Artist’s Corner-For Black History Month-J. M.W. Turner’s Slave Ship

Artist’s Corner-For Black History Month-J. M.W. Turner’s Slave Ship

Sometimes, to paraphrase the old saw about a picture telling more than one thousand words, a painting or film will tell more about what was going on in a society than a million books or speeches on the subject. Once can think a Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and the scene against the black and white film of the red coat of a little girl walking in what amounted to her death in the concentration camp and the later shot of that same red coat on a pile of clothes to tell more than a lot of speeches about the horrors inflicted there. Similarly the short scene in the film Amistad when dead and sick slaves going through the Middle Passage are slipped overboard as a matter of course to know the repugnance of slavery.          

J.M.W. Turner, himself a slavery abolitionist, did the same thing with his masterpiece Slave Ship for an earlier generation to graphically show what that institution was all about. Amazingly his style was based on color schemes rather than defined bodies and other details like the fish and sea monsters circling in for a feast which makes the whole scene that much more compelling. Hopefully that painting, as Turner intended it, turned its viewers to action against that vile institution. It certainly affected me the first time I saw it in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston almost over a hundred and fifty years later. If you are in Boston go to the second floor of the old building where the artists of the Romantic period in European painting are exhibited and spent a few moments looking at the details of this one.      

Can There Be Resistance If We Don't Support Resisters-From Courage To Resist-Free Reality Leigh Winner

Can There Be  Resistance If We Don't Support Resisters-From Courage To Resist-Free Reality Leigh Winner 

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 20^th 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 19^th 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 20^th 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 100^th 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.      

For Black History Month- Race, Gender And Space-The Black Women’s Place-“Hidden Figures” (2016)-A Film Review

Race, Gender  And Space-The Black Women’s Place-“Hidden Figures” (2016)-A Film Review     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Hidden Figures, starring Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, 2016  

Come on now when you are thinking  about the super-duper advanced mathematicians, computer whizzes or aerospace engineers who put men and women into space and to the moon  you are thinking about short-haired crew-cut  white guys in white shirts with those plastic sleeves in their shirt pockets filled with off-hand pens sitting in mission control at Houston calling the shots as part of a vanilla team of anonymous figures (except the head guy whose head was always being fitted for the platter with each early rocket failure back in the late 1950s and early 1960s after the red scare Cold War Russians put an object and then a man in space leaving the United States of America flat-footed and looking kind of foolish what with all the expertise and dough around).

Yeah, you are thinking in those days, somewhat still true now as well of guys who went to big time science schools like Cal Tech and MIT maybe an oddball from Stanford (although now you will see at least at MIT which I am most familiar many Asian guys and gals filling the classrooms with their computers at the ready but also with those plastic sleeves still holding their pens-the gals too.) What you would not be thinking about is three black women (complete with kids at home something you don’t associate with those white-shirted guys too busy figuring out the latest orbital trajectory) who did not go to Cal Tech, MIT or even an oddball at Stanford but in the case of one Podunk West Virginia and another having to attend night school at some previously all white high school to get up to speed in order to become an aerospace engineer. But that hard if long delayed acknowledgement is what drives the film under review Hidden Figures about those three black women who were pioneers in a man’s world (along with help from other black women from the “colored” pool of human computers from which they were selected). Hell there weren’t even that many white women come to think of it but this film is a black-etched story not a generic women’s story.          

Here’s the way the plot-line played out and why we should admire the tenacity and their sense of patriotism of those women. As mentioned above the U.S. was caught flat-footed by the Russians in the late 1950s with Sputnik first of all and so NASA down in Virginia was pushed hard, pushed hard politically to show some results-to catch up and surpass the Ruskkies (with the object of winning the big prize-landing on the moon not in the distance future but as per Jack Kennedy by the end of the 1960s). So everybody needed to pull some weight-all those highly prized Cal Tech and MIT guys had to push the envelope. Aided of course by those human computers who if you can believe this in the age of the personal computer and an average eight year old’s ability to handle the damn thing with ease used adding machines and pocket calculators-maybe slide rulers too. They appear to have been mainly women-“colored” (hey that is the term of the time so let’s let that stand here as well) and white women working in separate areas of the complex at Langley.           

That seemingly ancient situation which may seem weird in our so-called “post racial” society was however the social reality in early 1960s Virginia due to the Mister James Crow laws and their strict enforcement  in that state despite whatever the courts had proclaimed in the 1950s (or for that matter the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution from the 1860s). This is the “race” part of the “race and space” title of this review. Those laws and “customs” extended right up to those highly educated white- shirted guys who in a very  telling scene put a separate “colored” coffee pot in their break area (and in another scene it took almost a second civil war to get convenient restroom facilities against the previous distant “colored” women’s restroom- Jesus)               

Why was all this breaking down of the social norms of post-bellum Virginia necessary beyond the national goals and pacing set in far-off Washington? Well one Katherine Johnson, played here by Taraji Henson, a natural and brilliant mathematician, was put on the team on her merits which would be fully tested as the white guys were behind the curve most of the time on the critical trajectory tight numbers needed to insure a safe reentry from orbit to “splash down.” One Dorothy Vaughn, played by Olivia Spencer, who was in charge of the “colored” human computers and for a long while not given her due with the actual rank of supervisor who brought her “girls” over after learning the Fortram computer language which was the wave of the future in the computation world. And one Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, who at great effort would become the first African-American (not “colored”) aerospace engineer at NASA. Their neglected contributions to the space program and their having to facing with dignity the skewed racial ethos of the time made this an enjoyable and thoughtful two hours. Yeah, move over Cal Tech and MIT the sisters are in town.         

Corporate welfare for General Dynamics Lewiston Sun Journal At Bath Iron Works

 http://www.sunjournal.com/corporate-welfare-for-general-dynamics            

Corporate welfare for General Dynamics

Lewiston Sun Journal

By

 Russell Wray 

-

February 11, 2018

0

Maine politicians and officials should be working to protect and promote the interests and rights of its citizens. However, as a recent trial and pending legislation in Maine have clearly shown, some of these politicians and officials seem far more interested in advancing the wealth and power of an already extremely wealthy and powerful corporation.

That corporation is General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest so-called “defense” contractors, and owner of Bath Iron Works. The pending legislation is a move to give General Dynamics another $60 million in tax breaks, which will be paid for by the people of Maine.

The trial was that of the Aegis 9, who were arrested April 1, 2017, while peacefully protesting  — along with others — BIW’s public “christening,” or cerebration, of a newly built Navy Aegis destroyer.

There were many good reasons for protesting the celebration. One of those reasons is the ship’s cost — close to $2 billion. The U.S. military is already, by far and away, the deadliest in the world. The U.S. spends more than the next eight largest national defense budgets in the world — combined! When is enough, enough?

Then there are the exorbitant costs on the nation’s environment resulting from the government’s addiction to war-making: The Pentagon’s vast carbon emissions which are contributing mightily to climate disruption and the Navy’s assaults on life in the oceans from their reckless use of sonar, to name but a few.

And then there is the obvious toll of the U.S. government’s over-the-top militarism on any real prospects for a more peaceful world.

For all those reasons, the Aegis 9 chose to put our First Amendment rights to use to voice our opposition to the public celebration of this destroyer of lives. Although all we did was stand with our protest signs roughly 10 feet in front of the BIW entrance gate, and people were able to easily walk around us, and some did so, the police, at BIW’s behest, ordered us to leave. We were arrested when we refused the order and charged with criminal trespass.

At the trial’s conclusion, the judge upheld our constitutional rights, stating that the Bath police department had been improperly “outsourced to BIW,” and that because the Bath police order to leave BIW’s property during this public event was based solely on BIW’s objection to our lawful political expression, the order was, therefore, unlawful. In the end, justice prevailed when Justice Billings granted the motion to acquit all of the defendants.

So that was the trial.

The pending legislation is LD 1781, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer DeChant, D-Bath, which would provide General Dynamics with another $60 million in tax breaks through the next 20 years. Since 1997, this same corporation has already received more than $200 million in state and local tax breaks (though employment at BIW has decreased considerably since that time) as well as a huge corporate tax break from the Trump administration with the recent passage of the federal tax bill. Yet it is once again looking for a handout from the taxpayers of this cash-strapped state.

General Dynamics is claiming to need this additional tax break to keep BIW competitive. But a look at the facts will show this claim to be false. BIW is one of just two companies that build destroyers for the Navy, and it received more federal contract dollars in 2017 than in any year since 2011 — more than $2 billion. It would seem that BIW is doing just fine.

A quick look at General Dynamics finances will show it is also doing quite well, to put it mildly. Its annual revenues are estimated at $31 billion — more than four times Maine’s entire annual budget. Between 2013 and 2016, with plenty of available cash on hand, General Dynamics management spent $9.4 billion buying back its own stock. And in 2016, its CEO took home $21 million. Unlike so many in Maine, this corporation is not hurting for money.

Shouldn’t Maine’s politicians and officials be working to protect and promote the interests and rights of its citizens, not making them fund, through their hard-earned cash, more corporate welfare for General Dynamics?

Russell Wray of Hancock volunteers with Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), and is an associate member of Veterans For Peace, and one of the Aegis 9.

Once More Around The Good Book Social Doctrine- With Dorothy Day And Peter Marras’ Catholic Worker Movement In Mind

Once More Around The Good Book Social Doctrine- With Dorothy Day And Peter Maurin's Catholic Worker Movement In Mind   

By Si Lannon

The late Peter Paul Markin was a piece of work. So said Frankie Riley, a guy who should know since he was the acknowledged leader of the North Adamsville corner boy of whom Markin was something like the leading intellectual light in the early 1960s but more on that in a minute. So said Frankie one night when a bunch of the old gang still standing (not all are some have laid down their heads of late, a couple forever etched on that black granite wall down in Washington, and some too physically feeble to make the journey, and of course Markin) were at the Black Swan in downtown Adamsville talking over old times, something like a periodic reunion. Frankie, a successful lawyer now winding down his practice and passing the day to day operations to the younger partners while he becomes an odd-ball term “of counsel,” in such gatherings would usually be the one to start on about Markin.

Stop.

In order to avoid confusion let’s use Markin’s old time neighborhood moniker “ Scribe” which Frankie had anointed him with way back in junior high school when he was forever writing something or about to write something in the little notebook complete with pencil that he always carried with him in his off-the-wall out of fashion shirts that his mother, frugal mother from dirt poor land, would select for him (shirts as part of the twice yearly-start of school and Easter time-shopping spree at the Bargain Center for new cheap out of fashion clothing). So Scribe it is.          

At this gathering at the local watering hole, the first such outing since the summer of 2017 when they gathered to put a small memoir book together in honor of Scribe, Frankie mentioned that he had forgotten to say something about Scribe that was important to help understand what he was all about. And why after all these years since the mid-1970s when Scribe was murdered down in Sonora, Mexico after what appeared to be a busted drug, cocaine, deal and he wound up in a dusty dirt back alley with two slugs in his head the old gang still mourned him and were still trying to figure out what the hell made the guy tick.

That summer of 2017 gathering had been prompted by Scribe childhood closest friend Alex James’ return from a business trip out to San Francisco where quite by accident he found out about the 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love which was centered in that town and had gone to a stone crazy exhibition at the de Young Museum in old hang out Golden Gate Park where he freaked out over the music, photographs, clothing and incredible poster art (which was then just advertisement material for concerts and other events but really outstanding works of art in their own right)            

As a result of being immersed in the old days when Alex got back to Boston he corralled the guys with the idea of doing a small presentation book in honor of their fallen comrade. They all, all at the Black Swan anyway, had been out to Frisco in 1967. Guess who had been the motivating force for that see-saw trip been out to see what was happening in the “newer world” he had been talking about since the early 1960. Once they agreed, and agreed to write short sketches, Alex had his youngest brother, Zack who writes here on occasion and was a leader of the revolt of the “Young Turks” which purged the previous site manager, edit and have the book published. It is from an afterthought once the book had been put to bed that Frankie remembered a very important component of Scribe’s persona.        

Frankie, after checking to see if the statute of limitations had run on the various crimes the corner boys had committed in the old neighborhood to grab dough for, what else, girls, cars, dates,   walking around money that Scribe was the mastermind behind. (Frankie said that checking business was a joke but the guys knowing Frankie just rolled their eyes.) He had related how he had been the leader and the operations guy for the various car-jackings, burglaries, con jobs, heists, “clips” but evil genius Scribe was the planner. To this day Frankie can get smiles out of the guys when he mentions one caper that almost got them caught while in a big house up in Adamsville Center. Guess who had been the leader of the almost fateful attack. Ever after by unanimous agreement Frankie was in charge once they project went out the door.  

That was the larcenous side of Scribe, and the rest of them too, the world owned them a living for having grown up dirt-poor in the working poor Acre neighborhood and so they struck out to do a little self-interested redistribution of those worldly goods. So you see there was the fore-seeing new day coming let’s get on board side to Scribe and the larcenous too which Frankie covered in his memoir piece some detail remembering or exposing stuff they had all forgotten. (Frankie not a lawyer for nothing with that skill set). But Scribe was noble man too, a social justice partisan all mixed in except toward the end when according to Josh Breslin who was the last to see Scribe alive north of the border he let his serious cocaine habit get the best of him, Let the dope make him feel better about his Vietnam horror military service, his busted marriages and his deep depression as it became apparent that the “newer world” he sought was slipping away, was getting eaten alive but the night-takers he called them. 

What tipped Frankie to his memory lapse had been triggered by seeing a copy of something called the Catholic Radical when he had gone out to Worchester on some church legal business and subsequently a conference where that copy had been on the table. (It should be mentioned Frankie had been a lapsed Catholic for many years until one day a few years ago he had been a guest at a wedding in a Catholic church and that stirred long ago memories and fears for his “soul.) That paper reminded him about Grandma O’Brian, Scribe’s maternal grandmother who was a serious Catholic Worker devotee going back to the Great Depression when she had actually met Dorothy Day in New York. The Scribe would always be speaking of some social issue from the paper, Catholic Worker, he found lying around Grandma’s house. Grandma O’Brian by all accounts was a “saint” loved by all who knew her and knew too how brave she had been to put up with a lot of crap married to tyrant Daniel O’Brian a real villain whom all the young neighborhood kids would stay away from in order to avoid one of his tirades.

To give an idea of how bad Scribe’s own family household life was like he could be found many days at Grandma’s house seeking shelter from that whirlwind storm. He would read books, take notes in that little squirrely notebook, and discuss issues with Grandma. Like a lot of people, good godly people Grandma had a few blinds spots like her negative attitude toward black people who were getting “uppity” down south in Scribe’s youth (it would take several years before he got straight on his own racial attitudes) but overall she had been on the right side of the angels. Talked about abolishing the death penalty (Grandma had never gotten over the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti by the Commonwealth in 1927 even though they were Italian), war, and nuclear disarmament.

In a lot of ways you can see all of Scribe’s contradictions through that Catholic Worker background. While Frankie was remembering the good parts of Scribe he flashed back to one episode, really two come to think of it, which summed up Scribe’s whole life struggle. Scribe must have been about fourteen, maybe fifteen, in 1960 when he had read in the Catholic Worker  that there would be a demonstration, something like that for nuclear disarmament to be held at the Park Street entrance to the subway, a historic protest site on the Boston Common. This rally was being called by Doctor Spock’s SANE, some Quakers and other peace-type groups and individuals. And Catholic Worker. Scribe was all hopped up to go even though Frankie had tried to talk him out of it, told him that the “Communists,” Stalin’s heirs’ dreaded supporters, told him he might get beaten up by guys hanging around the Common who didn’t like the stinking “commie, red, “peace” word, He couldn’t be deterred. So what did they do? They made as always when the opportunity presented itself a bet, a five dollar bet, big money for poor kids, Scribe wouldn’t go into Boston for the event scheduled on an October afternoon. Scribe won and to this day Frankie can’t get over the fact that he lost, lost to a holy goof like Scribe.                 

Here’s the Scribe contradiction part. All during the lead-up to the demonstration Scribe had been working on a caper, had been casing a house where the owners had been away for a while. The weekend after that demo they “hit” the house and got a big haul. Big enough for dates, gas money, booze, and walking around money for months. Yeah, Frankie was sure he had it right Scribe was a piece of work.  

The Rise And Fall Of The Shamus Game- Frank Sinatra’s “Tony Rome” (1967)-A Film Review

The Rise And Fall Of The Shamus Game- Frank Sinatra’s “Tony Rome” (1967)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Bartlett Webber

Tony Rome, starring Frank Sinatra, Jill Saint John, 1967 

I am an old-time black and white film noir private detective, shamus, gumshoe, key-hole peeper, whatever you want to call guys who do the public coppers’ dirty work for chump change and a few lumps on the head, kind of guy. Have built a reputation in the cinematic and literary critics’ world for pushing up and pulling down the private eyes who filled up the screen when the film adaptations of guys like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain in an off moment ruled the roost and made many an audience forget their woes for a while in the 1930s Great Depression days and the waiting by the home fires for the other shoe to drop during the 1940s European and Pacific Wars. To give you an example, a famous one that others like the legendary film critic Sandy Salmon have commented on, I have taken Hammett’s classic Sam Spade from out his The Maltese Falcon and run him up the pole as super-hero that no DC or Marvel comic holy goof could even stand in his shadow, could beat with that ten foot pole, or have placed him down in the mud with the other geeks playing a bit role (picked out of the Frisco town telephone book to boot) against the real action between Brigid O’Shaughnessy and the “Fat Man.” I could give more but that should suffice.  

So it came as a challenge, what would have been a freak of nature thing under the old regime on this site of Allan Jackson, when new site manager, Greg Green, not knowing of my area of expertise, assigned me this Tony Rome private detective film from the 1960s. I had at first refused, had put my foot down, when Greg essentially ordered me to do the review to “broaden my horizons.” The coup de grace though was when he threatened me with having to do one of those super-hero comic holy goof reviews which he has foisted on virtually everybody under the false impression that his target audience, the younger crowd, even bothered to read hard copy or on-line reviews. Could give a fuck about such views. (He still believes social media, the real way that crowd forms a critical mass for anything these days, is just a passing fad like the hula-hoops of my youth.) As you can tell I have if under protest succumbed to his blandishment.         

Frankly it is hard to see what makes the post-World War II Technicolor private detective tick. What makes Tony run. A guy like Sam Spade, Phil Marlowe, hell, even Lou Dalton grabbed a case, a murder case usually although real private detectives mainly did, do, key-hole peeping and re-po work, maybe a security breech problem on an off-day, bang-bang the bad guys and went under the satin sheets with whatever femme was still standing. But most days they were sitting in some run down ill-kept small office in some seen better days office building filled with failed dentists, unlicensed quacks, re-po men, junk jewelers, insurance salesman and quick change artists reaching periodically for that low shelf whiskey bottle in the bottom drawer of that paper-strewn desk trying to figure how to keep this dunning fools away from his door.   

This Tony Rome, played by East Coast cool and collected Frank Sinatra last seen in this space playing Oscar-worthy Maggio the platoon wise ass who got tumbled by a sadistic prison guard in the film adaptation of James Jones’ From Here to Eternity, I can’t figure. Worked out of Miami in the post-Cuban Revolution days not a bad locale but too much sunshine and blue ocean seas floating out high white notes for serious detection world like in fog-bound San Francisco. Lived off a boat, dressed like a sportsman (complete with soft hat an emblem of a by-gone era), drove a swanky car and not a clunker like most key-hole peepers who are one step ahead of the loan company’s re-po man, and had an office that Sam, Phil, Lou would have died for. Where is there room for a low rent desk and sipping out of low shelf pint whiskey bottles in all of that. To boot our man Tony has a gambling jones that keeps the wolves at his door and the need to grab some kale on the off-track days. A man with feet of clay, an everyman.    

Even the caper Tony gets involved is a laugher of sorts. A cheapjack case that wouldn’t draw breathe one from the old-timers. Some young curvaceous dippy dame had about seven too many drinks and wound up passed out on a motel bedroom. Bad for business anyway you look at the matter so Tony does his old ex-partner a favor taking the nymph home to rich father and mother. The old man wonders what happened to his daughter and hires our man to figure on what was what. The key, a missing diamond pin “misplaced” by said dippy daughter, gives Tony an excuse to hunt high and low for that damn thing. Then the bodies start to pileup as his ex-partner, a fence, a jeweler and his bodyguard are wasted.   

Tony then spends the rest of his time trying to figure out what was going on since that so-called diamond pin was bogus, was glass. After some more shootings and mayhem it turned that the rich man’s daughter was hocking her step-mother’s jewelry to give some moola to his drunken sot of a mother and her ne’er do well husband what actually ordered the various and sundry killings to keep the cash cow coming. The hook? That step-mother was previously married to one of the bad guys and had never gotten a divorce so the squeeze was on when that bad guy hit town looking for the big pay-off. Instead getting lead, plenty of it. In the end the bad guys took it on the head and that was that.     

Well almost “that was that” because have you noticed something missing. Unlike in a Sherlock Holmes story line where Danny Moriarty (an alias for reasons he can explain if you run across him in this space) has been running a campaign to debunk the Englishman as a serious detective bringing up of late the question of his and Doctor Watson’s sexual preferences since neither has been seen lately with a dame, even a one night stand, Tony is strictly a lady’s man. Or so that is the way he wants to see himself in the private detection world where every male P.I. is chasing skirts and nobody thinks anything of it. Except Tony is not really chasing any dame, not even 1960s eye candy Ann Archer, played by Jill Saint John, whose only purpose is to do the other end of a lot of sexual foreplay and innuendo but no silky sheets. Yeah, not your grandfather’s shamus, no indeed.   

A View From The Left No to Trial by Media! Sex, Scandals and Power #MeToo Mania and the Democrats’ “Resistance”

Workers Vanguard No. 1126	26 January 2018

No to Trial by Media!

Sex, Scandals and Power

#MeToo Mania and the Democrats’ “Resistance”

Since Harvey Weinstein’s serial sexual assault exposé rocked Hollywood last fall, the net for alleged predators has been cast far and wide. What began as the Hollywood casting couch on steroids rapidly metastasized into an array of sexual misconduct allegations which are bringing down male types of all stripes—from Prairie Home Companion’s Garrison Keillor to talk-show hosts Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley, from black Democrat John Conyers to bible-thumping racist Roy Moore, from comedian Louis C.K. to music mogul Russell Simmons. A wide range of behavior—including flirtation and innuendo, a vulgar text or a crude joke, not to mention unpleasant sex—is being lumped together with real crimes of coercion and assault. Those called out for sexual impropriety, no matter how trivial, how unproven or how long ago, run the media gantlet, are declared guilty and their careers ruined.

Backers of the liberal #MeToo and #TimesUp movements present this as a reckoning and cathartic response to sexual inequality. There are indeed pervasive crimes against women, but most are not being splashed across Twitter and the press in America today. In factories, the military and prisons, assault and rape are routinely covered up. Poor, black and immigrant women, as well as sex workers, have little recourse against sexual predation. Meanwhile, mum’s the word on urgent questions such as the assault on abortion rights, which have been whittled down to a formality that is inaccessible for the majority, rising costs of health care, and lack of access to childcare. The hype over “inappropriate” peccadilloes minimizes the terror of rape and trivializes sexual abuse, like that suffered by numerous female Olympic gymnasts for decades under their doctor Larry Nassar. Such hype also does nothing to address women’s subordination and oppression, which are built into capitalist society.

The #MeToo campaign is about sex, but it is just as much about power and politics. The Democratic Party is scrambling to cohere the so-called resistance to Donald J. Trump, who is accused of harassment by over a dozen women. To make the whole campaign go down easier, leading Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Kirsten Gillibrand had to wash the party’s hands of its own sexual misconduct gaffe and dump Minnesota Senator Al Franken. It was a political calculation that cost them little, allowing them to posture as defenders of women, a lie the Democrats love to milk for their electoral fortunes.

The fight against the president’s “pussy grabbing” is on the top of the Democratic Party agenda. The biggest demonstrations during last year’s inauguration focused on how Trump’s piggish sexual follies made him “unfit” to rule the bloody American empire. The battle cry of those Women’s Marches, dominated by white petty-bourgeois and bourgeois women in pink pussy hats, was over the fact that a qualified imperialist hawk and Wall Street-backed woman lost to an unabashed misogynist. This year’s Women’s Marches continued to hail Hillary Clinton as their shepherdess with the slogan: “Power to the Polls.”

In good old American puritanical tradition, an anti-sex frenzy has been unleashed that serves to divert attention from the staggering brutalities carried out by the ruling class against working people: anti-immigrant roundups, the sanctioning of white-supremacists, attacks on unions, threats of unleashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In a cutting commentary, “The Great American Sex Panic of 2017” (counterpunch.org, 22 November), William Kaufman aptly calls this a “moral panic,” which is “ironically, immoral at its core: repressive and diversionary, an identity-politics orgy of misdirected moral energies that breeds a chilling conformity of word and deed.” He also notes a “bizarre inversion of values.” As imperialist Commander-in-Chief, the male Clinton slaughtered hundreds of thousands abroad and tossed millions of women and children off welfare at home, but he is stigmatized for a blow job. As Secretary of State, the female Clinton helped turn Libya to rubble and grooved on the torture and murder of Qaddafi (which included being sodomized with a weapon), but she is lauded as a symbol of diversity.

As Marxists, we know that anti-woman bigotry and oppression have a material basis in capitalist society, flowing from the patriarchal family, propped up by religious conservatism and state repression, and enshrined in virtually every social institution. Both ruling-class parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, represent this profit-driven system based on class exploitation and push a reactionary social agenda—even if their rhetoric differs based on their constituencies. Eradicating entrenched sexual stereotypes and discrimination requires a socialist revolution to overturn capitalism, an economic system that breeds degradation, repression and violence in everyday life.

Fear, Sexual Loathing and Racist Repression

Founded by black activist Tarana Burke over a decade ago, #MeToo went viral on Twitter post-Weinstein after it was taken up by actress Alyssa Milano. Shortly after, Time magazine declared the “silence breakers” Person of the Year. The Golden Globes were dominated by big money personalities preaching “Time’s Up,” including a much-lauded speech by billionaire Oprah Winfrey, whose name has been bandied about as a potential Democratic presidential nominee.

Shocking as it may be to some, not all women think alike. Fissures are now erupting in the #MeToo milieu. Early on, mainstream feminists like Nation writer Katha Pollitt expressed concern about a conservative backlash, especially as most of the outed harassers were Democrats. In a January 5 New York Times op-ed piece, “Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings,” Daphne Merkin, an avid Hillary supporter, worried that the career-ending condemnations and the automatic presumption of guilt could be an entrée to “torching people for the content of their fantasies.” (Too late: people are thrown behind bars for possessing kiddie porn.) Esteemed author Margaret Atwood was virtually tied to a stake for defending due process in her article, “Am I a Bad Feminist?” More recently, a debate is raging over whether a bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari makes him a “sexual predator.”

An open letter signed by actress Catherine Deneuve and a group of 100 French intellectuals and professionals denouncing the wave of purges provoked a full-frontal feminist uproar. The letter objects to neo-Victorianism, which paints women as frail children: “Just like in the good old witch-hunt days, what we are once again witnessing here is puritanism in the name of a so-called greater good, claiming to promote the liberation and protection of women, only to enslave them to a status of eternal victim and reduce them to defenseless preys of male chauvinist demons.” Within hours, supporters of #MeToo condemned the French signatories as “apologists for rape.” No critic is granted immunity. Actor Matt Damon faced a ferocious reaction for his patently obvious statement that rape is distinct from a pat on the butt.

If penalties are instant and draconian against anything deemed offensive, the net effect will be to police all behavior, especially the unconventional (anything kinkier than When Harry Met Sally). Defining inappropriate behavior is as subjective as defining “immoral” behavior. To the extent that codes of decency exist, they are prescribed by religion and regulated by the racist guardians of old-time virtue, the bourgeois rulers.

On the university level, decades-long campaigns against a purported date rape epidemic have increased the in loco parentis powers of the campus administration to enforce “acceptable” conduct. Virtually any encounter, from a drunken hookup to a regrettable romance, can be classified as nonconsensual, leading to punitive consequences according to the campus initiatives implemented under the Obama administration. (For more, see the review of Laura Kipnis’s book Unwanted Advances in “Title IX Witchhunts, Anti-Sex Frenzy and Bourgeois Feminism,” WV No. 1121, 3 November).

Such is the degree of #MeToo mania that feminist author Laura Kipnis, who opposes anti-sex regimentation on the campuses, is now celebrating the fact that the “floodgates have opened” (New York Review of Books, 21 December). That innocent people will be “caught in the crossfire” is treated as simply irrelevant. Kipnis echoes the view that if a couple of unfortunate schmucks get chased by the mob, they’re collateral damage in the war against patriarchy.

Mass vengeance is no doubt propelled by the fact that most of the falling stars are powerful, rich, white men…so, feminists say, good riddance. But in racist American society, those who will be “caught in the crossfire” have a greater dose of melanin and a lesser dose of prestige, i.e., black and brown people. To say that sex panics, which foment an inflated collective fear against the imaginary predator, have a tendency to legitimize punishment and rip up the presumption of innocence would be a vast understatement. This is potentially a dire threat to the rights of the entire populace.

The cops and courts have regularly used sex to go after any perceived enemies. Comedian Dave Chappelle noted in his recent stand-up “The Bird Revelation” how the FBI’s COINTELPRO spied on the sexual affairs of Martin Luther King to undermine his authority. The toll of the war on sexual “deviants” today has added to the earlier “war on crime” and ongoing “war on drugs”—code words for racist legal persecution that has increased the prison population by 500 percent to some 2.2 million people today, nearly 40 percent of them black. A 2016 University at Albany study found that one in about every 120 black men is a registered sex offender (twice the rate of white men), a branded outcast for life.

Lynchings brought on by rape accusations have a gruesome history in this country built on slave labor. The Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riot in 1921 and the Rosewood, Florida, massacre in 1923 were precipitated by lying rumors of black men assaulting white women. In 1955, young Emmett Till was murdered for an alleged wolf whistle.

In his article, “A City on a Hill (or the Weinstein Effect)” (counterpunch.org, 1 December), playwright John Steppling comments on how race lurks behind the scenes:

“There is something curious and unsettling in not seeing the dangers of a mass enjoyment of punishment. For that is what disturbs me the most. The pleasure of the mob.... Lynchings had vendors and souvenirs. This is not the same, and yet there are similarities. And the manufacturing of the survivor identity (which originated with the Pre School cases) is handed out even if all that was survived was an unwelcome advance. What will be the effect down the road on sexual choices that may be seen as non-mainstream? The public narrative so far is linked with Hollywood. That should provide a moment of cautious hesitation for everyone.”

Steppling recalls the mob hysteria of the 1987-90 McMartin preschool trial—the longest trial in history—in which child witnesses told fantastical tales of animal sacrifices, orgies, satanic ritual abuse occurring in day-care centers. The crusade was part of the reactionary “family values” campaign of the Reagan years, which, among other things, sought to drive women back into the home. As satanic abuse cases swept the country, hundreds of people were wrongfully convicted, losing their freedom, families and reputations. Thirty years ago, the refrain was Believe the Children; today, that catchphrase is being applied to all women.

Working-Class Servitude and Women’s Oppression

If the mob aids the government in deciding what’s acceptable in the bedroom, the consequences will be bad for men and women. As Marxists, we oppose any and all efforts of the state to regulate the manifold consensual expressions of human sexuality. Consensual relations between individuals are purely their own concern, and no one has any business interfering (including when it comes to those in Hollywood who lead very exposed lives). We do not support rules dictating “affirmative consent,” which decree that partners engaging in any sexual contact must get explicit verbal permission for each caress. The guiding principle in any sexual encounter should be effective consent, that is, nothing more than mutual agreement and understanding, regardless of age, gender or sexual preference.

Of course, determining what is truly consensual in this viciously class-divided, racist, sexist, not to mention religious, society is complicated. The attitudes and institutions of the capitalist society in which we live sway interpersonal relationships, and there are often ambiguities. Relationships can also be exploitative and unequal, including marriage. Rape, however, is not on the spectrum of sex. It is a degrading, brutal and horrific act of violence. To treat any bad encounter as rape means to demand legal retribution, or else some form of vigilante justice.

Sexual harassment and discrimination are rife in this anti-woman society, from quid pro quo come-ons to pay inequality. Under pressure to be pretty and pliant for their male superiors, women are subjected to humiliation and intimidation. But the Hollywood of well-heeled entertainers who seek to advance their careers is worlds apart from the situation for working-class women, who are desperate to make ends meet and far more subject to the whims of their bosses.

The capitalist class, with the acquiescence of the union misleaders, has waged a one-sided war on organized labor in order to create a cheaper workforce, with part-time, non-union workers often filling what were once full-time, unionized jobs. The all-too-frequent indifference by union bureaucrats to harassment on the job gives yet another opening to liberal anti-union forces to encourage government policing of the unions in the name of defending women. The unions must champion women’s rights, including free, 24-hour childcare, paid family leave and free abortion on demand as part of quality health care for all. To revitalize labor, the union movement needs a class-struggle leadership that would fight for organizing the unorganized, for equal pay for equal work and for union control of hiring and upgrading, which together would go a long way toward addressing the precarious economic position that makes working-class women vulnerable.

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements recently started paying lip service to the women at the bottom. Before the Golden Globes, an open letter signed by over a thousand in television, theater and film expressed solidarity with agricultural and factory workers, housekeepers, waitresses and domestic workers. In a patronizing display at the awards ceremony, swanky stars in black Gucci gowns brought activist guests to prove how “woke” they are. Given Hollywood’s long-running romance with the Democratic Party, the political virtue of this sisterhood spectacle is obvious.

Bourgeois women face sexual oppression but not class oppression. For feminists, the most important division in society is that of men against women, not capitalist exploiters against exploited workers. Feminism as an ideology reflects the concerns of professional and petty-bourgeois women who aim to break the glass ceiling and integrate themselves into the upper layers of the American capitalist power structure. The current era of “Lean In” feminism, which promotes success in the realm of corporate and political leadership, speaks directly to white, university-educated and upper-class women.

And these are the same women the ruling class considers to be the “credible” victims of sexual assault. Other women—poor, black, single mothers and immigrants—more often than not find themselves vilified or subjected to greater abuse when they call on the state to protect them. They’re also at risk for defending themselves. See the case of Marissa Alexander, a black woman from Florida who fired a warning shot near her abusive and estranged husband who was threatening her. Though no one was injured, she was sentenced in 2012 to 20 years in prison for aggravated assault. After almost six years of hell, Alexander was finally released from prison one year ago.

Bourgeois Feminism and Anti-Sex Repression

American feminism has always reflected the racist, conservative, puritanical values of this country. (The largest and most influential organization at the turn of the 20th century was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which rallied against alcohol and lust.) Decades ago, feminists made an unholy alliance with the religious right in declaring porn to be the cause of violence against women. In the course of this, they played a role supporting the government censorship drive spurring busts of X-rated video stores and attacks on erotic art. Looking to the state to regulate personal behavior and mete out punishment runs in the blood of feminism—particularly what is dubbed carceral feminism, which demands more policing, prosecution and imprisonment to curb violence against women.

Last December, two New York City feminists petitioned the Metropolitan Museum of Art to either remove or “contextualize” a 1938 work by the Polish-French artist Balthus. The painting, Thérèse Dreaming, depicts a pensive young clothed model sitting with her underwear slightly exposed. The petition, which has gathered over 11,000 additional signatures, refers to the current climate around “sexual assault” and accuses the Met of “supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children.” By that reasoning, every advertisement for young girls’ toys or clothing should be banned. Might as well throw out masterpieces like Alice in Wonderland, which was inspired by the love that author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) had for a prepubescent girl.

Feminist vehicles like Ms. magazine were big players in the witchhunting of day-school teachers as deranged pedophiles, and the subsequent morphing of child abuse into anything that smacks of sexuality involving a person under legal voting age. Not only does this play down the real abuse of children (which occurs mainly inside families), but it criminalizes young people having sex in general. Thus, the hounding of director Roman Polanski, who fled the country to escape criminal charges in 1978 for consensual sex with an experienced 13-year-old girl, has been revived in the wake of the Weinstein scandals. (Deneuve is hated not least for her defense of Polanski.)

There is also a renewed inquisition against Woody Allen over unfounded allegations of abuse of his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, accusations spearheaded by his vengeful ex-partner, Mia Farrow. Allen has always denied Farrow’s claims, and no legal charges were ever brought against him. As Allen said in 1992, “In the end, the one thing I have been guilty of is falling in love with Mia Farrow’s adult daughter [Soon-Yi Previn] at the end of our years together.” In the minds of maniacal accusers, he must be guilty—because he went on to marry Soon-Yi, who is 35 years younger than he. She was a young adult at the start of her relationship with Allen, and they have been married now since 1997. One might note that Mia Farrow was 21 and Frank Sinatra was 50 when they married. (See “Woody Allen Crucified on ‘Family Values’,” WV No. 558, 4 September 1992.)

The laws defining “sex crimes” today are fundamentally aimed at strengthening the repressive arm of the state and propping up the prison of the family. The struggle for the emancipation of women, including in the workplace, cannot be separated from the struggle for the emancipation of women from the family. The material basis for women’s liberation can only be laid through the victory of workers revolution, which requires the forging of a Leninist vanguard party that will act as the tribune of all the oppressed, mobilizing to combat all social backwardness. As part of constructing an egalitarian socialist society, the family as an institution will be replaced by the socializing of childcare and housework, freeing women to play a full and equal role in social and political life. In a global communist future, anti-woman violence and bigotry, the reactionary constraints of family and religion will be barbaric memories of the past.

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

By Zack James

Sid Lester had often wondered whether Lena, Lena of the Caffe Lena, the small coffeehouse that weaned many folksingers in the days when such activity was on deck, in the time of the now fabled early 1960s folk minute, now too but she the grey eminence had long gone to the shades and so that is not her bother had ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams and the song that the McGarrigle Sisters had reportedly written for her when she dreamed the dream of West Coast dreams. This was no mere academic question since Sid was asking it not only to himself but to his lovely companion, Mona Lord, who was accompanying him just that moment on the Pacific Coast Highway about fifty miles from that very spot, from the Mendocino of his dreams if not hers (but probably about three hours away given the hairpin turns that he increasingly hated to take along some very treacherous stretches of that beautiful view highway having almost gone down an un-guard-railed embankment to the ocean around Big Sur a few years back).

It was not like Sid had not been to the dreamland before, having made the trip up from the fetid seas of Frisco town (fetid in comparison to the Mendocino white-washed breakers eroding the sheer rock at a greater rate than he would have expected) a number of times mostly with his old time now long gone to “find herself” Laura, Laura Perkins whom he had talked into going up those several times based on nothing more than that he liked the song. Liked too that she, Laura liked it as well and would cover the song anytime she could find somebody to do a duo with her at “open mics” and features depending on how she was feeling. Mona having heard the song exactly once (she didn’t like the fact that Laura had liked the song and had been to Mendocino before she had and so would not listen when Sid tried to play it on his car CD player as they got closer to the place). Moreover she was reserving judgment on the relationship between the song and the place.

And that last point, the point for Sid anyway, was exactly how the song and the place connected. Was the real source of his wonder about old Lena back in the tired old East. Did she long like he had to be done with Eastern pressures and pitfalls. To stop worrying about where the money would come from for rent, to pay the utilities, hell to pay the performers and stop them from having to play for the foolish “basket” like when they  had just started out on some forlorn street in Cambridge , Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town or the Village. Stop all of that and head West, head to South Bend for a minute, head over the Rockies and suck in the breezes of the new land, of the new dispensation. Yeah, he bet though that she never got to the West, never could leave her cats, never could get that café out of her system, would probably fret even if she only went out for a week or so.

As they, Sid and his new Mona, approached the outskirts of Mendocino he wondered, seriously wondered whether Mona would ask him someday to speak of Mendocino, to let the place get under her skin. Yeah, speak of Mendocino.