Sunday, November 12, 2017

Independence Now! Catalan Masses Defy Spanish State Policía Nacional, Guardia Civil Out of Catalonia! For a Catalan Workers Republic!

Workers Vanguard No. 1119
6 October 2017
Independence Now!
Catalan Masses Defy Spanish State
Policía Nacional, Guardia Civil Out of Catalonia!
For a Catalan Workers Republic!
OCTOBER 3—Two days ago, the Spanish state unleashed massive repression aimed at preventing an independence referendum in Catalonia. Over two million people defied the savage police mobilization to cast their ballots, and 90 percent voted in favor of an independent republic in Catalonia.
The Castilian rulers of the capitalist Spanish state will brook no opposition to the sacrosanct unity of the Spanish prison house of peoples, which denies the right of self-determination to the Catalan, Basque and Galician nations. The state of siege imposed by Madrid is a powerful confirmation that the national oppression of Catalans—and of the Basques—cannot end short of independence. Autonomy is a fraud—Madrid retains the whip hand. The only principled position for revolutionary Marxists is to demand the immediate independence of these nations and to rally the workers of Spain and Europe to this struggle.
In the lead-up to the vote, the Castilian chauvinists who rule the country from Madrid declared the referendum illegal, with the full backing of the European Union. Thousands of Policía Nacional (National Police) and paramilitary Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) cops were sent to suppress any move toward self-determination by the oppressed Catalan people. The Catalan government’s funds were seized, many of its leaders arrested and offices raided. Millions of ballots, posters and official ballot boxes were confiscated. Tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets are threatened with sedition charges. Hundreds of websites promoting the referendum were taken down by the Spanish authorities, including those of the Catalan government. Anyone deemed responsible for conducting the referendum is facing jail time and massive fines.
Thousands occupied schools overnight and massed before dawn to ensure the referendum went ahead. As the polls opened, riot cops smashed their way into polling stations, beating voters, dragging them out into the street and seizing ballot boxes. People outside were hit with rubber bullets, tear gas and police clubs. Nearly 900 people were injured.
Despite the police terror tactics, the Catalan people remain unbowed. As we go to press, a “national stoppage” called by the Catalan government, business associations and unions to protest the repression has brought Catalonia to a halt. It is urgent for the working class in Catalonia and throughout Spain to rally in defense of Catalan national rights. Working people throughout Spain must demand: Drop all charges against independentistes! Guardia Civil and Policía Nacional out of Catalonia!
The brutality unleashed by the Spanish government against the people of Catalonia is reminiscent of the long years of the Franco dictatorship. The Catalans and the republican Basques played a vanguard role in the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s. But the triumph of counterrevolution in 1939 under Generalissimo Francisco Franco resulted in decades of bloody repression of the working class and of the Catalan and Basque nations. Thus, after Franco died in 1975, the struggles of the oppressed nations were mainly expressed along national lines, in contrast to the 1930s, when the working classes of these same nations fought directly for power.
Spain’s right-wing governing Partido Popular (Popular Party) is descended from the Franco regime. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declares that the Catalan independence referendum violated the 1978 Spanish constitution. Maintaining the unity of the Spanish state is central to the chauvinist, anti-democratic constitution of 1978, which established the monarchy as bonapartist overlord. The social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and Stalinist Partido Comunista de España (PCE, now buried in Izquierda Unida) criminally supported the establishment of this reactionary constitution while mouthing platitudes about “self-determination.” To maintain the “indivisibility” of Spain, bloody police-state repression has long been used against militant fighters for Basque independence, including by PSOE governments.
Tens of thousands have rallied in Euskal Herria (Basque Country) in support of the Catalan referendum, and the Basque independence movement has been given a boost by the developments in Catalonia. The Basque and Catalan nations, each of which straddles the border between France and Spain, are oppressed by both these capitalist states. Solidarity protests have also taken place in the Catalan and Basque regions of France.
As we wrote in the document of the ICL’s most recent International Conference, “The fate of the provinces forcibly retained within France strongly depends on what will happen on the Spanish side of the border. We call for the independence of the Basque Country and Catalonia, in the North and the South” (“The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 65, Summer 2017).
Workers Must Fight for National Liberation
The struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nations can be a powerful motor force for revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against the Spanish capitalist order. But the central leadership of the countrywide trade-union federations, headquartered in Madrid, is imbued with the putrid anti-Basque and anti-Catalan chauvinism of its own capitalist rulers. Thus, the day after the Catalan people voted for independence, the national leaderships of the two largest trade-union confederations in Spain, the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), issued a statement opposing any “Unilateral Declaration of Independence.” They wrote: “We do not endorse that position nor that political strategy.”
Such chauvinism is not only an obstacle to the struggle for liberation of the oppressed nationalities, but also undermines struggle by all workers in the Spanish prison house of peoples against their own capitalist exploiters. The Madrid government’s offensive against Catalonia has emboldened the Spanish fascists, who have held demonstrations under the call “Catalonia is Spain.” These forces represent a deadly threat to all workers, immigrants and oppressed minorities in Spain, and the working class must mobilize to stop them.
In Catalonia in recent weeks, hundreds of thousands have defied the Castilian rulers, their constitution, courts and cops—the so-called democratic order. Secondary and university students went on strike, while farmers drove their tractors into the cities and formed blockades to protect voters. But most significant were the actions carried out by unions in defense of the referendum. The port workers in Barcelona and Tarragona refused to service the ships being used to accommodate the Policía Nacional and Guardia Civil. The firefighters union also took action, forming security cordons around voting sites.
The working class has enormous potential social power that must be marshalled in support of the struggle for independence. It is absolutely necessary to defend Catalonia’s bourgeois pro-independence leaders against the repression from Madrid. However, workers must be politically independent from these capitalist politicians and their parties. These include not only the bourgeois nationalists of the Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català (PDeCAT) and of the Esquerra Republicana (ERC), but also the left nationalists of the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP). Although claiming to be socialist, the CUP is a petty-bourgeois party that has propped up the bourgeois government of PDeCAT and the ERC in the Generalitat (Catalan parliament).
For the Catalan bourgeoisie, independence means being able to rule over those whom they exploit for profit. They will deploy their own forces of capitalist repression, such as the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police), against the working class. It would be suicidal for the proletariat and oppressed to rely on the Catalan bourgeoisie in the fight for national liberation. For a Catalan workers republic!
The way forward was shown by the Bolshevik Party in Russia, which won the oppressed nationalities to its banner by championing the right of national self-determination. As Leon Trotsky, leader together with V.I. Lenin of the proletarian 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, wrote:
“In order to achieve liberation and a cultural lift, the oppressed nationalities were compelled to link their fate with that of the working class. And for this they had to free themselves from the leadership of their own bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties—they had to make a long spurt forward, that is, on the road of historic development.”
— The History of the Russian Revolution (1932)
Down With the Imperialist EU!
The Catalan bourgeois nationalists have long looked to the European Union (EU) for their salvation. Following the referendum, Catalan government leader Carles Puigdemont declared: “I must appeal directly to Europe.... The European Union can no longer continue looking the other way.” In response, the European Commission made the EU’s position clear: “Yesterday’s vote in Catalonia was not legal.” It went on to reiterate that “this is an internal matter for Spain that has to be dealt with in line with the constitutional order of Spain.”
The EU is determined to keep the current European borders intact, fearful that the breakup of Spain or any other member state could bring down the whole EU house of cards. As Marxists, we are opposed on principle to the EU, which is a reactionary consortium of capitalist countries. The EU aims to increase profits by squeezing workers throughout Europe, while its dominant members—Germany and, to a lesser extent, France—use it to further subordinate the weaker European countries. Our opposition to the EU is proletarian internationalist. We fight for workers revolutions throughout the continent, culminating in a voluntary Socialist United States of Europe.
Following the global financial crisis of 2008, the EU dictated vicious austerity to Spain, while having the common euro currency deprived Spain of the option of devaluing its currency to alleviate the crisis. The then-PSOE government in Madrid willingly enforced the EU’s austerity measures. For their part, the Catalan nationalists in the Generalitat also administered brutal austerity against workers and the oppressed.
The EU has also pushed union-busting across Europe. In 2014, the EU’s Court of Justice decreed that the Spanish port unions are in violation of EU rules on “free enterprise.” The Rajoy government issued a decree to force compliance with the EU rules. In response, thousands of port workers throughout Spain, including in Catalonia and the Basque Country, waged a series of strikes earlier this year against these attempts to smash their union.
Reformist Left: Wedded to the Bourgeois Order
Sundry reformists in Spain have for years opposed independence for Catalonia, while pretending to fight for self-determination. The Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras (CRT), affiliated to the neo-Morenoite Trotskyist Fraction-Fourth International, vociferously claimed to defend the “right to decide” in the referendum while openly opposing Catalan independence. They wrote: “We don’t call for a Yes vote because we are neither independentistas nor do we share the republican and constitutional process proposed by Junts pel Sí [bourgeois-nationalist parliamentary coalition] and the CUP” (izquierdadiario.es, 27 September).
The Izquierda Revolucionaria/Esquerra Revolucionària (IR/ER) of Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) likewise trumpeted, “The Catalan people have the right to decide!” but were careful to assure chauvinist opponents of independence that “anyone who does not support independence has the clear choice not to vote for it.” Then, on the day before millions voted for an independent Catalan republic...these consummate opportunists came out for independence.
The Taaffeites spent years inside the social-democratic PSOE and fully imbibed its national chauvinism. As recently as 2014, the IR/ER explicitly opposed independence in a pamphlet titled ¡Por el derecho a la autodeterminación, por el socialismo! (For the Right of Self-Determination, for Socialism!): “The task of the workers movement, there as here, in Euskal Herria and Catalunya, in the Spanish state as a whole and in Europe, is not to build new states and erect new borders, but to build socialism on a global scale.”
The breakup of the Castilian-chauvinist Spanish state, with its monarchy and Francoist nostalgists, would represent an enormous step forward for the struggles of all working people in Spain against the capitalist rulers. The struggle for national liberation of Catalonia and the Basque Country is integrally linked to the fight to overthrow capitalist rule throughout Spain and France. What is needed to lead the workers and oppressed in this fight are Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard parties, national sections of a reforged Fourth International. Down with the Spanish monarchy! For workers republics!
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You Ain’t In Paris Anymore-Kate Winslet’s “The Dressmaker” (2015)-A Film Review

You Ain’t In Paris Anymore-Kate Winslet’s “The Dressmaker” (2015)-A Film Review




DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley   

The Dressmaker, starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hensworth, 2015   

This is a first at least according to my boss Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon. The first being in this case reviewing a film like the one here, The Dressmaker, produced by an on-line operation, a streaming affair, Amazon the giant merchandise mart. Although Sandy (and film critic emeritus Sam Lowell) have shied away from reviewing such productions these operations probably are a fair representation of where the film industry might very well be heading since Netflix and others have also entered the fray.

Taking that idea into consideration I must say I was impressed by the production values and the acting, especially of the versatile Kate Winslet last seen in this space according to Sam in a review of Titanic although maybe his memory is not what it used to be since that was many moons ago and she has performed in many films between times so he must have reviewed something more current previously. This is a quirky film no question set in the Outback of Australia apparently the new Wild West of film-dom (another film Australia with Nicole Kidman also showing that tendency). What I don’t get though is why in the blubs about film consider this venture a comedy despite some marginal (and again quirky) moments.

Let me explain. Myrtle, Ms. Winslet’s role, returned home to that Outback after making a name for herself as a dressmaker (hence the appropriately named title) in the high-end fashion industry, okay, okay haute couture in Paris, that is in France not Texas. The at first murky reasons for her return after having been unceremoniously sent away from the town after she allegedly had murdered a fellow student who was tormenting her are what formally drives the plot. She ostensibly returned to take care of her ailing and seemingly unstable mother, Molly played by Judy Davis, and to try to figure out what actually happened back at that incident. (That taking care of “unstable” mother who as the film proceeds gets very, very stable and wise another example of film’s ability to raise the dead.)  And discover whether she is cursed by that event. Or should seek righteous revenge for being displaced out of spite since she was illegitimate and her un-acknowledging local bigwig father had been instrumental in sending her away.         
              
Of course as a professional dressmaker (she only brought one piece of luggage and a sewing machine home) Myrtle or rather Tilly as she preferred to be called was able to gain some cache in town by both wearing high fashion and making such for the braver women of the town. Still the past held her back. Held her back even when handsome Johnny Teddy, played Liam Hensworth, who really was something out of a New Age thoughtful male fantasy despite the 1950s feel of the film, started courting her and helping her retrace her steps to that dark past. And his work paid off as she is made to realize that that so-called murder was actually the tormenting boy killing himself in the act of physically abusing her. That the good part.


That said here is where the thing gets kind of mixed up in the genre department despite some off-beat funny moments. Gallant Teddy after Tilly and he became lovers dies in a freak grain elevator accident. Her “father” is murdered by his unstable wife after Tilly tells her what was what about her son’s so-called murder. In the final scenes Tilly after seeking and gaining revenge at the professional level gains final revenge by burning the town down. You figure out the genre and weird twists but don’t blame the fine performances by Ms. Winslet and Ms. Davis.    
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A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Website

A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Website 

 A link below to link to the Steve Lendman website 

http://stephenlendman.org/

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Over the years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog.  The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left from, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies. 

I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog then as now was like a breath of fresh air.
A Jackman disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 
An additional Jackman comment (Fall 2014):

The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still emerged in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference  (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank). 


Of course  I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion." on the question of the idea of depending on bourgeois society to reform itself. On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work.                  
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The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left

The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   


Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Frank Jackman comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from the days that I now call the “Generation Of ‘68,” we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists, mainly the shattered remnants of the government- hounded spy-infested Moscow-loyal American Communist Party still enthrall to Stalin and his progeny and still hoping that a few liberal friends would raise cash for defense funds and Democratic Party hacks, the Socialist Workers Party long associated with the name of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky but just then driving us crazy with a uni-linear strategy of building bigger and better mass peaceful anti-war rallies that even New Jersey housewives could join, and the moribund remnant of Social Democracy forever warning against the perfidious Communists and leading all down the garden path of the big tent  Democratic Party, tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics.  (That “generation of ’68 being no arbitrary designation with 1968 being a watershed year for lots of things from Tet in Vietnam bringing home the reality of the lost war to the American bourgeois political upheavals that led to Chicago hell in the summer and the May events in Paris which showed the limits of a student-based vision without other socially more weighty allies of the "newer world" we sought.)

Those scorned old leftists, mainly like I said old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on who survived the 1950s red scare or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who survived the red scare and the Stalinists had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us. Yes, we young stalwart in-your-face- rebels were going to re-invent the world we had not made and had no say in making needed no old fogies to put a damper on our efforts. See we were going to re-invent that world without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the hard-edged Prometheus-tangled rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads the minute the American government felt the least bit threatened. (Chicago 1968, Kent State 1970 and for me personally May Day 1971 when we without anywhere near adequate forces or much of a strategy were going to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war stand as signposts to those failures.) Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going, had anything to teach us outside of relating their personal experiences and maybe keeping away from what were clearly ultra-leftist weird ideas about strategy but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists.

Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels out in the means streets to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time New Left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s young left-wing militants.
***************
A Frank Jackman comment (2014):

Recently I wrote a short piece in a left-wing political blog centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the active left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a few years back, the continuing failed efforts to stop the incessant American war machine, and the lack of serious and righteous response to the beating that the working classes and oppressed in this country (and internationally) have taken from the ruling class and their hangers-on a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radicals and revolutionaries that I had run into in the various Occupy campsites and had talked to on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses.

I noted there, and the point is germane here as I try to place the remnant of old New Left represented by the contributors in The Rag Blog in perspective, that is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory which I mentioned in the article still holds true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working-class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

That said I have also made a note that some of theories from the old days, now being re-tread by some of the old New Left denizens of this blog as if nothing had changed since the 1960s,  made me think that making the revolution the old-fashioned Marxist working class way is the beginning of wisdom. In the interest of full disclosure though back in the day I was as likely as anybody to adhere to all kinds of new theories (mainly because the old theories being old must be irrelevant, a notion that was widespread then) but life, political life, itself has already made its judgments on the worth of those theories for pulling humankind ahead. The class struggle exists, although in a very one-sided manner right now, one-sided on their side not ours, and any theory, any plan worth its salt, worth the righteous oppressed rising up against it should reflect that and at its core the teachings of Marx and his progeny still make sense.   

A Jackman disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out, more times than I care to mention including my own behavior, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 


Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 
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Saturday, November 11, 2017

Be-Bop, Be-Bop Daddy-In Honor Of The Centennial Of The Birth Of The Mad Monk- Thelonious Monk

Be-Bop, Be-Bop Daddy-In Honor Of The Centennial Of The Birth Of The Mad Monk- Thelonious Monk   







By Zack James

No question I was (and still am on nostalgia late nights) a child of rock and roll and while I was just a shade too young to appreciate what was driving my older brothers and sisters to blow their socks off screaming about the new dispensation brought forth by Carl, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy and a fistful of other (and earlier influences like Big Joe Turner, Warren Smith, Smiley Jackson) I was washed clean in the afterglow of that time. Then the music died, got stale for a time and I, along with a billion other lost tween and teen souls, was looking for something to take the pain away from having to listen to Conway Twitty, Fabian, and Bobby Dee and Sandra Dee(I won’t even get into the beef I have with those guys who “stole” the hearts of the very girls I was interested in who would not give me a tumble since I was not their kind of “cute”). Later before the rock revival of the 1960s-the British Invasion for one thing I feasted on the folk minute.

But that was later. In between those times during the drought I got “hip” to jazz, to the cool ass max daddy of cooled-off jazz not the stuff that my parents were crazy for-you know Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey, the Duke, the Count, the Big Earl beautiful Fatah Hines (I would appreciate those pioneers a little late-about fifty years late). What caught my ear one night when I was flipping the dial on my transistor radio (look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t know what that life-saver was) and I caught a few strands of a piece on Bill Marlowe’s Be-Bop Jazz Hour (it was really two hours but hour probably sounded better in the show’s title). After that piece was over, really after several pieces were completed since the show unlike rock and roll shows was not inundated with commercials after every song Bill mentioned that those pieces had been performed by a guy he called the Mad Monk. Mentioned Thelonious Monk in a loving awestruck way as a max daddy of cool, very cool, maybe ice cold jazz. This I could listen to. Moreover the whole show was filled with cool jazz including guys like Charley Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charley Christian, the Prez, sweet Billy Holiday when she blasted outside the big band sound.


Get this though the real hook was that some guys like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burrows and a bunch of sidekicks were setting the cool ass jazz to poetry, to “beat” poetry that I was beginning to hear about. Started talking in clipped voices about there being new sheriffs in town-about the time of the hipsters come down to earth- that the thaw was on and that you had better get on board and some of us did-did catch the tail end of beat fever. But you cannot understand “beat”  without paying dues to guys like the Monk who was born a hundred years ago this year. Could not understand “beat” if you didn’t “dig” the Monk on the piano searching for that high white note to blow the world out into the China seas. Thanks-brother.              
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From Veterans For Peace-U.S. People's Treaty with North Korea

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From Veterans For Peace On November 11th-Armistice Day

From Veterans For Peace On November 11th-Armistice Day   

Armistice Day

Veterans For Peace calls on all members and all peace-loving people to take a stand for peace this Armistice (aka Veterans Day), Saturday November 11. We call for nationally coordinated local actions to demand diplomacy not war with North Korea, and the abolition of nuclear weapons and war. Veterans For Peace joins with the wider peace movement for actions before and after November 11th.   
In 2017, ninety-nine years after the end of  World War I, “the war to end war”, the world finds itself on the brink of a nuclear war, again. The threat of a horrific nuclear exchange is possibly higher than it has ever been. The President of the United States Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - DPRK), going so far as to say, while speaking to the U.N., that the U.S. will “totally destroy” the country. North Korea has also caused great alarm with its own threats, while testing long-range missiles and nuclear bombs. Twitter confrontations and saber rattling have only served to escalate tensions.
The road to war is a slippery slope on which one misstep can lead to the beginning of catastrophic war. Even the use of conventional weapons would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Millions will die if there is a nuclear exchange. Such horrific acts of violence can spread like a virus and easily lead to further global instability and a new world war. The people of North and South Korea should not face the possibility of horrible killings and destruction that they experienced during the 1950-53 period in the Korean War. The people of the world must speak out and act together to demand peace.
Veterans For Peace calls for the observance of November 11 to be in keeping with the holiday’s original intent as Armistice Day, to be “a day dedicated to the cause of world peace," as it was celebrated at the ending of World War I when the world came together to recognize the need for lasting peace. After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand November 11 as Veterans Day. Honoring the warriors quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day, as a result, has been flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
This year with a rise of hate and fear around the world it is as urgent as ever to ring the bells of peace. We in the U.S. must press our government to end reckless rhetoric and military interventions that endanger the entire world.
Instead of celebrating militarism, we want to celebrate peace and all of humanity. We demand an end to all forms of hate, patriarchy and white supremacy and we call for unity, fair treatment under the law and equality for all. We call for a tearing down of walls between borders and people. We call for an end to all hostilities at home and around the globe.
Today the U.S. has a president who says diplomacy with North Korea is a waste of time. Diplomacy is in fact the only hope, no matter the cost. War is the immoral and tragic waste. The world has said it before and is saying it again now.  NO to WAR!
If you need tabling materials or VFP promo items for Armistice Day, please e-mail casey@veteransforpeace.org! No matter what action you decide to take, please let us know so we can promote the work that you're doing.

Take Action - Here are some ideas! Let us know what you have planned here!

  • Join together with others for local actions (peace march, rally, vigils) to call for No War on North Korea. March in the Veterans Day Parade with signs calling for “No More Korean War; From Armistice to Peace Treaty with N. Korea; End the Korean War Now; Yes to Talks, No to Bombings, etc.
  • Partner with local peace groups to hold an event (forum, film showing, etc.) in honor of Armistice Day.
  • Ring bells at 11am on November 11th, as was done at the end of World War One. (Approach churches and ask them to ring bells at 11am on November 11th)
  • Share Your Vision of Peace! Submit a 10–20 second video illustrating your vision of peace. When you create your video, please state your name and city/state and complete the following sentence: "As a veteran, I believe peace is possible when _______________."
  • Take action on Twitter! Use these sample tweets:
    • I will be celebrating #VeteransDay as a day dedicated to peace #ArmisticeDay @VFPNational
    • Veterans will ring 11 bells this year to remember #ArmisticeDay, a day of #Peace @VFPNational  
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As The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I Continues (Remember The War To End All Wars) ... Some Remembrances

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I Continues  (Remember The War To End All Wars) ... Some Remembrances





From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  


The events leading up to World War I from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Also decisive although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experience in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of progressive capitalism, and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as the sinkhole trenches of Europe are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war) and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” and ran for president in 1920 out of his jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                   


Over the next period as we continue the last year of the long night of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.      
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