Did you see Ginger in The Intercept today?
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Sunday, October 29, 2017
From Socialist Alternative-Did you see Ginger in The Intercept today?
At U/Mass-Boston-Diplomacy, Domestic Politics and the Fate of South Vietnam-Nov 8
Sean's talk will explore the unheralded showdown between Saigon's military junta, and civil society groups including journalists, students and religious and ethnic minority groups.
Join us as Sean Fear challenges conventional views of the Cold War as a bipolar clash between great powers and their proxies.
William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences
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Join VFP At SOA Watch Border Encuentro
Join VFP At SOA Watch Border Encuentro
VFP enthusiastically supports this year's theme "Tear Down The Walls, Build Up The People." Please join us, November 10-12, and many other peace and justice groups on the border.
SOAW strives to expose, denounce, and end US militarization, oppressive US policies and other forms of state violence in the Americas. Often these Latin American political and economic policies are directly linked to forced displacement, increased violence, and militarized borders. And as we call attention to the militarization of the border and Latin America, we also call for an end to state-sponsored terrorism and violence against our communities inside the United States.
We stand with organizations and movements working for justice and peace throughout the Americas. There is no wall or border that can deter the solidarity of the people!
Help Send U.S. Deported Veterans to SOAW Encuentro
Help Send U.S. Deported Veterans to SOAW Encuentro
Can you help us get our Deported Veterans group to the border? It is critical that their voices be heard at the SOAW Border Encuentro. We are hoping to have enough travel funds to support as many as can attend. Can you help us raise $4,000?
SOAW strives to expose, denounce, and end US militarization, oppressive US policies and other forms of state violence in the Americas. Some of our VFP members have been deported under these ugly polices and continue to be directly affected by the U.S.' refusal to extend citizenship to those who have fought in our military.
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Broome County Veterans For Peace Denied Entry
This marks the second time since a new committee was formed to organize the parades that the group Broome County Veterans For Peace has had its application to participate denied.
The same committee rejected the group's application to march in the Memorial Day parade.
In an email to the group, committee member Clifford Post writes that the agenda of Veterans For Peace is inconsistent and distractive to the common purpose of the event which is to recognize and honor veterans of all wars.
VFP President Jack Gilroy says the original purpose of Veterans Day and its predecessor Armistice Day is to celebrate the end of war.
"Veterans Day is something more than just a glorification of war, which it seems to be very often. But rather it's a call for peace. This was the original intent of Armistice Day, the 11th day, the 11th hour, the 11th month. That was back in 1918, the end of the war, and it was a celebration for peace," said Gilroy.
Read the Full Story
Read the Full Story
Reality Winner’s defense team escalates bail arguments-Free Reality Leigh Winner Now!
Reality Winner’s defense team escalates bail arguments
Defense team hints at precedent-setting whistleblower defense
Reality’s defense team filed an appeal last week, seeking to reverse the decision to deny her bail and hold her in jail until March, setting the stage for a precedent-setting trial with implications far beyond this one case.
The appeal is important for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s important to keep fighting for Reality’s release because she doesn’t deserve to be in jail. She has not been convicted of any crime, has no criminal record, and has a spotless record of service to her country. Her attorneys point out that Reality is “accused only of leaking a single document, a single time, to a single domestic source, for no financial remuneration, to a news outlet.”
The new appeal highlights how those factors were entirely ignored by Magistrate Judge Brian Epps in Reality’s most recent bail hearing. It also highlights how unusual Reality’s pre-trial detention is — her defense team provided the court with a long list of cases in which defendants charged with the same crime were granted bail, and even held to significantly less restrictive conditions than Reality has already agreed to. This new defense motion will be decided by the eventual trial judge, Chief Judge J. Randal Hall.
How rare is such a no bail ruling? Just last week, prominent Alt-Right activist Lane Davis murdered his father with a knife, after his dad called him a nazi. Lane Davis had a bail set at $1,000,000, an amount that Reality’s parents were prepared to post, but were denied the opportunity to do so.
Precedent-Setting Trial
While Reality’s pre-trial detention is unusual, it’s not surprising. It’s been obvious from the beginning that this is both a politically motivated prosecution and a strategically offensive move in Trump and Jeff Sessions’ war on whistleblowers, the media, and anyone shining a light on government wrongdoing.
That’s another reason this appeal is so important — it is laying the groundwork to fight back against these tactics, crafting a defense strategy that, if successful, will have an impact far beyond this one case.
This section in particular from the appeal document makes the strategy clear:
“…the parties dispute the elements that constitute violation of § 793(e). The Government contends that to convict Ms. Winner, they need to show only that “a defendant in unauthorized possession of a document containing information relating to the national defense . . . retained that document without authorization, or transmitted it to someone not entitled to receive it, and knew that doing so was against the law” … Ms. Winner submits that there is more that the Government must prove, including that the information could actually damage the national security of the United States if disclosed…”
The Espionage Act is a loophole
Passed in 1917 before classified status even existed, there is no mention of classified information in the Espionage Act. Nevertheless the government claims that the mere fact of information being classified is enough proof of an intent to harm by anybody who leaks it. Any discussion of the information itself, or the motive for releasing it is prevented because the information is still classified.
The “classified information” in Reality’s case is now public and freely available for anyone to read on our website. Reading the document makes it clear why the government doesn’t want the burden of explaining the “harm” its release did. It’s an argument they would certainly lose.
Whistleblower Protections
That’s why this new appeal is so important — Reality’s defense team wants to force the government to prove what harm was done by the release of this document. Doing so would permanently end the government’s ability to use the Espionage Act as a loophole, and force them to acknowledge the legally guaranteed whistleblower protections of people who leak classified information, protections which pre-date the Espionage Act.
This appeal is important because it demonstrates that Reality’s defense team is going to fight hard every step of the way, both for justice for Reality herself and for all future whistleblowers facing the same transparently unjust prosecution.
Our only resources for this fight come from supporters of Reality. Donating just an hour’s wage per month makes a difference. Together, we can make this case a precedent-setting landmark in the defense of whistleblowers and the freedom of the press. Help us win by becoming a sustaining donor through Reality’s trial in March.
The 50th Anniversary Of The Anti-Vietnam War March On The Pentagon (1967)-With Norman Mailer’s “Armies Of The Night” In Mind (1968)
The 50th Anniversary Of The Anti-Vietnam War March On The Pentagon (1967)-With Norman Mailer’s “Armies Of The Night” In Mind (1968)
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
Earlier this year driven by my old corner boys, Alex James and Sam Lowell, I had begun to write some pieces in this space about things that happened in a key 1960s year, 1967. The genesis of this work has been based on of all things a business trip that Alex took to San Francisco early this spring. While there he noted on one of the ubiquitous mass transit buses that crisscross the city an advertisement for an exhibition at the de Young Art Museum located in Golden Gate Park. That exhibition The Summer of Love, 1967 had him cutting short a meeting one afternoon in order to see what it was all about. See if he was just having a “flashback” (not uncommon back the day for those who did not take their Kool-Aid straight but laced with mysterious chemical imbalances). What it was all about aside the nostalgia effect for members of the now ragtag Generation of ‘68 (an AARP-worthy generation but I prefer the less commercial Generation of ’68 to tag that crowd, my crowd) an entire floor’s worth of concert poster art, hippy fashion, music and photographs of that noteworthy year in the lives of some of those who came of age in the turbulent 1960s. The reason for Alex playing hooky from his important business meeting was that he had actually been out there that year, had been out in Haight-Ashbury-etched 1967) and had stayed and imbibed deeply of the counter-culture for a couple of years after that. (Imbibed not in running out of steam fast Frisco but on a magical mystery tour yellow brick road former school bus courtesy of Captain Crunch which went up and down the West Coast searching, hell, just searching.)
Alex had not been the only one who had been smitten by the Summer of Love revival bug because when he returned to Riverdale outside of Boston where he now lives he gathered up all of the corner boys from growing up North Adamsville still standing to talk about, and do something about, commemorating the event. His first contact was with Sam Lowell the old film critic who also happened to have gone out there and spent I think about a year, maybe a little more. As had most of the old corner boys for various lengths of time usually a few months. Except me which I will explain in a minute. Alex’s idea when he gathered all of us together was to put up a small commemoration book in honor of the late Peter Paul Markin with memory pieces by each of us. See Markin, always known as “Scribe” after he was dubbed that by our leader Frankie Riley (now a big time lawyer with a swanky office in downtown Boston but then poor as a church mouse and nothing but a serious con artist), was the first guy to go out there when he sensed that the winds of change he kept yakking about around the corner on desolate Friday and Saturday nights when we had no dough, no girls, no cars and no chance of getting any of those quickly were coming west to east.
Once everybody agreed to do the book Alex contacted his youngest brother Zack, the fairly well known writer, to edit and organize the project. I had agreed to help as well. The reason I had refused to go to San Francisco then had been that I was in the throes of trying to put together a career as a political operative by attempting to get Robert Kennedy to run against that naked sneak thief of a sitting President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had us neck deep in the big muddy of Vietnam and so I had no truck with hippies, druggies or “music is the revolution” types like those who filled the desperate streets around Haight-Ashbury. Then. Zack did a very good job and we are proud of tribute to the not forgotten still lamented late Scribe who really was a mad man character and maybe if he had not got caught up in the Army, in being drafted, in being sent to Vietnam which threw him off kilter when he got back to the real world he might still be around to tell us what the next big trend will be.
[I should mention here for the young or clueless something about corner boy culture since you no longer see guys hanging around corners at variety stores, pizza parlors, bowling alleys and the like as that scene has successively been replaced by mall “rat-dom” and now “don’t look up from the fucking phone” social media. (Don’t see gals either for the same reasons although back in the day the gals hanging around corners were with guys, glued to guys, otherwise they generally were inside say Doc’s Drugstore soda fountain or the pizza parlor spending their who knows where they got it discretionary money throwing dimes and quarters into the jukebox to play the latest heartthrob tunes). Corner boy-dom was a rite of passage in working class neighborhoods like the Acre section of North Adamsville where we grew up having certain corners passed on to you as you grew older like our progression from Harry’s Variety in elementary school to Doc’s Drugstore in junior high to Tonio Pizza Parlor in high school and beyond.
You, we, I hung on the corner for a very simple reason in those days- no dough. No serious dough although everybody had some scam from roughing up younger siblings for coin or a back door sneak at mother’s pocketbook to the midnight creep which best be left at that since who knows if the statute of limitations has run out on those high crimes and misdemeanors. No dough meant no car, meant nowhere in golden age of the automobile America where any guy with a car, handsome or ugly, had some young thing sitting very close in the front seat of his Chevy something. Meant even if you could find a girl who didn’t mind taking the bus or walking you had no money for dates even for a cheapjack movie date much less say hitting a drive-n restaurant. And no dates meant no girls hovering around which meant the corner with that cohort of guys in the same condition as you. Meant having a bunch of sullen surly guys with time on their hands, lust and larceny in their hearts, and an overweening desire to fall outside the law. That most of us survived is amazing but it was a close thing, very close.]
That initial impetus to think about 1967 at a time when I was in love with Robert Kennedy and that kind of grass-roots progressive politics of which we see very little now led me to do a piece about the first Monterrey International Pops Festival held at the beginning of that summer and where revered names for the Generation of ’68 like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Ravi Shankar (he, additionally the papa of today’s Norah Jones) had made their first big splashes. I always loved the music, always loved to go to concerts, generally free or cheap concerts if you can believe that in these days of nostalgia high-priced tickets for groups and singles well beyond their primes on Boston Common and elsewhere and hear what was what. Those were the days when I heard the first stirrings, and maybe half wanted to believe it was true, that “the music was the revolution.” That somehow new sounds and the emerging lifestyle, the hippie lifestyle of communal sharing, good vibes and easy going would be the impetus for a new ethos. That some idea of “dropping out” of bourgeois society (not a term I would have used then but which now kind of fits what I am getting at) would bring the new utopia onto our doorsteps. The Scribe and the others at the time having been through the initial stages of the Summer of Love out in the West were filled with such ideas to the extent that they could articulate such a vision. (The Scribe was able to and did at the time and carried the others with him.) I was having none of it, or very little, since at that time I neither believed in any kind of revolution nor did I think that society needed anything more than tweaking (with me helping the throw the tweak switch.) I argued against and I believe, unfortunately, that those who professed the “music is the revolution” idea have been shown to have been totally over their heads and left no serious mark on the social fabric.
There was another trend, another 50th anniversary trend which I would argue was counter-posed to the above mentioned theory. This event is the 50th anniversary of the famous, or infamous, March on the Pentagon in October of that year. The one that the late writer Norman Mailer wrote about in his well-received and highly honored The Armies Of The Night a review of which I have reposted elsewhere on this blog. That event was not the first massive Washington anti-Vietnam War demonstration (the first had been in New York in 1965) nor the first to feature acts of civil disobedience but it was the first threshing out, the first understanding that something big was going to be needed to stop the fucking war. That the government was not going to stop the madness on its own hook. Moreover that despite whatever residue remained from the intoxicating Summer of Love “dropping out” under the rubric of the “music is the revolution” mantra was not going to create the “newer world” in the words of the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson those of us from supporters of Robert Kennedy to the left were seeking.
Of course as described in detail including an overabundance of detail about his own part, his own arrest in the melee by Mailer this effort was very much a helter-skelter thing with mixed results. The key idea to be taken by any serious anti-war militants that the government (run by either major party as it later turned) was going to viciously thwart any such people’s efforts to bring an end to the damn thing. There would be a parting of the ways essentially not only between “drop out” and “confrontation” partisans but within the confrontationists camp a split over peaceful mass marches and more vigorous actions. The March on the Pentagon was the laboratory for all those ideas from “levitating” the place to a guerilla warfare-type actions to shut the place down.
Of course today I am commemorating an event, not for the first time, that at the time I was adamantly opposed to, saw as very disruptive to the attempts by first Senator Eugene McCarthy and his insurgent run at Lyndon Baines Johnson and later after Johnson’s withdrawal from candidacy by Robert Kennedy to solve this problem through parliamentary means. In short while I was vaguely anti-war, or thought I was only at that level, I did not participate in or honor such efforts. The turning point would be later, the next year as it turned out, when I was drafted by my “friends and neighbors” at the Draft Board in North Adamsville (that greeting was how the letter of induction actually started) and accepted induction even if half-heartedly in the U.S. Army. I have written, and others have written as well, about my complete turnaround once I was inducted and of my two year struggle including serious stockade time for refusing to go to Vietnam. One of the books I read during that time was Mailer’s The Armies Of The Night taking to heart some of the lessons from that experience (although still a bit put off by the centrality of Mailer’s ego in the whole process).
Here is the payoff though. In the spring of 1971 shortly after I had been released from the Army I started hanging around with a bunch of Cambridge radicals. The big idea at the time was to have a massive May Day civil disobedience action in Washington around the theme-“if the government does not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” I did not even think twice about not going, of not getting arrested and of thinking that such as action was desperately necessary. Although I drew some other conclusions about how to end war from that aborted experience I saw it as a continuation of that struggle at the Pentagon in 1967. And whatever else I never regretted my actions in 1971 and I hope those who were at the Pentagon in 1967 have not either, not in these desperate times.
OPINION | STEPHEN KINZER How to end the endless war
OPINION | STEPHEN KINZER
How to end the endless war
The aftermath of a bombing that destroyed three factories in Sana, Yemen, on Oct. 29, 2016. The Saudi-led coalition of Arab countries has bombed Yemen for more than two years in a war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
WARS THAT the United States is waging around the world undermine our security by turning entire populations against us and diverting our attention and resources away from urgent needs at home. No, the opposite is true: the United States faces serious threats, and can only protect itself by confronting them wherever they emerge. This debate has divided Americans for more than a century. Congress may soon have a rare opportunity to take one side or the other.
The battleground is Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East. For nearly three years, Yemen has been under relentless attack from the region’s richest country, Saudi Arabia. Saudi bombing has created what the United Nations calls “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” More than half the population is hungry. Cholera is raging and may afflict 1 million people by the end of this year. A child dies from preventable causes every ten minutes. Saudi forces have blockaded Yemen’s main port, so almost no humanitarian aid can reach the victims.
This war could not proceed without American help. Missiles and bombs raining down on Yemen are made in the United States. American intelligence officers help Saudi pilots pick targets to attack. Most important, American tanker planes refuel Saudi fighter jets in flight, allowing them to carry out many more raids than they could if they had to return regularly to their bases. At the UN, American diplomats work to water down condemnations of Saudi Arabia, and to block investigation of possible war crimes.
Outrage at the American role in this war has led several members of Congress to propose a resolution that would pull the country out of “unauthorized hostilities” in Yemen. If they can force a vote, it may come in the first days of November. This will give Congress a chance to decide what role Washington should play in Yemen, in the multi-front Middle East War that we have been fighting since 1980, and in the world.
The resolution to pull US forces out of the Yemen war has bipartisan support, but so does the war itself. President Obama made the decision to plunge in, and President Trump has continued his policy. Both decided that the United States had to stand by its traditional ally, Saudi Arabia. Supporters of the war also make other arguments. They point out that forces we are helping to bomb in Yemen are supported by Iran, which we consider an enemy. Victory for those forces might be counted as a strategic loss for the United States. It could allow Yemen to become a base from which Saudi Arabia itself might be subverted. American involvement in this war is also a symbol that Washington stands by its allies and will use all means to crush terrorists in the Middle East.
The upcoming vote — if House leaders let it happen — will be about far more than Yemen. It is a test of whether Congress will continue allowing presidents to make decisions that push the United States into war, or whether it will awaken from its constitutional coma and assert its own right to do so. More than 200 years ago, when President Thomas Jefferson asked for authorization to send warships to fight pirates in North Africa, he said presidents are “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.” Does that principle still apply, or does today’s rapidly changing “threat matrix” mean that Congress should stay out of the business of war? This question lies behind the upcoming congressional vote on Yemen.
So does an even larger one: What is the proper role for the United States in the post-Cold War world? Members of Congress instinctively shy away from contemplating such grand matters. The proposal they are now considering, which bears the unlovely name “House Concurrent Resolution 81,” forces them to do so. Some may hesitate to vote for it out of fear that they will be seen as weak in the face of terrorism, and that voters will punish them. Their fear is justified. America is a warlike state in which the military is revered and calling for peace is politically dangerous. As in any country, criticizing a war while it is underway strikes some as bordering on treason.
The argument on the other side is at least as potent. It is not simply that we are abetting the slaughter of Yemeni innocents, or that our Middle East wars are strategically unwise. Supporters of H.Con.Res. 81, as it is called in Washington, want to change the direction of not simply American foreign policy, but the United States itself. Propositions of that magnitude naturally frighten politicians.
War in Yemen has been bad for all parties, with the single exception of the American arms makerswho supply the weaponry. Suddenly the proverbial silver lining is visible. This war gives members of Congress the chance to make a decisive choice. The vote on this resolution will be the political equivalent of the 2002 Senate vote authorizing war in Iraq. That vote reshaped history. Hillary Clinton’s support for the war resolution made her a pariah for one segment of the electorate, and contributed to her defeat in the 2008 election. The vote on H.Con.Res. 81 may have a similar effect. Any member of Congress who runs for president in 2020 will be judged in part by his or her choice in the coming days.
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Saturday, October 28, 2017
In Honor Of The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"- The Film- A Guest Review
In Honor Of The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"- The Film- A Guest Review
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Sunday Globe article, dated September 26, 2010, concerning a review of Howl, a film adaptation of Allen Ginsberg's famous poem.
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/09/26/howl_marches_to_the_beat_of_ginsbergs_drummer/
Markin comment:
Needless to say this little cinematic effort to put the sense of Allen Ginsberg’s seminal modernist poem, Howl, on the screen is more than welcome in this space. As I have repeatedly emphasized on previous occasions any poem that starts of like this one is going to get my attention and keep it every time:
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night . . .’’
I have also of late made note of the influence of the “beats” in my own youthful political and social development. A prima facie case can be made by me, and has recently in this space, that Ginsberg’s Howl is his search for the blue-pink great American West night that animated my youth and that I have been ranting on about.
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Sunday Globe article, dated September 26, 2010, concerning a review of Howl, a film adaptation of Allen Ginsberg's famous poem.
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/09/26/howl_marches_to_the_beat_of_ginsbergs_drummer/
Markin comment:
Needless to say this little cinematic effort to put the sense of Allen Ginsberg’s seminal modernist poem, Howl, on the screen is more than welcome in this space. As I have repeatedly emphasized on previous occasions any poem that starts of like this one is going to get my attention and keep it every time:
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night . . .’’
I have also of late made note of the influence of the “beats” in my own youthful political and social development. A prima facie case can be made by me, and has recently in this space, that Ginsberg’s Howl is his search for the blue-pink great American West night that animated my youth and that I have been ranting on about.
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