From The Smedley Butler Brigade-Veterans For Peace-"Racketeers For Peace"

From The Smedley Butler Brigade-Veterans For Peace-"Racketeers For Peace" 


The "'racketeer" reference is from a statement by General Smedley Butler who after a lifetime of military service as a Marine from grunt to the highest levels of generalship concluded that "war is a racket"-you can find the rest of his statement with those words pominently in it at Wikipedia by Googling his name. 

                 RACKETEERS  FOR  PEACE

For Sev, Pat and Comrades

                      November 16, 2017

                                    I

Since Cain killed Abel countless years ago,

The world has suffered violence and war

As personal and national ego

Push us to murder and make fields of gore.

A second fundamental motive--fear,

Convinces us to fight in self-defense

When great, imagined menaces appear

To threaten us, with or without good evidence.

Demonic greed will often overrule

God-given reason, urge men to ignore

The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule,

Especially with assists from Emperor.

Patriotism is a shibboleth

That leads poor sheep to slaughterhouse of war,

Whose wealthy stockholders, merchants of death,

Gain gold beyond the dreams of Caesar's whore.

Then countless brave benighted mothers' sons

And fathers' precious daughters fight and die,

Misguided myrmidons and amazons,

Whose needless deaths, most nations glorify.

Poor troops trapped in the labyrinth of war

May relish their adventure for a time,

Until they meet the raging Minotaur

Who murders even warriors in their prime.

That slaughterhouse, that labyrinth, impact

Millions of citizens, both near and far,

Who never plot or fear nor feel attacked

And want no part of useless, senseless war,

But suffer, nonetheless, the insane rage

That shatters lives and cities when it comes,

As mindless armies and armadas wage

War--paragon of pandemoniums.

                                  II

"War is a racket," Smedley Butler said:

"A few men profit while the many pay."

Their costs of business are the masses dead,

Maimed, grieving, homeless--worse in every way.

If General Butler could be here tonight,

He'd recognize and decorate his sons:

Veterans for Peace, determined to fight

The fatal folly of more bombs and guns.

We need to raise a racket for release

From deadly, bankrupting racket of war.

I cast my lot with you brave Vets for Peace,

Who've learned the hard way what's worth fighting for.

Two champions of peace for humankind--

Pat Scanlon, indefatigable man,

And Severyn Bruyn, inestimable mind--

Campaign for peace in every way they can.

These Veterans for Peace have gifts of Orpheus

To soothe the savage heart and pacify the mind:

Composer Sev, bold singer Pat, inspire us

To leave the bloody, so-called "arts of war" behind.

We comrades honor them as Racketeers

For Peace--the kind of citizens we need,

Who work to counter manufactured fears,

Defy the deadly enterprise of greed.

We strive with these prime paladins for peace,

Against the misled partisans of war,

To counter warmongers who want to fleece

The flock, and butcher some, to profit more.

We toast their leadership and zeal for peace,

The end of war´s destruction, death and grief.

Let patriotic theft and murder cease;

Unmask "heroic" war--killer and thief.

Congratulations, Sev, and kudos, Pat,

You guys, politically so incorrect!

May all, like you, heed Smedley's caveat:

The curse of war forevermore reject!

You led us in the church and in the streets,

Brave Racketeers for Peace who boldly say:

War victories are actually defeats.

There has to be….   Peace IS the better way!

 ©   Bob Wire 

Dancing Cheek To Cheek- Again-Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire’s “Top Hat” (1935)- A Film Review

Dancing Cheek To Cheek- Again-Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire’s “Top Hat” (1935)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Top Hat, starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, music by Irving Berlin, 1935

No, I will not start this review of what even to me seems like a never-ending series of dance films by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire reminding me of the never-ending Bob Dylan concert tours (and bootleg CD volumes) or the William Powell and Myrna Loy Nick and Nora Charles The Thin Man series going on and on about the superiority of Mr. Astaire’s dancing and grace compared to Mr. Gene Kelly based on the latter’s performance in the Gershwin-etched An American In Paris. Doing so would be merely overkill since once again in this film Mr. Astaire shows what grace, style and athleticism (the one attribute in which Mr. Kelly has an edge over Mr. Astaire) combined looks like when the hammer goes down. My understanding is the film under review Top Hat was one of the ten that this well-known dance pair did together although it seems like I did many more reviews than that already rather large number.

Since the real deal in these Astaire-Rogers pairings is the dancing this review can be mercifully short and sweet. After all nobody has ever accused the screenwriters of these frilly things of writing Oscar-worthy material to back up the dancing and the music by the likes of Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Cole Porter or as here Irving Berlin. Here is the “skinny,” very skinny as my old friend and colleague Sam Lowell is fond of saying. Top Broadway musical showman Jerry, Fred Astaire’s role, is in London to bail out some producer’s musical when along the way he meets, well who else, Dale, played by Ginger Rogers, who seems to be some kind of model for an upscale high society Italian fashion designer. Naturally Jerry goes bug-eyed when he spies Dale and makes his big play. She somewhat guardedly is intrigued by him (after out of nowhere doing a serious pair dance with him out in the park which either meant something was in the water or that the dance indicated in an unspoken way that they were kindred spirits-you figure it out).

   

All well and good although this would be an extremely short film with basically nothing else but dancing and singing if it was left to that. What keeps the thing moving along a bit is a case of mistaken identity. Dale is led to believe that Jerry is the producer who just so happens to be married and therefore nothing but a cad and ne’er-do-well even if he can dance up a storm. Moreover, supposedly married to a good friend of hers. This miscue business takes them eventually to Italy where the thing gets played out and resolved in Jerry’s favor after a few more songs and a few more dances. The dancing by Astaire making obvious that he was the one you could not keep your eyes off of with his moves and not Ms. Rogers. End of story as they go dancing into that good night. See this one mainly for the great dance scene when they go Dancing Cheek to Cheek.

US nuclear arsenal to cost $1.2tn over next 30 years, independent CBO report finds

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/31/us-nuclear-arsenal-cost-cbo-report?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=250448&subid=5509345&CMP=GT_US_collection

US nuclear arsenal to cost $1.2tn over next 30 years, independent CBO report finds

• CBO finds total price tag marks 25% increase from previous estimate
• Nuclear Posture Review under way and expected by end of the year

An intercontinental ballistic missile with a simulated warhead is launched during an operational test at Vandenberg air force base in California in April. Photograph: Pix/Rex/Shutterstock

Julian Borger in Washington

Tuesday 31 October 2017 18.20 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 1 November 2017 16.11 EDT

The cost of the US nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will be over $1.2tn, even before any new weapons ordered by the Trump administration, and is unlikely to be affordable without cuts elsewhere in the defence budget, according to a independent congressional report.

Trump team drawing up fresh plans to bolster US nuclear arsenal

The total price tag marks nearly a 25% increase from previous estimate, taking in the modernisation programme established under the Obama administration, which accounts for $400bn, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found. The costs would peak in the 2020s and the 2030s.

A new Nuclear Posture Review is under way and expected around the end of the year. Trump has repeatedly vowed to bolster the nuclear stockpile, and the defence department is reportedly considering the development of a low-yield warhead for a ballistic missile, and reintroducing a sea-launched cruise missile, among a variety of new options.

The CBO report warns that such new capabilities would increase the total bill for the US arsenal yet further.

“If these plans reach fruition, it would be the largest nuclear buildup since the Reagan administration. This is not affordable,” said Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear analyst and editor of the book, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940.

“Pursuing nuclear modernization will be challenging in the current environment,” the report said, adding that it would compete with parallel ambitions to upgrade the navy and the air force, and increase the size of the army.

It is the first comprehensive costing of the US nuclear weapons programme. The report offers three approaches for cost reductions to make it affordable. One would keep the programme as is currently planned but delay elements of it, bringing potential savings of 5%.

The second looks at ways of reducing the programme but keeping to the existing ceiling agreed with Russia of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. One variant of that approach examined by the CBO would be to do without one leg of the nuclear “triad”, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and keeping air-launched and sea-launched weapons. That would generate savings of 10%, the report said.

The third approach would incorporate a reduction of the deployed strategic stockpile to 1,000 warheads, a cut the defence department under the Obama administration said could be made without affecting the US nuclear deterrent, which would save 5% to 11% of the total.

“The report blows apart the ‘do everything or do nothing’ false choice repeatedly posited by Pentagon officials,” Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said. “But perhaps the biggest contribution of new CBO nuclear cost study is the evaluation of options to manage and reduce the mammoth price tag.”

Reif added: “Meanwhile, the Trump administration is reportedly considering adding new weapons to the arsenal, which would increase the budget train-wreck odds, and undermine US security.”

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From The Pages Of "Workers World"-After Bay of Pigs U.S. continues failed attempts against Cuban revolution

In Honor of Anniversary Of The July 26^th Movement

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman (2015)

Every leftist, hell, everybody who stands on the democratic principle that each nation has the right to self-determination should cautiously rejoice at the “defrosting” of the long-time diplomatic relations between the American imperial behemoth and the island of Cuba (and the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five in the bargain). Every leftist militant should understand that each non-capitalist like Cuba going back to the establishment of the now defunct Soviet Union has had the right (maybe until we win our socialist future the duty) to make whatever advantageous agreements they can with the capitalist world. That despite whatever disagreements we have with the political regimes ruling those non-capitalist states. That is a question for us to work out not the imperialists.

For those who have defended the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959 under whatever political rationale (pro-socialist, right to self-determination, or some other hands off policy) watching on black and white television the rebels entering Havana this day which commemorates the heroic if unsuccessful efforts at Moncada we should affirm our continued defense of the Cuban revolution. Oh yes, and tell the American government to give back Guantanamo while we are at it.   

50 years after Bay of Pigs U.S. continues failed attempts against Cuban revolution

By Teresa Gutierrez
Published Apr 20, 2011 7:55 PM

Fifty years ago, on April 16, 1961, Cuban Commander in Chief Fidel Castro declared the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution.

Beloved around the world to this day, Fidel stated in 1961: “This is what they cannot forgive us ... that we have made a Socialist Revolution right under the nose of the United States. ... Comrades, workers and farmers, this is the Socialist and democratic Revolution of the people, by the people and for the people. And for this Revolution ... we are willing to give our lives.”

It was a momentous development that shook the world. Revolutionaries everywhere triumphed in the victory, and all those in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America who lived wretchedly under the yoke of imperialism felt tremendous possibilities for their own liberation struggles.

It was a historic step forward for workers and oppressed worldwide — one that resonates today.

Fidel’s proclamation was made as Cubans paid their respects to those who had been killed the day before during the U.S. bombing of a Cuban airbase, an attack that was a prelude to the Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) incident.

The Bay of Pigs was a military attempt by the U.S. government to destroy the Cuban Revolution so that imperialism could restore its domination over Cuba. The military attack failed and was a major defeat for imperialism.

Counterrevolutionary efforts continue

U.S. imperialism has not and will never reconcile itself to the building of socialism at its doorstep. Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the U.S. has never stopped its attempts to sabotage and undermine the Revolution. Overtly and covertly, it has carried out countless acts of aggression — including the longest economic and political blockade in U.S. history as well as numerous assassination attempts against Fidel — all aimed at destabilizing and overturning the Revolution.

On March 22 the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations issued a damning press release, announcing that a series of testimonial documentaries recently shown in Cuba revealed current “direct connections of counterrevolutionary individuals in the Island with the U.S.”

The four documentaries — “The Empire’s Pawns,” “Trues and Principles,” “Cyberwar” and “Well Paid Lies” — are a study in counterrevolutionary subterfuge.

The documentaries revealed U.S. plans to introduce illegal communication and spying systems on the island and how the U.S. Agency for International Development serves as a cover for anti-Cuba CIA activities.

USAID, the documentary demonstrated, sets out to “fabricate social leaders ... who try to influence youth and academics.”

The press release states that “in ‘The Empire’s Pawns,’ Moises Rodríguez and Carlos Serpa, who for a long time lived side by side with factions that operate on the Island under direct orders of terrorists who live in the U.S., revealed evidence of how the so-called dissidents or alleged advocates of the human rights in Cuba received money directly from the U.S.”

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which is equivalent to an embassy, was exposed once again as playing a role of sabotage, similar to its role in other countries the U.S. wants to undermine.

For example, Rodríguez explained receiving instructions from U.S. diplomats to plot against the Cuban government. He was also sent to Miami, where he held meetings with infamous terrorists, among them Luis Posada Carriles.

Serpa was instructed by anti-Cuba elements to spread false information about Cuba through Radio Martí and other U.S. media.

In “Trues and Principles,” Dalexis Gonzalez Madruga, a graduate student in telecommunication engineering at the Jose Antonio Echeverria University, showed how he was contacted by U.S. agents to “illegally introduce sophisticated equipment and install a network feasible to transmit directly to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.”

The documentary showed how equipment was hidden in surfing equipment and how major communication advances are used by the U.S., not to help economic and social development, but for destabilizing Cuba.

In “Cyberwar” the creation of cyber-dissidents or cyber-mercenaries, in an attempt to subvert order and create confusion among the Cuban population, was revealed. A website called “Cyber Dissidents on the Web” was created to organize a media campaign to defame Cuba by distorting Cuban reality, attacking socialism and slandering Cuban leaders. Bloggers at the website have all been linked to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Despite an intense, well-orchestrated, constant, unremitting campaign to undermine the Cuban Revolution, U.S. imperialism has failed. It failed in 1961 and it is failing in 2011. The Cuban Revolution stands firm and steadfast not only because of its dedicated and knowing masses and its solid revolutionary leadership, but because of the overwhelming support the Cuban Revolution has earned worldwide.

The masses of the world who face untold misery and hardship cheer the Cuban Revolution, knowing that Cuba is not perfect, but its free education and health care are leaps and bounds ahead of the starvation and death the majority of the oppressed face. “Long live the Cuban Revolution” was the cry in 1961 heard around the world — and it remains today.
**********
Markin comment:

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s, especially those of us who cut our political teeth on defending, under one principle or another (right to national self-determination, socialist solidarity, general anti-imperialist agenda, etc.), the Cuban revolution that we were front row television witnesses to, cherish the memory of the heroic Cuban defenders at the Bay of Pigs. No one cried when the American imperial adventure was foiled and President John Kennedy (whatever else we felt about him then), egg on face, had to take responsibility for the fiasco.

Those of us who continue to adhere to the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist agenda, whatever our differences with the Cuban leadership, today can join in honoring those heroic fighters. Today is also a day to face the hard fact that we have had too few victories against the imperialist behemoth. The imperial defeat at the Bay of Pigs was however our victory. As today’s imperialist activity in Libya, painfully, testifies to those forces, however, have not gotten weaker in the past 50 years. So the lesson for today’s (and future) young militants is to honor our fallen forebears and realize that the beast can be defeated, if you are willing to fight it. Forward! Defend the Cuban Revolution! Defend Libya against the imperialist onslaught!

From North Korea to Grove Hall: Confronting War, Struggling for Peace & Justice

VFP Smedley

11/17/2017 10:18 AM

From North Korea to Grove  Hall:

Confronting War, Struggling  for  Peace & Justice

Respondent: Judith Roderick

Thursday, Dec. 7, 5:30 pm Grove Hall Branch Library 41 Geneva Ave., Dorchester

The Trump Administration is doubling  down on war policies which have developed during the Bush and Obama administrations. We now have inter- national crises in Syria, Korea, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Niger, Palestine and more. The military budget and nuclear weapons spending  are  increasing,  as  is  USmilitary

intervention in Africa. Militarization of the police is affecting Black and other communities at home. In this context, Ajamu Baraka will address the relationship of the Black liberation movement to the struggle for peace.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, which was launched on April 4th of this year, the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Beyond Viet Nam” speech where he came out against the Viet Nam war. Baraka will talk with us about this work and about re-building the anti-war movement in the face of a government which is devoted to “full spectrum dominance”.

An internationally recognized advocate for human rights with roots in the Black Liberation Movement, Baraka was the Green Party's vice presidential candidate in 2016. He was the Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network from 2004 to 2011 and his political analysis has been covered by CNN, BBC, Washington Post, RT, and New York Times. He is a contributing columnist for Black Agenda Report and Counterpunch. Baraka serves on the board of Cooperation Jackson, a solidarity economy project in Jackson, Mississippi, and is working on the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases. Baraka emphasizes that “placing people, planet, and peace before profit has to be not  just a slogan but a political objective that is realized.”

Please arrive at 5:30 for snacks and discussion.  The talk will begin promptly at 6:00 pm.

Transit: Take the Fairmount Line from South Station to Four Corners/Geneva Ave., departing 5:00 or 5:45 (use regular MBTA pass).  Or take 19 bus from Fields Corner station.

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Black Lives Matter Boston Event co sponsored by the Smedleys-VFP

Black lives Boston Event co sponsored by the Smedleys

VFP Smedley

11/21/2017 12:18 PM

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IMAGINE! An Evening of Encouragement. Inspiration. Radical Imagination!

by Black Lives Matter Boston, Union United Methodist Church, The Dignity Project

Description

We have been working. We have been organizing. We have been marching. We have been resisting. We have been fighting back! Now let us come together for a time of refreshing, an evening of soulful, intimate conversation. Encouragement. Inspiration. Radical Imagination! We need it...

Ticketed Event: $35.00

Please consider making an additional donation (purchase an extra ticket) to sponsor another attendee. No one turned away due to funds.

Doors open at 6:30

Date and Time                                        Tickets:    www.eventbrite.com

Tue, November 28, 2017

Location

Union Church

485 Columbus Avenue

Boston, MA 02118

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The 100th Anniversary Year Of The October Bolshevik Revolution In Russia-Lessons Of The Resistance Then

The 100^th Anniversary Year Of The October Bolshevik Revolution In Russia-Lessons Of The Resistance Then 

Workers Vanguard No. 1103	13 January 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN

Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution

(Quote of the Week)

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution, which swept away the capitalist exploiters and landlords and established the working class in power. Key to the success of the Revolution was the Bolshevik Party and its leader V.I. Lenin. January is also the month in which communists honor the “Three Ls”: Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and German Communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who were assassinated on 15 January 1919 at the behest of the German Social Democratic government as part of its suppression of a mass working-class uprising.

What were the advantages of Bolshevism? A clear and thoroughly thought-out revolutionary conception at the beginning of the revolution was held only by Lenin. The Russian cadres of the party were scattered and to a considerable degree bewildered. But the party had authority among the advanced workers. Lenin had great authority with the party cadres. Lenin’s political conception corresponded to the actual development of the revolution and was reinforced by each new event. These advantages worked wonders in a revolutionary situation, that is, in conditions of bitter class struggle. The party quickly aligned its policy to correspond with Lenin’s conception; to correspond, that is, with the actual course of the revolution. Thanks to this, it met with firm support among tens of thousands of advanced workers. Within a few months, by basing itself upon the development of the revolution, the party was able to convince the majority of the workers of the correctness of its slogans. This majority, organized into soviets, was able in its turn to attract the soldiers and peasants.

How can this dynamic, dialectical process be exhausted by a formula of the maturity or immaturity of the proletariat? A colossal factor in the maturity of the Russian proletariat in February or March 1917 was Lenin. He did not fall from the skies. He personified the revolutionary tradition of the working class. For Lenin’s slogans to find their way to the masses, cadres had to exist, even though numerically small at the beginning; the cadres had to have confidence in the leadership, a confidence based on the entire experience of the past. To cancel these elements from one’s calculations is simply to ignore the living revolution, to substitute for it an abstraction, the “relationship of forces”; because the development of the revolution precisely consists of the incessant and rapid change in the relationship of forces under the impact of the changes in the consciousness of the proletariat, the attraction of the backward layers to the advanced, the growing assurance of the class in its own strength. The vital mainspring in this process is the party, just as the vital mainspring in the mechanism of the party is its leadership. The role and the responsibility of the leadership in a revolutionary epoch is colossal.

—Leon Trotsky, “The Class, the Party, and the Leadership,” August 1940, reprinted in The Spanish Revolution (1931-39) (Pathfinder, 1973)