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France: Mothers denounce police brutality

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Since 17 November, there’s been widespread street protests and road blocks all over France by the ‘gilets jaunes’ (named after the hi-vis yellow vests they wear). They were sparked off by an increase in the tax on petrol while the rich had had a tax cut. The movement has grown and broadened its demands and now includes many more sectors – school students, ambulance workers, campaigners against police murders and racism, etc.
Police repression has been ferocious, especially against secondary education kids who blockaded their schools. In one school alone (Mantes la Jolie, near Paris) over 150 students were arrested and forced by armed police to kneel down against a wall with their hands tied behind their backs. This received general condemnation, especially from parents horrified by how they children were treated. The "Mothers Front", a parents trade union, issued a statement on 8 December denouncing police racism and brutality and their invasive presence in schools. They are planning various actions in defence of children and their right to organise.	Arrests of students, Mantes-la-Jolie, 6 Dec. 2018
FRANCE: FRONT DES MERES syndicat de parents  MOTHERS FRONT parents trade union
Nous avons créé le Front de Mères, premier syndicat de parents des quartiers populaires. Nous l'avons crée parce que nous aimons nos enfants, parce que nous voulons mettre hors d’état de nuire le système raciste qui les détruit, parce que nous voulons leur transmettre tout ce qui pourra les rendre plus forts, à commencer par notre dignité, parce que nous voulons les éduquer à travers des valeurs d’égalité, de justice et de bienveillance, et parce que nous savons que sans lutte politique et collective, ce combat-là est vain. Notre projet s'inscrit dans une démarche d'éducation populaire, nous travaillons sur des projets concrets et locaux, sur du long terme, dans une perspective positive et constructive, et sur tout ce qui concerne l'éducation de nos enfants.	We created the Mothers Front, the first tradeunion of parents in working-class neighbourhoods. We created it because we love our children, because we want to stop the racist system which destroys them, because we want to pass on to them everything that can make them stronger starting with our dignity, because we want to educate them with values of equality, justice and kindness, and because we know that without political and collective struggle, this fight is futile. Our project is part of a process of popular education, we work with a positive and constructive perspective on concrete local projects, as well as long term, and on all that concerns the education of our children.
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/front-de-meres/blog/081218/les-meres-avec-les-lyceens-reprimes-par-la-police-ne-touchez-pas-nos-enfants Les mères avec les lycéens réprimés par la police: ne touchez pas à nos enfants! ·        8 DÉC. 2018  PAR FRONT DE MÈRES ·        BLOG : LE BLOG DE FRONT DE MÈRES C'est en tant que mamans unies et déterminées que nous nous adressons à l’État : ça suffit, nous vous interdisons d'humilier, de mutiler et de détruire nos mômes ! Nous ne laisserons pas faire ! Nous protégerons nos enfants par tous les moyens nécessaires, parce que nous les aimons, que c'est notre avenir, et parce que c'est notre devoir de parents ! Depuis plusieurs jours, nos enfants lycéens et lycéennes subissent une infâme répression policière digne d'une dictature. La guerre est déclarée à nos enfants à Ivry, Mantes-la-jolie, Garges, Paris, Orléans, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Marseille et partout en France. Nos assistons à des scènes où nos enfants sont humiliés, placés dans des positions dégradantes, rappelant les pratiques coloniales. Nous entendons la police les menacer avec des insultes racistes et homophobes. Nos enfants sont illégalement placés et maintenus en garde à vue. Nous voyons, horrifiées, la police les mutiler à coups de flashballs, plusieurs d'entre eux ont perdu une main, ont le visage cassé, la mâchoire détruite. Quelle hypocrisie de la part d'un gouvernement qui dans le même temps veut interdire aux parents la fessée ! Nous ne sommes pas dupes concernant les objectifs de cette répression féroce : nous savons qu'il s'agit de défigurer la jeunesse de ce pays et de la terroriser pour éviter qu'elle vienne donner de la force au mouvement massif de contestation sociale, notamment autour des gilets jaunes. Nous savons que la garde à vue est utilisée comme arme de dissuasion pour empêcher les jeunes d'utiliser leurs droits les plus fondamentaux de s'exprimer et de manifester. Nous ne sommes pas dupes, nous savons que cette répression s'inscrit dans le prolongement de l'Etat Macron qui veut expérimenter la présence policière au sein des établissements, qui nomme des gendarmes comme proviseurs adjoints, qui forme les chefs d'établissement aux techniques militaires. Nous ne sommes pas dupes également du fait que le système d'oppression raciste ne traite pas nos enfants de la même manière selon leur classe et leur couleur de peau. Si tous les lycéen.nes qui manifestent aujourd'hui sont ciblés, nous savons que le pouvoir traite différemment les jeunes noirs et arabes, et les jeunes blancs des classes moyennes. Aux jeunes noirs et arabes habitant les quartiers populaires, et depuis des décennies, on dénie jusqu'à leur humanité. Ils ne sont même pas considérés comme des enfants, mais comme des délinquants. Nous savons aussi que ce système cherche par là à nous diviser. Mais aujourd'hui, nous ne sommes pas divisées ! Aujourd'hui, nous sommes solidaires. Car liées par le même sentiment d'amour pour nos enfants, liées également par le même sentiment d'inquiétude et d'angoisse pour eux. Et c'est en tant que mamans unies et déterminées que nous nous adressons à l’État : ça suffit, nous vous interdisons d'humilier, de mutiler et de détruire nos mômes ! Arrêtez de maltraiter et de sexualiser le corps de nos enfants ! Nous ne laisserons pas faire ! Nous protégerons nos enfants par tous les moyens nécessaires, parce que nous les aimons, que c'est notre avenir, et parce que c'est notre devoir de parents ! Nous sommes solidaires des revendications légitimes de nos enfants, qui refusent qu'on restreigne « réforme » après « réforme » leurs champs des possibles et leurs perspectives d'avenir. Nous sommes solidaires de leurs revendications contre Parcoursup, la « réforme » du bac, la suppression de 2600 postes depuis septembre, et les discriminations dans le système scolaire le plus inégalitaire d'Europe. Quant à notre revendication principale, elle concerne la police, qui n'a rien à faire dans l'école. Ni autour ! Nous exigeons une distance de sécurité entre nos enfants et la police. Et que les chefs d'établissement ne soient pas des relais de la police au sein de l'école. Car l'institution scolaire est aujourd'hui complice de la répression à l'égard des lycéen.nes et de l'atteinte à leurs droits fondamentaux en excluant les lycéen.nes qui bloquent les établissements, en leur refusant des salles de réunions, et en collaborant étroitement avec les services de police contre leurs élèves.Nous exigeons de l'institution scolaire qu'elle défende avant tout l'intérêt des élèves ! Dans ce sens, nous exigeons que soit respecté le droit de nos enfants à manifester et à s'exprimer. Nous refusons la criminalisation de leur engagement, cette forme de punition collective parce qu'ils osent se lever. Car notre rôle éducatif de parents c'est d'apprendre à nos enfants à refuser l'injustice et la violence. Notre démarche est de long terme, mais nous prévoyons plusieurs actions concrètes dès les prochains jours : • Nous sommes en train d'organiser une riposte juridique pour faire condamner l’État français. En ce sens, nous soutenons les plaintes déposées par les avocats de lycéen.nes victimes de violences policières Arié Alimi, Hosni Maati, Yassine Bouzrou, etc. • Nous allons organiser des cellules de soutien pour les lycéen.nes victimes et leurs familles • Nous sommes en train de rédiger une plaquette à destination de tous les lycéen.nes, avec leurs droits, les démarches à suivre, les contacts à appeler, etc • Mais surtout nous allons protéger nos mômes, nous allons être des mères boucliers !! • Nous nous rendrons dès ce lundi 10 décembre dans les lieux d'extrême répression, à Ivry, Mantes la Jolie, Garges, Villemonble, etc pour y faire bouclier face à la police et protéger nos enfants ! Car un pays où l'on détruit les enfants est un pays sans avenir, Un pays où l'on terrorise les enfants se dirige vers la dictature et le fascisme. Nos enfants, c'est notre vie, notre espoir ! Protégeons-les contre les violences d’État ! A toutes les mamans de France, rejoignez-nous! FRONT DE MÈRES MÈRES SOLIDAIRES COLLECTIF DES MÈRES DE BERGSON COLLECTIF DES MÈRES D'ARAGO	https://blogs.mediapart.fr/front-de-meres/blog/081218/les-meres-avec-les-lyceens-reprimes-par-la-police-ne-touchez-pas-nos-enfants Mothers with the school children repressed by police: do not touch our children! ·        8 DÉC. 2018   BY FRONT DE MÈRES  ·        BLOG : LE BLOG DE FRONT DE MÈRES   As united and determined mums, we want the  State to know that: enough is enough, we forbid you to humiliate, maim and destroy our kids! We will not allow it! We will protect our children by any means necessary, because we love them, it is our future, and because it is our duty as parents! For several days, our high school child­­­­ren have suffered infamous police repression akin to a dictatorship. You have declared war on our children in Ivry, Mantes-la-Jolie, Garges, Paris, Orleans, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Marseille and everywhere in France. We witness how children are humiliated, placed in degrading positions, reminiscent of colonial practices. We hear the police threatening them with racist and homophobic insults. Our children are illegally taken into custody and held. We see, horrified, the police mutilate them with flashballs, a number of them have lost a hand, have a smashed face, a destroyed jaw. What hypocrisy on the part of a government which at the same time wants to ban parents from spanking! We are not fooled about what the goals of this fierce repression are: we know it’s about disfiguring the youth of this country and terrorizing them to prevent them from adding strength to the massive movement of social protest, in particular around the yellow vests. We know that police custody is used as a deterrent to prevent young people from exercising their most basic rights of expression and demonstration. We are not fooled, we know that this repression is an extension of the Macron state that wants to try having a police presence in our schools, appoints gendarmes as deputy headmasters, and training school heads in military techniques. We are not fooled, we also know that this system of racist oppression treats our children in a different way according to their class and their skin colour. Even if all the high school students who are demonstrating today are targeted, we know that the power treats Black and Arab youth differently than it treats middle class white youth. For decades, Blacks and Arabs youth living in working class neighbourhoods have denied even their humanity. They are not even considered children, but delinquents. We also know that this system seeks to divide us. But today, we are not divided! Today, we stand together. Because we are bound by the same feeling of love for our children and by the same feeling of worry and anguish for them. And it is as united and determined mums that we tell the State: enough is enough, we forbid you to humiliate, mutilate and destroy our kids! Stop mistreating and sexualizing the bodies of our children! We will not allow it! We will protect our children by any means necessary, because we love them, it is our future, and because it is our duty as parents! We stand in solidarity with the legitimate demands of our children, who refuse "reform" after "reform" narrowing their scope of possibilities and their future prospects. We stand in solidarity with their demands against Parcoursup, the "reform" of the baccalaureate, the elimination of 2600 posts since September, and discriminations in the most unequal school system in Europe. As for our main demand, it concerns the police: they have no place within school. Or around it! We demand a safe distance between our children and the police. And school managers must not be extensions of the police within the school. The school institution is now complicit with the repression of high school students and the violation of their fundamental rights by excluding those who block schools, refusing them meeting rooms, and working closely with the police against their own students. We demand that school institution defends above all the interest of its pupils! That is, we demand respect for the right of our children to demonstrate and express themselves. We refuse this criminalisation of their involvement, this collective punishment because they dare to stand up. Because our educational role as parents is to teach our children to reject injustice and violence. What we are doing is long-term, but we are planning several concrete actions in the coming days: • We are organizing a legal response to condemn the French State. That is, we support the complaints lodged by the lawyers of high school students victims of police violence Arié Alimi, Hosni Maati, Yassine Bouzrou, etc. • We will organize support cells for high school students and their families. • We are writing a booklet for all high school students, with their rights, steps to follow, contacts to call, etc. • But above all we will protect our kids, we will be ‘mother shields’!! • We will go this Monday, 10 December, to areas of extreme repression, Ivry, Mantes la Jolie, Garges, Villemonble, etc., to be shields from the police and protect our children! Because a country where children are destroyed is a country without a future. A country where children are terrorized is heading towards dictatorship and fascism. Our children are our life, our hope! Let’s protect them against state violence! To all the mothers of France, join us! MOTHER'S FRONT MOTHERS IN SOLIDARITY COLLECTIVE OF MOTHERS OF BERGSON COLLECTIVE OF MOTHERS OF ARAGO

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Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Short Film Review Series

Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Short Film Review Series

Recently I wrote a short, well maybe not short when the thing got finished, summary of my “take” on this American Left History publication that I have been the site manager of since the fall of 2017. Took over full time after the variously called “purge,” “exile”, “retirement,” forced or otherwise of the previous site manager Allan Jackson who had actually hired me to run the day to day operations before the “internal rebellion” of the younger writers against his regime knocked him out of the box. I stood on the side-lines then since taking sides would have hurt my chances of taking full command and also I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other although I cringed when Seth Garth who I respect started talking about Stalinist purges, Siberia and written out of history photographs like this was the second coming of the Leon Trotsky-Joe Stalin fight back in ancient history early Soviet Union days.

I also cringed when the younger writers who obviously had never known privation or hard times started taking Allan to task for glorifying his hometown high school junkie corner boy, a guy called the Scribe, who got himself killed for some stupid reason down in Mexico over a busted drug deal. Hated   Allan’s incessant nostalgia for the 1960s, especially the Summer of Love, 1967 which they knew nothing about, didn’t want to write about and could have given a fuck about except to placate him (and move up the food chain which some did even in opposition). I now, now that the dust has settled, and I have taken firm control of the operations do have an opinion that indeed Allan was unceremoniously purged and found himself in exile although not to Ata Alma or deep Siberia but sunny California, via a short stop in Utah. Needless to say the same fate will not await me as long as I can keep young and old writers too busy to waste time plotting around the office water cooler.

(Needless to say I have in the back of my mind thought many times that I should just get rid of the damn water cooler and let the employees find their own water sources just like in most offices. Maybe I am making a mistake putting this in print will be seen by somebody who will then get all protective and defend keeping the thing as some democratic right or something grandfathered in since it was here before I was but so be it. My real problem is that this illustrious water cooler is the place where many a plot against recently exiled Allan Jackson were hatched and where, according to Sam Lowell’s own words, he “got religion” about the need to “pass the torch” and along the way put the knife deeply into the misbegotten body of his oldest friend by casting the decisive vote for Allan’s ouster. So you can see where things stand with these wild cowboys and the cohort of women writers I have brought in, or in the case of Leslie Dumont brought back spend even more time there so who knows what they are talking about).

Yeah, Allan took it on the chin, didn’t see it coming when the younger writers led by Will Bradley who when not conniving with others who harbor some kind of grievous hurts from those in charge, whoever is in charge, is an up and coming writer who now has courtesy of my good offices a by-line, if he can keep it, took a vote of no confidence and Allan took the sack, hit the skids. Some of his detractors wanted him escorted from the office under guard like they do in the high tech and finance fields throwing his boxes of stuff out the window or something like that but cooler heads prevails. Meaning this silly Editorial Board which needs to rubber stamp my decisions-nixed the idea since maybe he still had some friends from the old days who might take umbrage at the idea-and come in and do bodily harm to whoever proposed the crazy idea. Worse of all his longtime old-time high school corner boy Sam Lowell under the guise of passing the torch gave him the coup de grace giving the kids the deciding “no” vote. With friends like that I said at the time although not to Sam who now heads the Ed Board and is technically my “boss” who needs enemies. Sam I am sure in true hard-ass Acre neighborhood form will say all is fair in love and war and that Allan had done much worse to him over the years including sleeping with his, Sam’s, third wife.

Adding insult to injury the conspirators, Sam in good corner boy form included at first before he got elevated to the Ed Board and so had to be “neutral” or nice I forget which he claimed he was doing to back out of the battle, to slander and libel Allan when he was down, kicked him in the metaphorical groin. Maybe not court-worthy, not money damages worthy but it made it extremely hard for him to find work on the East Coast, in New York City particularly.  Put the hex on him like he had been some kind of monomaniacal tyrant when they put the kiss of death “hard to work with,” tag which gets your resume to the shedder faster than you can walk there. Publishers who a few years ago would have paid big money to Allan just to sit in the office when important advertisers came by now wouldn’t offer him a cup of coffee, would make him wait all day in the foyer and then  tell the front office that the big boys had gone home for the day and could you come back tomorrow like he was just out of journalism school. 

Those young writers as if to bury the dead deeply or perform some exotic exorcism to insure that Allan would not come back zombie-like from the dead like you see in the current wave of dystopic films or if you are old enough or have access to a Netflix account some films from the heyday of zombie films-the 1950s spread the rumors far and wide. As far as I can tell they made the stuff up. Or they had so-called “third parties” do their dirty work a trick I too learned long ago when you wanted to rake somebody over the coals but wanted to pretend you were just reporting some facts you had picked up along the way. Either way they had a field day once Allan left the office, left without giving a forwarding address (although Seth Garth his main old-time hometown neighborhood supporter knew where he was part of the time, knew at least that when he tapped out in New York that he headed West, not just any West but purely West Coast California west, to get clean, to get washed over by some fresh Pacific breeze in along the Pacific Coast Highway near Todo el  Mundo scene of many early fresh breathes when he and that crowd were young and filled to the brim with Summer of Love, 1967 dreams and visions).       

Some of the stuff really was unbelievable although as long as it didn’t impinge on the operations here or diminish my authority starting out trying to fill some pretty big shoes in the industry after Allan’s demise, I tucked my head in. A couple of things I tried to check out, stuff like he was selling encyclopedias door to door out in Westchester County when Readers Digest turned him down for an office boy’s job. (Does anybody still use a hard copy set of encyclopedias in the age of Internet anyway which is what made the story seem fishy to me.) Was working in a fish factory for wages down in North Carolina. Nothing to it. Had gotten a job as a bellhop at the Ritz. (Maybe but I could never get anybody to follow up on the story). Had been washing dishes when the Ritz had banquets and needed extra day labor help. Nothing.    

The three that did keep coming up and which had an aura of possibility since he had been seen in the West (which is how we were able to discount the North Carolina fish factory story since he was in either Utah or California by then confirmed by Seth) are worth noting. Let me put it this way I hope the next generation that rebels, assumed to be against me, will just shoot me and get it over with rather than run my reputation into the ground.

According to the most prevalent rumors Allan had variously been “seen” running a high-end West Coast whorehouse with his old flame Madame LaRue, acting as stage manager for the  famous Miss Judy Garland “drag queen” Queen of  the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco or more improbably “selling out “ to the Mormons via attempting to get a press agent’s job during Mitt’s now successful U.S. Senate campaign out in the wilds of Utah. The first one was totally wrong although Allan did stay at Madame’s place, not the whorehouse, on Luna Bay for a while and who knows what they did or did not do together but it was not running the whorehouse since Madame according to Seth was very touchy about anybody running her place since she dealt almost exclusively with rich Asian businessmen with a taste for the wild side. Still even spreading such a rumor was just another nail in Allan’s coffin in a profession where things at least had to look aboveboard.

The KitKat Club rumor was really a vicious one and I was kind shocked when young Sarah Lemoyne, who was hired by me after the Allan dust-up so had no reason to seek some silly revenge, told me in all good faith and naivete that Allan had come out of some “closet” and was MC-ing the nightly shows at that establishment in full drag regalia. When I asked Seth about it, actually ordered him to find out what was happening, he laughed and said that yes Allan was out in Frisco town, all these older writers love to call it Frisco town like they were just slumming wherever else they landed in life. What the younger writers didn’t know, maybe couldn’t know, or didn’t give a damn about just so they could throw some mud was that Miss Judy Garland, the owner of the club and the Queen of the “drag” set out there was none other than their old-time corner boy Timmy Riley who after years in the closet, after years of being abused, mentally and physically by everybody in their old home town from immediate family to some Acre young toughs had drifted West to a friendlier environment. The real deal was that Allan had staked Timmy to the money to buy the club and so was only staying in one of the apartments above the club (which Timmy also owned) while in town to see if he could catch on in the publishing industry out there far from the East where he really had tapped out. End of story.       

I would not ordinarily in a publication dedicated to the left side of society, politically and every other way although some of the writers, especially the younger ones, are either pretty wide-world politically indifferent or just slightly to the left of say the Democratic Party, give two words to the Romney slur. But maybe, just maybe although none of this ever surfaced in any piece submitted to me except maybe a vague reference in a film review about Utah, whoever surfaced this one will learn a small political lesson, or at least get the facts right before running to the water cooler all heated up. What that rumor did not recognize was that Allan had skewered Mitt Romney for years when he was governor of Massachusetts all the way to his failed Republican Party presidential bid in 2012. Had particularly honed in on counting his inadequacies as a executive against his Mormon pioneer great-grandfather who had five wives in the days when that religion went in for polygamy. The guys here from what I have been told had great admiration for the old man. Nevertheless no way was Allan going to get any job with the long-memory Mormons hovering around Romney, or even anything in the whole state of Utah for that matter. End of story although I hope not end of lesson.   

I noted above that I had been looking over the on-line archives since this publication went to a totally on-line format in 2006 and offered some observations about what way the winds were blowing and which way they should blow in the future. (See From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green, date November 18, 2018) One key observation, especially since I was brought over from American Film Gazette by Allan Jackson (who by the way now writes an occasional contributing editor piece here belying all those rumors mentioned above except as I have also mentioned that he did wind in Frisco will old friend Miss Judy Garland when he was broke and needed a place to stay before heading back East) where I had spent many years editing some 40,000 film reviews of varying lengths and by everybody with any pretentions to film reviewing expertise from long time film editor Sam Lowell of this publication to the legendary Janie Dove and Jack Cummings was the yearly decline in the number of film, book and music reviews.

I wondered why given the sparse political environment, the general decline of street politics which animated a lot of the early work and decline in end-around cultural and social material to report on, to spent money sending people to cover. I have since his return talked to Allan, we have exchanged e-mails since he is now up in Maine, about the matter and gotten some other feedback. Allan had insisted that each review had to be full-blown “think piece” style contribution or else forget it apparently. (He denied this originally when he resurfaced to edit a rock and roll anthology which I thought needed his touch, but most senior older writers have testified under oath and a couple before God for balance that anything less than three thousand words and worthy of print in some academic cinematic journal went into the ashcan and I accept their takes on this.) Frankly, many of the films that I have seen come to my desk or have reviewed personally are not worth more than about three or five hundred words, maybe less, maybe just a thumb up or down is plenty.

To bring more balance, to get better into the film review business which is what many people who don’t have time to read endless reviews expect of a publication like ours I have started this new series of short movie reviews which has the dual purposes of giving today’s busy world a quick but incisive opinion. And keep these monstrous writers who are hanging around the “water cooler” plotting against the “boss,” me, occupied. Greg Green]  

          

“T” For Texas, “T” For Trouble, “T” For Well You Get The Idea, “T”-William Holden And Glenn Ford’s “Texas” (1941)-A Short Film Review

“T” For Texas, “T” For Trouble, “T” For Well You Get The Idea, “T”-William Holden And Glenn Ford’s “Texas” (1941)-A Short Film Review

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Texas, starring William Holden, Glenn Ford, 1941

[In a recent introduction to this new series, a series based on short film reviews for films that deserve short reviews if not just a thumb’s up or down I noted that Allan Jackson, the deposed previous site manager, required his film reviewers to write endlessly about the film giving the material an almost cinema studies academic journal take on it. That caused a serious decline in the number of reviews over the years which I hope to make up with a flurry of snap reviews for busy people. To see in full why check the archives for November 28, 2018- Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series Greg Green]

******  

Hold it I am not going to talk about red state Texas, nor about rising star in some quarters of Beto O’Rourke, nor even about the oil-rich Texas of the 1950s Giant which made James Dean’s short career resume blossom and solidified Rock Hudson as a matinee idol (his subsequent tragic fate, his coming out of the closet with his AIDS announcement does not take away from that 1950s status). No, today we are going back to post-Civil War Texas (which was rebel gray) and the big-time cattle drives that drove that state’s economy well before the oil came gushing out of the ground in the film Texas. We will look at the fortunes of a couple of defeated “Johnny Rebs” trying to make their young ways in the world after their lost cause had been defeated.

The story line hinges on the exploits of Todd, played by Glenn Ford last seen in this space trying to make time with B-movie queen Gloria Grahame very married to a bad ass guy whom she hates but will not give her up and Dan, played by William Holden last seen in this space face down in Norma Desmond’s swimming pool in the high numbers end of Sunset Boulevard in the film of the same name. No, that is not right on the Holden sighting, last seen snapping his provocative jazz beat fingers at provocative come hither Kim Novac in Picnic. They leave the war-weary South to try their luck in Wild West, wide open lawless, or rather make your own law with a gun Texas. Which at the start get them into a series of semi-comic escapades around a stage robbery and end with them on opposites sides in the cattle wars-Todd as the “good guy” herd driver to an insatiable market and Dan as the “bad guy” rustler.

Naturally something has to give, despite their comradeship, and in the end Dan had to go down, had to take the bullet from guys who wanted the whole cattle business to themselves leaving not only “Rustlin’ Dan” out of the picture but Todd as well. RIP Dan, RIP. Oh, wait a minute did I mention, silly me, the love angle. Dan and Todd both were smitten by the same woman, the oddly named “Mike,” hard-headed and independent daughter of a rancher. You know in the end only one guy can be left standing-and there was only one. Dan might have rued his exit, might have asked for a better ending that a few spare bullets to his body but that was the way it was in Wild West Texas. Short enough, Greg?

Looking for a few good… people who want to defend the American Republic against the Greed-heads and Con Men-You have allies-Vietnam Veterans Seth Garth And Ralph Morris Are Afraid For The Fate Of The Republic And If They Are I Am Too-Count Us In

Looking for a few good… people who want to defend the American Republic against the Greed-heads and Con Men-You have allies-Vietnam Veterans Seth Garth And Ralph Morris Are Afraid For The Fate Of The Republic And If They Are I Am Too-Count Us In       

By Frank Jackman

Politics and our relatively new site manager Greg Green are hard task-masters. The politics part is simple or relatively simple since the Republic is in some danger these days starting right at the top with the POTUS, his hangers-on and his assorted lackeys and enablers which I will go into detail more below. But first to the “why” of why I am I am writing this screed at this time a couple of years before the 2020 Presidential elections (if it was merely the Congress that was the problem, which it is, then we could comfortably wait until 2020 but these are urgent times so now is the time to wade into this mess). Recently Greg wrote a short, well maybe not short if you had to read the damn thing, piece in this publication summing up his take on what had happened after the first year of his regime. (See From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green, dated November 18, 2018) In that piece Greg noted that he had perused the publication archives since 2006, since the operation went totally on-line for financial reasons after many years as a hard copy then hard copy and on-line combined.

After spending some time on the mistakes he had made, notably his hare-brained attempt to draw a younger demographic by catering to film, book, music reviews lite, he drew two major conclusions about the drift of the on-line publication under long-time former site manager Allan Jackson. The first was the joined tendencies to move away from film, book and music reviews that had animated the early days of the operation and rely more on what Greg called “nostalgia” pieces about coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s by the older writers, Allan’s contemporaries,  and some of the younger writers called “prison” since they were either too young had not even been born when all of this happened and  when they dragooned into the work they had to ask parents, grandparents and those older writers about what had happened back then. Under the old regime I had the official designation “political commentator” since abolished so l rarely delved into reviews except when some political angle came up and it made sense for me to put my two cents in.       

The second major comment, which very much concerned me, was his surprise that since 2006 the amount of primary political commentary, meaning original articles and not material grabbed “off the wire” as we call it from other sources making us more of a clearing house for generally progressive and left-wing groups and individual views. He particularly noted the still-born series that I had started in about 2007 as I was getting ready to comment on the forces gathering for the 2008 presidential elections. (See Rolling The Rock Up Just To Have It Come Tumbling Down-Prometheus Chained, dated March 8, 2008) I had assumed since 2008, like 2016 and unlike the upcoming 2016 elections that with no incumbent that the fireworks would be worthy of serious commentary. And for a while it was until early 2008 when, despite a heated contest between Hillary Clinton and the successful Barack Obama and a fistful of candidates on the Republican side, particularly one Mitt Romney who I has skewered endlessly when he was Massachusetts governor and more after when he became “Mr. Flip-flop” when he got the fire in the belly to be POSTUS, tweet speak if you must know, and realized he was out of step with the reactionaries in the Republican Party that the whole thing evaporated in thin air. That any time spent on the ins and out of what I call, and more and more others do as well, bourgeois politics was so much wasted space, so much as some young radicals would say back in the 1960s when the idea of voting only meant encouragement to those evil forces that what they said had meaning.

Greg cornered me at the water cooler one day and mentioned that he thought the series had even if truncated been some of the best , and funniest, political writing he had seen from me and wished me to take another stab at it for 2020 since a big part of what is coming up will be who will wind up facing the wicked witch of the West, the senile old hag Trump if he goes the distance and is not wearing some form of prison garb for high crimes and high misdemeanors come that November. I gave him several very valid reasons for not doing so from that old-time theory of not feeding the animals, trolls in modern speak, not encouraging what will be by any standard, any modern standard an undignified street fight. If I wanted that I would have long ago continued on my youthful dream of being a power before the throne after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy threw me for a loop rather than move away, way away with my nose covered from that kind of politics. (The being dragooned into the Vietnam War against people I had no quarrel with also helped in that decision no question.) So for a while I was able to hold Greg off on any commitment to the kind of reportage that ruined Theodore White and subsequently Doctor Hunter S Thompson’s careers when they got catch in the whirlwind trap of every four years having to debase themselves by giving, for serious pay granted as against the pittance received here, their pithy remarks about the progress of such vapid campaigns.

Enter Ralph Morris, of the famed Ralph and Sam Stories which were recently given an encore presentation by Greg with introductory remarks by the slightly “rehabilitated” back from Siberian exile, Babylonian captivity or whatever you would like to call his purge and its aftermath former site manager Allan Jackson as editor. Ralph, a much-decorated fellow Vietnam War veteran who like me went over to the anti-war side as a result of what he did, what he saw others do and most importantly what his government made him do to those benighted people in Southeast Asia. Ralph along with Sam Eaton are both members of the “street cred” wise Veterans for Peace  organization and men ready at the drop of a dime to march against war and any number of social justice issues cornered me one day at Jimmy’s Grille in downtown Boston and asked me whether it was true or not that I had turned down Greg’s idea of starting up another series on the election campaigns. I said yes. He came storming back first saying hey the 2020 campaign had already started the night the midterms were over, maybe before for some like Elizabeth Warren who already had “the fire in her belly” for a while and was just pacing the floor for now. Started telling me to get in on the ground floor of what will be something not seen in this country since the time of blessed Robert F. Kennedy and his vision-and bag of dirty tricks which is why I loved the guy when the deal went down in 1968 even if that Irish poet bastard McCarthy from Minnesota led the fight before Bobbie got his courage up.   

More importantly, and in this Ralph, Sam, me, and maybe everybody east of the Mississippi and not a few west of that tidal pool as well know we are living in the secular version of end times these days. The times of cold civil war ready at the drop of a hat, ready at will be some seemingly obscure event, ready to turn hot and nasty like the brothers and cousins war of the 1860s. This is the way Ralph put the matter to me, with Sam backing him up which surprised me a bit because of the pair Sam always seemed a little more radical, a little readier to bring fire and brimstone down on any sitting government in Washington. Ralph said that he too was as ready on any given day to call for bringing the sitting government down as not and gave the classic example of that first effort on May Day, 1971 to end the Vietnam by attempting, unsuccessfully attempting to bring the Nixon government down. Now, 2018 now, after two years and more of flame-throwing by those who would close the door on the Republic he was fearful, as fearful as he, they had been back in 1971 when the Republic was in the balance that once again that awful end time kind of thing was in the wind. Practically that meant that he was ready to unite with anybody, including the devil, Jimmy Higgins, Johnny King and whoever else was ready, to defend the Republic. By any means necessary even jumping into some presidential campaign like I had back in 1968. Whee!

Thus who am I to say as I did in 2008 a pox on both, on all, of your houses and will for Ralph and Sam’s sake try to revive that commentary which I had begged off of from Greg. Enough said.   

Soldiers, you are not alone! a message from Veterans For Peace You are not alone if you are thinking WTF am I doing on the U.S. border with Mexico?

Soldiers, you are not alone!
a message from Veterans For Peace

You are not alone if you are thinking WTF am I doing on the U.S. border with Mexico?

You are not alone if you are thinking WTF am I doing on the U.S. border with Mexico?

You are not alone if you are asking if this is some kind of political stunt.

You are not alone if you wonder what all this concertina wire is for.

Is it even legal to deploy troops on U.S. soil?  Against desperate asylum seekers?

You are not alone if you are re-thinking your role in the U.S. military.

No, you are not alone.  Many people, in and out of the military, have these very same concerns. 
Veterans For Peace certainly does.  We believe the deployment of U.S. troops to the border is an illegitimate use of the U.S. military.  We believe the Central America caravan poses no threat whatsoever to anyone.

This is no “invasion.”  The asylum seekers are traveling in a caravan for their safety from criminal gangs.  With their babies and young children, they are fleeing from extreme violence and poverty. They are desperate to keep their families alive.  They have every right under both U.S. and international law to seek asylum in the U.S.  In fact, we have a special responsibility to help them. For decades the U.S. has been supporting corrupt dictators throughout Latin America, creating the conditions from which these poor people are fleeing. We should be meeting the asylum seekers at the border with open arms, not with concertina wire.

If you decide to follow your conscience and refuse to obey orders that you believe are illegal or immoral, you will not be alone. Veterans For Peace will support you, along with other organizations who have legal resources and know how to organize political support.  See below.

If you decide it is time for you to get out of the military, we can put you in touch with counselors who can help you to be honorably discharged.

Most of all, as veterans of multiple wars, we strongly advise you not to do anything that you might regret for the rest of your life, just because you were “following orders.” It is much better to follow your conscience, and do what you know deep down is right.

Veterans For Peace is responsible for this message.  The other organizations listed are valuable resources.

VETERANS FOR PEACE
www.veteransforpeace.org

COURAGE TO RESIST
www.couragetoresist.org

MILITARY LAW TASK FORCE, www.nlgmltf.org

CENTER ON CONSCIENCE & WAR
www.centeronconscience.org

GI RIGHTS HOTLINE, 877-447-4487

Veterans For Peace works to educate the public about the true costs of war. We want peace at home and peace abroad.  We are committed to acting nonviolently.  We welcome active duty members.

DoD Instruction 1325.06 allows GI’s to read and keep one copy of the leaflet.