  Afghanistan). Street Heat is a small demonstration we have Tuesdays from 
  4:15-5pm at locations throughout the Syracuse area. Also we'll put out the 
  poster and info via our 1800+ person listserv and social media. Sponsored by 
  the Syracuse Peace Council.  
  carol@peacecouncil.net 

Tucson, Arizona (Oct 
  4) Peace vigil 
  against drones piloting at Davis-Monthan AFB, Craycroft Road entrance, 7:00am 
  Contact nukeresister@igc.org  or 520-323-8697

Tucson, Arizona (Oct 
  4) Speech by John 
  LaForge ‘Dangerous, Useless, Expensive: Why Eliminate Land-Based Missiles’ at 
  Himmel Library (1035 N. Treat Ave), Contact nukeresister@igc.org  or 520-323-8697

Vadso, Norway (Oct 10-11) National conference 
  called ‘Military Intelligence as a democratic blind zone’.  Event will discuss NSA-cooperation 
  with Norway 1952-2016. In Vadsø is a huge US space Communications-Intelligence 
  station near the Russian border. Event held at Scandic Vadso Hotel.  For 
  more information contact torill@formidlingskraft.no  

Vandenberg AFB, California (Oct 
  5) Keep Space for 
  Peace vigil at space warfare base at the Main Gate from 3:45 pm to 4:45 
  pm.  For info contact 
  jdapel@yahoo.com or at (805) 249-3796.

Volk Field, Camp Douglas, 
  Wisconsin (Sept 27) Vigil Against Drones 
  3:30-4:30, Gates of Volk Field, an Air National Guard Base where they train 
  personnel to operate the Shadow Drone. The monthly vigil at Volk Field is a 
  legal vigil where we will be on public property.  It will be a solemn vigil, remembering 
  the victims of US drone attacks. For information joyfirst5@gmail.com  or blbb24@att.ne 

Pentagon, Washington DC (Sept 
  26) 9:00 a.m. 
  Nonviolent Action at Pentagon. Our gathering will begin outside The Pentagon 
  near the top of the Metro subway escalators (the Pentagon stop) next to the 
  bus bay. Bring your signs and banners and join our spirited nonviolent witness 
  against war! We will also be delivering to the Pentagon a petition to close 
  Ramstein Air Base in Germany, as U.S. whistleblowers and Germans together 
  deliver it to the German government in Berlin. http://worldbeyondwar.org/   

Pentagon, Washington DC (Oct 
  3) Weekly Dorothy 
  Day Catholic Worker Peace Vigil (7-8 AM) will display Keep Space for Peace 
  signs.  artlaffin@hotmail.com 

White House, Washington DC (Oct 7) 
  Weekly Dorothy Day 
  Catholic Worker White House Peace Vigil (Noon-1PM) will display Keep Space for 
  Peace Signs) artlaffin@hotmail.com 












































 

* Watch the award winning documentary 
Pax Americana & the Weaponization of Space  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRA5bEO0cUg&feature=player_embedded 

 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 
652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org  
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  
(blog)

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the 
earth. - Henry David 
Thoreau

• keepalbukirtland[3].jpg (129 KB)

A Little Rough Justice, Please-Paul Newman’s The Verdict (1982)-A Film Review

A Little Rough Justice, Please-Paul Newman’s The Verdict (1982)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Verdict, starring Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, James Mason, directed by Sidney Lumet, 1982

Oh sure back in the day Shakespeare in one of his plays, Richard III I think, had somebody intone ‘”first, let’s kill all the lawyers,” as the beginning of wisdom of the new regime. And on any given day that might be sound advice, good lawyers or bad, although usually when people moan about lawyers their own seen to been an exception to the rule so some might actually be spared. But what if, as in the film under review Paul Newman’s The Verdict, there are dueling lawyers one side an alcoholic lone practitioner defending a just case and on the other a slew of lawyers from a big Boston Brahmin law firm at the service of the well-heeled. On that day you and I might have to take sides in the murky land of seeking some rough justice in this wicked old world.      

Let’s flesh this one out a little. Frank Galvin, a Boston Irish-bred lawyer played by Paul Newman, had fallen on hard times after reaching for the brass ring of big-time law firms and falling down, had taken up like a lot of the brethren the drink to wash away a lot of sins and had been reduced to ambulance-chasing. That fate the lowliest of the low in the profession and left strictly for the lesser members of the tribe. Then a friend came along and gave him a case which would make him well again, would put the wind back in his sails and give him some dough and his reputation back to boot. The case seemed like a slam dunk- a young women giving birth to a child had due to an improper use of anesthesia been in a coma for several years and was not coming back, had become a vegetable. The question at hand was whether the attending doctors were negligence and as a consequence the deep pockets in the case-a Catholic Church- run hospital of high repute were to be held liable for a big settlement.   

 

The woman’s sister and brother-in-law were looking for some help to get out from under having to spend their own lives caring for that non-responsive young woman in some manner. As usual before trial the two sides were mandated to reach a settlement out of court to avoid wasting the limited resources of the court system for a civil case, a case which seemed to everybody like a slam dunk. A serious offer was made by the law firm for the Church, a high-rolling big time operation headed by Ed Concanon, played by James Mason, who was known to take no prisoners in court, to leave no stone unturned for his defendant clients.  Frank though despite pleas from all sides “got religion,” saw that this case had to go court to hold somebody responsible in a big way for what had happened to the young woman.      

And to trial they did go. But here is the not so funny part of this seemingly slam dunk case. Every possible aid to Frank like expert testimony from a well-known doctor that there had been serious errors made in the operating room was being throttled to ruin his case. Put that weakening of his main case together with an unsympathetic judge and the chances of winning dropped dramatically. As each door was slammed shut it became clear that something was not right. That not right turned out to be the work of a lovely young woman, Laura played by fetching Charlotte Rumpling, who “picked” Frank up in a bar and who subsequently became his lover. The real deal though was that Laura was working as a spy for old don’t miss any possibility Concanon and his big-time law firm feeding her masters every tidbit about the trial strategy and the witness list. Nice, right.     

But in the end, no thanks to Laura or some others, a little rough justice prevailed in this wicked old world when the admitting nurse after a frantic search in the case came forward and revealed that one of the doctors forced her to change the admitting document. That testimony was supposed to be suppressed, ignored by the jury but you know as well as I did that once they had heard that Frank had won the day, had stepped up to the plate. Best of all the foreman of the jury asked the surly judge whether they could vote to give the young woman more than had been asked for. Yes. Yes, hang ‘em high. So, yes as well, let’s kill all the lawyers but let’s give Frank Galvin a big pass-okay.