This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
We are extremely disappointed to share yesterday’s ruling of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals which has upheld the indefinite imprisonment of Reality Leigh Winner. Ms. Winner has been jailed without bail since June 6, 2017 for helping expose Russian hacking that targeted US election systems.
"I am beyond heartbroken" shared Winner's mother, Billie Davis-Winner. "The trial, originally scheduled in October 2017 and then reset to March 2018, will once again be reset to a much later date, but as of now we do not have a new setting. There is so much going on with the evidence and discovery and there are a few active appeals not yet ruled on. It's gonna be a long journey."
Winner, a decorated Air Force veteran with no criminal record, who has already served eight months in jail despite being convicted of no crime, and displaying every intention to face the single charge against her in court, will now be jailed for another year, regardless of the jury's eventual verdict.
SUPPORTERS RESPOND
Government transparency advocate Rainey Reitman adds that “Reality Winner is facing an unjust and unconstitutional prosecution under the Espionage Act. This 100 year old law, created to prosecute spies during World War I, isn’t designed to be used on whistleblowers. Under this law, the judge won’t consider her motives or the public benefits of her actions as a whistleblower. It makes it impossible for her to receive a fair trial.”
Jeff Paterson, who managed the successful campaign to free Chelsea Manning, notes that, “By the time Reality’s trial starts, she’ll have spent a full year and half behind bars. Meanwhile the actual Russiagate indicted criminals, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn, haven’t spent a day in jail.”
“Winner’s case has precedent setting implications for whistleblowers trying to do the right thing, press freedom, election suppression, and the government’s escalating war on dissent. Reality took a risk to share something that Americans had a right to know,” Paterson added.
TIMELINE
January 2017 - After serving six years in the Air Force, Winner takes a job as an NSA intelligence contractor.
May 9, 2017 - President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. Winner allegedly finds and prints a classified report entitled, “Russia/Cybersecurity: Main Intelligence Directorate Cyber Actors.”
May 10, 2017 - Trump celebrates with Russian officials in the White House, bragging that he had fired “nut job” Comey in order to end any “Russiagate” investigation.
May 11, 2017 - Winner allegedly sends NSA report to the media outlet “The Intercept.”
May 17, 2017 - Special counsel Robert Mueller appointed to investigate “Russiagate.”
June 5, 2017 - Winner arrested. During interrogation, she allegedly states, “Why do I have this job if I’m just going to sit back and be helpless … I just thought that was the final straw … I felt really hopeless seeing that information contested … Why isn’t this out there? Why can’t this be public?”
US v. WINNER INSIGHT
Contrary to a focus on citizens’ right to know of attacks against election infrastructure, Winner’s Espionage Act charge actually requires the government to prove that the leak itself caused harm rather than exposed it. Joe Whitley, attorney for Reality Winner, recently explained.
"This is not a simple case. 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) -- the charged offense here -- is a notoriously complicated statute that has numerous elements the Government must prove, including ... that the classified intelligence reporting referenced ... constitutes “national defense information” (meaning the Document could actually threaten the national security of the US if disclosed, and that the information in the classified intelligence reporting was “closely held”) and that the Defendant knew the Document contained this type of information." (Case document #203)
Winner has a top notch defense team determined to prove her innocence in court, despite the prosecution’s ongoing campaign to deny her the right to a fair and open trial.
And we are the primary source of fundraising for Winner’s legal defense team as well as leading public education efforts regarding this precedent setting First Amendment vs. Espionage Act case.
SOLIDARITY STEP: Make a donation today in honor of Reality's courage to do the right thing and to support her legal defense. And tell others. BOOST THE SIGNAL!
Can you donate a few hours this month to help? We have a small list of a few well-defined volunteer tasks which we can send you to consider if they match with your interest and skills. Please email us at connect@standwithreality.org
~~~
For complete campaign information and case documents:
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of
’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In Jukebox
Night-With Ben E. King's Spanish Harlem In Mind
There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
It is the special one, it's never seen the sun
It only comes out when the moon is on the run
And all the stars are gleaming
It's growing in the street
Right up through the concrete
But soft and sweet and dreaming
There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
With eyes as black as coal
That looks down in my soul
And starts a fire there and then I lose control
I have to beg your pardon
I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden
I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden
La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)
La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)
*******
Sometimes it is hard to figure out why a certain
memory draws certain other memories out although today, musically, which is
what I want to talk about, just flipping to YouTube and its cross-references
makes that statement more explicable since one is almost automatically
bombarded with about seven million songs with some memory meaning. Meaning
maybe a memory of that first record hop at school, elementary school in the
1950s, just by the reference. Or that first time you noticed that girls were,
well, kind of interesting or at least approachable at some basement family room
“petting” party. (The first “private” time when adults may be hovering around
unseen but when they are persona non grata with the confines of the party room
and a time when lights low or out the first “feels” occurred however innocent
or bewildering for either sex. That basement family room also serving as
fall-out shelter, fully-stocked, if the Russkies decided to blow one by us.)
Better just a little time later, although time seemed then to drag infinitely
by and you tried to hurry it up then, when you started dreaming about that
brunette on television (you can fill in your own color preference) swaying back
and forth provocatively, provocatively in your mind anyway, just for you after
rushing home after school to watch American
Bandstand. Or later when the hormones really kicked in that first night
time junior high school dance with her, the her with the faraway eyes whose
bubble soap (or maybe some “stolen” scent from the top of mother’s dresser)
drove you crazy. Yeah, I like the latter better since that scenario would mean
that she was provocatively trying to drive you crazy with her amateur womanly
wiles. Moving on to that first double-date night down by the seashore watching
the “submarine races” and you copped a “feel” (for those who did not have a
seashore to go down to in order to look for those locally famous submarines at
midnight, sorry, but okay so maybe at a drive-in movie, or that spot out by the
dam or up in the foreboding hills known strictly as a lovers’ lane). Then
before you know it you had graduated high school and the memories got fonder
but faded with time until you got to the 2000s night and you woke up in a sweat
thinking about that girl with the faraway eyes and that damn bubble soap smell
that filled your nostrils (and wondering, wondering did she really have the
cunning to steal that mother’s scent right off the top of her dresser).
Recently I have, seemingly endlessly, gone back
to my early musical roots, my memory roots, in reviewing various commercial
compilations of classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock
‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. That
classic rock designation signifying the “golden age of rock,” the time of some
Les Paul guitar zip rocket 88 Ike Turner, zap finger-snapping the big man
flapping shake, rattle and roll Big Joe Turner, from long side-burned,
sexy-eyed (yeah guys can say that now about guys without blushing), sneering
one night of sin hunger Elvis, from sweet little sixteen Mister’s girl hunger
telling Beethoven his time had passed Chuck Berry, from the back of a flatbed
truck double girl hunger high school
confidential Jerry Lee, the time of the original jail break-out and not the
smoother later patched-up stuff-ouch!. While time and ear have eroded
the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes (and lesser singers like blueberry hill
Fats and he/she good golly Little Richard) it still seems obvious that those
years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my
generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
We had our own little world, or as some hip
sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own
sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about such notable
phenomena as the pre-chain convenience store mom and pop corner variety store
corner boy hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette
(naturally unfiltered, not some “faggy” (yeah, that’s what we said then and
what did we know about such things, such same-sex things that were whispered
then and are now laughingly out in the open, anyway) Kents, Winstons or
Marboros but real coffin nails Luckies, Camels, or Pall Malls) hanging from the
sullen lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys
thing. Complete with foxy tight cashmere-sweaterd girls hanging off every bump
and grind of that twisted machine. And, of course, about the pizza parlor, you
name it House of Pizza, Marios’s, Mama Mia’s,
juke-box coin-devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that
night, hold the onions on that order please as I might get lucky tonight,
dreamy girl coming in the door thing. Another of course, the soda fountain,
and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae,
please. Ditto for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we
parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in
the door, save the last dance for me thing (and where Mister Ben E. King at
some point was “walking with the king” to get us close on his la la la’s in
Spanish Harlem.
Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for
a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid
messenger feels the need to go back again and take a little different look at
that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the early 1960s.
Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days.
Bowling alleys, drugstores, pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and as had
been shown in the cover art on one of that rock and roll series CDs I reviewed
also at the daytime beach. While boy or girl watching. Basically any place
where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows
came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.
A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or
that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show
off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted
your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on that daytime
beach scene, for example, showed a dreamy girl waiting for her platters (vinyl
records, okay, check on it) to work their way up the mechanism that took them
from the stack and laid them out on the player. And tee-shirted sullen guy
(could have been you, right?) just hanging around the machine waiting for just
such a well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days,
and still do if anybody is asking), maybe chatting idly was worth at least a
date or, more often, a telephone number to call. Not after nine at night though
or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Jesus.
But lucky guy, maybe.
But here is where the real skill came in, and
where that white-tee-shirted guy on the cover seemed to be clueless. Just
hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day
waiting on a twist (one of about a dozen slang words for girl in our old
working-class neighborhood usually made up by or learned from corner boy leader
Frankie Riley who had a thing for old time detective novels and films where he
would pick them up) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five
selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking,
usually to girlfriends, as she made those selections. Usually the first couple
were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then
she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.
Then you made your move-“Have you heard Spanish
Harlem. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you
right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But
see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and
Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking
to... for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh,
jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very
likely to hear some of the following songs. Here’s the list and there are some
stick-outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” just mentioned above on
tough nights):
1)My
Boyfriend's Back-The Angels:it seemed that every good-looking girl had some
hidden boyfriend stashed away for just that occasion when you got too close and
she sprung the hurting news on you without grace, worse scorned you for
thinking that you had a chance beyond “being friends” when everybody, everybody
who counted, knew she had been going with Joe College from State U who had
graduated from high school a couple of years before forever. Although if you
thought about it for a minute the real problem had been the break-down in your
“intelligence” network, you know, your Monday morning before school boys’ lav
info session where you gathered the scoop on the weekend doing and discreetly
asked around about that Laura something, the one who you had been eyeing in
study for about a week before you made your big move and got your hopes up. Or at least had gotten “the word” from one of
your corner boys, maybe Josh, maybe Frankie, who were sworn to not leave you in
the lurch on such matters and make you the laughing stock of subsequent Monday
morning boys’ lav talkfests about the weekend doings. No, you had to jump in
with both feet, hell, both feet and both hands, on the basis of a furtive
glance that she threw you way in the corridor one day. Hadn’t you learned by
then that those subtle furtive glances were thrown at every guy with anything
going for him by the Lauras of this wicken old teen world. Join the club
brother, join the club.
2)Nadine (Is It You?)-Chuck Berry: anything
by Chuck by definition in the theme and tenor of his lyric, or by the various
hot licks he laid down on his guitar spoke of sex, back seat of the car sex
which was just fine then when you were young and agile. Young and agile and if
the moment was right and you had some Chuck playing on the car radio permanently
tuned to WMEX down by the seashore (or wherever that local lovers’ lane was far
from prying adult eyes and far from children glares) and you needed every inch
and ounce of young and agile in that damn crowded backseat that somebody, some
S.O.B car manufacturer though was saving profits by making as small as possible
you still managed to do what you, and she (or he for she or whatever
combinations pass these days in the love circle) started out to do because
otherwise why were you down by that seaside far from prying eyes.
3)Spanish Harlem-Ben E. King:I
have already pointed out the central importance of this song come late night
school dance night when you want that she you were eyeing all evening to slow
dance with you on that last chance to dance, and you were looking for that one
moment when you could put your hands down her back toward her ass and she
didn’t brush you off, didn’t seem to mind at all in that dark hall moment.
Thanks, Brother King.
4) Come & Get These Memories-Martha and the
Vandellas: well, it is not dancing in the streets but Martha and the girls had
that Motown sound down. That sound that got everybody up and dancing just to be
dancing, dancing close or dancing apart but just dancing. A big relief for bad
dancers and semi-wallflower guys like me. The real full-time wallflowers that
hugged the gym walls like they were a life-saver thrown in the sea just kept to
their walls as they always did but the rest of us decided to live a little
dangerously, and we survived.
5) Little Latin Lupe Lu- The Righteous
Brothers: every guy, at least every guy I knew, wondered about that Latin girl
thing from these guys like maybe we missed something, like maybe there was
something to that Tia Taco thing, that high-blown Spanish blood lust thing.
Problem, big problem around our way was that there was no way to verify or not
verify that hot blood thing since there were zero, nada nunca nada, Latinos in
our high school, hell, in the whole town. Needless to say no blacks either,
none. The closest we came to dark-skinned ethnics was a girl from Lebanon who
seemed very exotic. It would be a long time and a couple of thousand miles
south in old Mexico before I got the message that those hermanos were laying
down.
6)It's Gonna Work Out Fine-Ike and Tina Turner: Yeah, we all
know now, have had it knocked into our heads that Ike was not nature’s noble
man but they rocked on this one with that drop dead guitar work of Ike’s and
Tina’s on fire singing.
7) When We Get Married- The Dreamlovers: after a bunch of busted marriages, a few
off-hand affairs that didn’t work out and a few things that did that kid’s rush
to the blissfully wedded aisle with his ever-loving honey seems kind of wishful
thinking now. And you know what in those days I had a lot of the same feelings
although not directed to a specific person since the routine was finish high
school, get a job or go on in school, get married, have two point three
children, one white picket fence with whitewashed house attached, have a dog named
Spot or Rover and bliss. Yeah, life turned out a little different, no, a lot
different.
8)Dear Lady Twist
–Gary U.S.
Bonds: Brother Bonds saved more two-left feet guys in this universe than you
could shake a stick with his twist mania where you could look pretty good all
tangled up as long as everybody else was too. Except don’t watch this lad, me,
too closely because his tangled up is off the beat even though his kindly
partner was courteous enough to mention that, said he was a great dancer. Said
it in such a way that they wound up sitting down by the seaside shifting sand
before the night was over where she admitted that her tangling up was off too.
Get this, and suggested we form a club, a two left- feet club, with two
members. Well, okay.
9) If You Gotta
Make a Fool of Somebody –James Ray: the national anthem for guys who did not
get to dance that last chance dance, damn, after eyeing her all evening until
your eyeballs got sore. And you suddenly learned if you did not know already,
and maybe you should have, maybe some boys’ locker room guy, come brethren
corner boy, heck, your older brother, consulted wiser heads to find out that
the good-looking women of the world, the Lauras mentioned above throw out those
furtive glances just for kicks, just to see what sore eye-balled guys would do.
And guess what 16 or 68 it does not get any better. Jesus.
10) I Count the Tears-The Drifters: a great
backup song just in case Spanish Harlem hadalready been played
and Loopy Lenny the DJ was not into taking requests or maybe the borrowed record
was worn out from play or the guy running the record-player if not Loopy Lenny had
absolutely no sense of what a high energy, high hormonal count teenage crowd
wanted to hear late at night. Wanted to have a chance for that last
dance.
We publish below excerpts from Friedrich Engels’ 1880 work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. In explaining scientific socialism, Engels makes clear that only through the conquest of power by the working class and the expropriation of the capitalist class can the benefits of science, technology and education be available to all, laying the material basis for the full liberation of humanity. The excerpts below are taken from the Marx and Engels Selected Works (Progress Publishers, 1976).
The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.
What is, then, the position of modern socialism in this connection?
The present structure of society—this is now pretty generally conceded—is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organisation. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and in degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalistic mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class....
The perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market. “The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.” (Marx’s Capital, p. 671)....
The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself....
Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times....
Division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development.
This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialised appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties—this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.
With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom....
To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.
For Black History Month-Artists’ Corner-The Work Of Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence first came to widespread public attention for his series of paintings chronicling the historically significant migration of blacks out of the Mister James Crow South toward the north which became a flood after World War I-mainly the industrial towns of the Midwest then. Going up the Mississippi. Later Lawrence came to evoke the northern urban scene of the black diaspora. Those later paintings evoke in a dramatic manner the visual search via iconic Jazz among the folk for the high white note that every musician worth his or her salt was looking for. Pictured are the workman, the hipster, the street persona and the respectable too. Thanks Brother Lawrence-there is a very strong reason that some of your work is enshrined in the Afro-American History Museum down in Washington fast by the Washington Monument.
***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes- With One-Easy Boogle In Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
February is Black History Month
One-Easy Boogle
… he, all six feet two, one hundred and ninety-five lanky pounds, brown- skinned brother of him dressed in his Saturday night finery nothing flashy but a couple of guys, a couple of guys not skimpy in the fashion plate set-up looked the look that they thought he made the cool grade, better some brown sugar gave sets of big eyes his way (truth to tell the finery stuff had been bought at Wal-Mart’s or cadged from an older brother not using the material since said brother had long ago given up Saturday night roaming, Saturday night hungers but in the half-light the look looked), had spied her, all that brown sugar of her not giving a set of big eye glances his way across the room the minute he came in the door. Came into Brother Earl’s High Hat Lounge ready for some low-key jazz and maybe some jam too, came into his what did the white folks call it, yeah, his watering hole (funny white-bread name for bars but those white folks were always coming with up weird words, had been coming up with weird crap ever since they hung “nigger” and “high yella” on his people).
So he gave her his full eyes up and down, and then down and up, practically unclothing her slinky frilly white dress low cut the way he liked them in order to see what baubles a gal had. While he was too much of a gentleman to lick his chops, he also knew if she had seen him in such a foolish schoolboy on a lark pose he would be sleeping alone that night. Or more likely given his luck lately with some cheap pick-up floozy like Sarah Lou or Betty Buck ready to roll over for a guy, a guy like him in his finery (they too not able to tell the difference or maybe he mused they were looking at other stuff, looking down his well-creased pants), with some dough, some good liquor and reefer, and a line of patter to get her out of her panties (not hard when it came to floozy time, midnight hour time, he knew, knew only too well not being able to shake either of those two whores when they got their walking daddy habits on). She not so much beautiful as fetching, all high yella like Mr. Whitey said, knowing she had plenty of blood coursing through her veins from some long ago indignity ravaged on his great-grandmother, maybe before. Yeah, fetching in the long haul which was usually preferable unlike Sarah Lou who after he had had his way with her and he woke up the next morning her beside him would scamper out of bed and out the door before she opened her blood-shot eyes.
Yes, one look at her, one look at that light brown sugar, one once-over (really twice over) told him that, told him too that he needed to be cool, cool enough to stay a little aloof while she was up at the stand in front of that band singing, singing some faggy Cole Porter tune that Billie made pop, sounded like Night and Day as he came in, some god-struck angel face now that he had stopped looking up and down and started to figure out what he needed to do when intermission time came.
He knew for instance, that she would require scotch, high-shelf scotch, to soothe those tender vocal cords like some magic elixir. He liked to speculate on the brand; here it seemed to require Haig &Haig Royal Bonded to aid his cause. (He was right when he asked the waitress what the torch singer was drinking when he sent a drink over to her table at intermission, and plenty of it too, judging by the way she drank the drink in front of her and later that one he had sent up to the stage so she would not be dry between songs). He thought about whether she would want to be complimented on her clothes. (She did, talking for a little too long about it, about how tough it was to keep herself in slinky dresses which guys wanted to look at her in, the boss too, until he moved the subject on to her music that blues jazz mix that she had down pat, very pat). Or whether telling her that she had a fine body (nice shoulders, slim waist, etc.), nice legs, nice well-turned ankles, nice hair, nice, fill in the blank, or any combination of nices, would get him any place. (It did, as she gave him even more meaningful looks as they talked, only be stopped by the call for the next set from Sammy, the combo leader). Thought whether he should ask right then whether she wanted a nightcap with him elsewhere later or ask her ask her at the end of the evening. (End of the evening, a wise choice since she kept giving him meaningful little smiles along with the drinks to keep the mood up throughout that last performance.)
Preliminaries over he once again listened to that angel-voice, listened to her phrasing, listened for the pause between the phrasing, and then that slight little snarl of the upper lip as she went into her own blues-drenched version of Rock Me Baby, and looking right at him, right directly at him, when she sang long drawn out phrasing sang, “rock me all night long.”(He did, rocked her sore, and she did too, rocked him sore as hell.)
From The Marxist Archives-The Bolshevik Revolution Versus The State Church
Frank Jackman comment:
Usually when I post something from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the article speak for itself, or let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own piece if some pressing issue is at hand. Occasionally, and the sentiments expressed in this article is one such time, I can stand in solidarity with the remarks made. I do so here.
February is Black History
Month-Honor Historian Carter G. Woodson
By Sam Eaton
Normally, unlike guys
like Sam Lowell and Frank Jackman that write here about politics and history, I
am not interested in the fate of historians dead or alive. They provide
valuable material, mostly, but I just am not attuned to history enough to go
crazy over any particular one, or any particular morsel they have to serve up.
Not so the man we are honoring here Carter G. Woodson (and on Google’s home
page doodle as well which is where I got my prompt from). The reason I am more
than happy to make an exception is that the good Doctor did yeoman’s work, no
more than that, to bring us young white kids who were involved in the black
civil rights movement in the early 1960s plenty of information about the history
of early black struggles and personalities. Started journals and programs to study
the subject. Stuff that we were clueless about despite our avidity to help in
the black liberation struggle. Stuff that was not taught in any high school
course, hell, any college courses until well after Black/Afro-American study
programs were established. So, yes, hats off to the good Doctor.
I Accuse-Unmasking The
Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part II-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “The
Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes” (1939)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Danny Moriarty
(Once again as I did in
my initial offering on the bogus Sherlock Holmes legend Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, hah!, in the interest of transparency
which has become more of an issue these days when every medium is under
scrutiny Danny Moriarty is not my real name. As then and will be discussed again
below in my research about the “fake news” legend of Mr. Holmes I have run into
a notorious cult-like band of desperadoes known as “The Baker Street
Irregulars,” why that name I do not know. This clot of criminals, who I am told
have very stylized rituals involving illegal drugs and human blood, and are the
bane of the London Bobbies, have been connected with the disappearance of many
people who questioned the Sherlock myth, and not a few unsolved murders of
people who have washed up on the Thames over the years.
This need for an alias,
for cover, is no joke since that first review I have been threatened,
threatened with I won’t death, death threats, but some nasty actions which
necessitate my keeping very close tabs on my security apparatus as I attempt to
deflate this miserable excuse for a detective, a parlor detective at that. I
will not be stopped by hoodlums and blood-splattered junkies.)
The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes, starring Basil Rathbone (if that is his real name which is doubtful
although unlike myself he has never been transparent enough to say that he is
using an alias), Nigel Bruce (a name which has been confirmed as a British National
active in the 1930s and 1940s), 1939
We live in an age of
debunking. An age perhaps borne aloft by cynicism, hubris, sarcasm and above
all “fake news,” not the fake news denying some reality that you hear so
much about these days, but by the elaborate strategy of public relations cranks
and flacks who will put out any swill as long as they are paid and not a minute
longer. That hardly started today but has a long pedigree, a pedigree which has
included the target of today’s debunking one James Sherlock Holmes out of
London, out of the Baker Street section of that town. From the cutesy
“elementary my dear Watson” to that condescending attitude toward everybody he
encounters, friend or foe, including the hapless Doctor Watson this guy Holmes is
nothing but a pure creation of the public relations industrial complex. As I
have noted above I have paid the price for exposing this chameleon, this
so-called master detective, this dead end junkie, with a barrage of hate mail
and threats from his insidious devotees.
Maybe I better refresh
for those who may not have read the first review, may be shocked to find their
paragon of a private detective has feet of clay, and an addiction problem no
twelve step program could curtail in a million years. Here are some excerpts of
what I said in that review which I stand by this day no matter the
consequences:
“Today is the day. Today
is the day I have been waiting for since I was a kid. Today we tear off the
veneer, tear off the mask of the reputation of one Sherlock Holmes as a master
detective. Funny how things happen. Greg Green assigned me this film out of the
blue, at random he said when I asked him. However this assignment after viewing
this film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (of course he doesn’t
face, hadn’t been anywhere near any danger that would put death in his way but
that can wait until I finish out defanging the legend) set off many bells, many
memories of my childhood when I first instinctively discovered this guy was a
fraud, a con artist.
Back then my
grandparents and parents hushed me up about the matter when I told them what I
thought of the mighty Sherlock. They went nutty and told me never to speak of
it again when I mentioned that a hard-boiled real private detective, a guy who
did this kind of work for a living, a guy named Sam Spade who worked out in San
Francisco and solved, really solved, the case of the missing black bird which
people in the profession still talk about, which is still taught in those
correspondence course private detection in ten easy lesson things you used to
see advertised on matchbook covers when smoking cigarettes was okay, who could
run circles around a parlor so-called detective like Mr. Holmes.
[Even Sam Spade has come
in for some debunking of late right here in this space as Phil Larkin and Kenny
Jacobs have gone round and round about how little Spade deserved his “rep,” his
classic rep for a guy who was picked by some bimbo out of the phone book and
who couldn’t even keep his partner alive against that same femme he was
skirt-addled over. Kept digging that low-shelf whiskey bottle in the bottom
desk drawer out too much when the deal went down. The only guy who is safe is
Phillip Marlowe since nobody can call him a “one solved murder wonder” after
the string of cold as ice, maybe colder, cases he wrapped up with a bow over
the years. They still talk about the Sherwood case out on the Coast even today,
talk in hushed tones too. You notice nobody has tried to go after him, not even
close. D.M.]
That was then. Now after
some serious research as a result of this film’s impact on my memory I have
proof to back up my childhood smothered assertions. Sherlock Holmes (if that is
his name which is doubtful since I went to the London telephone directories
going back the first ones in the late 1800s and found no such name on Baker
Street-ever) was nothing but a stone-cold junkie, cocaine, morphine, lanadum
and other exotic concoctions which is the reason that he had a doctor at his
side at all times in case he needed “scripts” written up. A doctor who a guy
like Sam Spade would have sat on his ass a long time before as so dead weight.
That junkie business
would not amount to much if it did not mean that high and mighty Sherlock
didn’t have to run his own gang of pimps, hookers, con men, fellow junkies,
drag queens, rough trade sailors and the flotsam and jetsam of London, high
society and low, to keep him in dough for that nasty set of habits that kept
him high as a kite. There are sworn statements (suppressed at the time) by the
few felons whom the Bobbies were able to pick up that Sherlock was the guy
behind half the burglaries, heists and kidnappings in London. And you wonder
why the Baker Street Irregulars want to silence me, show me the silence of the
grave….
Of course the Bobbies,
looking to wrap up a few cold file cases which Sherlock handed them to keep
them off the trail, looked the other way and/or took the graft so who really
knows how extensive the whole operation was. In a great sleight of hand he gave
them Doctor Moriarty who as it turned out dear Sherlock had framed when one
wave of police heat was on and who only got out of prison after Holmes died and
one of Holmes’ flunkies told the real story about how Holmes needed a “fall
guy” and the wily Doctor took the fall.”
This The
Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes cover-up is a classic example of police
collision to cover their own dirty tracks. Everybody knows that Sherlock made
his name after he beat down some poor mistreated dog who should have been
reported as abused to whatever they call the humane animal treatment society in
merry old England.
You don’t have to be one
of those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lessons that you
used to see on matchbook covers when cigarette smoking was okay like I said
before to know that these high society cases are inside
jobs. Naturally the
luckless and clueless Holmes has his fall guy all set up. A guy like I
mentioned before named Professor Moriarty (no relative since if you remember
this is my alias) who is a salt of the earth type but whom Holmes has a deep
hatred for ever since the good doctor stopped feeding him his drugs, told him
to go cold turkey. That good advice and good cheer despite the obvious fact
that no twelve step program was going to do anything but drive Holmes to who
knows what paranoid delusions. All the good professor did was to clue in a guy
whose father had been bamboozled by this high society young woman’s father. Had
been murdered by the dame’s old man.
The dispute had been
over dough money which the guy should have gotten as inheritance but didn’t and
wound up on skid road. While this young heiress and her ne’er do well a con artist
and card shark from the word around town brother lived high off the hog. The
stuff you heard about the good professor trying to take the Crown jewels is
nothing but fake news. They were never in danger of being stolen but our man
Sherlock raised a big hue and cry after smoking too much hashish and thought he
saw them floating over the Thames. Called copper for them to nab favorite fall
guy the hapless professor. You never hear about this of course since the
coppers kept it hush-hush but that was the night in a drug frenzy Sherlock tried
to murder the good professor. Kill him dead. RIP, Professor, RIP. Didn’t happen
but the good professor got the slammer anyway and it was only Sherlock’s
overdose death that sprung him after “Five Fingers” Benny Boren gave the real
story.
Like I said last time, a
fake, fake all the way. Unless that Irregular crowd of thugs and blood-stained
aficionados get to me this is not the last you will hear about this campaign of
mine to dethrone this pompous junked-up imposter. I am just getting into second
gear now.
For Black History Month-Artists’ Corner-The Work Of Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence first came to widespread public attention for his series of paintings chronicling the historically significant migration of blacks out of the Mister James Crow South toward the north which became a flood after World War I-mainly the industrial towns of the Midwest then. Going up the Mississippi. Later Lawrence came to evoke the northern urban scene of the black diaspora. Those later paintings evoke in a dramatic manner the visual search via iconic Jazz among the folk for the high white note that every musician worth his or her salt was looking for. Pictured are the workman, the hipster, the street persona and the respectable too. Thanks Brother Lawrence-there is a very strong reason that some of your work is enshrined in the Afro-American History Museum down in Washington fast by the Washington Monument.
