*****Stop The Killer-Drone Madness...Stop It Now!

*****Stop The Killer-Drone Madness…Stop It Now

Late one night in 2014 Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton had been sitting at a bar in Boston, Jack Higgin’s Grille, down a few streets from the financial district toward Quincy Market talking about various experiences, political experiences in their lives as they were wont to do these days since they were both mostly retired. Ralph having turned over the day to day operation of his specialty electronics shop in Troy, New York to his youngest son as he in his turn had taken over from his father Ralph, Sr. when he had retired in 1991 (the eldest son, Ralph III, had opted for a career as a software engineer for General Electric still a force in the local economy although not nearly as powerful as when Ralph was young and it had been the largest private employer in the Tri-City area) and Sam had sold off his small print shop business in Carver down about thirty miles south of Boston to a large copying company when he had finally seen a few years before the writing on the wall that the day of the small specialty print shop specializing in silk-screening and other odd job methods of reproduction was done for in the computerized color world.

So they had time for remembrances back to the days in the early 1970s when they had first met and had caught the tail-end of the big splash 1960s political and social explosion that stirred significant elements of their generation, “the generation of ’68” so-called by Sam’s friend from New York City Fritz Jasper although neither of them had been involved in any of the cataclysmic events that had occurred in America (and the world) that year. Sam had that year fitfully been trying to start his own small printing business after working for a few years for Mr. Snyder the premier printer in town and he was knee-deep in trying to mop up on the silk-screen craze for posters and tee shirts and had even hired his old friend from high school Jack Callahan who had gone to the Massachusetts School of Art as his chief silk-screen designer, and later when he moved off the dime politically his acting manager as well. Ralph’s excuse was simpler, simplicity itself for he was knee-deep in the big muddy in the Central Highlands of Vietnam trying to keep body and soul together against that damn Charlie who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Occasionally over the years Ralph would come to Boston on trips at Sam’s invitation and they almost always would go have a few at Jack Higgin’s during his stay talking mainly family matters before Ralph would head back to Troy and his family but more frequently of late they would go back over the ground of their youth, would go over more that ground more than one time to see if something they could have done, or something they did not do, would have made a difference when the “counter-revolution,” when the conservative push-back reared its head, when the cultural wars began in earnest with the ebbing of that big good night 1960s explosion. Sam would return the favor by going out to Albany, or more frequently to Saratoga Springs where he, they could see who from the old days, Utah Phillips before he passed away, Rosalie Sorrels before she left the road, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger before they passed but you get the picture, the old folk minute of the early 1960s that Sam had been very interested in when he started to hang around Cambridge later in that decade, were still alive enough to be playing at the famous coffeehouse still going from the 1960s, the Café Lena, although minus founder Lena for quite a while now. Sam had never lost the bug, never lost that longing for the lost folk minute that in his mind connected in with him hanging around the Hayes-Bickford in Harvard Square on lonesome weekends nights seeing what was to be seen. Sam had dragged Ralph, who despite living on about less than an hour away had never heard of the Café Lena since he had been tuned to the AM stations playing the awful stuff that got air time after the classic period of rock went into decline and before rock became acid-tinged, along with him and he had developed a pretty fair appreciation for the music as well.         

The conversation that night in 2014 got going after the usual few whiskey and sodas used to fortify them for the night talkfest had begun to take effect had been pushed in the direction of what ever happened to that socialist vision that had driven some of their early radical political work together (in the old days both of them in these midnight gabfest would have fortified themselves with in succession grass, cocaine, speed and watch the sun come up and still be talking. These days about midnight would be the end point, maybe earlier.). The specific reason for that question coming up that night had been that Sam had asked Ralph a few weeks before to write up a little remembrance of when he had first heard the socialist-anarchist-communist-radical labor militant   international working class anthem, the Internationale, for Fritz Jasper’s blog, American Protest Music.

Sam had noted that Ralph had with a certain sorrow stated that he no longer had occasion to sing the song. Moreover one of the reasons for that absence was that  despite his and Sam’s continued “good old cause” left-wing political activism socialism as a solution to humankind’s impasses was deeply out of favor (that activism as Ralph mentioned to Sam on more than one occasion these days considerably shortened from the old frenzied 24/7 desperate struggles around trying unsuccessfully end the Vietnam War from the American side by getting the government to stop the damn thing although the Vietnamese liberation forces in the end and at great cost had had no trouble doing so).

People, intellectuals and working stiffs alike, no longer for the most part had that socialist vision goal that had driven several generations, or the best parts of those generations, since the mid-19^th century to put their efforts into, did not have that goal on their radar, didn’t see a way out of the malaise through that route. Had moreover backed off considerably from that prospective since the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites in the early 1990s if not before despite the obvious failure of capitalism to any longer put a dent in the vast inequalities and injustices, their suffered inequalities and injustices, in the world. Sam had had to agree to that sad statement, had had to agree that they, in effect, too had abandoned that goal in their own lives for all practical purposes even though they had been driven by that vision for a while once they got “religion” in the old days in the early 1970s, once they saw that the anti-war struggle that animated their first efforts was not going to get the war-makers to stop making war.

Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was growing older and more reflective, maybe it was that Ralph’s comments had stirred up some sense of guilt for losing the hard edge of their youthful dreams but that night Sam wanted to press the issue of what that socialist prospective meant, what they thought it was all about (both agreed in passing, almost as an afterthought that what had happened, what passed for socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere was NOT what they were dreaming of although they gave third world liberation struggles against imperialism like in Vietnam dependent on Soviet aid plenty of wiggle room to make mistakes and still retain their support).       

Both men during the course of their conversation commented on the fact that no way, no way in hell, if it had not been for the explosive events of the 1960s, of the war and later a bunch of social issue questions, mainly third world liberation struggles internationally and the black liberation question at home they would not even be having the conversation they were having (both also chuckling a little at using the old time terms, especially the use of “struggle” and “question,” for example the  black, gay, woman question since lately they had noticed that younger activists no longer spoke in such terms but used more ephemeral “white privilege,” “patriarchy,”  “gender” terms reflecting the identity politics that have been in fashion for a long time, since the ebb flow of the 1960s). 

No, nothing in the sweet young lives of Samuel Eaton to the Carver cranberry bog capital of world in Carver (then) working-class born (his father a “bogger” himself when they needed extra help) and Ralph Morris, Junior to the Troy General Electric plants-dominated working- class born would have in say 1967, maybe later, projected that almost fifty years later they would be fitfully and regretfully speaking about the their visions of socialism and it demise as a world driving force for social change. 

Ralph and Sam had imbibed all the standard identifiable working-class prejudices against reds, some of those prejudices more widespread among the general population of the times, you know, like the big red scare Cold War “your mommy is a commie, turn her in,” “the Russians are coming get under the desk and hold onto your head,” anybody to the left of Grandpa Ike, maybe even him, communist dupes of Joe Stalin and his progeny who pulled the strings from Moscow and made everybody jumpy; against blacks (Ralph had stood there right next to his father, Ralph, Sr., when he led the physical opposition to blacks moving into the Tappan Street section of town and had nothing, along with his corner boys at Van Patten’s Drugstore, but the “n” word to call black people, sometimes to their faces and Sam’s father was not much better, a southerner from hillbilly country down in Appalachia who had been stationed in Hingham at the end of World War II and stayed, who never could until his dying breathe call blacks anything but the “n” word); against gays and lesbians (Ralph and his boys mercilessly fag and dyke baiting them whenever the guys and he went to Saratoga Springs where those creeps spent their summers doing whatever nasty things they did to each other and Sam likewise down in Provincetown with his boys, he helping, beating up some poor guy in a back alley after one of them had made a fake pass at the guy, Jesus; against uppity woman, servile, domestic child-producing women like their good old mothers and sisters and wanna-bes were okay as were “easy” girls ready to toot their whistles, attitudes which they had only gotten beaten out of them when they ran into their respective future wives who had both been influenced by the women’s liberation movement although truth to tell they were not especially political, but rather artistic.  Native Americans didn’t even rate a nod since they were not on the radar, were written off in any case as fodder for cowboys and soldiers in blue. But mainly they had been red, white and blue American patriotic guys who really did have ice picks in their eyes for anybody who thought they would like to tread on old Uncle Sam (who had been “invented” around Ralph’s hometown way).      

See Ralph, Sam too for that matter, had joined the anti-war movement for personal reasons at first which had to do a lot with ending the war in Vietnam and not a lot about “changing the whole freaking world” (Ralph’s term). Certainly not creeping around the fringes of socialism before the 1960s ebbed and they had to look to the long haul to pursue their political dreams. Ralph’s story was a little bit amazing that way, see, he had served in the military, served in the Army, in Vietnam, had been drafted in early 1967 while he was working in his father’s electrical shop and to avoid being “cannon fodder” as anybody could see what was happening to every “drafted as infantry guy” he had enlisted (three years against the draft’s two) with the expectation of getting something in the electrical field as a job, something useful. But in 1967, 1968 what Uncle needed, desperately needed as General Westmoreland called for more troops, was more “grunts” to flush out Charlie and so Ralph wound up with a unit in the Central Highlands, up in the bush trying to kill every commie he could get his hands on just like the General wanted. He had extended his tour to eighteen months to get out a little early from his enlistment not so much that he was gung-ho but because he had become fed up with what the war had done to him, what he had had to do to survive, what his buddies had had to do to survive and what the American government had turned them all into, nothing but animals, nothing more, as he told everybody who would listen. When he was discharged in late 1969 he wound up joining the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the main anti-war veterans group at the time. Such a move by Ralph and thousands of other soldiers who had served in ‘Nam a real indication even today of how unpopular that war was when the guys who had fought the damn thing arms in hand, mostly guys then, rose up against the slaughter, taking part in a lot of their actions around Albany and New York City mainly.

Here is the way Ralph told Sam in 1971 about how he came in contact with VVAW while they had plenty of time to talk when they were being detained in RFK Stadium after being arrested in a May Day demonstration. One day in 1970 Ralph was taking a high compression motor to Albany to a customer and had parked the shop truck on Van Dyke Street near Russell Sage College. Coming down the line, silent, silent as the grave he thought later, were a ragtag bunch of guys in mismatched (on purpose he found out later) military uniforms carrying individual signs but with a big banner in front calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and signing the banner with the name of the organization-Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). That was all, and all that was needed. Nobody on those still patriotic, mostly government worker, streets called them commies or anything like that but you could tell some guys in white collars who never came close to a gun, except maybe to kill animals or something defenseless really wanted to. One veteran as they came nearer to Ralph shouted out for any veterans to join them, to tell the world what they knew first-hand about what was going on in Vietnam. Yeah, that shout-out was all Ralph needed he said, all he needed to join his “band of brothers.”                               

Sam as he recalled how he and Ralph had met in Washington had remembered that Ralph had first noticed that he was wearing a VVAW supporter button and Ralph had asked if he had been in ‘Nam. Sam, a little sheepishly, explained that he had been exempted from military duty since he was the sole support for his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away of a massive heart attack in 1965. (He had gone to work in Mister Snyder’s print shop where he had learned enough about the printing business to later open his own shop which he kept afloat somehow during the late 1960s with Jack Callahan’s help and which became his career after he settled down when the 1960s ebbed and people started heading back to “normal.”) He then told Ralph the reason that he had joined the anti-war movement after years of relative indifference since he was not involved in the war effort had been that his closest high school friend, Jeff Mullins, had been blown away in the Central Highlands and that had made him question what was going on. Jeff, like them had been as red, white and blue as any guy, had written him when he was in Vietnam that he thought that the place, the situation that he found himself in was more than he bargained for, and that if he didn’t make it back for Sam to tell people, everybody he could what was really going on. Then with just a few months to go Jeff was blown away near some village that Sam could not spell or pronounce correctly even all these many years later. Jeff had not only been Sam’s best friend but was as straight a guy as you could meet, and had gotten Sam out of more than a few scrapes, a few illegal scrapes that could have got him before some judge. So that was how Sam got “religion,” not through some intellectual or rational argument about the theories of war, just wars or “your country right or wrong wars,” but because his friend had been blown away, blown away for no good reason as far as that went.  

At first Sam had worked with Quakers and other pacifist types because he knew they were in Cambridge where he found himself hanging out more and more trying to connect with the happenings that were splitting his generation to hell and back. They got him doing acts of civil disobedience at draft boards, including the Carver Draft Board on Allan Road the place where Jeff had been drafted from (and which created no little turmoil and threats among the Eaton’s neighbors who were still plenty patriotic at that point, his mother and sisters took some of the fire as well), military bases and recruiting stations to try to get the word out to kids who might get hoodwinked in joining up in the slaughter. As the war dragged on though he started going to Cambridge meetings where more radical elements were trying to figure out actions that might stop the damn war cold and that appealed to him more than the “assuming the government was rational and would listen to reason” protest actions of those “gentile little old ladies in tennis sneakers.”

1971 though, May Day 1971 to be exact is, where these two stories, two very different stories with the same theme joined together. Sam at that point in 1971 was like Ralph just trying to get the war ended, maybe help out the Panthers a little but before May Day had no grandiose ideas about changing the “whole freaking world.” Sam had gone down to Washington with a group of Cambridge radicals and “reds” to do what he could to shut down the war under the slogan-“if the government does not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” Ralph had come down with a contingent of ex-veterans and supporters from Albany for that same purpose. Sam and Ralph had as a result met on the bizarre football field at RFK Stadium which was the main holding area for the thousands of people arrested that day (and throughout the week)

So May Day was a watershed for both men, both men having before May Day sensed that more drastic action was necessary to “tame the American imperial monster” (Sam’s term picked up from The Real Paper, an alternative newspaper he had picked up at a street newsstand in Cambridge) and had come away from that experience, that disaster, with the understanding that even to end the war would take much more, and many more people, than they had previously expected. Ralph, in particular, had been carried away with the notion that what he and his fellow veterans who were going to try to symbolically close down the Pentagon were doing as veterans would cause the government pause, would make them think twice about any retaliation to guys who had served and seen it all. Ralph got “smart” on that one fast when the National Guard which was defending the Pentagon, or part of it that day, treated them like any Chicago cops at the Democratic Party Convention in 1968, treated them like cops did to any SDS-ers anywhere, and like anybody else who raised their voices against governmental policy in the streets.

Ralph told Sam while in captivity that he still worked in his father’s shop for a while but their relationship was icy (and would be for a long time after that although in 1991 when Ralph, Senior retired Ralph took over the business). He would take part in whatever actions he could around the area (and down in New York City a couple of times when they called for re-enforcements to make a big splash).

Ralph has like he said joined with a group of VVAW-ers and supporters for an action down in Washington, D.C. The idea, which would sound kind of strange today in a different time when there is very little overt anti-war activity against the current crop of endless wars but also shows how desperate they were to end that damn war, was to on May Day shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. Their task, as part of the bigger scheme, since they were to form up as a total veterans and supporters contingent was to symbolically shut down the Pentagon. Wild right, but see the figuring was that they, the government, would not dare to arrest vets and they figured (“they” meaning all those who planned the events and went along with the plan) the government would treat it somewhat like the big civilian action at the Pentagon in 1967 which Norman Mailer won a literary prize writing a book about, Armies of the Night. Silly them. 

They after the fall-out from that event were thus searching for a better way to handle things, a better way to make an impact because those few days of detention in D.C. that they had jointly suffered not only started what would be a lifelong personal friendship but an on-going conversation between them over the next several years about how to bring about the greater social change they sensed was needed before one could even think about stopping wars and stuff like that. (The story in short of how they got out of RFK after a few days was pretty straight forward. Since law enforcement was so strapped that week somebody had noticed and passed the word along that some of the side exits in the stadium were not guarded and so they had just walked out and got out of town fast, very fast, hitchhiking back north to Carver, and Ralph later to Troy). Hence the push by Sam toward the study groups led by “red collectives” that were sprouting up then peopled by others who had the same kind of questions which they would join, unjoin and work with, or not work with over the next few years before both men sensed the tide of the rolling 1960s had ebbed. 

Old time high school thoughts even with the cross-fire hells of burned down Vietnam villages melted into the back of his brain crossed his mind when Ralph thought of Marx, Lenin (he, they, were not familiar with Trotsky except he had “bought it” down in Mexico with an icepick from some assassin), Joe Stalin, Red Square, Moscow and commie dupes. Sam had not been far behind in his own youthful prejudices as he told Ralph one night after a class and they were tossing down a few at Jack’s in Cambridge before heading home to the commune where Sam was staying.

Ralph had gone out of his way to note in that blog entry for Fritz that before he got “religion” on the anti-war and later social justice issues he held as many anti-communist prejudices as anybody else in Troy, New York where he hailed from, not excluding his rabidly right-wing father who never really believed until his dying days in 2005 that the United States had lost the war in Vietnam. Ralph had realized that all the propaganda he had been fed was like the wind and his realization of that had made him  a very angry young man when he got out of the Army in late 1969. He tried to talk to his father about it but Ralph, Senior was hung up in a combination “good war, World War II, his war where America saved international civilization from the Nazis and Nips (his father’s term since he fought in the Pacific with the Marines) and “my country, right or wrong.” All Ralph, Senior really wanted Ralph to do was get back to the shop and help him fill those goddam GE defense contract orders. And he did it, for a while.

Ralph had also expressed his feelings of trepidation when after a lot of things went south on the social justice front with damn little to show for all the arrests, deaths, and social cataclysm he and Sam had gotten into a study group in Cambridge run by a “Red October Collective” which focused on studying “Che” Guevara and the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky after an introduction to the Marxist classics. Sam who was living in that commune in Cambridge at the time, the summer of 1972, had invited Ralph to come over from Troy to spent the summer in the study group trying to find out what had gone wrong (and what they had gotten right too, as Sam told him not to forget), why they were spinning their wheels trying to change the world for the better just then and to think about new strategies and tactics for the next big break-out of social activism. At the end of each meeting they would sing the Internationale before the group broke up. At first Ralph had a hard time with the idea of singing a “commie” song (he didn’t put it that way but he might as well have according to Sam) unlike something like John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance, songs like that. As he, they got immersed in the group Ralph lightened up and would sing along if not with gusto then without a snicker.

That same apprehensive attitude had prevailed when after about three meetings they began to study what the group leader, Jeremy, called classic Marxism, the line from Marx and Engels to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A couple of the early classes dealt with the American Civil War and its relationship to the class struggle in America, and Marx’s views on what was happening, why it was necessary for all progressives to side with the North and the end of slavery, and why despite his personal flaws and attitudes toward blacks Abraham Lincoln was a figure to admire all of which both men knew little about except the battles and military leaders in American History classes. What caused the most fears and consternation was the need for revolution worked out in practice during the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. They could see that it was necessary in Russia during those times but America in the 1970s was a different question, not to speak of the beating that they had taken for being “uppity” in the streets in Washington, D.C. in 1971 when they didn’t think about revolution (maybe others had such ideas but if so they kept them to themselves) and the state came crashing down on them.    

The biggest problem though was trying to decipher all the various tendencies in the socialist movement. Ralph, maybe Sam more so, though if everybody wanted the same thing, wanted a better and more peaceful system to live under then they should all get together in one organization, or some such form. The split between the Social Democrats and the Communists, later the split between Stalinists and Trotskyists, and still later the split between Stalinists and Maoists had their heads spinning, had then thankful that they did not have to fight those fights out.

All in all though they had the greatest respect for Trotsky, Trotsky the serious smart intellectual with a revolver in his hand. Had maybe a little sympathy for the doomed revolutionary tilling against the windmills and not bitching about it. Maybe feeling a little like that was the rolling the rock up the hill that they would be facing. That admiration of Trotsky did not extend to the twelve million sects, maybe that number is too low, who have endlessly split from a stillborn organization he started when he felt the Communist International had stopped being a revolutionary force, the Fourth International. Sam brought up a Catholic would make Ralph laugh when he compared those disputes to the old time religious disputes back in the Middle Ages about how many angels would fit on the tip of a needle. They, after spending the summer in study decided that for a while they would work with whoever still needed help but that as far as committing to joining an ongoing organization forget it. 

At the beginning in any case, and that might have affected his ultimate decision, some of Ralph’s old habits kind of held him back, you know the anti-red stuff, Cold War enemy stuff, just like at first he had had trouble despite all he knew about calling for victory to the Viet Cong (who in-country they called “Charlie” in derision although after  Tet 1968 with much more respect when Charlie came at them and kept coming despite high losses). But Ralph got over it, got in the swing. 

The Marxism did not come easy, the theory part, maybe for Ralph a little more than Sam who had taken junior college night classes to bolster the small print shop he had built from nothing after Mister Snyder moved his operation to Quincy to be nearer his main client, State Street Bank and Trust (although for long periods his old Carver friend, Jack Callahan, managed the place when Sam was off on his campaigns). They got that the working-class, their class, should rule and be done with inequalities of all kinds but the idea of a revolution, or more importantly, a working class party which was on everybody’s mind in those days to lead that revolution seemed, well, utopian. The economic theory behind Marxism, that impossible to read Das Capital and historical materialism as a philosophy were books sealed with seven seals for them both. Nevertheless for a few years, say until 1975, 1976 when the tide really had ebbed for anybody who wanted to see they hung around with the local “reds,” mostly those interested in third world liberation struggles and political prisoner defense work. Those were really the earnest “socialist years” although if you had asked them for a model of what their socialism looked like they probably would have pointed to Cuba which seemed fresher than the stodgy old Soviet Union with their Brezhnev bureaucrats.

After that time while they would periodically read the left press and participate any time somebody, some group needed bodies for a rally, demonstration, some street action they would be there in their respective hometowns that they both eventually filtered back to. Then 2002 came and the endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and seemingly a million other places drove them to drop their “armed truce” (Sam’s term picked up by Ralph) with society and return to the streets , return with an almost youthful vengeance. They would see young people at the rallies hocking their little Marxist papers, maybe buy one to read a home but that flame that had caused them to join study groups, to work with Marxist-oriented “red collectives,” to read books that were hard to fathom had passed, had passed just as socialism as a way to end humankind’s impasses had fallen out of favor once the Soviet Union and its satellites had gone up in a puff of smoke. Sam thought one time that maybe those earnest kids with their wafer-thin newspapers will study the classics and make more sense out of them than Sam and Ralph could. As for Sam and Ralph they would now just keep showing up to support the “good old cause.”              

 And here is what Ralph, an ex-Vietnam veteran and no stranger to war up close and personal  had to say about the damn drones:   

If one takes a quick look at military history not at the pre-conditions that set any particular war up but, you know, what was decisive in the victory of one side over the other you will, except those times when desperate valor saved the day, actually an unusual occurrence in the great scheme of warfare, notice that the side with the technological advantage, the latest gadget usually will prevail. Or at least that is what the average run of military historians will highlight. Taking an example from American internal war history, the Civil War of the 1860s, the decisive edge had been given to the industrial power of the North to produce as many cannon, guns, wagons, etc. as needed whereas the South, especially after Billy Sherman and his “bummers” marched through Georgia and its environs squeezing whatever industrial capacity that region did have, was starved for such materials. Thereafter the massing of high caliber accurate firepower weaponry became the standard on the battlefield.

All of this simple-simon history is presented to make a point about what military strategists are up to these days with the incessant use of killer-drones, those gadgets that now, whether recognized as such or not are seen as the solution to reducing the need for boots on the ground which in turn means that those like the American military and its civilian administrators need to worry less about outraged citizens when the body count gets too high. That has not deterred every administration, including the current Obama one from anteing up the boots on the ground when the deal goes down and land needs to be secured. So needless to say this military “new age” thinking is hogwash since while drones had more than occasionally hit their targets they have more than occasionally created what is euphemistically termed “collateral damage” to anybody in the area of the strike.

That fact alone, that fact of innocent civilian causalities, is why I along with others, hopefully a growing number of others, are out in the streets at anti-war rallies and elsewhere telling presidents and generals to stop their killer-drone programs. Join us on this one just like you would when the American government throws boot on the ground in some ill-conceived plan to make the world “safe for democracy.”         

 
 
 
 

*PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, THE EARLY YEARS, 1925-27

Click on title to link to early Leon Trotsky speech on the then unfolding second Chinese Revolution and the tasks of the Russian Left Opposition. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the 1949 revolution it is worthwhile to go back and see where that revolution first went off the skids.

BOOK REVIEW

PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, 1967

Recently I reviewed in this space Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate, a novelistic treatment of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, that emphasized the problems at the base of Chinese society in its late phase after the popular front alliance with General Chiang Kai-Shek’s bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang broke down and Chiang began his extermination drive against the Chinese Communists. In Leon Trotsky’s book, under review here, we get a real time, real life analysis of the political questions that led to that catastrophe and what revolutionaries could learn from it.

I have noted elsewhere that the Communist International (hereafter Comintern) evolved in the mid-1920’s , under the impact of Stalinization, from a revolutionary organization that made political mistakes, sometimes grossly so, in pursuit of revolution to an organization that pursued anti-revolutionary aims as it turned primarily into an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. Prima facie evidence for such a conclusion is the Soviet Communist Party /Commintern policy and its implementation toward the budding Chinese Revolution.

As much as policy toward the Chinese Revolution became a political football in the internal Russian Communist party fights between Stalin’s bloc and Trotsky’s bloc it is impossible to understand the strategy for the Chinese Revolution without an understanding of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. No Marxist, at least not openly and honestly, put forth any claim that in the West the national bourgeoisie could be a progressive force in any modern upheaval. Russia, in the early 20th century was, however, still a battleground over this question. This is where Trotsky formulated the advanced Marxist notion that in Russia the national bourgeoisie was too weak, too beholding to foreign capitalist interests and too dependent on the Czarist state and its hangers-on to fulfill the tasks associated with the classic bourgeois revolutions in the West. Thus, for Russia alone at that time Trotsky postulated that the working class had become the heirs of the revolutions in the West. The Revolution of 1905 gave a glimmer of understanding to that proposition and the Revolution of October 1917 cannot be understood except under that premise.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution the question of who would lead the revolutions of the countries even less developed that Russia, mainly colonial and semi-colonial regimes, formed one of the new political battlegrounds. And China was the first dramatic test that Trotsky’s originally Russia-only premise applied to underdeveloped ‘third world’ capitalist regimes, as well. However,unlike in Russia, this time Trotsky lost. The necessary independent organization of the working class and the political separation of the communist vanguard were not carried out and, to our regret, the Chinese Revolution was beheaded. As mentioned above this was a conscious Stalinist policy of kowtowing to Chiang by unequivocably ordering the Communist Party to make itself politically and militarily subservient to the Kuomintang as well as providing Comintern military advisers to Chiang.

Today, even a cursory look at countries of belated and uneven development emphasizes the fact that the various tasks associated with the Russian and Chinese Revolutions still need to be carried out. Thus, the political fights that wracked the international communist movement in the 1920’s which under ordinary circumstances would only be of historical interest today take on a more life and death meaning for many of the peoples of the world. That makes this book well worth the read.

I might add that there is a very interesting appendix at the end of this work detailing reports from the field filed by those Communist agents that carried out Comintern policy in China and who as a result of disillusionment with that policy had become oppositionists. These reports give added ammunition to Trotsky’s more theoretical arguments. They also give flesh and bones to the some of the points that Malraux was trying to bring out in Man’s Fate. Read on.

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/.

 

'TAKING TO THE STREETS' for Affordable Rental Housing

Hundreds of folks in Boston STOOD UP for Renters, Homeowners and Tenant Protections and Resources. We took to our Land to declare Public Land for Public Use!  And, we highlighted the ERROR of ways that City Officials have been WRONG in giving Tax Breaks and Back-Door deals with developers, planners and corporations with giving away Boston for Profit.  We were heard Loud and Far!  Across the county thousands of people took to the streets for the Renters Day Of Action. Statewide Rent Control campaigns launched in Oregon and Colorado. 4 cities (Portland, Santa Rosa, Boston (300+) and LA (300+)) took the fight directly to Landlord Lobbyists that are funding displacement, gentrification, evictions and profiting off of rising rents (in LA they occupied the offices of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles).  More

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WILLIAM BARBER II: Why We Are Protesting in Charlotte

Since a police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday afternoon, the ensuing protests have dominated national news. Provocateurs who attacked police officers and looted stores made headlines. Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency, and the National Guard joined police officers in riot gear, making the Queen City look like a war zone…  Charlotte’s protests are not black people versus white people. They are not black people versus the police. The protesters are black, white and brown people, crying out against police brutality and systemic violence. If we can see them through the tear gas, they show us a way forward to peace with justice…  As a pastor and an organizer, I do not condone violent protest. But I must join the Charlotte demonstrators in condemning the systemic violence that threatened Mr. Scott’s body long before an officer decided to use lethal force against him. And I must condemn the militarization of Charlotte by the authorities who do not want to address the fundamental concerns of protesters. For black lives to matter in encounters with the police, they must also matter in public policy.   More

 

REPARATIONS:  U.S. owes black people for a history of ‘racial terrorism,’ says U.N. panel

"In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent," the report stated. "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching."  Citing the past year's spate of police officers killing unarmed African American men, the panel warned against "impunity for state violence," which has created, in its words, a "human rights crisis" that "must be addressed as a matter of urgency." … Separately, a coalition of Caribbean nations is calling for reparations from their former European imperial powers for the impact of slavery, colonial genocide and the toxic racial laws that shaped life for the past two centuries in these countries. Their efforts are fitful, and so far not so fruitful.  More

 

UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY:

Corporations Pouring Millions into Local Ballot Fights

This election cycle, corporate donors are not just beefing up the war chests of their most-favored politicians. According to a new study, industry is flexing its Supreme Court- approved political power to dominate local democracy, as well.  In the study, Big Business Ballot Bullies (pdf), Public Citizen examined eight state-level ballot initiatives and referenda that have seen an outsized amount of political spending. According to the research, published Wednesday, the corporate-backed campaigns have an average of 10-to-1 financial advantage over their mostly grassroots opponents, with total corporate spending in those races topping $139 million. "These findings should be deeply disturbing to anyone who is concerned about the power of corporate money to distort our democracy," wrote report author and Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool in a Thursday op-ed.  More

 

How Democrats Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Big Donor Money

Democrats denounced it as an assault on democracy and a sop to billionaires when the Supreme Court issued a ruling two years ago that loosened limits on campaign giving. But Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party leaders are now exploiting the decision, funneling tens of millions of dollars from their wealthiest donors into a handful of presidential swing states. The flow of money, documented in Federal Election Commission reports, shows Democrats expanding their fund-raising advantage in the final phase of the presidential race, defying expectations at the beginning of the campaign that Republicans would dominate the money chase…  Like other candidates for federal office this year, Mrs. Clinton can accept only up to $5,400 from any one donor over the course of her campaign. But after the McCutcheon decision, Mrs. Clinton established an agreement last year with the Democratic Party under which she asked her wealthiest patrons to write checks in excess of $300,000, more than double the old limit, to the Hillary Victory Fund, an account made up of the national and state parties and the Clinton campaign.   More

 

US AT THE CROSSROADS:

Start a New Nuclear Arms Race? Or Address Climate Change and Human Needs?

Under the benign or even positive heading of “nuclear modernization,” the United States plans to spend an estimated $1 trillion (it will surely be more than that – when was the last time an exorbitant military project came in under budget?) to overhaul every part of our nuclear weapons enterprise over the next three decades. Weapons laboratories, warheads, missiles, planes and submarines are all slated to be upgraded...  Besides  the opportunity cost of investing in new nukes – money that won’t go to cancer research, affordable housing, health care for all, infrastructure repair and building the green economy – what baffles is the lack of democracy and accountability. Did anybody vote for this? Did any politicians run on this platform? Certainly not President Obama, who ran on reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide, yet agreed to The New Nuclear Arms Race proposal in exchange for ratification of the modest New START agreement with Russia, a very poor trade-off.   More

 

Trump Promises No First Nuclear Strike, Sort of; New Bill Would Make it Illegal

Responding to the majority of Americans who say they would not trust Trump with the nuclear arsenal, Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., introduced legislation Tuesday that would bar the president from conducting a nuclear strike unless Congress had issued a formal declaration of war. “Our Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew the President could launch a massive, potentially civilization-ending military strike without authorization from Congress,” Lieu said in a statement. “The current nuclear launch approval process, which gives the decision to potentially end civilization as we know it to a single individual, is flatly unconstitutional.”  Whatever Trump actually believes about nuclear weapons, neither Clinton nor President Obama nor any former president has ever adopted a firm “no first use” policy…  In the closing months of Obama’s presidency, some media outlets have speculated that the Obama administration might revise its policy and issue a “no first use” pledge. But the New York Times reported in September that such a proclamation was unlikely, given strong opposition from Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry.   More

 

The Markey (S 3400 text and info here) and Lieu (H.R. 6179 text and info here) bills that would require a congressional declaration of war before any nuclear first strike. Here calls to your House and Senate contacts asking members to cosponsor the bill would be good.

 

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

 

U.S. To Send 600 More Troops To Iraq

President Obama has authorized sending an additional 600 American troops to Iraq to assist Iraqi forces in the looming battle to take back the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, United States officials said on Wednesday. The announcement means that there will soon be 5,000 American troops in Iraq, seven years after the Obama administration withdrew all American troops from the country…  “These are military forces that will be deployed to intensify the strategy that’s in place, to support Iraqi forces as they prepare for an offensive,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday.  More

 

Afghanistan War Supplemental Request Coming in November

Defense Secretary Ash Carter plans to present Congress with a request for a supplemental spending measure to fund US troops in Afghanistan come November, he said Monday.  However, Carter would not give a sense of how large the monetary request may be, saying only that there is a “range” that the department’s budgetary experts are considering. “We have a range. We’re going to refine it. And they’ll get a refined number when [Congress members] return in November, hopefully to pass a budget for the federal government,” Carter told reporters during a visit to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. President Barack Obama in July announced plans to leave 8,400 service members in Afghanistan through the end of the year, rather than the 5,500 that were initially budgeted for fiscal year 2017.   More

 

HOW THE US ARMED-UP SYRIAN JIHADISTS

“No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort”, a former Green Beret writes of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian insurgents, “they know we are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”. “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added.  In a detailed report, US Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy gone Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria, Jack Murphy, himself a former Green Beret (U.S. Special Forces), recounts a former CIA officer having told him how the “the Syria covert action program is [CIA Director John] Brennan’s baby …Brennan was the one who breathed life into the Syrian Task Force … John Brennan loved that regime-change bullshit.”  In gist, Murphy tells the story of U.S. Special Forces under one Presidential authority, arming Syrian anti-ISIS forces, whilst the CIA, obsessed with overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, and operating under a separate Presidential authority, conducts a separate and parallel program to arm anti-Assad insurgents…  Buried in the text is this stunning one-line conclusion: “after ISIS is defeated, the real war begins. CIA-backed FSA elements will openly become al-Nusra; while Special Forces-backed FSA elements like the New Syrian Army will fight alongside the Assad regime. Then the CIA’s militia and the Special Forces’ militia will kill each other.”     More

 

Syria Rebels Draw Closer to al Qaeda-Linked Group

Some of Syria’s largest rebel factions are doubling down on their alliance with an al Qaeda-linked group, despite a U.S. warning to split from the extremists or risk being targeted in airstrikes. The rebel gambit is complicating American counterterrorism efforts in the country at a time the U.S. is contemplating cooperation with Russia to fight extremist groups…  Some rebel groups already aligned with Syria Conquest Front responded by renewing their alliance. But others, such as Nour al-Din al-Zinki, a former Central Intelligence Agency-backed group and one of the largest factions in Aleppo, pledged allegiance for the first time to the front in recent days. A second, smaller rebel group joined the alliance known as Jaish al-Fateh, which is dominated by Syria Conquest Front and includes another major Islamist rebel force, Ahrar al-Sham.    More

 

When Is Direct Military Intervention Not Direct Military Intervention?

“President Obama has long refused to approve direct military intervention in Syria,” the New York Times asserted in an editorial (9/29/16) about “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.”  That’s a peculiar thing to say, given that the Times regularly covers the United States’ ongoing direct military intervention in Syria. Since 2014, according to official Pentagon figures, the US has carried out 5,337 airstrikes in Syria. According to the monitoring group Airwars, these airstrikes (along with a few hundred strikes by US allies) have likely killed between 818 and 1,229 Syrian civilians. Nor is direct US military intervention in Syria limited to aerial attacks. In May 2015, the New York Times (5/16/15) reported on a combat raid by US Delta Force commandos in eastern Syria. Later that year, the Times (10/30/15) observed that President Barack Obama had announced he was sending (in the paper’s words) “several dozen” special forces troops on an “open-ended mission” inside Syria.  More

 

US Threatens to Arm Al Qaeda, ISIS with Anti-Air Missiles
US officials have threatened Syria and its allies – including Russia specifically – that the collapse of a US-proposed ceasefire will lead “Gulf states” to arm militants with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles… One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss American policy, said Washington has kept large numbers of such man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, out of Syria by uniting Western and Arab allies behind channeling training and infantry weapons to moderate opposition groups while it pursued talks with Moscow.
But frustration with Washington has intensified, raising the possibility that Gulf allies or Turkey will no longer continue to follow the U.S. lead or will turn a blind eye to wealthy individuals looking to supply MANPADS to opposition groups.“The Saudis have always thought that the way to get the Russians to back off is what worked in Afghanistan 30 years ago – negating their air power by giving MANPADS to the mujahideen,” said a second U.S. official.  More

U.S. and EU Sanctions Are Punishing Ordinary Syrians and Crippling Aid Work

The sanctions and war have destabilized every sector of Syria’s economy, transforming a once self-sufficient country into an aid-dependent nation. But aid is hard to come by, with sanctions blocking access to blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps, spare parts for power plants, and more…  In 2013 the sanctions were eased but only in opposition areas. Around the same time, the CIA began directly shipping weapons to armed insurgents at a colossal cost of nearly $1 billion a year, effectively adding fuel to the conflict while U.S. sanctions obstructed emergency assistance to civilians caught in the crossfire…  Such conditions would be devastating for any country. In war-torn Syria, where an estimated 13 million people are dependent on humanitarian assistance, the sanctions are compounding the chaos. More

 

THE US, ISRAEL, SAUDI ARABIA – AND IRAN

As the US alliance with reactionary Saudi Arabia begins to show some signs of strain, Israel and its American cheerleaders are anxious to keep those relations on-track. Senators closely associated with unstinting support for Israel were among the votes to sustain massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia. There is also a relentless flood as anti-Iran resolutions, letters and hearings in Congress, mostly spearheaded by Republican allies of Israel. (On the recent contentious issue of a Congressional bill to allow lawsuits against see here and here; somewhat surprisingly, many progressive Members of Congress voted against the successful over-ride of President Obama’s veto.)

Israel itself barely conceals its growing de facto partnership with Saudi Arabia and the other reactionary Gulf monarchies, as highlighted in this prominent op-ed piece by former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Why Iran is more dangerous than Islamic State. Israel’s strategic concerns coincide with the sectarian project of the Sunni monarchies, especially in Syria.  Foreign intervention in Syria has everything to do with breaking that country’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah rather than any concern for democracy or human rights.

 

The Outdated Special Relationship with Saudi Arabia

Like other longstanding American relationships in the Middle East, the ties between Washington and Riyadh have nothing to do with human rights or democracy. The alliance rests mostly on two key factors: natural resources and regional stability… In the past two weeks, Congress has adopted a contradictory posture toward Saudi Arabia. It has pressed for both the declassification of a report that details the potential Saudi connection to the 9/11 attacks and on human rights violations within the Kingdom. It also overrode an Obama veto for the first time to pass a bill allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government as a potential enabler of the attacks. At the same time, Congress blocked an attempt to undermine a $1.15 billion sale of military tanks to Riyadh. In the post-Cold War world, the interests of Riyadh and Washington have increasingly diverged in the region… If the next administration continues to free US Middle East policy from its Saudi-centric, Cold-War-era thinking, Washington will find that it has more flexibility in making a strategic approach to Iran, advance human rights in the region, and effectively counter political and religious extremism, whether Sunni, Shia, or any other variety.   More

 

Angered by 9/11 Victims Law, Saudis Rethink U.S. Alliance

Saudis responded to the passage of the bill, after both houses of Congress voted on Wednesday to override Mr. Obama’s veto, with a mix of anger and disappointment, while many have already begun thinking about how their country will need to adjust. Passage of the law was a huge blow to the Saudis, who have long maintained strong ties in Washington though close cooperation with the American government on a range of issues, from economic and oil policy to counterterrorism to shared intelligence and military programs. Saudi diplomats, and a range of public relations companies hired by the Saudi government, lobbied hard against the bill, with Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister and former Saudi ambassador to Washington, leading the effort. But that failed to persuade enough lawmakers to vote against a bill promoted by the families of victims of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.   More

 

U.S. MILITARY IS BUILDING A $100 MILLION DRONE BASE IN AFRICA

Niger has positioned itself to be the key regional hub for U.S. military operations, with Agadez serving as the premier outpost for launching intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions against a plethora of terror groups…  The U.S. military activity in Niger is not isolated. “There’s a trend toward greater engagement and a more permanent presence in West Africa — the Maghreb and the Sahel,” noted Adam Moore of the department of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and the co-author of an academic study of the U.S. military’s presence in Africa.   More

 

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

 

SHIMON PERES

 

U.S. President Barack Obama stands next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the funeral of former Israeli president Shimon Peres at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, September 30.

The press has been serving up non-stop tributes to the deceased Israeli leader.  Perhaps it reflects the more urbane and liberal persona Peres had projected during the many decades of his public life.  Of course, he benefitted by comparison to the crude nationalistic and bullying style of current rightwing Israeli politicians.  A low bar.    The presence of so many world leaders at his funeral was perhaps meant to highlight this contrast, at least in image and rhetoric. (The ceremony was attended by, President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Bill Clinton and up to 50 Members of Congress).   Palestinians, of course had a different experience with the late Israeli leader.  Peres, the “peacemaker” was the founding father of the Israeli settlement project in the lands conquered in 1967.

 

Few tributes note the efforts of Peres “the peacemaker” to develop Israel’s nuclear weapons in the 1960’s – with the help of the French and stolen fissionable material from the US; his key role in Israel’s breaking of the international arms embargo against Apartheid South Africa; the wars against Israel’s neighbors, including the infamous Qana massacre in 1986; the many slaughters in Gaza.

 

As President Obama commented, with unintended irony, when he awarded Peres the US Medal of Freedom in 2012: “In him, we see the essence of Israel itself.” Indeed.

 

Media Hails Shimon Peres as Man of Peace — But Doesn’t Bother to Ask Arabs

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres’s death unleashed an outpouring of adoration from American media outlets, with major newspapers and broadcast media calling Peres a great man of peace, almost exclusively quoting Israelis and Americans who shared that view.

Lost in the rush to praise Peres were the voices of Arabs such as the Palestinians who lived under the Israeli occupation he expanded, the Lebanese civilians who survived the massacre his military perpetrated, or the Arab representatives in Israel’s Knesset who boycotted his funeral over his support for policies that suppress the Palestinian population.   More

 

A Palestinian perspective on the legacy of Shimon Peres

The peace project, which has become inextricably interwoven with Peres’s own political career, provided him with a clear sense of purpose and a not inconsiderable level of international acclaim…  The belief that the conditions and consequences of the occupation can be overcome through a range of semantic devices and illusionary hopes has since been exposed as the cruel fiction that it always was. It is no coincidence that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement should now demand and assert Palestinian rights with such intensity.

I­t would perhaps be appropriate to speak of a Palestinian rejection of the style of politics with which Peres’s career was so tied – a style which speaks the language of universalism while promoting exclusivism; a style which holds out the hand of peace while simultaneously extending a clenched fist; a style which acknowledges Palestinian rights, but which does so in a way that is conditional, contingent and subject to the dictates of Israeli politicians.   More

 

WHY IS CONGRESS FIGHTING NETANYAHU’S BATTLE?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have learned a thing or two from his frenzied attempts to mobilize the US Congress against the nuclear deal with Iran behind President Barack Obama’s back. Netanyahu is now waging a battle to foil recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN Security Council during the period between the November elections in the United States and the presidential inauguration in January…  Netanyahu has 88 of the 100 US senators hitched to his wagon. This bipartisan group wrote Obama on Sept. 19 demanding that he veto any unilateral move at the UN Security Council in the coming months on a permanent arrangement concerning the territories that Israel controls or its settlements. That is how things work when you have billionaire friends like gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson and you have at your disposal a powerful lobbying group like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee…Congress could make life miserable for any president who permits UN recognition of a Palestinian state to pass. US lawmakers cannot force an administration to use its veto power in the Security Council or to withhold it, but Congress does control the federal budget, including foreign aid allocations.  More

 

Donald Trump backers also trying to get vote out in Israeli settlement

Trump, however, remains in my life, this time very close to home. Israeli supporters of the Republican presidential nominee have opened an office in the occupied West Bank. The first office was placed in Karnei Shomron in the north West Bank. This settlement and the more than 140 other Israeli settlements are rejected by nearly all, if not all, countries around the world.  A nonprofit group, Republican Overseas Israel, was established for the purpose of getting out the Republican vote in Israel – and now in the occupied West Bank. Marc Zell serves as its co-chairman and proudly claims that they are serving all of Israel from this "logistical jumping-off point."  As if having Trump in the presidential race is not enough, we now have "close coordination" of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee with Israeli settlers who not only violate international law, but are also in direct contradiction with U.S. foreign policy.  More

 

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OTHER EVENTS

 

Saturday-Sunday, October 1 –2:  HOMELAND (IRAQ YEAR ZERO) BY ABBAS FAHDEL,  The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to present HOMELAND (IRAQ YEAR ZERO) BY ABBAS FAHDEL from October 1 – October 2, 2016 with filmmaker Abbas Fahdel in person. $12 Special Event Tickets.  Abbas Fahdel in person, Saturday October 1 at 7pm, Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) – Part 1. Before the Fall, Sunday October 2 at 7pm, Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) – Part 2. After the Battle http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2016sepnov/homeland.html  Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) is a riveting home-movie chronicle of life in Iraq before and after the US invasion. Offering all-too-rare images of everyday life in Iraq, the film closely follows extended family members and friends of director Abbas Fahdel as they brace for the long impending attack and then struggle to survive the disastrous consequences of American imperialism. Leaving the invasion itself eerily absent, Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) is cleaved into two epic chapters starkly separated by a dark, gaping chasm. Before the Fall offers a touching portrait of middle-class Iraq, assembled from extended domestic scenes and debates among Baghdad friends and neighbors, as well as a wedding that becomes an emotional centerpiece of the entire film. After the Battle bravely takes to the street to survey, with shock and unspoken outrage, the ruthless destruction of public and private space wrought by the occupying US forces.

 

Wednesday, October 5: Greening the Global (and Massachusetts) Economy,  7- 9pm, Cambridge Friends Meeting, 

5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge. We can stop climate catastrophe  If we are up to the challenge!  Here’s How:  An Open Forum with Dr. Robert Pollin: Co-director, Political Economy Research Institute and Professor of Economics @ UMASS-Amherst;  Author: Greening the Global Economy (M.I.T. Press);   Come hear Robert Pollin lay out his economic plan for how we can meet the carbon reduction targets that will actually avert climate catastrophe, generate vast numbers of new jobs and protect those employed by fossil fuel energy companies.

 

Friday, October 7:  ROCK AGAINST THE TPP,  6-10pm,  Spontaneous Celebrations,  45 Danforth St
Jamaica Plain.   Rock Against the TPP is a nationwide uprising to stop the biggest corporate power grab in history: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The tour comes to Boston on Friday, October 7th with an all-star lineup of musicians helping sound the alarm about this toxic deal. Featuring: Mirah, Debo Band, Taina Asili y La Banda Rebelde, Foundation Movement, bell's roar, + more TBA! FREE! All ages. RSVP for your free tickets here: https://www.rockagainstthetpp.org/boston-ma

 

Tuesday-Thurs, October 11-14:  PHYLLIS BENNIS: Ending the Many Wars in Syria

Is the war in Syria a civil war? Is it a proxy war between the US and Russia ? Is it also a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey? Can ISIS be reined in? Should Assad go? Or stay?  Should the US "do more"?  Or is it already doing too much by arming and training rebel groups? What will be the likely outcome of the current cease fire negotiations?  Tuesday, October 11, 7:00 pm ~ Boston College, Gasson Hall, room 305;  Wednesday, October 12, noon ~ Tufts University, Meyer Campus Center room 112. Lunch and Learn sponsored by Peace & Justice Studies; Wednesday, October 12, 4:00 pm ~ Salem State University, Marsh Hall 210 (Petrowski Room). Sponsored by History Dept & Center for Community Engagement; Thursday, October 13, 12:15 pm ~ Emmanuel College, Room TBA. Sponsored by Emmanuel Peace Action

Thursday, October 13, 7:00 pm ~ Brandeis University, Mandel G12. Sponsored by Peace, Conflict & Coexistence Studies program; Brandeis Peace Action, Graduate Program in Conflict Resolution and Coexistence, Schusterman Center, Social Justice and Social Policy, and Sociology

Find out more »

 

Saturday, October 15: Climate Change and the Growing Risk of Nuclear War -- A Health Care Perspective, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm, Tufts University School of Medicine, Sackler Auditorium, Boston (Map/Directions).  A one-day Symposium to examine the catastrophic public health consequences of climate change and the ways that climate change will increase the risk of conflict, including nuclear war.   More info here: http://www.psr.org/chapters/boston/events/symposium/

 

Saturday, October 15: MUSIC FOR PEACE: An Evening of French Music, 7:30pm at the Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge.  A Fundraiser for Mass Peace Action. Featuring  Ayano Ninomiya, violin, Carol Ou, cello, Mana Tokuno, piano. Poulenc Sonata for violin and piano, Pierné Sonata for cello and piano, Chausson piano trio. More Details Here ~ Purchase Tickets  First concert of MUSIC FOR PEACE 2016-2017 SERIES, Three Sundays of chamber music to support our work for a more peaceful U.S. foreign policy. Victor Rosenbaum, Music Director. Cost for the series of 3 concerts: $60 for Massachusetts Peace Action members, $85 for non-members, $25 for students.  Purchase tickets for the series or join Massachusetts Peace Action now!) Cost for a single concert: $25 for members, $35 for non-members, $10 for students.

 

Friday-Sat, October 21-22: MEDEA BENJAMIN – “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection”,  

MEDEA BENJAMIN is the author of a new book on Saudi Arabia and Co-Founder of the Organization Code Pink.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 First Church in Cambridge, Jewett Hall 7:00 p.m. • 11 Garden Street, Cambridge. Admission: Free (donations for Code Pink accepted) ; SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22. Community Church of Boston. 6:30 p.m. Reception • 7:30 p.m. Event • 565 Boylston Street, Boston. Admission: $20 www.brownpapertickets.com • www.communitychurchofboston.org  Contact: CHRIJ 617.552.8491 | humanrights@bc.edu | www.bc.edu/humanrights  

 

Friday-Sat, October 21-22: “WHITE LIKE ME: A Honky Dory Puppet Show", Mass. College of Art  (details can be found specifically at www.puppetshowplace.org/zaloom).  The (in)famous puppeteer Paul Zaloom, of Bread & Puppet and Beakman's World fame, will be presenting his latest outrageous political comedy " which basically blasts white privilege into the stratosphere. The NY Times has dubbed Zaloom as “one of the most original and talented political satirists working in the theater.”  Zaloom's "White Like Me," produced by Puppet Showplace Theater, will take place October 21-22 at. Further details can be found specifically at www.puppetshowplace.org/zaloom with an advance tix discount code available (good thru Oct. 11th) by entering the code ZALOOM when ordering tix. Sen. John McCain has called Zaloom's "White Like Me" a "questionable puppet show,” so what's not to like?

 

 

SAVE THE DATE!

 

Saturday, December 3: The Next Four Years: Building Our Movements in Dangerous Times, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm ~ Simmons College, Boston.  Regardless of the outcome of the November, 2016 elections, the peoples’ movements and the political revolution will face enormous challenges in the next four years. We therefore call for a post-election conference on Saturday December 3 to identify and capitalize on all opportunities for organizing open to us in an increasingly undemocratic, hawkish and xenophobic environment. “The Next Four Years: Building Our Movements in Dangerous Times” will help us to frame our issues and public messaging, to forge a common vision, to increase greater integration of our movements, and to build an action plan that will inspire and motivate more and more people to get involved.