Pittsburgh Stands United With Tree of Life - Unite to fight Anti-Semitism and The Far Right
To
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Sunday, November 04, 2018
Pittsburgh Stands United With Tree of Life - Unite to fight Anti-Semitism and The Far Right Socialist Alternative
In Boston - Cosehcha protest 11/17 in defense of caravan
Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx-From The Archives- The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx
Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx-From The Archives- The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx
Workers Vanguard No. 1134
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18 May 2018
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TROTSKY
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LENIN
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The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx
(Quote of the Week)
May 5 marked the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. The excerpts below are taken from the beginning and conclusion of the Communist Manifesto, a seminal work that Marx co-wrote with his lifelong comrade, Friedrich Engels.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes....
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat....
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers....
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
In Honor Of The 150th Anniversary Of The Publication Of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” (1868)-A Book Review
In Honor Of The 150th
Anniversary Of The Publication Of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” (1868)-A
Book Review
Book Review
By Alden Riley
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott,
Roberts Brothers, 1868
I thought things were supposed to
change around here with the changing of the guard, otherwise known at least
among the younger writers as the purge and exile of the previous site manager
Allan Jackson and his replacement by Greg Green after a bitter internal fight
with no holds barred and no prisoners taken in the fall of 2017. The idea was
to let the younger writers spread their wings, learn to fly and not do dreary
pieces like the 24/7/365 1960s nostalgia hippie revival regime under
Jackson. And for a while there was a
breath of fresh air around the place, around the formerly hostile water cooler
which drives the social life of many operations and this one is no exception.
Then Greg, I think to show he was his own boss, his own operator came up with
the silly, silly even to Will Bradley who originally presented idea before thinking
better of it, that to appeal to a younger, eventually non-existent audience,
that the publication would feature film reviews of Marvel/DC comic book
characters gone to screen, serious analysis of rap and pop music, and review
graphic novels. Over the top silly stuff
since that phantom audience wouldn’t touch a high-brow publication if they were
paid to do so and even then it would be Seth’s six, two and even that would rouse
them. They get their ideas, information, style elsewhere.
We younger writers in our turn
rebelled at that fantastic imposition and Greg retreated mostly gracefully
under the blowback and let us do our own thing. Then Allan Jackson whom we all
though had perished, gone to pot, dope pot, was working for Mitt Romney out in
Utah Mormon country, running a whorehouse with an old flame in East Bay or
living with an old former hometown corner boy turned “out” drag queen in San
Francisco depending on which rumor you believed at the moment, showed up to do
a series of encore presentations of material he had produced over the years in
order to get back that older audience which had sustained the publication
through good times and bad. Invited by Greg via old geezer Sam Lowell and the Editorial
Board. Something has happened to Greg since Allan’s return, maybe he is under
the Svengali influence of the man but now we are all expected to write “outside
the box” meaning material that we know damn little about and could care even
less about. Hence I have been assigned to do a book review of Louisa May
Alcott’s Little Women in honor of the
150th anniversary of its original publication.
There is where things have gone awry
with Greg’s I am sure Allan-inspired approach. The only thing I knew about Louisa
May Alcott, and this second-hand through Sandy Salmon when he was Senior Film
Editor and I was his associate editor was that her father, Bronson Alcott, was
a wild man, had run amok at Brooks Farm, the holy of holies in the pre-Civil
War Transcendentalist movement, you know Emerson, Thoreau and other Buddha-like
figures who ran around Cambridge, mainly Brattle Street telling naked truths
naked. Bronson has run through whatever dough he had from his inheritance and had
fathered, some say illegimately, a bunch of children by various female denizens
of that isolated farm including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife and had had an
affair with Herman Melville’s brother. Such things are hard to pin down but all
I know for sure is that he claimed Louisa May and three other young women as
his children. Lacking DNA testing who knows. So old Bronson was a certified wild
man no doubt but that was hardly enough knowledge to help ‘the hook” of this
famous book which in its time was a best-seller and a standard for young girls
and young women’s bedside reading.
Here is where things get weird though
Sandy who knew Allan Jackson when they both were much younger and had worked the
free-lance stringer racket we all go through before getting our so-called cushy
by-lines at American Film Gazette
asked him what sources I should go to for a look at the lingering influence of
the book on modern girls and young women. Told Sandy to tell me to ask my
sister, Ellen, when she had read the book and what she had thought of it. Here
is the honest truth Ellen had never heard of the book, didn’t know who or what
I was talking about and when I told her the outline of the story she laughed,
smirked and laughed saying “are you kidding” who had time to read such old-time
melodramas. Failing there I figured that I would work my way back so I mentioned
the book I was reviewing to my mother who told me that my grandmother had read
her the book at night before bed but she didn’t remember much except there were
four sisters who grew up and got married or something like that and were good
wives except one who died young of some strange disease. She said ask my
grandmother. Bingo. Grandma quoted me chapter and verse without hesitation
until I asked how the book influenced her. She told me those were different times,
more restrictive times even against her growing up times in the 1930s so she would
have to pass on the influence question. She was only a little shocked that my sister
knew nada about the book and my mother only a little more. So I am going to
take a stab and say as a 150th anniversary honor-women you have come
a long way since those homebody marriage child-rearing times.
I had to think awhile, had to ask
Seth Garth who is good at this kind of question and his old flame Leslie
Dumont, both fellow writers here what was it about the novel that would have
appealed to young girls and women up at least until my grandmother’s growing up
times. And why when I later asked some other female contemporaries they came up
as blank as my sister on even having heard of the book. Leslie said it best, or
at least better. Those were male dominated times and so even the least amount of
spunk, independence by say Jo, who is the
character in the book who pretty much represents Louisa May’s profile was like
a breath of fresh air even to young girls and women who knew the score, knew
they would be driven back into the cave if they got too brave. Seth, who was
more than willing to defer to Leslie’s judgment took a more historical approach
saying there was nothing in the plotline that dealt with eternal truths so that
such a novel would have a limited life-span except in the groves of academia where
a couple of generations of Ph.ds could get worked up about the social meaning
of it all.
That is about it except to briefly trace
the story line, or lines since there are actually two main threads, the almost
universal family-centered expectations for women and Louisa May’s struggle to
get somebody to survive into strong independence co-managership of the family
along with a thoughtful husband. Oldest sister Meg is pretty conventional,
beautiful and domestic preaching to the younger sisters’ choir about the need
to be civilized and good God-fearing wives. Jo, Louisa May’s character is
strong-willed and thoughtful and will make the marriage that Alcott thought
should be appropriate for her times and class. Beth is something of a cipher, musical
but early on sickly who dies young from the after effects of horrible scarlet
fever so no real lesson can be drawn from her life. (Funny how these Victorian
novelists, male and female, have to have some frail sickly female character
hovering in the background.) Amy, the youngest, is the closest to the character
that let’s say my daughter could relate to if she ever finished reading the
book which she adamantly refused to finish after reading about a third of it and
declaring the thing utterly boring even the
Amy character who struggle for artistic self-expression is very similar to her
own feelings about what she wants out of life. As Sam Lowell has stated on many
occasions-a slice of life circa the 1860s-that is the “hook.”
*The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget
Click on title to link to a YouTube film clip of some of the events of that day in 1979 when various right-wing paramilitary thugs murdered five communist workers.
Commentary
This is the 29th Anniversary of the heinous crimes of 1979 against communist workers in Greensboro, North Carolina
This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same. As does the message- Never Forget!
REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON, SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER
For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:
On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.
This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.
REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006
In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.
First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.
In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.
One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.
Commentary
This is the 29th Anniversary of the heinous crimes of 1979 against communist workers in Greensboro, North Carolina
This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same. As does the message- Never Forget!
REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON, SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER
For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:
On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.
This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.
REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006
In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.
First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.
In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.
One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.
Saturday, November 03, 2018
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.
Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding, would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
Once Again The Legend-Slayer Cometh-This Time In Old Mexico-A Retort To Si Lannon’s Film Review Of “The Mask Of Zorro-A Commentary
Once Again The Legend-Slayer Cometh-This Time In Old Mexico-A Retort To Si Lannon’s Film Review Of “The Mask Of Zorro-A Commentary
By Will Bradley
If this legend-slaying that I have been
asked to perform ever since I debunked the modern legend of one Sherlock
Holmes, real name Lawrence Livermore, in battle with old time film reviewer
Seth Garth who while as wary of the “fake news” legend of Mr. Livermore as I
was, nevertheless got caught up in some semi-homophobic weirdo scene trying to
debunk the legend via his and Doc Watson, assumed real name although the name Nigel
Bruce has been bandied about of late, membership in the Homintern and their being
the masterminds behind all the troubles in Merry Olde England running guns and everything
else out of Baker Street and at the Black Swan Tavern on the docks. Thus I got
this assignment almost by default since site manager Greg Green now is very
aware that anytime some stumblebum legend comes across his desk in film or book
form I am the go-to person to utterly destroy whatever nonsense is afoot. (I will
also take a shot at art but feel less confident there since the poor buggers
who work that trade really believe these legends and spent a ton of time
putting paint or chalk to canvas)
My credentials for today’s debunking of
poor deluded Si Lannon’s review of his childhood hero, a guy, a Spanish guy but
not from Spain but out in the wilds of California back in the 1800s named Zorro
are starting to pile up. The occasion this time a paean to one Zorro, no known
last name portrayed in the 1998 film The
Mask of Zorro and played by either Anthony Hopkins whom I thought had died years
ago from withered old age and hubris or Antonio Banderas, take your pick since it
is the legend I am smashing not the actors or plot-line of the greedy producers.
We live in a funny age, an age where on the one hand a lot of people will believe
anything that comes on the television spewed by any dingbat with time on his or
her hands and on the other everything has to be dissected by some authority, some
college deadbeat who just happened to specialize in whatever the flavor of the
month subject was afloat.
Therefore I am duty-bound to present my
credentials since at this publication we have since lovely Greg Green arrived
to head the day to day operations bent toward that latter practice mentioned
above. I have already mentioned my documented (and wearisome having to wade through
twelve or was fourteen Holmes films) debunking of the British parlor pink amateur
private detective formerly known as Sherlock Holmes and now fully exposed as a
guy named Livermore, then recently escaped from Darthmoor Prison. In a way that
was kids’ stuff since I was dueling Seth Garth who had I admit had some insights
into the psycho world of Holmes and his crowd. On my own though I was able to
sniff out the rancorous fake legend of one Johnny Cielo who supposedly was a nearly
legendary aviator when that profession meant danger and short lives. Turned out
this half-baked junkie was making his stuff up as he went along and some desperate
newspaperman down in Miami was gullible enough to believe he had screen siren Rita
Hayworth in one arm and guns for Fidel Castro out in the hills of Cuba in the other.
(That Rita tag not a hard thing to see guys would lie about since she really
was a looker as they used to say even to a twenties something guy.)
A couple of major coups were ripping
the mask off of Robin Hood and his so-called band of Merry Men, really nothing
but highway robbers and drunken sots who had the “rep” of robbing the rich and
giving to the poor. Bullshit and as hard as it was since the documentation I
needed was from church and estate files going back to the 12th
century I proved the guy was among the greediest guys in the English realm especially
when his sponsor Richard the Lion-Hearted got back from the crusades and gave
him whatever he wanted. Smashed like a ripe pumpkin. The other major one and I
will stop there since I am started to get heated up about this clown Zorro was
the so-called king of love then and leave them, another Spanish dude except this
guy actually in Spain, for a while anyway until they deported him or he put himself
in exile after disgracing himself before a lot of young virginal convent girls
who were suffering from enclosure hysteria and hormonal imbalance and made the
whole thing up and created a hell of a lot of work for the Inquisition before some
Maria something confessed that she was in heat, something like that.
Look, if you read Si Lannon’s review
you could hardly keep a dry eye when he explained that his own precious mother was
not the Italian of the neighborhood acceptable ethnic group (if just barely in the
Irish Town Acre) but Spanish, Mexican and was keeping that “on the low.” Nobody,
no reasonable person could fault him for a certain adult pride in his heritage.
He will get no argument from me on that score but what brings me to the boiling
point and fast is his cringing fawning of this dead-beat bracero with no last
name, and as far as I could discover no address, in California or Mexico. In the
early 1800s after Mexico righteously kicked dear mother, madre Spain out of its
lands there was still plenty of work to be done. The poor landless peasants were
land hungry (hell they still are today to no avail with the decimations of
globalization and bum treaties like that old NAFTA rape) and were getting nothing
but dust and arroyos. Anybody could have come along and gone with that eternal
gag- steal from the rich give to the poor and found a receptive audience. Robin
Hood got away with it for centuries before I exposed the bloody bastard for the
fake he was.
This Zorro business was of the same cloth,
tattered cloth. This guy, this Senor Rios, or whatever moniker he was using
depending on what part of California he was working started wearing black, all black
and talking tough to the coppers when those land hungry peasants were around.
Started calling himself Zorro, the chosen one. Here is his gag though, or part of
it. He worked these peasants into a lather, told them he would get land grants
and whatever else they were clamoring for but he needed money to raise an army to
fight the greedy Dons who did own everything including those braceros. They forked
up, forked up plenty and off he went. Friends, one of the great things about
breaking up the more modern legends is that there is a paper trail, especially
among the Spanish churchman (remember they were the cadre for the Inquisition in
an earlier time). A paper trail not easily findable in the Robin Hood and Don
Juan cases. After exhaustive study and research I can report that those poor benighted
peasants were once again gulled by a passing grifter- a guy named Zorro who
never even existed. That Senor Rios on the other hand became one of the wealthiest
landowners in California before the Republic. I will put my knife back in my
sheath for any day now that I have done what I needed to do.
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