Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Abolitionist Movement-John Brown Late Of Harper's Ferry

Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Abolitionist Movement-John Brown Late Of Harper's Ferry  

 

Chapter Five
Bleeding Kansas

"Tragic Prelude," John Steuart Curry mural in the Kansas state house
depicting the dominating figure of John Brown against a territorial Kansas background. Unless otherwise noted, all images are from the Boyd B. Stutler Collection

John Brown Jr.

The year 1856 began optimistically for the Brown family with the election of John Brown Jr. as a delegate to the free-state Topeka Legislature on January 15. But as pro-slavery forces viciously murdered another free-state man, and President Franklin Pierce spoke out against the free-state element and in support of the pro-slavery legislature, the situation quickly began to unravel. When the free-state legislature met in March, John Jr. was the only delegate to oppose a conciliatory resolution that delayed the effective date of any legislation until Kansas became a state.

“To those who contemplate coming I would if I could, say to them by all means come thoroughly armed with the most efficient weapons they can obtain, and bring plenty of ammunition.” – Letter, John Brown Jr. to Friend Louisa, March 29, 1856, Boyd B. Stutler Collection

In April at Dutch Henry's Tavern, pro-slavery Judge Sterling G. Cato opened the spring term of the U.S. District Court for the area that included Pottawatomie and announced his intent to enforce the laws of the pro-slavery legislature. Concerned about the possible outcome of the court session, as well as a possible invasion of Missourians, about three dozen local free-state residents organized a defensive militia group known as the Pottawatomie Rifles, with John Jr. as captain. The company appeared at court and presented the judge with resolutions opposed to the pro-slavery legislature, but no violence occurred. Violence did erupt by the end of the month, however, with the wounding of a pro-slavery sheriff. Tensions escalated through a series of incidents, and toward the end of May, pro-slavery militia gathered outside Lawrence and sacked the town. The Pottawatomie Rifles, including John Jr. and Jason, joined by their father, four brothers, and brother-in-law, headed for Lawrence only to be met part way by a messenger who told them that Lawrence had fallen without resistance but the border ruffians had left after looting the town, destroying the news presses, and burning the hotel.

The arrival of John Brown and his sons at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1856. Drawing by Von Gottschalck.

"I found my father and one brother, William, lying dead in the road, . . .; I saw my other brother lying dead on the ground, . . .; his fingers were cut off, and his arms were cut off; his head was cut open; there was a hole in his breast. William’s head was cut open, and a hole was in his jaw, as though it was made by a knife, and a hole was also in his side. My father was shot in the forehead and stabbed in the breast.” – John Doyle affidavit, 1856, Special Congressional Investigative Committee

In the aftermath, John Brown decided a blow against the pro-slavery side was needed. On May 23, Brown; his sons Owen, Frederick, Salmon, and Oliver; Henry Thompson and two other men departed for Pottawatomie. Dragging several pro-slavery settlers from their cabins, Brown’s group brutally killed Allen Wilkinson, William Sherman, and James, Drury, and William Doyle and mutilated their bodies. John Brown committed none of the murders himself, which apparently were carried out by Henry Thompson, Theodore Weiner, Owen Brown, and possibly Salmon Brown. However, the elder Brown oversaw their acts and acknowledged afterwards, “I approved of it.” After they were through, the group rejoined the Pottawatomie Rifles.

John Jr. and Jason were distressed by news of the murders. John Jr. resigned his captaincy and left “in a very dejected state of mind bordering on a mental breakdown,” he and Jason staying the night at their aunt and uncle Adair’s cabin while pro-slavery forces scouted the countryside looking for the Browns. The two were soon arrested, and John Jr., his mental condition already stressed, received such ill-treatment that he went insane for a short time. According to Jason, at one point John “fancied himself commander of the camp, [and] was shrieking military orders, jumping up and down and casting himself about” (quoted in Villard, 195). Jason was released in June, but his brother was held until September because of his political activities. Samuel Adair's cabin Free State Prisoners, including John Brown Jr., Published in Leslie's, October 4, 1856.

“The next day we were placed in the custody of Captain Walker, of United States Cavalry, a Southerner who himself tied my arms back in such a manner as to produce the most intense suffering. Giving the other end of the rope to a sergeant, I was placed a little in advance of the column headed by Captain Walker, and to avoid being trampled by the horses which had been ordered to trot, I was driven at this pace in the hot sun to Osawatomie, a distance of about nine miles. The rope had been tied so tightly as to stop circulation. Instead of loosening the rope when we arrived at camp, a mile south of town, no change was made in it through that day, all of the following night, nor until about noon the next day. By that time my arms and hands had swollen to nearly double size, and turned black as if mortified. On removal of the rope, which in consequence of the swelling had sunken deeply, a ring of the skin came off. The scar, slavery’s bracelet, I still wear after twenty-seven years.” – John Brown Jr., 1883, clipping in Boyd B. Stutler Collection

Henry Clay Pate

Meanwhile, John Brown and his men joined Captain Samuel Shore and his volunteers on June 1 to march on Black Jack Springs, where a large group of Missouri militia was camped. The next day, this force engaged the Missourians, under the command of Henry Clay Pate. After several hours, Pate and his men surrendered. Brown intended to exchange his prisoners for the release of free-state prisoners, including his two sons. Three days after his victory, however, the Missourians were freed and Brown’s group was broken up by U.S. troops under Col. Edwin Sumner, under orders “to disperse all armed bodies assembled without authority.”

Edwin V. Sumner during the Civil War

Kansas was the scene of much violence over the next few months, with both pro-slavery and free-state groups guilty of numerous instances of robbery and murder. During much of the summer, John Brown apparently was inactive, instead tending the ailing Henry Thompson and Salmon Brown, wounded during or after Black Jack, and Owen Brown, sick with fever. In early August, Brown took several members of his family to Nebraska, where he left them, and returned to Kansas with son Frederick. Shortly thereafter, John Brown prepared a “Covenant,” an agreement of the men serving under him to serve as a volunteer force of Kansas Regulars “for the maintainance [sic] of the rights & liberties of the Free-State Citizens of Kansas.” By the end of August, John Brown was encamped near Osawatomie, where an attack by a large pro-slavery force was expected. On August 30, Frederick Brown was shot and killed on the road near Samuel Adair’s cabin by Martin White, who was traveling with the Missourians. Alarm spread through Osawatomie as the pro-slavery group under Gen. John W. Reid approached the town. The much smaller contingent of free-state men was able to delay Reid’s taking of the town for a short period before Reid’s men overwhelmed Brown and his men, took possession of Osawatomie, and burned the town. Accounts from both sides exaggerated the number of casualties from the Battle of Osawatomie. Five free-state men are known to have been killed, while an indeterminant number of pro-slavery men died, possibly in the range of ten.

The Soldiers Monument, Osawatomie, Kansas, dedicated in 1877 to John Brown and the men killed during the Battle of Osawatomie.

John W. Geary during the Civil War

The arrival of a new governor, John W. Geary, in early September instituted a relatively more peaceful situation in Kansas. John Brown Jr. was released after three months of captivity, but the cabins that he and his brother Jason had built had been destroyed in the aftermath of the Pottawatomie Massacre. John Brown with sons John Jr. and Jason and their families, and son Owen, who had returned to Kansas, headed north out of the territory in October. By December 1856, John Brown was in Ohio visiting relatives.

Primary Documents:

Letter, Wealthy Brown to Louisa C. Barber, March 23, 1856
Letter, John Brown Jr. to Friend Louisa, March 29, 1856
Letter, John Brown Jr. to Frederick Douglass' Paper, April 4, 1856
Affidavits of Mahala and John Doyle, James Harris, and Louisa Jane Wilkinson on the Pottawatomie Massacre, June 1856
"The Voice of Kansas-Let the South Respond,"De Bow's Review, August 1856
"Articles of Enlistment and By Laws of the Kansas Regulars," 1856 (from Sanborn)
Letter, John Brown to Mary Ann Brown, October 11, 1856
Pamphlet, John Brown, as viewed by H. Clay Pate, 1859
Clipping, Jason Brown to the Akron Beacon, January 21, 1880 (on Pottawatomie Massacre)
Clipping, John Brown Jr. to the Cleveland Leader, November 16, 1883 (on Pottawatomie Massacre)
Clipping, August Bondi to the Kansas Free Press, December 1883
Clipping, August Bondi to the Salina Herald, January 24, 1884
Manuscript, Owen Brown on leaving Kansas in 1856, April 26, 1888
Clipping, Owen Brown on the Fight at Black Jack, Springfield Republican, January 14, 1889
Letter, Salmon Brown to William Connelley, May 28, 1913 (on Pottawatomie Massacre)

Secondary Sources:

"John Brown of Osawatomie," by David N. Utter
Reminiscences of Old John Brown,by G. W. Brown

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An Appeal From Veterans For Peace-President Obama Pardon Leonard Peltier -He Must Not Die In Jail

An Appeal From Veterans For Peace-President Obama Pardon Leonard Peltier -He Must Not Die In Jail  

5th Maine Peace Walk-Stop the War$ on Mother Earth-Indian Island (Penobscot Nation) to Kittery October 11-26

Stop the War$ on Mother Earth

 

Indian Island (Penobscot Nation) to Kittery

October 11-26

 

 

 

5^th Maine Peace Walk-Stop the War$ on Mother Earth-Indian Island (Penobscot Nation) to Kittery October 11-26

 

For immediate Release

 

Contact:  Bruce Gagnon (207) 443-9502

 

 

Peace and environmental activists from Maine and beyond will walk through large portions of our state from October 11-26 in order to bring the issues of endless war, environmental degradation, and climate change to the public’s attention.  The walk will begin on Indian Island (with a supper and ceremony hosted by the Penobscot Nation) and end in Kittery.

 

“We come together out of our deep concern about the many different wars being waged on Mother Earth, ranging from over-fishing, deforestation, and human-caused extinctions, to climate disruption and endless war,” said Russell Wray of Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST) in Hancock.

 

According to walk co-organizer Connie Jenkins from Orono, “Close to home we support the Penobscot Nation’s struggle for Justice for the River, opposition to the East/West Corridor, and conversion of war production to alternative energy at Maine shipyards.  We know from past experience of walking through rural and urban Maine that many people will be reached with our messages. We hope this spiritual act of walking and sharing conversation and food will help people in our state feel less isolated and despairing about the future.”  

 

The peace walk begins on Indian Island October 11 and will pass through Dexter, Pittsfield, Unity, Waterville, Augusta, Norway, Lewiston, Brunswick, Bath, Freeport, Portland, Saco, Kennebunk, York Beach, and Kittery.  The walk will average about 12 walking miles per day. (Some driving will be necessary between some of these communities.) In the evenings walkers will be fed at local churches and will often stay in local homes.)

 

The walkers will hold a protest at Bath Iron Works on October 20 at 3:00 pm and conclude on October 26 with a protest at the naval submarine yard in Kittery.  Both protests will call for the conversion of the Maine shipyards to alternative energy production such as public rail systems, solar power, wind turbines and tidal power systems.  Studies at UMASS-Amherst Economics Department reveal that building needed alternative energy rather than military production would create more jobs.  See the study at http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/PERI_military_spending_2011.pdf

 

Buddhist monks and nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji order will lead the non-violent peace walk.  Their order does peace walks all over the world.

 

Maine Walk for Peace is sponsored by:  Penobscot Nation; Smedley D. Butler Brigade Veterans For Peace (Boston area); Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space; Maine Veterans For Peace; Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST); Veterans For Peace (National); Peninsula Peace and Justice; Maine Natural Guard; Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks; Maine War Tax Resistance Resource Center; Veterans For Peace, Jim Harney Chapter 003; Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine; Alliance for the Common Good; Grandmothers Against the East/West Corridor; Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC); Pax Christi Maine; Friends of the Piscataquis Valley; Concord Massachusetts Peace Vigil; Peace Action Maine; ESTIA Maine; Stop the East-West Corridor (STEWC); Maine Green Independent Party; Mission Board of State Street Church (Portland); Reversing Falls Sanctuary; Peace to All Beings; Waldo County Peace & Justice

 

The daily schedule and entire walk route can be found at Maine Veterans For Peace   http://vfpmaine.org/

 

- END -

*****Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind

*****Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind

 

Sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words, a thousand words and more as in the case Howlin’ Wolf doing his Midnight creep in the photograph above taken from an album of his work but nowadays with the advances in computer technology and someone’s desire to share also to be seen on sites such as YouTube where you can get a real flavor of what that mad man was about when he got his blues wanting habits on. In fact I am a little hesitate to use a bunch of words describing Howlin’ Wolf in high gear since maybe I would leave out that drop of perspiration dripping from his overworked forehead and that salted drop might be the very thing that drove him that night or describing his oneness with his harmonica because that might cause some karmic funk. So, no, I am not really going to go on and on about his midnight creep but when the big man got into high gear, when he went to a place where he sweating profusely, a little ragged in voice and eyes all shot to hell he roared for his version of the high white note. Funny, a lot of people, myself for a while included, used to think that the high white note business was strictly a jazz thing, maybe somebody like the “Prez” Lester Young or Duke’s Johnny Hodges after hours, after the paying customers had had their fill, or what they thought was all those men had in them, shutting the doors tight, putting up the tables leaving the chairs for whoever came by around dawn, grabbing a few guys from around the town as they finished their gigs and make the search, make a serious bid to blow the world to kingdom come.

Some nights they were on fire as they blew that big high white note out in to some heavy air and who knows where it landed, most nights though it was just “nice try.” One night I was out in Frisco when “Saps” McCoy blew a big sexy sax right out the door of Chez Benny’s over in North Beach when North Beach was just turning away from be-bop “beat” and that high white note, I swear, blew out into the bay and who knows maybe all the way to the Japan seas. Well see we were all a little high so I don’t know about that Japan seas stuff but I sure know that brother blew that high white one somewhere out the door.  But see if I had, or anybody had, thought about it for a minute jazz and the blues are cousins, cousins no question so of course Howlin’ Wolf blew out that high white note more than once, plenty including a couple of shows I caught him at later when he was not in his prime.         

The photograph (and now video) that I was thinking of is one where he is practically eating the harmonica as he performs How Many More Years (and now like I say thanks to some thoughtful archivist you can go on to YouTube and see him doing his devouring act in real time and in motion, wow, and also berating “father” preacher/sinner man Son House for showing up drunk. Yes, the Wolf could blast out the blues and on this one you get a real appreciation for how serious he was as a performer and as blues representative of the highest order.

Howlin’ Wolf like his near contemporary and rival Muddy Waters, like a whole generation of black bluesmen who learned their trade at the feet of old-time country blues masters like Charley Patton, the aforementioned Son House who had had his own personal fight with the devil, Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil out on Highway 61 so he could get his own version of that high white note, and the like down in Mississippi or other southern places in the first half of the twentieth century. They as part and parcel of that great black migration (even as exceptional musicians they would do stints in the sweated Northern factories before hitting Maxwell Street) took the road north, or rather the river north, an amazing number from the Delta and an even more amazing number from around Clarksville in Mississippi right by that Highway 61 and headed first maybe to Memphis and then on to sweet home Chicago.  

They went where the jobs were, went where the ugliness of Mister James Crow telling them to sit here not there, to walk here but not there, to drink the water here not there, don’t look at our women under any conditions and on and on did not haunt their every move (although they would find not racial Garden of Eden in the North, last hired, first fired, squeezed in cold water flats too many to a room, harassed, but they at least has some breathing space, some room to create a little something they could call their own and not Mister’s), went where the big black migration was heading after World War I. Went also to explore a new way of presenting the blues to an urban audience in need of a faster beat, in need of getting away from the Saturday juke joint acoustic country sound with some old timey guys ripping up three chord ditties to go with that jug of Jack Flash’s homemade corn liquor (or so he, Jack Flash called it).

 

So they, guys like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Magic Slim, Johnny Shines, and James Cotton prospered by doing what Elvis did for rock and rock and Bob Dylan did for folk and pulled the hammer down on the old electric guitar and made big, big sounds that reached all the way back of the room in the Red Hat and Tip Top clubs lining the black streets of blustered America and made the max daddies and max mamas jump, make some moves. And here is where all kinds of thing got intersected, as part of all the trends in post-World War II music up to the 1960s anyway from R&B, rock and roll, electric blues and folk the edges of the music hit all the way to then small white audiences too and they howled for the blues, which spoke to some sense of their own alienation. Hell, the Beatles and more particularly the Stones lived to hear Muddy and the Wolf. The Stones even went to Mecca, to Chess Records to be at one with Muddy. And they also took lessons from Howlin’ Wolf himself on the right way to play Little Red Rooster which they had covered and made famous in the early 1960s (or infamous depending on your point of view since many radio stations including some Boston stations had banned it from the air originally).Yes, Howlin’ Wolf and that big bad harmonica and that big bad voice that howled in the night did that for a new generation, did pretty good, right.  

 

*****The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind-A Personal Letter From The Pen Of Chelsea Manning From Fort Leavenworth

*****President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind-A Personal Letter From The Pen Of Chelsea Manning From Fort Leavenworth 

  

 

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting in Cambridge about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts, the Act itself, as it relates to Chelsea and its constitutionality will be the basis for one of her issues on appeal) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. (She had already been held for three years before trial, the subject of another appeals issue and as of May 2015 had served five years altogether thus far and will be formally eligible for parole in the not too distant future although usually the first parole decision is negative).

That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea. The question of her sexual identity was a situation than some of us already had known about while respecting Private Manning’s, Chelsea’s, and those of her ardent supporters at Courage to Resist and elsewhere the subject of her sexual identity was kept in the background so the reasons she was being tried would not be muddled and for which she was savagely fighting in her defense would not be warped by the mainstream media into some kind of identity politics circus.

I had responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, and there is no question that Private Manning is one despite the fact that every United States Attorney-General including the one in charge during her trial claims that there are no such prisoners in American jails only law-breakers, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually falls by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years.

At that point I informed him of the details that I did know. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her trial defense lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures.

At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind.

Locally on Veterans Day 2013, the first such event after her sentencing we had honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014 and will do again this December of 2015).  Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well).    

At our February 2015 monthly meeting that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still being reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming. A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation concerning Private Manning’s case. The lawyers had in June 2014 also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere. 

On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco (and had a contingent supporting her freedom again in the 2015 parade). Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having herself faced such torture down in Quantico adding to the poignancy of that suggestion. More recently she has written articles about the dire situation in the Middle East and the American government’s inability to learn any lessons from history and a call on the military to stop the practice of denying transgender people the right to serve. (Not everybody agrees with her positon in the transgender community or the VFP but she is out there in front with it.) 
 

[Maybe most important of all in this social networking, social media, texting world of the young (mostly) Chelsea has a twitter account- @xychelsea ]  

Locally over the past two year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Pride Parade, commemorated her fourth year in prison last May [2014] and the fifth this year with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day 2014, celebrated her 27^th birthday in December with a rally (and did again this year on her 28^th birthday).

More recently big campaigns by Courage To Resist and the Press Freedom Foundation have almost raised the $200, 000 needed (maybe more by now) to give her legal team adequate resources during her appeals process (first step, after looking over the one hundred plus volumes of her pre-trial and trial hearings, the Army Court Of Criminal Appeal)

Recently although in this case more ominously and more threateningly Chelsea has been charged and convicted of several prison infractions (among them having a copy of the now famous Vanity Fair with Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner’s photograph on the cover) which could affect her parole status and other considerations going forward.     

We have continued to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.

After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past couple of years in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. I do so here, and gladly. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along in Veterans for Peace and elsewhere- we will not leave our sister behind… More later.              

When The Blues Was Dues-With Mississippi Goddam In Mind

When The Blues Was Dues-With Mississippi Goddam In Mind   

 

By Fritz Taylor

 

Sid Jenkins was not quite sure when he first be-bopped the blues, knowingly be-bopped the blues although it must have been in early childhood on some vagrant radio station that would come meandering into the family house on a wiry windy Saturday or Sunday night for out in the wilds of America, out in some be-bop heaven at least that what it sounded like, places called Chicago and Detroit, with programs like Be-Bop Benny Blues Hour and Sal Mann’s The Blues Is Dues Show but those were basically backdrop, renegade musical shows against the Frank Sinatra croon, the Bing Crosby pitter-patter, the Patti Page whatever, the Peggy Lee flame and the Rosemary Clooney “come on to my house” stuff. The stuff that had gotten his parents through the war, World War II worrying music for those slogging through the mud fields of Europe or like his father the island wars in the Pacific. That was the main music blaring over the radio before rock and roll landed its bombshell. (Landed its bomb shell but a dud when it came to family room air time since Mother Jenkins, and behind her Father Jenkins acting as surly rearguard against the degenerate devil’s music banished all such WMEX madness from her presence until God-sent transistor radios solved the problem and he could listen away from preying ears and only have to deal with a snotty-nosed roommate brother.)    

Maybe somewhere in that rock and roll mix he had heard a stray saxophone that went blazing in the night to round out the deep croon of Bill Haley’s romping around the clock. In fact he knew if only by intuition that some linkage placed the saxophone of some forlorn Benny Goodman musician played stepfather to that far-out brother when he reached for the big high white note. But so much for history. All he knew when he watched the doings on American Bandstand was that some curlicue guy in a rented tux was blowing that rif, that rif that came from deep inside the pit of his stomach looking to be fed to a closed in world, looking for that high white note that would blow right out to the Japan seas like that night in Frisco town back when he first started. Blasted the joint wide open (blasted that joint too courtesy of some heady chick in a tight cashmere sweater who was all promise and then disappeared in the night maybe had been blown out with that high white note in the Japan seas) throw caution to the wind that night even though his bandleader a guy working six, two and even said cool the wild boy stuff, this was strictly the suburbanite set out for a night of drink kicks. Liquor kicks and being able to say they were there the night Kenny somebody they didn’t remember the last name blew the high white note out into the Japan seas like they would even know the thing happened they were probably talking stock futures and the latest recipes when that blow they would read about it in the next day’s newspaper reported by some second-string guy who replaced Ralph somebody from the Hearst chain who had been too drunk to write up a real review and that second brother heard that high white, heard it right. Blew blues too, blew for Chilly Doone when he was coming up in as the next big thing from out of Decatur, Chilly the guy whose signature was “later Decatur” and had half a generation getting into the rhyming simon thing that Sid would get caught up with when that fad blasted down to the junior high set, blew the blues right into the sunlight flaming sky if you asked anybody who knew what was what in the big horn world.

 

Maybe it was some good old boy fugitive from some farm outside of Memphis who once the share crop was a dusted reality to the mega-corporation agri-farm decided that Gloversville, Riverdale, Carver, Adamsville was too square for his talents and headed to town to take his chances, and they were chances. Went down to Sam Phillips’ place, his record shop cum recording studio and blasted the joint to the ground. Those good old boys feasting on fisted-two dollars to Sam to keep them from those dusty moth-eaten shoes they left behind and try to hit it big like good old boy (or rather good young boy since he passed away at twenty-nine of, well, of hard living and hard loving not a bad way to go when you think about the alternative). Grabbed an old Les Paul-inspired guitar or some Sears rendition of the same, went and got a little juice for the machine (and another kind of juice for the head) and let it rip, let themselves put the rock in rockabilly hoping that some record company would grab Sam’s lapels and insist that they manage that good-looking, women-pleasing, suggestively hip-moving, hair all slicked back bad boy to fame and fortune. Guys like Warren Smith who claimed that rock and roll Ruby could only dance to satisfy her soul, Sonny Burgess getting worked up over red-headed women (and who wouldn’t when you saw her shake that thing, shake it good and hard too, Ray Perkins jack-knifing across the stage to his classic Fireball, Billy James going all out Rock My Baby Down. Strangely there was a little rif, a little something not learned from listening to the Grand Ole Opry when they were kids, something with a “Negro” beat, maybe picked up in passing the 12^th Street Baptist Church and sneaking a hear, hearing something primal, sometime from our homeland Mother Africa and that guitar just jumped along twisting Hank and the boys for a while. And so it went as a whole generation of good old boys gave it hell while it lasted, hell, none of them were complaining since it got them off that freaking farm.                 

Maybe it was some exotic, exotic to a white bread Riverdale working poor (po’, okay if we are going down to the ground) from the Acre and never having seen a black person in the flesh until he went in Boston and got a who mix of people he never had seen out in the sticks, rhythm and blues beat dig up from the muds by guys like Big Joe, Sammy Sacks, Lenny Boy, Sonny Boy, Hi Hat McCoy and he kept wondering why he was snapping his fingers to the sway of say Big Joe telling his lady friend to shake that thing (of course by then Sid was aware, totally aware, of what that was command was suggesting) and digging the mood created. Dug that simple pitter-patter which reflected his own hard scrabble take on the world, on the hard to swallow fact that those down on the floor stayed on the floor and nobody gave a damn whether nobody ever got up on his or her hind legs and said the hell with it. Put plenty of time trying to put out the fire in his head that would not let him rest (and a million years later would wind up going through some crazed mantra trying to slow down, to rest, to be at peace to stop that self-same fire in his head that he could never extinguish for hell nor high water).              

Maybe, just maybe though, thinking back to that Mother Africa idea, that raw back beat that seemed to be in his head from baby-hood had joined him with dusty old sweated plantation workers hacking away their lives for Mister’s cotton, soy beans, peanuts, who come Saturday let Mister and his products go to hell and raised hell themselves down in Uncle Billy’s tavern (illegal of course since the place would pass no inspection even under Mister’s lax laws where Uncle Jim, Sleepy John somebody, Mississippi Fred, John, Joe or somebody, Tom from over in Clarksdale now but who grew up under Mister’s shadow would take out some old National steel guitar or, better, some Sears catalogue-ordered grand stand guitar and wail the night away for the folk, the folk swilling up Uncle Billy’s illegal, cutting up Harlem sunsets, and generally making a mess of things as that beat drove the night’s proceedings. Or more probably some late arriving traveler from Mister’s country heading up the river following some modern Northern star finding him or herself in some Maxwell Street gin mill his old plug-in guitar (showing a new complex of sound never heard down at Uncle Billy’s) handy after a day of sweated factory labor wailing hell out of the damn thing and the night away for the folk, the folk swilling up Uncle Billy’s illegal, cutting up Harlem sunsets, and generally making a mess of things as that beat drove the night’s proceedings. Hard to imagine such roots but how else explain that strange mix that drove Sid all his livelong life, that simple three chords and out.                     

http://aviationweek.com/blog/opinion-why-trump-wrong-us-nuclear-modernization

Opinion: Why Trump Is Wrong On U.S. Nuclear Modernization

Oct 10, 2016by Lara Seligman 

Donald Trump made a sweeping claim during Sunday night’s explosive presidential debate that America's nuclear weapons capability has fallen far behind Russia’s. But the facts don’t back up his assessment.

“Our nuclear program has fallen way behind. And [Russia has] gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good,” Trump said during his second debate with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Russia is new in terms of nuclear. We are old. We are tired. We are exhausted in terms of nuclear.”

This is just not true. The U.S. is actually in the midst of modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad: the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), armed with Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM); the U.S. Air Force’s Cold-War era B-52 strategic bombers that carry the nuclear-tipped air-launched cruise missile (ALCM); and the Air Force’s silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Though Trump’s claim that the U.S. “has fallen way behind” in terms of nuclear modernization doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, he is correct that Russia is farther along in its upgrade program than the U.S. However, that is simply because the U.S. and Russia have different cycles of modernization for their nuclear arsenals, and those cycles don’t happen in the same time period, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the Federal of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project.

The U.S. last modernized its nuclear triad in the late 1980s, so there is no need to replace the arsenal until the 2020s or 2030s, Kristensen said. By contrast, Russia’s warheads and delivery systems aren’t designed to last as long. 

“This just shows that he misunderstands the issue, because it’s not about what you are building when, it’s about are the ones that you have ready to be used or credible?” said Kristensen. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the U.S. military who would say sure, let’s swap.” 

Most recently, the Air Force kicked off two multibillion-dollar competitions to upgrade the nuclear arsenal, issuing requests for proposals in July for the Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), a replacement for the aging AGM-86B ALCMs, and the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), the replacement for the 1960s-era Minuteman III ICBMs. LRSO will be the primary standoff weapon for Northrop Grumman’s next-generation B-21 and existing B-2 stealth bombers, and is expected to be fielded by 2030. Meanwhile, GBSD will replace some 450 Minuteman IIIs around the country, and could cost as much as $85 billion.

Meanwhile, the Air Force plans to buy about 100 B-21 “Raider” stealth bombers, which will be capable of dropping both conventional and nuclear bombs, to replace the legacy B-52 and B-1 fleets. After an October 2015 contract award to Northrop for the engineering, manufacturing and development phase, the B-21 program was held up for several months while the Government Accountability Office assessed a bid protest brought by losing team Boeing-Lockheed Martin. But since GAO overruled the protest earlier this year, the program has stayed on track for a 2025 initial operational capability (IOC) date. The Air Force says the B-21 will become nuclear capable within two years of IOC. 

The Navy’s $97 billion Ohio-replacement SSBN(X) effort to build a new class of 12 new Columbia-class SSBNs is the farthest along of all the Pentagon’s nuclear modernization efforts, with advanced procurement slated to begin in 2017. Top service officials are fiercely guarding the costly modernization effort from budget cuts and sequestration, pushing for a standalone fund, called the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund, to fund SSBN(X) outside the service’s dedicated shipbuilding account.  The Navy expects to buy the first Columbia-class submarine in fiscal 2021 at a price of about $14.5 billion, including $5.7 billion in detailed design and nonrecurring engineering costs for the entire class, and estimates boats 2 through 12 will cost $5.2 billion each.

Simultaneously, the National Nuclear Security Administration is continuing rejuvenationof the precision-guided B61-12 tactical nuclear bomb, which along with LRSO will eventually arm the B-21. The first refurbished unit is expected by fiscal 2020.

Meanwhile, Moscow is certainly making new nuclear delivery systems a national priority, with a new ballistic-missile submarine class and missile in production, as well as continued deliveries of a modern, silo-based and road mobile ICBM.

Russia’s effort to recapitalize its Soviet-era ICBMs with new SS-27 missiles is more than halfway done, and scheduled for completion in 2022, according to a recent report by Kristensen and Robert Norris. Some of these new missiles, which come in two versions, are already in production, Aviation Week reported in 2013: the single-warhead Topol-M was deployed in silos in the late 1990s and as a road-mobile ICBM in 2006. Meanwhile, the RS-24 Yars, a modified Topol-M that can carry multiple, independently targetable warheads, was declared operational in mid-2011 in its silo-launched version, and will be road-mobile as well.  Yars is reportedly capable of carrying four or six warheads.

Moscow is also working on a new heavyweight ICBM called RS-28 Sarmat that is capable of carrying up to ten warheads, Kristensen told Aviation Week. Sarmat is scheduled to begin some test launches this year or next, and will likely be fielded at the turn of the decade. Where U.S. ICBMs are traditionally single-warhead (although some are capable of carrying up to three), Russia has invested in multiple-warhead ICBMs in part to offset a deficit of missile launchers compared to the U.S., Kristenson explained. 

Meanwhile, Russia is also arming its bomber fleet of Tu-160 Blackjacks and Tu-95MS Bears with a new cruise missile, the Kc-102, and plans a new fleet of next-generation PAK DA bombers which are expected to be blended wing-body, stealthy, subsonic aircraft. PAK DA, built by manufacturer Tupolev, has been in development for several years, with a first flight planned for 2019 and delivery to the Russian Air Force around 2023. However, PAK DA has reportedly been delayed.

However, there are signs that PAK DA has been delayed, Kristensen said.  The most significant indication that Moscow is having issues with PAK DA is that Russia recently decided to re-open production of the Blackjack.

“That seems to indicate that they are not switching to the new bomber as early as people have expected,” he said. 

Finally, Russia’s new Project 955a Borey-class fleet of eight total SSBNs, armed with the six-warhead RSM-56 Bulava SLBM, should be ready by 2020. 

STAFF NOTE: this blog entry is the opinion of the author. While we recognize people may hold strong opinions on this issue and we welcome their views, we do not tolerate blatant personal attacks on our staff or guest writers. Any such comment will be removed.

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Cole Harrison

Executive Director

Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace organization

11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138

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The Heroic Days Of The Chinese Revolution

BOOK REVIEW

Red Star Over China, First Revised and Enlarged Edition, Edgar Snow, Bantam Books, New York, 1994

I am using the the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.

For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.

As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, The History of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. However, for a view of the Chinese Revolution in the period after its defeat no better place to start for a quick early overview of the heroic days of the Chinese revolution and the besieged Chinese Communist Party before the seizure of power, is journalist Edgar Snow’s reportage on the military fight to shape China’s future between the Maoist-led Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army in the mid-1930s.

Snow’s journalistic endeavors have come in for more than their fair share of criticism, especially in the post-1949 period when the debate over who ‘lost’ China raged in the West, especially the United States. That criticism is somewhat irrelevant (and antiqued) now. The value of his work for us is that he was the first Western journalist to actually go to the outer regions of China where the Red Army was holed up in Yenan after the heroic and historic Long March. The Long March itself represented an understanding that the pro-Communist forces which held so much promise of seizing power in the 1920’s were fighting a rearguard action in the mid-1930s. Snow’s first-hand interviews with Mao, Chu Teh, Lin Piao, Ho Lung or, in their absence, those close to them provided that critical “first draft of history” that is always being touted by newspaper people. Moreover, his analysis and description of life in the Chinese soviet areas, the kind of issues that were on the top of people’s minds and the critical 1930s issue of the struggle against the furiously encroaching Japanese holds up fairly well.

The first question that any working class militant today has to ask, at least one who has imbibed the Russian Revolution as the touchstone event of the 20th century, is how a communist party assumed to represent the historic interests of the urban working class came out of the boondocks building a peasant army which at its height was fighting for land distribution and a national independence struggle against the Japanese. Part of that answer is the afore-mentioned defeat in the cities in the 1920s due to disastrous strategic problems concerning the nature of the “third-word” national bourgeoisie in the age of imperialism (a question that still stymies the international working class movement). Part was the overwhelming peasant nature of early 20th century Chinese society and the practical difficulties of creating any military force not centered on the peasantry. However, the biggest part is a conception on the part of the Chinese Communist leadership that guerrilla warfare was the only practical way to defeat the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek, American imperialism or who ever decided to take aim at China.

This distortion led to serious problems later, not only in practical matter of organizing a rural society for the tasks of industrialization but by making a virtue out of, perhaps, necessity. The so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) that convulsed China for a decade from the mid-1960s emblazoned on its banner the notion of the countryside (on a world scale) defeating the cities (on a world scale). That is the Chinese struggle writ large. But so much for that now.

The true value of Snow’s book lies for its detailing of the following accounts. First, a rather vivid description of the various hardships of his getting to Yenan as an individual that reflected the Communists' difficulties in trying to bring a whole army north. Secondly, a vivid description of the set up of the soviets and the social, political and cultural arrangements of life in the soviet areas. Thirdly, in Snow’s random interviews of the rank and file soldiers of the Red Army, the peasants whose co-operation was critical to the defense of the soviet areas and of the cultural/educational/administrative workers who kept the apparatus working through thick and thin. Lastly, Snow has painstakingly provided a plethora of end notes and biographical sketches concerning the fates of the various characters from all factions that people his journals, a wealth of data about various events up until 1937 and, perhaps, most importantly, much updated information including material on the GPCR from subsequent trips to China. This later material gathered at a time when very little was known about what was going on in China, especially around the intra-bureaucratic struggle behind the scenes of the GPCR. Retroactive kudos to Edgar Snow.

An Appeal From Veteran For Peace-It Is Desperately Necessary To Get President Obama To Pardon Chelsea Manning Now-She Must Not Die In Prison!

An Appeal From Veteran For Peace-It Is Desperately Necessary To Get President Obama To Pardon Chelsea Manning Now-She Must Not Die In Prison!

Defend arrested members of the Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589-Rally Thursday

Defend arrested members of the Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589

 

For all of you in the Boston area, we hope you can rally tomorrow 3 - 5 p.m. at the State House in defense of the arrested members of the Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589   (see info below)

Rally & Informational Picket

When:  October 20, 2016 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Where: Mass. State House

Oct 6---Seven members of the Executive Board were arrested this morning as they blocked the Money Room trucks from trying to leave.President Jimmy O’Brien; Assistant Secretary Joe Cerbone; Allen Lee, Delegate, Division 1; Larry Kelly, Delegate, RTL/AFC; Patrick Hogan, Delegate, Division 3; Mike Keller, Delegate, Equipment Maintenance; and John Hunt, Delegate, Engineering Maintenance were arrested and taken to the MBTA Transit Police’s headquarters and will face charges of unlawful assembly. Vice President Peggy LaPaglia, Financial Secretary Jim Evers, and Recording Secretary John Clancy are at the ATU International Convention, or they would be facing charges this morning too.
We never wanted it to come to this, but we have tried for months to convince the MBTA to join us for constructive negotiations at the bargaining table. But under the leadership of Acting General Manager Brian Shortsleeve and Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack the MBTA has repeatedly used misleading or incomplete financial projections to pursue privatization of the MBTA’s Money Room at all costs.
Today, we took action to stop an outsourcing attempt. Nothing about this process has been transparent ―the numbers, the audits, or the decision-making. The MBTA leadership team was handed a blank check to privatize and they are doing whatever it takes to cash it. We cannot stand by while they privatize our public transportation system and turn the keys over to a private company seeking to profit from our riders’ fares and the public’s tax dollars.
The Boston Herald and many other news outlets were on hand to cover the protest. We’re sending a message to the public that privatization is wrong for Massachusetts
Today, Brian Shortsleeve expects the Fiscal and Management Control Board to vote to approve BRINKS to take over the Money Room. We crashed his press conference yesterday to fight back for our members―take a look at the coverage from WGBH,The Boston Globe, and CommonWealth Magazine.
We’re not backing down from this fight.

In Solidarity,The Executive Board
Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589

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