President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning-She Must Not Die In Jail-A Story Goes With It-Observe Her Birthday December 17th

President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning-She Must Not Die In Jail-A 

Story Goes With It-Observe Her Birthday December 17th  

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/commute-chelsea-mannings-sentence-time-served-1

By Fritz Taylor 

[The organization that the two men, Ralph Morse and Bartlett Webber, in the story below belong to, Veterans for Peace, has been a long-time supporter of the struggle for freedom for heroic whistle-blower Chelsea Manning. Veterans for Peace has supported Chelsea since the organization found out in the summer of 2010 through Courage to Resist, an organization dedicated to publicizing the plight of military resisters, that she had been arrested and through a long process wound up in solitary confinement down at the Quantico Marine Base south of Washington in Virginia. She had been charged with releasing hundreds of thousands of documents via Wiki-leaks to a candid world. Many of them documenting the cover-up at all levels of military atrocities by American soldiers, mercenaries under contract to the American government or within the American-led coalition. The most graphic and infamous piece of evidence of such actions was a tape of a helicopter crew gunning down unarmed civilians in Iraq which is available on YouTube under the title Collateral Murder and laughing about it afterwards. (That tape, the entire tape, all thirty-nine minutes is permanently part of the record in the Manning case placed there at trial by the defense team. No one ever challenged the veracity of the tape although no one was ever charged with any crimes either.)

Chelsea was held in pre-trial confinement for over three years (opening an appeal question about constitutional speedy trial rights-applicable even in the military courts. Her solitary confinement (for her own good either because she was then a suicide risk by one account or because her fellow soldiers would be so outraged by her whistle-blowing that they feared for her safety by another-take your pick) at Quantico lasted almost a year before she was due in part at least to a public outcry and rallies of hundreds at the gates of Quantico for her release she was placed in Fort Leavenworth. (Here is the military logic tough-every time she had to appear for some matter before the court at Fort Meade she would be flown back and forth after the conclusion of whatever had transpired.) Ms. Manning (Private if you prefer her rank) has after an over two month trial been convicted of a number of charges including several counts of espionage under a law going back to World War I and sentenced to a thirty-five year sentence as a result of being court-martialed in the summer of 2013 and is currently being held in the all-male barracks at Fort Leavenworth out on the prairies of Kansas.     

Ralph and Bart first heard about the details of the case in the fall of 2010 when they received an e-mail from the American Civil Liberties Union announcing a forum to be held at Boston University to publicize the case. (Bart was not sure that he had not seen something about the matter earlier on Boston Indy Media where Anonymous, a radical underground group, had places news about the case and of course the leaks would have been by then public knowledge but this forum was the first active part they played in the case.) They both attended that forum and as a result have been ever since involved one way or another in Chelsea’s defense. Their first action was to “pony up,” these are working-class guys so pony up is right, some money for the defense. (Courage To Resist was/is the repository for raising and accounting for all legal defense monies since the beginning. As stated above that organization has had a long history of supporting military resisters-for military whistle-blowers as well.)         

There were many reasons why this case had appealed to them personally but the strongest reason was that they were “paying their dues” as Bart put it while speaking about the case one Saturday afternoon at a vigil for Chelsea at historic Park Street Station on the Boston Common for not having had the courage during their own military service during the Vietnam War to “buck the system.” For a long time, actually since the last days of the Vietnam War when they supported an anti-war G.I. coffeehouse near Fort Devens about forty miles outside of Boston, they had no opportunity to get involved in a military resister case so once this case surfaced they were “all in.” (After they “got religion” on the war issue they had done their respective peace activist works through various mostly ad hoc organizations and for the past several years through VFP. The last time I checked they were still “all in.” That will tell you something about them, about how razor sharp that military service had made them  about the folly of war and about the importance of the Chelsea Manning case, especially as now as the long drag of her sentence and her environment has worn her down and she has attempted suicide twice in the past few months. (Google the Chelsea Manning Support Network for details.) So Frank Jackman’s phrase “she must not die in jail” in the headline is not a rhetorical flourish. Not at all. F.T.]      

******

“You know it is a crying shame that the Chelsea Manning case has fallen beneath the cracks, that her plight as the only woman prisoner in an all-male prison out there in the wheat fields of Kansas, out at Leavenworth has been ignored except for an occasional news note or yet another petition for President Obama to do the right thing like he has with the draconian drug cases and pardon her, to commute her sentence to time served, to the six plus years she has already been tossed away behind the walls,” yelled Ralph Morse over to Bart Webber while they were preparing to set up a banner proclaiming that very idea as part of a birthday vigil for Chelsea on her 29^th birthday on this cold December day. The banner “President Obama Pardon-Chelsea Manning-“We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind” with two copies of a photograph of her as some friendly artist had drawn of an image her as she might look like if she could express her full sexual identity (see above) and not the Army’s hard-ass male version since she had “come out” as a transgender woman shortly after her sentencing in 2013 had been inspired, the last part anyway by their fellow VFPer Frank Jackman. Frank had had his own very personal “war” against the military during his war, again Vietnam, and had served time in an Army stockade for refusing to go to that war. He always said that the one thing the Army did teach him was that you did not leave your fellow soldiers behind, and sometimes that might be the only reason left to fight. He thought it appropriate that peaceful veterans could express that same sentiment about a political prisoner who once the notoriety of the case faded could use plenty of that sentiment. 

(Ralph thought to himself while he was yelling over to Bart and cutting some wind holes in the banner to cut the sometimes fierce winds that passed through the Boston Common that he would never get over those basic training drill sergeants during his time in the military during the Vietnam War, never get over being spooked by them that if you did not toe the mark you would wind up in Leavenworth and here he was supporting a young transgender whistleblower who wound up in that very place after having done what he should have done-resist- but he cowered to those redneck drill sergeants. Well even 60-somethings can learn a thing or two from the younger crowd.)

“Yeah, between the fact that she had to in order to protect herself against maltreatment from a bunch of goddam threatening guards who told her to “man up” at Leavenworth after she was convicted and sentenced to those hard thirty-five years in 2013 “come out” as a transgender woman and the overriding blow-up over the Snowden revelations which took all the air out of any other whistle-blower case Chelsea got the short end of the stick,” replied Bart also yelling his comment across to Ralph against both the windy day and the constant stream of loonies, crazies and con men and women who populated the environs around the Park Street subway station at Boston Common on any given Saturday of while both men could tell a million zany stories about between the hours of one and two in the afternoon when the space, or part of it, was given over to  peace action groups and other left-wing political organizations.

(That business about formerly Bradley having to reveal her true sexual identity the day after her sentencing had been a personal safety necessity against the taunts of the guards out in Leavenworth as both men had been told by a man from Courage To Resist who knew the inside story when they asked why she had “come out” so soon after the sentencing which threw a lot of supporters off-center who had not been privy to the sexual politics involved although some stuff had come out courtesy of the Army about her sexual identity in order to diminish her heroic actions.)   

Oddly, or maybe not so oddly at that, Bart, as he told Ralph later that day when they were sitting in a bar having a couple of drinks to warm themselves up against the coldness of the day thinking about the day’s action that he too had been thinking about how incongruous it would have been in his old working class neighborhood in Riverdale to be supporting a transgender soldier condemned to Leavenworth, a “transvestite,” a drag queen they would have called her not then making the subtle distinctions that have evolved on questions of sexual identity. Had that day thought about the time that he and his corner boys, that is what they called each other back then when there were corners for dough-less guys to hang around on, that one summer they had travelled down to Provincetown, even then a gay and other odd-ball Mecca for the specific purpose of baiting the drag queens, faggots and dykes along with getting the usual drunk to gather courage. Jesus.                    

Ralph thought to himself as he continued to cut a few wind holes in the banner proclaiming the need for President Obama to grant Chelsea her pardon that he had come a long way (and Bart too) since the fall of 2010 when they learned that Chelsea (then using her birth name Bradley but here we will use her chosen now legal name and assume everybody understands that this is the same person we are talking about) was being held essentially incommunicado down at the Quantico Marine Base (strange location since Chelsea was in the Army and the various branches of the services jealously guard their prerogatives) in solitary and their organization, Veterans for Peace, had called for demonstrations to have her released even then, or at least taken have her taken out of solitary and stop being tortured (not some  small “peacenik” charge or propaganda super-charged to gain sympathy for the victim of government repression since the appropriate United Nations rapporteur had made such a finding in her case concerning her pre-trial treatment). Ralph and Bart had been among the very first to set up a rally (not at Park Street but in Davis Square over in Somerville where Bart had lived for the previous decade) and they had been committed to her defense ever since. The weekly shout-out on Friday afternoons is the place where Ralph not known a as a public speaker but more as a “Jimmy Higgins” figure (a rank and filer who did the odd chores to insure the success of the event) began get his “voice,” get his political facts in a row with at first maybe a minute speech. By the end of that series of vigils which were switched the busier intersection at Central Square in Cambridge you could hardly get the “mic” out of his hand. Bart who had some college behind him where he had to take a debating class as a requirement his freshman year tended to give the pitches about what people could to support Chelsea, usually a set five minute speech.   

(That shout-out designation was simply current usage for such events in the wake of the Occupy movement where the term took on an almost religious mantra quality. Also acceptable and used at other times including the event that Brad and Ralph were helping stage this day- vigil, rally or whatever other appropriate name you want to call an event where people were free to express their opinions about Chelsea’s case and other causes which made sense to speak of and a few times budding folk singers who also hung out in the space would come by and sing some song, especially David Rovacs tribute to Chelsea’s heroic action.)

Both men freely admitted and it bears repeating here that what was driving them on this case more fervently that other peace and progressive actions they had been involved with over the decades had been their own admittedly sorry response to “their” war, Vietnam. In Ralph’s case joining the Army, meaning volunteering for three years   and in Bart’s case by accepting induction into that same Army for the mandatory two years had caused then after the fact, after their military service to “get religion” on the questions of war and peace. Ralph had gone out of his way to join up as soon after high school as he could. Had bought in hook, line and sinker all the admittedly paper-thin anti-communist domino theory reasons provided by the government any given week to justify their actions. Hell, the hard truth and Ralph was hardly alone in this a young man was looked down at in his old Forsythe Street section of Troy if he waited for the draft board to come calling for him to get on the ball. Most of the guys he knew were already in or getting ready to. The neighborhood had already lost a few guys over in Vietnam, a few more had come back as shells of their former selves. Ralph in any case like his class had done his “tour” in Vietnam without a peep although already he knew that he had to do something to let people know what really was going on-mostly straight out murder and mayhem against people that he had no quarrel with-after he got out if he survived to calm the horrible pit that never left his stomach one he got “in country.”

Bart had had more qualms about the war, had seen no way though that he could escape the draft once the draft board tagged him. Like Ralph most of his friends and neighbors supported the war, the guys doing their service, a few not coming back as in all wars. While he made a few more noises about his feelings about the war while he was in uniform he had kept quiet mostly, kept the drill sergeant-driven “you don’t want to wind up in Leavenworth” quiet. He did not wind up going to Vietnam as after Tet in 1968 when all hell broke loose which signaled either endless war or an ordered retreat the military authorities were beginning to pull back the troops during his time. He often wondered though if he had gotten orders for Vietnam what he would have done. Probably gone quietly like his wife, his very patriotic wife whose two brothers were doing second tours in ‘Nam wanted him too when the deal went down. No Canada or jail for him. To his shame as he told the military resister one night at a VFP general meeting after hearing about what Frank had done during his time (this is about Chelsea but Frank had done time in the Army stockade for refusing to go to Vietnam).          

They saw the Chelsea case as pay-back to a real hero, maybe the only hero of the Iraq War and had worked like seven dervishes on the case. More importantly had kept the faith even after the case inevitably went off the front pages and became a cypher to the general population. The case like all high publicity and high stakes political prisoner cases had been front and center for a while, say from the time of the Wikileaks exposes with their endless documentation of the nefarious activities of the American and other governments in covering up everything that could be covered up in order as both Ralph and Bart knew from their short Army experiences to “cover your ass” to the verdict and sentence at trial. After that unfortunately even some supporters drift away and the thing becomes yesterday’s news in the welter of some new case (here the Snowden case took a lot of the air out since his revelations were current unlike Chelsea’s which dealt with pass atrocities and had personal effects on almost everybody in the cyberspace universe meaning almost everybody). Yesterday’s news to everybody but the defendant who has to do the hard time while the attorneys sniff around for issues on the long drawn out appeal. That is the hard reality of political prisoner cases, especially when it seems the trial was “fair” and the defendant had been convicted of a crime after all.

Not doing what was right at the time of your confrontation with your own war a very powerful now lifelong impetus to push on in the face of indifference and hostility among the general public these days. Both men had agreed once the fanfare had died down that along with keeping the case in the public eye as best they could they would commemorate two milestones in Chelsea’s life yearly-the anniversary of her incarceration by the government now over six years in May and her birthday in December (her 29^th). That was why Ralph and Bart were struggling with the downtown winds to put their banner in place. These days they were not taking the overall lead in setting up such events but had responded to a call by the Queer Strike Force to do so and they were following that organization’s lead to rally and to make one last desperate push to get Chelsea a pardon. They had urged everybody who had not done so to sign the on-line petition to President Obama (see link above) to commute her sentence to “time served.” That on-line petition needed one hundred thousand signatures in order to get an official response from the White House about the matter (it also had to be done in a thirty day period). They were still short so hence the urgency of their calls. Everybody agreed, willingly or not, that under the impending Dump the Trump regime that Chelsea’s chances of a pardon were about zero, maybe less. So the rally. And so too the desperation in Ralph and Bart’s own minds that the slogan their fellow VFPer Frank Jackman had coined-“we will not leave our sister behind” would now fall on deaf ears, that she would face at least four, maybe eight years of hard ass prison time-time to be served as a man in a woman’s body when the deal went down. Worse that Chelsea had already attempted twice earlier in the year to commit suicide and the hard fact emblazoned in the added sentence on their banner-“she must not die in jail” had added urgency. (She had as well under some bizarre Army logic been “sentenced” to fourteen days in solidarity for the first attempt-Jesus, figures both men had blurred out when they heard that news earlier in the fall.)         

Ralph and Bart had met down in Washington in 1971 after both had been discharged from the Army and had gotten up some courage, with some prompting from their respective very anti-war girlfriends (Bart had divorced that hung-ho wife as soon as he got out of the Army), to go down and get arrested during the May Day actions when in another desperate situation they tried to help shut down the government if it would not shut down the war-the Vietnam War. They had been through a lot over the years in the struggle to keep the peace message alive and well despite the endless wars, and despite the near zero visibility on the subject over the previous ten plus years.

Both had grown up in very working class neighborhood respectively Troy in upstate New York and Riverdale out about thirty miles west of Boston and had followed the neighborhood crowds unthinkingly in accepting their war and participating in the war machine when it came their time. So no way in 1968,1969 say could either have projected that they would hit their sixties standing out in the lonesome corners of the American public square defending an Army private who in many quarters was considered a traitor and who moreover was gay. In the old days the best term they could think of to describe their respective attitudes toward gays was “faggot and dyke”-Jesus. (That whole gay issue was already well known to them from some information provided by agents of Courage to Resist, the organization which was the main conduit for publicity about the case and for financing Chelsea’s legal defenses. They also were aware through those same agents about Chelsea’s sexual identity which all partisans and Chelsea herself had agreed to keep on the “low” in order not get that issue confused with her heroic whistle-blower actions during trial and only later revealed by her publicly as a matter of self-defense as mentioned above.)    

Later that night after the birthday vigil was over and Ralph and Bart were sitting at Jack’s over in Cambridge near where Bart lives (Ralph still lived in Troy) having a few shots to ward away the cold of the day’s events both had been a bit morose. The event had gone as well as could be expected on a political prisoner case that was three years removed from the serious public eye. The usual small coterie of “peace activists” had shown up and a few who were supporting Chelsea as a fellow transgender and there had been the usual speeches and pleas to sign the on-line petition to the White House to trigger a response from the President on the question of a pardon (see link above). (That lack of response by the greater LGBTQ community to Chelsea’s desperate plight all through the case had had Ralph and Bart shaking their heads in disgust as the usual reason given was that all energies had to be expended on getting gay marriage recognized. The twice divorced Ralph and three times divorced mumbled to themselves over that one).

Ralph and Bart were in melancholy mood no question since they had long ago given up any illusion that the struggle against war and for some kind of social justice was going to be easy but the prospects ahead, what Ralph had called the coming “cold civil war” under the tutelage of one Donald Trump had them reeling as it related to Chelsea’s case. They bantered back and forth about how many actions they had participated in since they got the news of the case that a young whistle-blower was being held for telling the world about the cover-up of countless atrocities committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (via Wiki-leaks, not the mainstream media who would not touch making the information that Chelsea had gleaned for love or money).

There were the trips to Quantico down in hostile Virginia in order to get Chelsea out of the “hole,” get her out of Marine base solitary (and where they faced an incredible array of cops and military personnel all to “monitor” a few hundred supporters). The trips to the White House to proclaim their message. The several trips during the trial down at Fort Meade in Maryland where they had to laugh about being on a military base for the first time in decades (they had been barred many years back for demonstrations on a military base against the Reagan administrations war against Central America). The weekly vigils before the case went to trial and over the previous three years the fight to keep the case in the public eye.         

As they finished up their last shots of whiskey against the cold night both agreed though that come May they would be out commemorating Chelsea’s seventh year in the jug if Obama did not do the right thing beforehand. They both yelled as they went their separate ways (Ralph was staying with his daughter in Arlington) old Frank Jackman’s coined phrase-“we will not leave our sister behind.” No way.   

*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”- Free the MOVE 9 Prisoners! Remember May 1985 MOVE Massacre

Click on the headline to link to the article from “Workers Vanguard” described in the title.


Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.

Out In The Big Bubble- Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson’s Fair Game (2010)-A Film Review

Out In The Big Bubble- Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson’s Fair Game (2010)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Fair Game, starring Naomi Waits, Sean Penn, based on the writings of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, 2010  

It is a rather odd circumstance when I am rooting for a CIA agent to win, or at least get out from under what burden he or she is facing. Not that I wish any particular harm but the agency as a whole is usually in my sights for criticism for its nefarious activities. Those activities, as highlighted in the film under review Fair Game about the “outing” of CIA operative Valerie Plame over her assessments about the rationale for the Iraq War (the one started officially in 2003 not the earlier one in 1991 although there is a connection about the fate of the Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, WMD, that link the two together) including some very shady dealings around the lead-up to the war in 2002. Although that agency was hardly the prime culprit for that disastrous war policy that we are still paying for in cash, lives, including innocent Iraqi citizen lives, and for arbitrary use of military power that had made the world cringe before and has since the initial phase of the military campaign was completed.   

Valerie Plame Wilson was a career CIA operative whose tasks included checking up on the bad guys who were looking to get nuclear weapons for jihad or whatever purpose bad guys were looking for powerful weapons. In the post-9/11 world that task took on greater importance as the American government under President Bush was looking for a rationale to blast Iraq’s dictator and nemesis Saddam off the map as part of the overall national security plan to thwart the international terrorist cabals. The Bush administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, et al) were looking for any evidence that Saddam had his WMD program still intact after 1991. So even the slightest evidence that would physically prove that he was still pursuing his program was welcome-they would “spin” whatever tidbits they had once they got a bite.    

One big piece of “evidence” that was making the rounds, the thing that got Valerie, played by Naomi Waits, and her ex-ambassador husband, Joe Wilson, played by Sean Penn was “yellowcake” uranium, lots of it, allegedly being sought by the Iraqis from Niger in Africa. During the lead-up to the war the CIA “hired” Joe, who had contacts in the area, in Niger, to verify if possible that trail. Joe’s conclusion: the “purchase” didn’t exist, nada, nothing of the kind. Of course that conclusion when the CIA kicked it upstairs died a quiet death. Lost amount a million other things in the welter of war. The administration had buried the information deep in some hole and had spun a whole different unture tale and Joe was ticked off about it.      

As the disastrous policy in Iraq unfolded Joe Wilson, who had connections in the press, wrote an op-ed article about his true findings in Niger concerning the yellowcake. Then all hell broke loose. Administration officials were running for cover, guys like Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in particular. A little trick they played to get even was to “out” Valerie Plume. A no-no. A no-no as far as federal law went and a no-no as far as Joe Wilson was concerned. While Valerie was the “good soldier” keeping quiet despite her being kicked out of the agency Joe was determined to find the culprits who did his wife and her career in. And he succeeded, or at least had the satisfaction to see somebody take the fall (Scooter Libby who was subsequently sentenced and pardoned for his crimes). A small victory against the big boys by an average citizen. That part is to the good. Still I am a little uneasy about having had to raise my fist and say well done Joe and Valerie. An interesting topical movie in the age of serious “disinformation” and “false” news.

President Obama Free Oscar Lopez Rivera -Sign The Petition

President Obama Free Oscar Lopez Rivera -Sign The Petition

“I Said, Who Do You Love”-Again-The Raucous Music Of George Thorogood And The Destroyers

Click on the title to link to "YouTube"'s film clip of George Thorogood and The Destroyers performing their version of the John Lee Hooker classic, "One Bourbon, One Scotch One Beer".

CD Review

Extended Versions, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, BMG Special Product, 2000

A couple of years ago when Bo Diddley died I mentioned in a review of his work that many latter musicians, particularly white musicians were influenced by his songs, and covered them like crazy. That is the case with George Thorogood, with or without his Destroyers. Although he is probably best known for his bad boy anthem, “Bad To The Bone” Thorogood cut his teeth on doing covers of Bo, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and the other greats of the blues and early rock and roll. That is how we should measure his work, as an exponent of a certain kind or of rock and R&B.

This album delivers extended versions of his master works including: the afore-mentioned “Bad To The Bone,” the classic Bo Diddley tune “Who Do You Love,” and the classic Hooker song “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”. Not the best versions technically but they give an idea of what old George and boys could do on a so-so night.

"1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer"

Wanna tell you a story,
About the house-man blues
I come home one Friday,
Had to tell the landlady I'd-a lost my job
She said that don't confront me,
Long as I get my money next Friday
Now next Friday come I didn't get the rent,
And out the door I went

So I goes to the landlady,
I said, "You let me slide?"
I'll have the rent for you in a month.
Next I don't know
So said let me slide it on you know people,
I notice when I come home in the evening
She ain't got nothing nice to say to me,
But for five year she was so nice
Loh' she was lovy-dovy,
I come home one particular evening
The landlady said, "You got the rent money yet?",
I said, "No, can't find no job"
Therefore I ain't got no money to pay the rent
She said "I don't believe you're tryin' to find no job"
Said "I seen you today you was standin' on a corner,
Leaning up against a post"
I said "But I'm tired, I've been walkin' all day"
She said "That don't confront me,
Long as I get my money next Friday"
Now next Friday come I didn't have the rent,
And out the door I went

So I go down the streets,
Down to my good friend's house
I said "Look man I'm outdoors you know,
Can I stay with you maybe a couple days?"
He said "Let me go and ask my wife"
He come out of the house,
I could see it in his face
I know that was no
He said "I don't know man, ah she kinda funny, you know"
I said "I know, everybody funny, now you funny too"
So I go back home
I tell the landlady I got a job, I'm gonna pay the rent
She said "Yeah?" I said "Oh yeah"
And then she was so nice,
Loh' she was lovy-dovy
So I go in my room, pack up my things and I go,
I slip on out the back door and down the streets I go
She a-howlin' about the front rent, she'll be lucky to get any back rent,
She ain't gonna get none of it
So I stop in the local bar you know people,
I go to the bar, I ring my coat, I call the bartender
Said "Look man, come down here", he got down there
So what you want?

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer
Well I ain't seen my baby since I don't know when,
I've been drinking bourbon, whiskey, scotch and gin
Gonna get high man I'm gonna get loose,
Need me a triple shot of that juice
Gonna get drunk don't you have no fear
I want one bourbon, one scotch and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

But I'm sitting now at the bar,
I'm getting drunk, I'm feelin' mellow
I'm drinkin' bourbon, I'm drinkin' scotch, I'm drinkin' beer
Looked down the bar, here come the bartender
I said "Look man, come down here"
So what you want?

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer
No I ain't seen my baby since the night before last,
Gotta get a drink man I'm gonna get gassed
Gonna get high man I ain't had enough,
Need me a triple shot of that stuff
Gonna get drunk won't you listen right here,
I want one bourbon, one shot and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

Now by this time I'm plenty high,
You know when your mouth a-getting dry you're plenty high
Looked down the bar I say to my bartender
I said "Look man, come down here", he got down there
So what you want this time?
I said "Look man, a-what time is it?"
He said "The clock on the wall say three o'clock
Last call for alcohol, so what you need?"

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer
No I ain't seen my baby since a nigh' and a week,
Gotta get drunk man till I can't even speak
Gonna get high man listen to me,
One drink ain't enough Jack you better make it three
I wanna get drunk I'm gonna make it real clear,
I want one bourbon, one scotch and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

*****Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

*****Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are known social distinctions long recognized among the brethren even if with a touch of envy by those not among the elect although the general population, you know, the honest citizenry who make the rules against vagrancy and pay the enforcers to keep the riffraff out of their towns called the whole heap nothing but bums knows the road is hard, but that is the road they have chosen, or had chosen for them by their whole freaking life choices. Despite the claims of oneness for the whole heap of bummery by those honest citizens of small town America (or these days the world) where the fear exists every really honest person, even every thoughtful amateur sociologist should know that among the wandering tribes the hobos, “the kings and queens of the transient peoples,” are merely migrant or walking through the land rucksack on the back day laborer-type worker, what Oswald Spengler and Jack Kerouac called the fellahin, the outcasts, who has not forgotten the dignity of labor, just not for him (or occasionally her) the nine to five grind and such brethren can be found out back in many a restaurant throughout the land especially at diners and truck shop eateries “diving for pearls, working,” working as dishwashers.

Every hobo has some problem, usually some Phoebe Snow problem, a woman problem, that forced him or her on the road (I don’t know what it would be for the distaff side so call him Jack Snow, any other sexual combination more acceptable today although definitely not unknown in the male-heavy “jungle camps” along the transcontinental railroad lines). That Phoebe Snow designation from some old time railroad advertisement when they finally figured how to keep their respectable passengers from looking like coalminers after alighting from a train by changing the way the engine was maneuvered and to express that new found discovery they had a virginal young woman in white getting on their trains ready for every civilized adventure in some faraway place (or maybe an illicit tryst but we will ask no questions). And so many a campfire night as the trains went westbound, or wherever bound, you would find many a man, maybe in his cups just then, dreaming back to their own Phoebes and wondering damn why they ever left Peoria, Lima, Scranton and that white dress with flowers in her hair standing in the wind. So, make no mistake, fear of work is not what drove the hobo out on to the roads.

See that royalty, the hobo, and his or her ability to work is why the Industrial Worker of the World (IWW, Wobblies, moniker origin unknown so Wobblies) went into the jungle camps (and gin mills too) in order to recruit labor fighters against the bosses when the deal went down, particularly in the West. (Although more famously in the great Lawrence, Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” textile strike of 1912 when they gathered in the nations of immigrants that the textile bosses recruited on the assumption that they could “divide and conquer.” Yid and gentile, Mick and Dago, Hunky and Frog, name your national derogatory moniker but didn’t they get a surprise that first morning when the nations gathered against the Wasp oligarchy.) Of course that transient work habit was also the down side of that organization as the kings of the transient road hit the road west, or somewhere, when it came to defending the unions over the long haul.

As for the other two, the tramp who only worked when forced to like on some thirty day county jailhouse for vagrancy gig or some Salvation Army work program to keep the body and soul together for a few days when whatever con, what grift was played out and the bum, Jesus, the bum wouldn’t work if he was Rockefeller himself, the dregs, winos, jack-rollers, sappers, petty crooks, mother’s purse stealers, the crippled up, sorry, and the dumb, sorry again, to put the matter plainly in the old- fashioned parlance how the hell could you organize them. You might as well try to organize air, might as well go down without a fight since they have probably already sold you out and the boss man will be waiting arms in hand, you can bet on that. There was a very good reason that the beloved heroic Paris Communards in 1871 as desperate as they were for fighters placed the placate “Death to Thieves” above the Hotel de Ville. Yeah, they had that right, don’t give the lumpen a change to breathe or he will steal your breathe just for kicks, or a jug of low-grade wine.          

Now that you are all caught up on the differences, the “class differences,” between each cohort recognized among themselves, oh how recognized, and subject to fierce dispute including some faux fists, if not quite so definitely by rump academic sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day (there is some hope for the amateur versions as long as the avoid the graduate schools of social work the bane of every person on the road, and rightly so). What they do have in common since they are out in the great outdoors more than the rest of us gentile folk is that they to a person have seen starlight on the rails. Yeah, had their fill of train smoke and dreams.

Now all these sullen subtle distinctions among the brethren I probably would have not been able to draw in my youth when I would have lumped the lot together as collective losers and riff-raff, the bums to honest citizens, before I hit the hitchhike road heading west at one time in search of the blue-pink great American West night out there somewhere. Thought I found it for a minute out in Mendocino with a sweet Lorraine all long hair, long granny dress and flowers, garlands really around her neck and in her hair. Go check out a  Botticelli painting if you are near an art museum something or google up the man’s name on the Internet if you can’t wait, my own Phoebe Snow, before the hordes descended.  Thought I had it another time in a hash/opium dream outside of Monterey after the jazz festival and some dark-haired, dark laughing eyes, hot-blooded, Juanita curled my toes for a while until I fought there were seventeen burn down the country club golf course and I had not enough matches and fled. Ah, you know and man’s reach should exceed his grasp like the Jack poet said.

I had, broken dreams aside, broken but not forgotten Botticelli dreams included, on one more than one occasion along with the late Peter Paul Markin who led the way among the North Adamsville corner boys on that trail been forced to stop along a railroad trestle “jungle camp,” under a cardboard city bridge, or out in the arroyos if you got far enough west to live for a few days and rest up for the road further west.

The hobos of the “jungle” were princes among men (there was no room for women then in such a male-dominated society, not along the jungle although at the missions and Sallys, Salvation Army Harbor Lights, that might be a different story) as long as you did not ask too many damn questions. Shared olio stews, cigarettes, cheap rotgut wine, Thunderbird “what’s the word, Thunderbird, what’s the price, forty twice” and that eighty cents tough to gather some days no matter how smooth the pan-handle, or Ripple, ‘save the nipple, cripple” sorry, whichever was cheapest after cadging the day’s collective pennies together. Later, after the big dream American West busted me up when my “wanting habits” (getting many worldly goods off easy street paid for by working the drug trade down south of the border along with Markin before he became the late Markin face down in some dusty Mexican bracero fellahin town when a drug deal he was trying to finagle caught him short, two slugs to the head short by some angry hombre who didn’t like gringos messing with their trade, or their dark-haired, dark laughing-eyed, hot-blooded women) built up from the edges of that sullen youth got the better of me and my addictions placed me out in that same “jungle” for keeps for a while that distinction got re-enforced.  

But hobo, bum or tramp each had found him or herself (mainly hims though like I said out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Having let their, our, collective wanting habits get the best of them, us. Maybe penniless, maybe thrown out of some flophouse in arrears and found that nobody bothers, or did bother you out along the steel rails, I won’t vouch for that now with all the weirdness in the world, when the train lost its luster to the fast speed Interstate automobile and one coast in the morning the other in the afternoon plane and rusted and abandoned railroads gone belly up, Union Pacific, SP, Denver, Rio Grande, Baltimore and Ohio, Illinois Central, all train smoke names for lack of use provided safe haven from the vagaries of civilization. So sure I too have seen with the brethren, those nameless hobos, tramps, and bums  (to you they had among themselves monikers like Railroad Shorty, Black River Red, Smokestack, Philly Jack, mine, the Be-Bop Kid although I always had to explain what the be-bop was since these guys were well behind the curve, back in Benny Goodman swing time)     the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed penitent dreams of shelter against life’s storms, had dreamed while living for the moment trying to get washed clean after the failure of the new dispensation to do the job (hell, what did they/Markin/me think just because the drugs or alcohol flowed freely once, just because the fixer man fixed, fixed fine, that that was the Garden of Eden, that was Nirvana, hell, those ancient forebears all after they had been expelled from the earthly paradise saw that same starlight as they/he/we/I did).   

Maybe this will explain it better. An old man, or at least he has the marks of old age, although among the iterant travelling peoples, the hoboes, tramps, and bum, who have weathered many of life’s storms bottle or needle in hand, panhandled a million quarters now lost, old age, or their marks wear a soul down early so a guy who has been on the road enough years if he is say thirty looks about fifty by the time the train smoke and the busted dreams have broken his will, white beard, unkempt, longish hair, also unkempt, a river of lines in his face, deep crow’s feet setting off his vacant eyes, a second-hand soiled hat atop his head, a third-hand miner’s jacket “clipped” off some other lonesome traveler (“clipped”- stolen for clueless or those who led sheltered childhood and did not in order to satisfy some youthful wanting habit stakeout a jewelry store say and grab a few trinkets while the salesperson was looking the other way), shredded at the cuffs chino pants of indeterminate age, and busted up shoes, soles worn, heels at forty-five degree angles from crooked walks on crooked miles and game legs is getting ready to unroll his bedroll, ground cloth a tablecloth stolen from Jimmy Jack’s Diner’s somewhere, a blanket stolen from a Sally [Salvation Army] Harbor Light house in salad days, rolled newspapers now for a mattress for the hundredth, hundredth time against the edge of the railroad trestle just outside Gallup, New Mexico.

Do not ask him, if you have the nerve to approach him, and that is an iffy proposition just ask a guy going under the moniker of Denver Shorty how he got that deep scar across his face, where he is going or where he has come from because just that moment, having scratched a few coins in the town together for a jug of Thunderbird he is ready to sleep his sleep against the cold-hearted steel of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks just ten yards from where he stands.      

And this night, this starlit brown, about eight colors of brown, desert night he hopes that he will not dream, not dream of that Phoebe Snow whom he left behind in Toledo when he had no beard, no longish unkempt hair, and no rivers of lines on his misbegotten face. (Why the brethren called every long gone sweetheart Phoebe Snow, why they would get misty over the dying campfire after some younger traveler stopped by and told his tale of leaving some young thing behind is unknown except, according to some old wizened geezer who might have just made the story up, in the old, old day when the railroads finally figured out how to keep people from being blackened by the train smoke every trip they took they started advertising this the fact with this white-dressed  virginal young woman who went under the name Phoebe Snow. That’s probably as good an explanation as any since whatever the name, or the young woman almost every guy in camp would in his sorrows get weepy about that situation. Hey, didn't I tell that story before, Jesus, the dope or old age is getting to me but what the hell maybe that Phoebe Snow dream is worth a repeat I know it got me through many a restless night thinking about sweet Botticelli Lorraine and Goya Juanita.) Dream as he always did about whatever madness made him run from all the things he had created, all the things that drove him west like a million other guys who needed to put space between himself and civilization.

Dream too about the days when he could ride the rails in the first-class cars (having not only left Phoebe Snow behind but a growing specialty printing business started from scratch before the alcohol, and later the dope although now back to cheapjack alcohol got the better of him), and about the lure of the rails once he got unhinged from civilization. About how the train pace had been chastised by fast cars and faster planes when a the speed of a train fitted a man’s movements, about the days when they first built the transcontinental, this line that he was about to lie his head down beside, about the million Chinks, Hunkies, Russkies, Hibernians, hell, Micks, Dagos who sweated to drive the steel in unforgiving ground, many who laid down their heads down to their final rest along these roads, and later guys he knew on the endless road like Butte Bobby, Silver Jones, Ding-dong Kelly, who did not wake up the next morning and were carried out to the carcass vulture desert having left no way to get a hold of kin. Almost all guys had left no forwarding address, no real one anyway, no back address, for fear of the repo man or some other dunning, an angry wife or about ten thousand other reasons. So the desert was good enough as a potter’s field as any other place.

As he settled in to sleep the wine’s effect settling down too he noticed the bright half- moon out that night reflecting off the trestle, and the arroyos edges, and thought about what a guy, an old wizard like himself told him about the rails one time when he was laid up in Salt Lake City, in the days when he tried to sober up. The guy, a guy who had music in his soul or something said to him that it was the starlight on the rails that had driven him, rumble, stumble, tumble him to keep on the road, to keep moving away from himself, to forget who he was. And here he was on a starlit night listening down the line for the rumble of the freight that would come passing by before the night was over. But as he shut his eyes, he began to dream again of Phoebe Snow, always of Phoebe Snow.         

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those starlit heavens (or to the void if that is what chances to happen as the universe expands quicker than we can think, bang- bang or get smaller into dust if that is the deal once the philosopher-king physicists figure out the new best theory) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song by the same name ripping some wisdom from literary man Thomas Wolfe who knew from whence he spoke, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances to wind up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs up in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent.

Worked her way to a big sold out night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. Sang some nice stuff speaking about the west, about the Brazos, about the great Utah desert which formed Utah Phillips a little too, formed him like his old friend Ammon Hennessey, the old saint Catholic Worker brother who sobered some guys up, made them take some pledges, made them get off the railroad steel road. Sobered me up too, got me off that railroad track too, but damn if I didn’t see that starlight too. So listen up, okay.         

*****From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 97th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The CI (1919)

From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 97th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919) -Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click below to link to the Communist International Internet Archives"

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

Markin comment from the American Left History blog (2007):

BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

The Russian Revolution, and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working-class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.

Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social-democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

*“I Said, Who Do You Love”- The Raucous Music Of George Thorogood And The Destroyers

Click on the title to link to YouTube's film clip of George Thorogood and The Destroyers performing "Bad To The Bone".

CD Review

Anthology, George Thorogood And The Destroyers, 1999

A while back when Bo Diddley died I mentioned in a review of his work that many latter musicians, particularly white musicians were influenced by his songs, and covered them like crazy. That is the case with George Thorogood, with or without his Destroyers. Although he is probably best known for his bad boy anthem, “Bad To The Bone” Thorogood cut his teeth on doing covers of Bo, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and the other greats of the blues and early rock and roll. That is how we should measure his work, as an exponent of a certain kind or of rock and R&B. This album delivers some of that although his best work is in other albums. The stick outs here are: “Nine Lives,” and “Rockin’ The Walk”.

George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Bad to the Bone Lyrics

On the day I was born, the nurses all gathered 'round
And they gazed in wide wonder, at the joy they had found
The head nurse spoke up, and she said leave this one alone
She could tell right away, that I was bad to the bone
Bad to the bone
Bad to the bone
B-B-B-B-Bad to the bone
B-B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-B-Bad
Bad to the bone

I broke a thousand hearts, before I met you
I'll break a thousand more baby, before I am through
I wanna be yours pretty baby, yours and yours alone
I'm here to tell ya honey, that I'm bad to the bone
Bad to the bone
B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-Bad
Bad to the bone

I make a rich woman beg, I'll make a good woman steal
I'll make an old woman blush, and make a young woman squeal
I wanna be yours pretty baby, yours and yours alone
I'm here to tell ya honey, that I'm bad to the bone
B-B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-B-Bad
Bad to the bone

*Etta James Is In The House-“At Last”

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Etta Jame performing "At Last"

CD Review

At Last, Etta James, MCA, 1999



The name Etta James is no stranger to this space. Whether it is in reference to the classic Chicago blues label Chess Records, Chicago blues as a genre, or just Etta rockin’ the house I have found time to place her in that rather small (unfortunately) number of great modern female blues singers. That said, this CD has plenty of that, but also showcases her other talents. Although this album started life as a Chess production (of some sort) there are ballads and other old time tunes here to show that in her prime there was nothing Etta couldn’t cover with gusto. Some of it like “Trust In Me” is just a little too sweet for me. I called it “bubblegum" music in the old days. But compare that to her covers of famous classic Lena Horne “Stormy Weather” or “Sunday Kind of Love” and you have an approximation of what the songs were that we listened to when thoughts of love were first bubbling up around 1960. And easy music to ask a girl or guy to slow dance too. Ah, well.

Stormy Weather lyrics

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather
Since my gal and I ain't together, keeps raining all the time
Life is bare, gloom and misery everywhere, stormy weather
Just can't get my poor old self together
I'm weary all the time, the time
So weary all the time
When she went away the blues walked in and they met me
If she stays away, that old rocking chair's gonna get me
All I do is pray the Lord above will let me
Walk in the sun once more
Can't go on, everything I have is gone, stormy weather
Since my gal and I ain't together
Keeps raining all the time
Keeps raining all the time
Can't go on, everything I have is gone, stormy weather
Since my gal and I ain't together
Keeps raining all the time, the time
Keeps raining all the time

*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-For Class-Struggle Defense!

Click on the headline to link to the article from “Workers Vanguard” described in the title.


Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.

A View From The Left- Afghanistan Occupation: 15 Years of Imperialist Crimes All U.S./NATO Forces Out Now!

Workers Vanguard No. 1101	2 December 2016

Afghanistan Occupation: 15 Years of Imperialist Crimes

All U.S./NATO Forces Out Now!

October marked the 15th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. In the launch of what has become the longest war in U.S. history, on 7 October 2001 cruise missiles and bombs rained down on Kabul, Kandahar and other parts of Afghanistan. Weeks of relentless pounding reduced villages to rubble, destroyed hospitals, obliterated Red Cross facilities and wiped out entire families. Here was the world’s mightiest imperialist power, having taken hits on its own territory in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, lashing out to assert its unchallenged supremacy. The vast firepower unleashed on an already devastated Afghanistan, like the “shock and awe” invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, was part of a drive by U.S. imperialism to extend its global military reach and maintain its control over world resources.

When Barack Obama took over as Commander-in-Chief later in the decade, Afghanistan was his preferred theater of imperialist carnage, citing it as the “good war” compared to Bush’s folly in Iraq (conveniently sidestepping the bipartisan support for the devastation of both countries). In 2009, Obama pledged to win the war and diverted tens of thousands of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, almost tripling the number of troops there to nearly 100,000. Despite this “surge,” a highly publicized offensive to wrest control of Kandahar from the Taliban collapsed. Today, even as the U.S. military continues to wreak havoc, the Taliban controls large swaths of the country, including areas outside its traditional Pashtun base, and has made repeated incursions into the northern city of Kunduz. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) have both claimed shares of the country.

At the time of the invasion, we declared: “It is the obligation of the proletariat internationally, especially workers and minorities in the U.S., to defend Afghanistan in the face of the imperialist attack” (WV No. 766, 12 October 2001). We made clear that having a military side did not constitute the least political support to the reactionary, woman-hating Taliban cutthroats. Similarly, in defending Iraq against the U.S. invasion, we gave no political support to the dictatorial capitalist regime of Saddam Hussein. As we stressed, the chief means of defending the two neocolonial countries was through international working-class struggle, above all by the multiracial U.S. proletariat. The post-September 11 wars abroad were part and parcel of an onslaught by the capitalist rulers against workers, minorities and just about everyone else at home. The “war on terror” that was a pretext for the occupations was used domestically to increase state repression and regiment the population. Today, we call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO troops and bases from Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Near East.

The last 15 years have left a trail of death and destruction in Afghanistan. Airstrikes and official night raids alone have killed tens of thousands of civilians. In 2010, amid the seemingly endless litany of sadistic outrages perpetrated by imperialist forces, a dozen U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Kandahar province were charged with the murder of Afghan civilians for sport. The soldiers cut up the bodies of their victims, keeping fingers and skulls as trophies of war. Bagram air base—a site where hundreds of people were tortured and killed and just one of Washington’s many “black site” detention centers worldwide—became synonymous with U.S. imperialist savagery.

The bloodshed has displaced over one million people within the country and forced over two and a half million to flee it altogether. In 2015, Afghans constituted the second largest group of asylum seekers in Europe after Syrians. In October, by threatening to cut aid to Kabul, the European Union pressured the Afghan government to take back tens of thousands of refugees and is now set to deport them en masse to the very hellhole that the European imperialist powers helped create.

With occupied Afghanistan sinking deeper into a morass of corruption, terror, brutal oppression of women and murderous tribal warfare, the country remains one of the world’s poorest. More than ten million of its 33 million people live in dire poverty, and three-quarters of the population is illiterate. Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world; 60 percent of its children are malnourished and only 27 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water.

Obama has refused to lift the imperialist jackboot. In an Orwellian moment a year ago, the U.S. president declared that he does “not support the idea of endless war” while announcing nearly 10,000 troops would remain in Afghanistan, ostensibly as “trainers.” In fact, they have been carrying out special operations raids and supporting drone assassinations. As the New York Times reported regarding U.S. soldiers who fought the Taliban at close quarters in October 2015: “Nine months after President Obama declared an end to the American combat mission in Afghanistan, these Green Berets were at the leading edge of an offensive to retake Kunduz, where Afghan forces had melted away as insurgents attacked, leaving an entire city in the Taliban’s grip for the first time since 2001” (“U.S. Role in Afghanistan Turns to Combat Again,” 8 May). Tens of thousands of military contractors, i.e., mercenaries, also remain in the country.

The criminal bombing of a Kunduz hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) last year underscored the ugly reality of the new phase of the war. This November, U.S. aerial bombardment of a village outside Kunduz killed at least 30 civilians, including women, children and babies. With fewer troops available for night raids, the U.S. has become increasingly dependent on airstrikes, which have more than doubled since last year.

Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan

U.S. imperialist crimes in Afghanistan extend back more than two decades before the occupation, to a time when Washington heralded the Islamic fundamentalists as “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union and showered them with billions of dollars in aid. The CIA began to fund and train the woman-hating mujahedin reactionaries shortly after the Soviet-allied, left-nationalist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) came to power in 1978. What followed was the biggest covert operation in CIA history, and a decade-long proxy war against Soviet military forces that intervened to bolster the modernizing PDPA regime. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS are all first- or second-generation offspring of that U.S.-sponsored “holy war.” As Trotskyists who stood for the unconditional military defense of the bureaucratically degenerated Soviet workers state and championed the cause of women’s emancipation, we proclaimed: Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! Recognizing that the material conditions did not exist for meaningful social progress to emerge from within Afghan society, where for instance mullahs outnumbered manufacturing workers over seven-to-one, we also raised the call: Extend social gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan peoples!

The mullahs had first gone on the warpath when the PDPA embarked on a program of limited reforms, which included canceling peasant debt, carrying out land redistribution, prohibiting forced marriages and lowering the bride price to a nominal sum. The new government made schooling compulsory for girls and launched literacy programs for women, building 600 schools in just over a year. The earliest bloody confrontations were over women’s education, as PDPA cadres and women literacy workers were driven from villages and killed. A New York Times reporter observed at the time: “Land reform attempts undermined their village chiefs. Portraits of Lenin threatened the religious leaders. But it was the Kabul revolutionary Government’s granting of new rights to women that pushed Orthodox Moslem men in the Pashtoon villages of eastern Afghanistan into picking up their guns” (9 February 1980).

Unable to fend off the U.S.-backed mujahedin insurgency, the PDPA repeatedly requested Soviet intervention. Fearing the collapse of the PDPA regime and acting to defend its southern flank, the USSR sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan in December 1979. While the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy did not send the Red Army into Afghanistan to accomplish a social revolution, Soviet military intervention objectively opened up the possibility of bringing the country into the modern world and of freeing Afghan women from degradation. Women were encouraged to shed their head-to-toe burqas and study science, medicine and engineering. By the late 1980s, almost two-thirds of the students at Kabul University were women. Some 5,000 Afghan women took up arms as members of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan militia.

Instead of fighting to finish off the mujahedin, a prospect that was within reach by the mid 1980s, the Kremlin bureaucrats temporized, hoping to appease the U.S. In 1988-89, the Moscow bureaucracy withdrew the Soviet Army. This betrayal left Afghanistan to revert to the benighted and tribal-riven slaughterhouse it is to this day and helped to pave the way to the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state itself. With the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, U.S. imperialism’s strategic target became the Chinese deformed workers state, where capitalist rule was overthrown in 1949. The occupation of Afghanistan and the placement of U.S. military bases in Central Asia and elsewhere in Asia under the rubric of the “war on terror” were part of the effort to militarily encircle China and ultimately to restore capitalist rule.

U.S. Imperialism: Enemy of Women’s Rights

Under the occupation, Afghanistan has been a living hell for women. To sell their predatory war, the U.S. rulers cynically decried the plight of women under the Taliban, pledging that an American-led takeover would bring liberation. Instead, the imperialists brokered a constitution that effectively enshrined Islamic fundamentalist sharia law. In 2012, Washington’s puppet Afghan president Hamid Karzai approved a new “code of conduct,” issued by the Ulema Council of senior Muslim clerics, that bars women from going out without a male guardian or mingling with men in schools, offices and markets. Afghan women still suffocate under the burqa. Forced marriages and “honor killings” of women are rampant.

Afghanistan has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world. Due to lack of access to health care, thousands of women die during pregnancy and childbirth. Barely a quarter of Afghan girls go to school. Religious fanatics attack those who do, including by spraying acid in their faces, and kill their teachers. The literacy rate for women is 12 percent, while their average life expectancy is 44, some 24 years below the world average. To escape their unbearable lives, many women turn to suicide. Even by official Afghan accounts, some 2,300 women and girls kill themselves every year—more than six each day.

The regimes installed by the imperialists during the occupation have been based largely on the same reactionary, anti-woman mujahedin tribal warlords who devastated the country after the Soviet withdrawal. They populate both the central and provincial governments and maintain private militias linked to smuggling and criminal networks. These warlords hold the power of life and death over the mass of Afghan people through extortion, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and murder. They kill farmers and grab their land. Empowered by the imperialists and enriched through bribery, contract awards and opium traffic, their patronage networks have become more entrenched.

Gul Agha Shirzai, who ran Kandahar in the early 1990s during the bloody rule of the mujahedin, was picked by Washington to be governor of Kandahar province after the invasion and is now governor of Nangarhar. Asadullah Khalid, another recipient of U.S. largesse, is the former head of Afghanistan’s security agency. According to Human Rights Watch, he has participated in arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial summary executions and rape of women and girls in his private prison. When he traveled to the U.S. for medical care in 2013, Barack Obama paid him a visit.

The horrors produced by U.S. imperialism’s anti-Soviet “holy war” and current occupation of Afghanistan show once again that the capitalist system is a barrier to social progress and a breeding ground for war. The only possibility of a future free of wars, misery and want rests in the victory of international socialist revolution. When the workers of the world rule, deeply oppressed and backward regions like Afghanistan will finally begin to be lifted out of their poverty, isolation and obscurantism, laying the basis for the genuine equality of all peoples. Our purpose is the forging of a multiracial revolutionary workers party, section of a reforged Trotskyist Fourth International, that is dedicated to leading the American proletariat in overthrowing the U.S. imperialist beast from within.