ORGANIZING REPORT: New York City gets fired up for the Freedom Fast!
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Fihn is the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Tuesday, March 06, 2018
ORGANIZING REPORT: New York City gets fired up for the Freedom Fast!
Asgard Is In The Ninth House-Once Again Down Valhalla Lane-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: The Dark World ” (2013)-A Film Review
Asgard Is In The Ninth House-Once Again Down Valhalla Lane-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: The Dark World ” (2013)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Laura Perkins
Thor: The Dark World, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tim Hiddleton, Marvel Comics, 2013
No, I will not as I did in the first review of the seemingly going on forever Marvel Comic Viking saga Thor moan and groan in public about having to dirty my hands with this kids’ stuff boys’ comic book super-hero fantasy adventures. Not because as a result of that very public wailing I got to get my feet wet in film noir even if on the edges and not the heart of the Bogie, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Lauren Bacall, Glenn Ford, Queen Gloria Grahame Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Jim Turner, Jim West treasure trove which my longtime companion Sam Lowell, a fellow writer here, mined for years and kind of was smarty pants about the matter. Now after reviewing Beat The Devil I can have my little bragging rights, can hold my head high. No, the hook here is what was left undone, was not finished in that first film review. The inevitable boy meets girl aspect which Hollywood, Bollywood, Indies, have also mined since moving pictures started well over a century ago now taking the lead from the novel and before that probably unto the Greek calends.
That unresolved “boy” hunk (still sorry Sam) Thor, played by hunk Chris Hemsworth (once again giving a beefcake shot for all the women, young and old, to feast on if so desired) “girl” Earthling Jane, although not Plain Jane by any means, played by Natalie Portman last seen by me playing in The Black Swan who have been separated, planetary separated when Thor in defense of the realm of hometown Asgard tore up the bridge to Earth to thwart brother, adopted brother as it turned out, Loki from invading other worlds in his quest to be king of the hill on the cheap. That left the two inter-planetary sweethearts in a bind and it did not take a rocket scientist or even a third rate screenwriter to know that another film would issue to resolve that little dilemma.
So the Jane-Thor search for eternal blest will drive this one even more so than the first Thor-ian (sic, maybe) vehicle. Naturally this interplanetary romance will have to play out to a fight against the dark forces that guys like Thor and his small band of trusty devotees are always having to thwart. (Just as an aside I find it very interesting that ancient Thor from way back when doesn’t give a damn about taking an Asgard girlfriend like Lady Sif the one woman warrior in his cohort and who would certainly have liked to have gone under the silky sheets with him or say a female Frost Giant or any other dame from the nine realms but that is just an aside. I won’t even comment on how easily Thor from “primitive” Asgard has no problem with traversing say modern New York City or London and conversely Jane when she finally gets to meet Thor’s parents on backwater Asgard)
Here’s the “skinny” (I have already given the origin of that expression from Sam so that is that). Thor is sulking for his Janie, Loki is back in chains from his craziness on plundering Earth and Jane is looking, desperately looking for a way to get back to Thor. Simple. The trick will be done through the revival of an ethereal substance Aether produced by the Dark Elves which will sent the nine realms into darkness, into the abyss if it once again gets in wrong hands. The vehicle to do this, that Aether, is, oh well, Jane who is infected with it. Thor finds about it and gets down to Earth Asap on that bridge that links all the realms which has finally been repaired. Finding radioactive Jane they are transported to Asgard (to meet his folks I think but supposedly to fight the menacing Dark Elves and their malignant leader who will stop at nothing now that his magic elixir is back on the radar).
All of this preliminary madness starts a series of battles between Thor and his trusty band and the Dark Elves and leader over various planetary and spacial locations including a minute alliance with Loki to get rid of the really bad guys. Loki “dies” honorably in battle and that is that but you know that cuckoo would do anything to get that coveted Asgardian throne. Eventually the Dark Elves are defeated, their leader wasted and the Aether out of bad guy hands. For now. Thor declines the throne offered by his “father” who turns out to be Loki and so it goes. Thor and Jane, well, they are back together on Earth but they still haven’t gotten under the silky sheets which makes me think that there will be yet another sequel. (Which turned out to be true as the third installment which I will not review, will not in a thousand years came out in 2017). I think I have had enough of this crowd, even hunk Thor.
Beatrice Fihn Thinks We Can Abolish Nuclear Arms Fihn is the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Beatrice Fihn Thinks We Can Abolish Nuclear Arms
Congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize! How did you become interested in nuclear disarmament? I’ve always been interested in international issues. But as with many people who grew up after the Cold War, nuclear weapons didn’t feel relevant. I interned for a Swedish feminist peace organization called Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Geneva. I got thrown into these big U.N. meetings where Russia and the U.S. and China debated nuclear weapons, and I was completely fascinated because it was so bizarre.
How so? Nuclear weapons just don’t make any sense! They’re sitting there with their papers talking about these crazy weapons that can end us all, and no one said: “This is crazy! What are we doing?” I was fascinated by the power dynamics, and I just got hooked.
Many countries banned chemical weapons and land mines for being inhumane. Why haven’t we done the same for nuclear weapons? That’s the thing; we give them this exception to all sanity or reason. We have the Geneva Conventions that say that you can’t indiscriminately target civilians, but that’s just what nuclear weapons are designed to do. Nuclear bombs are a very old-fashioned weapon. And if you consider the kind of threats we’re facing today — climate change, organized crime, food security, that kind of stuff — you can’t fight terrorism with a nuclear bomb.
So how do you do this work, day to day? Lots of emails, mostly. Talking to people. We have more than 460 organizations that are a part of this campaign network. Some are activists, some are connected to politicians and work to lobby parliaments, plus everything in between. It’s basically trying to raise awareness of this issue.
What is the aim of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons that the U.N. adopted in July? There’s always been this idea that we need to get rid of nuclear arms that even leaders of the nuclear-arms states have sort of supported. For instance, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize partly for his Prague speech against them. But we have allowed it to continue and have this exception to laws and norms. With the treaty, we wanted to push an agreement. We hope that it will help countries make other choices. We saw, for example, with the Land Mines Treaty, that the United States or Russia or China didn’t sign it, but they change their policies and behaviors. This treaty creates a norm that nuclear weapons are bad.
In a time of so many profound worries, why should we prioritize nuclear disarmament? This is an issue that could be an easy fix. It could be quite easy to make decisions to just reduce them or take them off alert status and reprioritize our militaries. We could use that money for other things. We have the power to do it. People think nuclear weapons are like a natural disaster or an asteroid hitting Earth, because the consequences are so awful. But we need to see them as just weapons; we can control them. They’re just really giant, expensive, dirty bombs that could end us all. We built them; we can take them apart.
Are there ways to change people’s minds about nuclear bombs? We have to keep talking about the humanitarian impacts of what would happen if you use them. We get a glimpse of it when we talk about North Korea, but we don’t think about how American nuclear weapons are aimed right now. They can be launched within 20 minutes. If the U.S. nuclear arsenal all went off, it could kill civilization, and Donald Trump has the ultimate authority to do that, as commander in chief. But if you’re really uncomfortable with Trump having that power, you are really uncomfortable with nuclear weapons in general. There are no right hands for these weapons. There’s no one who should have that kind of power.
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Excerpts of Beatrice Fihn's Nobel Acceptance Speech…
At dozens of locations around the world – in missile silos buried in our earth, on submarines navigating through our oceans, and aboard planes flying high in our sky – lie 15,000 objects of humankind’s destruction.
Perhaps it is the enormity of this fact, perhaps it is the unimaginable scale of the consequences, that leads many to simply accept this grim reality. To go about our daily lives with no thought to the instruments of insanity all around us.
For it is insanity to allow ourselves to be ruled by these weapons. Many critics of this movement suggest that we are the irrational ones, the idealists with no grounding in reality. That nuclear-armed states will never give up their weapons.
But we represent the only rational choice. We represent those who refuse to accept nuclear weapons as a fixture in our world, those who refuse to have their fates bound up in a few lines of launch code.
Ours is the only reality that is possible. The alternative is unthinkable.
The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be.
Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us?
One of these things will happen.
The only rational course of action is to cease living under the conditions where our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away.
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Today I want to talk of three things: fear, freedom, and the future.
By the very admission of those who possess them, the real utility of nuclear weapons is in their ability to provoke fear. When they refer to their “deterrent” effect, proponents of nuclear weapons are celebrating fear as a weapon of war.
They are puffing their chests by declaring their preparedness to exterminate, in a flash, countless thousands of human lives.
Nobel Laureate William Faulkner said when accepting his prize in 1950, that “There is only the question of ‘when will I be blown up?’” But since then, this universal fear has given way to something even more dangerous: denial.
Gone is the fear of Armageddon in an instant, gone is the equilibrium between two blocs that was used as the justification for deterrence, gone are the fallout shelters.
But one thing remains: the thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads that filled us up with that fear.
The risk for nuclear weapons use is even greater today than at the end of the Cold War. But unlike the Cold War, today we face many more nuclear armed states, terrorists, and cyber warfare. All of this makes us less safe.
Learning to live with these weapons in blind acceptance has been our next great mistake.
Fear is rational. The threat is real. We have avoided nuclear war not through prudent leadership but good fortune. Sooner or later, if we fail to act, our luck will run out.
A moment of panic or carelessness, a misconstrued comment or bruised ego, could easily lead us unavoidably to the destruction of entire cities. A calculated military escalation could lead to the indiscriminate mass murder of civilians.
If only a small fraction of today’s nuclear weapons were used, soot and smoke from the firestorms would loft high into the atmosphere – cooling, darkening and drying the Earth’s surface for more than a decade.
It would obliterate food crops, putting billions at risk of starvation.
Yet we continue to live in denial of this existential threat.
But Faulkner in his Nobel speech also issued a challenge to those who came after him. Only by being the voice of humanity, he said, can we defeat fear; can we help humanity endure.
ICAN’s duty is to be that voice. The voice of humanity and humanitarian law; to speak up on behalf of civilians. Giving voice to that humanitarian perspective is how we will create the end of fear, the end of denial. And ultimately, the end of nuclear weapons.
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That brings me to my second point: freedom.
As the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the first ever anti-nuclear weapons organisation to win this prize, said on this stage in 1985:
“We physicians protest the outrage of holding the entire world hostage. We protest the moral obscenity that each of us is being continuously targeted for extinction.”
Those words still ring true in 2017.
We must reclaim the freedom to not live our lives as hostages to imminent annihilation.
Man – not woman! – made nuclear weapons to control others, but instead we are controlled by them.
They made us false promises. That by making the consequences of using these weapons so unthinkable it would make any conflict unpalatable. That it would keep us free from war.
But far from preventing war, these weapons brought us to the brink multiple times throughout the Cold War. And in this century, these weapons continue to escalate us towards war and conflict.
In Iraq, in Iran, in Kashmir, in North Korea. Their existence propels others to join the nuclear race. They don’t keep us safe, they cause conflict.
As fellow Nobel Peace Laureate, Martin Luther King Jr, called them from this very stage in 1964, these weapons are “both genocidal and suicidal”.
They are the madman’s gun held permanently to our temple. These weapons were supposed to keep us free, but they deny us our freedoms.
It’s an affront to democracy to be ruled by these weapons. But they are just weapons. They are just tools. And just as they were created by geopolitical context, they can just as easily be destroyed by placing them in a humanitarian context.__
That is the task ICAN has set itself – and my third point I wish to talk about, the future.
I have the honour of sharing this stage today with Setsuko Thurlow, who has made it her life’s purpose to bear witness to the horror of nuclear war.
She and the hibakusha were at the beginning of the story, and it is our collective challenge to ensure they will also witness the end of it.
They relive the painful past, over and over again, so that we may create a better future.
There are hundreds of organisations that together as ICAN are making great strides towards that future.
There are thousands of tireless campaigners around the world who work each day to rise to that challenge.
There are millions of people across the globe who have stood shoulder to shoulder with those campaigners to show hundreds of millions more that a different future is truly possible.
Those who say that future is not possible need to get out of the way of those making it a reality.
As the culmination of this grassroots effort, through the action of ordinary people, this year the hypothetical marched forward towards the actual as 122 nations negotiated and concluded a UN treaty to outlaw these weapons of mass destruction.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides the pathway forward at a moment of great global crisis. It is a light in a dark time.
And more than that, it provides a choice.
A choice between the two endings: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us.
It is not naive to believe in the first choice. It is not irrational to think nuclear states can disarm. It is not idealistic to believe in life over fear and destruction; it is a necessity.__
All of us face that choice. And I call on every nation to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The United States, choose freedom over fear.
Russia, choose disarmament over destruction.
Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression.
France, choose human rights over terror.
China, choose reason over irrationality.
India, choose sense over senselessness.
Pakistan, choose logic over Armageddon.
Israel, choose common sense over obliteration.
North Korea, choose wisdom over ruin.
Russia, choose disarmament over destruction.
Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression.
France, choose human rights over terror.
China, choose reason over irrationality.
India, choose sense over senselessness.
Pakistan, choose logic over Armageddon.
Israel, choose common sense over obliteration.
North Korea, choose wisdom over ruin.
To the nations who believe they are sheltered under the umbrella of nuclear weapons, will you be complicit in your own destruction and the destruction of others in your name?
To all nations: choose the end of nuclear weapons over the end of us!
This is the choice that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons represents. Join this Treaty.
We citizens are living under the umbrella of falsehoods. These weapons are not keeping us safe, they are contaminating our land and water, poisoning our bodies and holding hostage our right to life.
To all citizens of the world: Stand with us and demand your government side with humanity and sign this treaty. We will not rest until all States have joined, on the side of reason.
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No nation today boasts of being a chemical weapon state.
No nation argues that it is acceptable, in extreme circumstances, to use sarin nerve agent.
No nation proclaims the right to unleash on its enemy the plague or polio.
No nation argues that it is acceptable, in extreme circumstances, to use sarin nerve agent.
No nation proclaims the right to unleash on its enemy the plague or polio.
That is because international norms have been set, perceptions have been changed.
And now, at last, we have an unequivocal norm against nuclear weapons.
Monumental strides forward never begin with universal agreement.
With every new signatory and every passing year, this new reality will take hold.
This is the way forward. There is only one way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons: prohibit and eliminate them.
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Nuclear weapons, like chemical weapons, biological weapons, cluster munitions and land mines before them, are now illegal. Their existence is immoral. Their abolishment is in our hands.
The end is inevitable. But will that end be the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us? We must choose one.
We are a movement for rationality. For democracy. For freedom from fear.
We are campaigners from 468 organisations who are working to safeguard the future, and we are representative of the moral majority: the billions of people who choose life over death, who together will see the end of nuclear weapons.
Thank you.
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Boston Socialist Unity Project Annual Conference 2018 When: Saturday, March 17, 2018, 9:00 am Where: MIT • 50 Vasser Street • Cambridge
Boston Socialist Unity Project Annual Conference 2018
When: Saturday, March 17, 2018, 9:00 am
Where: MIT • 50 Vasser Street • Cambridge
Boston Socialist Unity Project Annual Conference 2018
Saturday, March 17, 9-5 pm, @ MIT Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street
We invite you to join our third annual conference on the theme "Building Socialist Power: social movements and the Left in an Election Year." The conference will feature speakers on important issues facing the Left and socialists, as well as a full range of workshops.
Registration: BostonSocialistUnity.org
ANNOUNCEMENT OF PROGRAM
Saturday, March 17, 9:00 AM: registration opens 9:00 a.m. / program begins 10:00 a.m.
Some Workshop Highlights (see website for schedule):
- Palestinian rights and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Ari Wohlfeiler (deputy director Jewish Voice for Peace) and Amahl Bishara (Tufts Univ.)
- Puerto Rico: Colonization and Oppression: Dorotea Manuel, encuentro 5
- Drugs, Violence and Free Trade: Boston Trade Justice
Featured speakers
- Savina Martin, eastern Massachusetts chair of the new Poor Peoples Campaign
- Monica Poole, associate professor at Bunker Hill Community College, a radical take on #MeToo and current women's issues
- Louise Parker, University of Massachusetts - Boston, on single payer and a national health care system
- Ari Wohlfeiler, national deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, on Palestinian rights
- Jill Stein on the crisis in Korea and US imperialism
Our lunchtime plenary presents different perspectives on the 2018 elections and electoral politics, seeking common ground and strengthening the movement: presentations will include members of the Socialist Party of Boston, Our Revolution, the Communist Party USA of Greater Boston, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Green-Rainbow Party of Boston, Boston Democratic Socialists of America
Two sessions of participatory workshops will showcase movement-building work and issues. Topics include Puerto Rico; immigrant rights and deportation; Drugs, Violence and Free Trade; Jobs not Jails; lessons from Gramsci; Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel; socialist organizing strategies; student organizing; digital security; labor issues in education
Breakfast and lunch options available at the conference.
Everyone is welcome, $10 suggested donation; nobody turned away for lack of funds.
Write with your questions and more information: bostonsocialistunity@gmail.com
Together we fight. Together we win.
Upcoming Events:
| Ilan Pappe: Zionism and the Creation of the Biggest Prison on Earth | Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 7:00pm | Cambridge Friends Meeting | Cambridge | |
| Boston Socialist Unity Project Annual Conference 2018 | Saturday, March 17, 2018 - 9:00am | MIT | Cambridge | |
| Resisting War, Poverty and Racism: Massachusetts Peace Action 2018 Annual Meeting | Saturday, March 17, 2018 - 12:00pm | First Church in Boston | Cambridge | |
| Forum and Standout for World Water Day! | Thursday, March 22, 2018 - 6:30pm | encuentro 5 | Boston | |
| Regional Antiwar Rally and Protest: United Day of Action ! | Saturday, April 14, 2018 - 10:00am | New York City | New York | |
| Tax Day: Repeal the Trump Tax, Pass the People's Budget | Saturday, April 14, 2018 - 1:00pm | Cambridge Common | Cambridge | |
| Walk for Water 5K In Support of Palestinian Rights | Saturday, April 28, 2018 - 11:00am | Cambridge near Kendall Square | Cambridge | |
| No War Conference 2018: Legalizing Peace | Friday, September 21, 2018 - 5:30pm | Ontario College of Art and Design | Toronto |
Newsletter:
An evening on Korea: The dangers of war and the hopes for peace-7pm Thursday, March 8 Cambridge Friends Center 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle Street, out of Harvard Square) in Cambridge
An evening on Korea: The dangers of war and the hopes for peace
Special Feature Film
“Games of Their Lives”, a film that provides a very exciting, heart-warming, and deeply humanizing look at the North Korea of the Cold War era that U.S. audiences can relate to. In 1966, DPRK won a birth at the World Cup held in England. The story of the players, how they got there, how they were received at the height of the Cold War, the drama of the games, the totally unexpected embrace by the city of Middlesborough, and what became of the team over the years - is absolutely gripping. So much so that several of Korean American organizations sponsored a national screening tour of the film in 2003 with the British filmmakers, Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner. These screenings were among the first real exposures of North Koreans/North Korea to the US public including Korean Americans. And the response was incredible.
7pm Thursday, March 8
Cambridge Friends Center
5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle Street, out of Harvard Square) in Cambridge
Film followed by short update on the new national effort to “Continue the Korean Truce” with Paul Shannon of the National Collaboration on Korea.
The United Nations called for an Olympic Truce to last from Feb. 2 to March 25. During the Olympics and Paralympics we have seen the first high level discussions between North and South Korea in many years. The people of the world saw the United States suspend joint military exercises and North Korea suspend nuclear weapons and missile tests. We saw North Koreans and South Koreans marching together in the opening ceremony under the banner of a unified Korea. New discussions are being planned. But the U.S. is planning to resume military exercises in Korea soon after March 25
We must do everything we can to support the efforts among Koreans to build on the momentum toward a peace process: We must raise our demand that the Olympic Truce be continued after March 25.
Paul will fill us in on the campaign to continue the Olympic Truce and on the Week of Actions from March 15 to March 22. Find out something that you can do to promote continuation of the small steps toward reconciliation that began during the Olympics.
Event sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, Massachusetts Peace Action, Veterans for Peace/Smedley Butler Brigade, and United for Justice with Peace. For information call 617-623-5288
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Monday, March 05, 2018
In Honor Of The 99th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-Take Three –A Daughter of The Communards?
In Honor Of The 99th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-Take Three –A Daughter of The Communards?
Claudette Longuet idolized her grandfather, her maternal grandfather, Louis Paret, called the Lyonese Jaures by his comrades in the Socialist Party and by others as well not attuned to his political perspectives but respectful of the power of his words nevertheless, an honorific well-deserved for his emulation of the internationally famous French socialist orator, Jean Jaures, who had been villainously assassinated just before the war. Claudette had reason to idolize Papa Paret for his was a gentle man toward his several grandchildren and so had a built-in fan club of sorts before he even left the comfortable confines of his townhouse on the edges of downtown Lyon.
More importantly Claudette had idolized him for his political past, his proud working class and socialist political past. As a mere boy he had fought on the barricades during the Paris Commune, a touchstone for all those who survived the bloody massacre reprisals of the Thiers government carried out by the sadistic General Gallifit. He just barely missed being transported. Fortunately no “snitch” could place him on the barricades, although the Thiers government was not always so choosey about such things when they had their killing habits on. He had defended the poor Jewish soldier Dreyfus when Emile Zola screamed for his release. He had opposed Alexander Millerand, an avowed socialist, in joining the murderous bourgeois government when he took that step. He tirelessly campaigned against war, signed all the national and international petitions to prevent that occurrence, and attended all the conferences too. Although he himself was no Marxist, his socialism ran to more mystical and philosophical trends, he welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1905 with open arms. So, yes, Claudette, as she grew to young womanhood and began her own search for social and political meaning, understandable took her cues from her Papa. Moreover before the war she spent many hours in his company at the local socialist club doing the “this and that” to spread the socialist faith around and about Lyons.
Then the war came, that dreaded awful August 1914 when the guns of war howled into the night and her grandfather changed, almost chameleon-like. From a fervent anti-warrior he turned overnight into a paragon of defense of French culture, French bourgeois culture, as he would have previously said against, against, the Hun, the Boche, the, the, whatever foul word he could use to denigrate the Germans, all of them. He stood in the central square in Lyon and preached, preached the duty of every eligible young Frenchman to defend the republic to the death, no questions asked. And since he had that Jaures-like quality those young boys listened and sadly went off to war, many to never return. For a while he also had Claudette with him, for the first couple of years when he, they uttered not one anti-war word, not one. But after about two years, after some awful battles fought on French soil, some awful battles that were just stacking up the corpses without let-up, she started to listen to that younger Papa voice, the voice that thrilled her young girl-hood, and silently began to oppose the war, to oppose her grandfather who had not changed his opinion one iota throughout the carnage.
Claudette kept his silence until the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 when it seemed like peace might be at hand. He grandfather cursed the Russians whenever there was talk that they might withdraw from the war but she saw that their withdrawal might stop the war on all fronts. Mainly she was tired of seeing the weekly casualty lists and all the women, young and old, in black, always black. Then in November or maybe December 1917 she heard, heard from her new beau (a beau a little younger than her, almost just a boy, since the men her age were either at the fronts or had laid their heads down in some sodden ground) who had been agitating for an end to the war (and getting hell for it from the local government, and her grandfather) that the Russians under the Bolsheviks had withdrawn from the war. Things were sketchy, very sketchy with the wartime censorship on but that is what she heard from him. She talked to, or tried to talk to her grandfather about it, but he would not hear of the damn Bolshevik rabble.
Papa Paret moreover said when peace came, and it would come, with or without the damn Russians, since the entry of the American would take the final stuffing out of the Germans, then everybody could go back to arguing against war and French and German workers could unite again under the banner of the Socialist International and maybe really end war for good. And the war did end, and the various socialists who had just supported the massive blood-letting in Europe and elsewhere started talking of brotherhood once again and of putting that old peacetime International back together. Claudette though, now more under the spell of that feisty boyfriend, was not sure that grandfather had it right. And in the summer of 1919 when she heard (via that same boyfriend who had already joined the French Communist Party, or really the embryo of that party) that the Bolsheviks had convened a conference to form a new International, a Third International, to really fight against war and fight for socialism she was more conflicted. See she really did idolize Papa and so she would wait and see…
HONOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY-A WORKER'S HOLIDAY
HONOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY-A WORKER'S HOLIDAY
Click on title to link to " A History Of International Women's Day In Words And Pictures".
COMMENTARY
MARCH IS WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH-MARCH 8TH IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
MARCH 2017 (WESTERN DATES)MARKS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FEBRUARY 1917 REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA STARTED ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY BY WOMEN TEXTILE WORKERS AND OTHER WOMEN DEMANDING BREAD AND PEACE, AMONG OTHER ISSUES DURING THE HEIGHT OF WORLD WAR I.
This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the journal Women and Revolution in 1975
"Under the lead of the Third International, the day of the working women shall become a real fighting day; it shall take the form of practical measures which either solidify the conquests of Communism ...or prepare the way for the dictatorship of the working class."
Alexandra Kollontai (early Bolshevik leader)
Bourgeois feminists may celebrate it, but March 8 —International Women's Day—is a workers' holiday. Originating in 1908 among the female needle trades workers in Manhattan's Lower East Side, who marched under the slogans "for an eight hour day," "for the end of child labor" and "equal suffrage for women," it was officially adopted by the Second International in 1911.
International Women's Day was first celebrated in Russia in 1913 where it was widely publicized in the pages of the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, and popularized by speeches in numerous clubs and societies controlled by Bolshevik organizations which presented a Marxist analysis of women's oppression and the program for emancipation.
The following year the Bolsheviks not only agitated for International Women's Day in the pages of Pravda (then publishing under the name Put' Pravdy), but also made preparations to publish a special journal dealing with questions of women's liberation in Russia and internationally. It was called Rabotnitsa (The Working Woman), and its first issue was scheduled to appear on International Women's Day, 1914.
Preparations for the holiday were made under the most hazardous conditions. Shortly before the long-awaited day the entire editorial board of Rabotnitsa— with one exception—as well as other Bolsheviks who had agitated for International Women's Day in St. Petersburg factories, were arrested by the Tsarist police. Despite these arrests, however, the Bolsheviks pushed ahead with their preparations. Anna Elizarova —Lenin's sister and the one member of the editorial board to escape arrest—single-handedly brought out the first issue of Rabotnitsa on March 8 (or, according to the old Russian calendar, February 23) as scheduled. Clara Zetkin, a leading figure in the Ger¬man Social Democratic Party and in the international working women's movement, wrote:
"Greetings to you on your courageous decision to organize Women's Day, congratulations to you for not losing courage and not wanting to sit by with your hands folded. We are with you, heart and soul. You and your movement will be remembered at numerous meetings organized for Women's Day in Germany, Austria, Hungary and America."
—Quoted in A. Artiukhina, "Proidennyi Put',"
Zhenshehina v revoliutsii
By far the most important celebration ever of International Women's Day took place in Petrograd on 8 March 1917 when the women textile workers of that city led a strike of over 90,000 workers—a strike which signaled the end of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty and the beginning of the Russian Revolution. One week afterward, Pravda commented:
"The first day of the revolution—that is the Women's Day, the day of the Women Workers' International. All honor to the International! The women were the first to tread the streets of Petrograd on their day."
As the position of Soviet women degenerated under Stalin and his successors, as part of the degeneration of the entire Soviet workers state, International Women's Day was transformed from a day of international proletarian solidarity into an empty ritual which, like Mother's Day in the United States, glorifies the traditional role of women within the family.
But International Women's Day is a celebration neither of motherhood nor sisterhood; to ignore this fact is to ignore the most significant aspects of its history and purpose, which was to strengthen the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat. Unlike the pre-war Mensheviks who wanted to conciliate the feminists of their day by limiting the celebration of International Women's Day to women only, the Bolsheviks insisted that it be a holiday of working women and working men in struggle together. As Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife and life-long political companion) wrote in the lead article of the first issue of Rabotnitsa:
"That which unites working women with working men is stronger than that which divides them. They are united by their common lack of rights, their common needs, their common condition, which is struggle and their common goal.... Solidarity between working men and working women, common activity, a common goal, a common path to this goal—such is the solution of the 'woman' question among workers."
We look forward to celebrating future International Women's Days not only through the dissemination of propaganda, but also through the initiation of the full range of activities traditionally associated with this proletarian holiday—general strikes, insurrections, revolution!
Click on title to link to " A History Of International Women's Day In Words And Pictures".
COMMENTARY
MARCH IS WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH-MARCH 8TH IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
MARCH 2017 (WESTERN DATES)MARKS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FEBRUARY 1917 REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA STARTED ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY BY WOMEN TEXTILE WORKERS AND OTHER WOMEN DEMANDING BREAD AND PEACE, AMONG OTHER ISSUES DURING THE HEIGHT OF WORLD WAR I.
This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the journal Women and Revolution in 1975
"Under the lead of the Third International, the day of the working women shall become a real fighting day; it shall take the form of practical measures which either solidify the conquests of Communism ...or prepare the way for the dictatorship of the working class."
Alexandra Kollontai (early Bolshevik leader)
Bourgeois feminists may celebrate it, but March 8 —International Women's Day—is a workers' holiday. Originating in 1908 among the female needle trades workers in Manhattan's Lower East Side, who marched under the slogans "for an eight hour day," "for the end of child labor" and "equal suffrage for women," it was officially adopted by the Second International in 1911.
International Women's Day was first celebrated in Russia in 1913 where it was widely publicized in the pages of the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, and popularized by speeches in numerous clubs and societies controlled by Bolshevik organizations which presented a Marxist analysis of women's oppression and the program for emancipation.
The following year the Bolsheviks not only agitated for International Women's Day in the pages of Pravda (then publishing under the name Put' Pravdy), but also made preparations to publish a special journal dealing with questions of women's liberation in Russia and internationally. It was called Rabotnitsa (The Working Woman), and its first issue was scheduled to appear on International Women's Day, 1914.
Preparations for the holiday were made under the most hazardous conditions. Shortly before the long-awaited day the entire editorial board of Rabotnitsa— with one exception—as well as other Bolsheviks who had agitated for International Women's Day in St. Petersburg factories, were arrested by the Tsarist police. Despite these arrests, however, the Bolsheviks pushed ahead with their preparations. Anna Elizarova —Lenin's sister and the one member of the editorial board to escape arrest—single-handedly brought out the first issue of Rabotnitsa on March 8 (or, according to the old Russian calendar, February 23) as scheduled. Clara Zetkin, a leading figure in the Ger¬man Social Democratic Party and in the international working women's movement, wrote:
"Greetings to you on your courageous decision to organize Women's Day, congratulations to you for not losing courage and not wanting to sit by with your hands folded. We are with you, heart and soul. You and your movement will be remembered at numerous meetings organized for Women's Day in Germany, Austria, Hungary and America."
—Quoted in A. Artiukhina, "Proidennyi Put',"
Zhenshehina v revoliutsii
By far the most important celebration ever of International Women's Day took place in Petrograd on 8 March 1917 when the women textile workers of that city led a strike of over 90,000 workers—a strike which signaled the end of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty and the beginning of the Russian Revolution. One week afterward, Pravda commented:
"The first day of the revolution—that is the Women's Day, the day of the Women Workers' International. All honor to the International! The women were the first to tread the streets of Petrograd on their day."
As the position of Soviet women degenerated under Stalin and his successors, as part of the degeneration of the entire Soviet workers state, International Women's Day was transformed from a day of international proletarian solidarity into an empty ritual which, like Mother's Day in the United States, glorifies the traditional role of women within the family.
But International Women's Day is a celebration neither of motherhood nor sisterhood; to ignore this fact is to ignore the most significant aspects of its history and purpose, which was to strengthen the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat. Unlike the pre-war Mensheviks who wanted to conciliate the feminists of their day by limiting the celebration of International Women's Day to women only, the Bolsheviks insisted that it be a holiday of working women and working men in struggle together. As Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife and life-long political companion) wrote in the lead article of the first issue of Rabotnitsa:
"That which unites working women with working men is stronger than that which divides them. They are united by their common lack of rights, their common needs, their common condition, which is struggle and their common goal.... Solidarity between working men and working women, common activity, a common goal, a common path to this goal—such is the solution of the 'woman' question among workers."
We look forward to celebrating future International Women's Days not only through the dissemination of propaganda, but also through the initiation of the full range of activities traditionally associated with this proletarian holiday—general strikes, insurrections, revolution!
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