Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Fighters Of The International Working Class Today-The International Working Class Anthem The Internationale

 

A YouTube film clip of a performance of the classic international working class song of struggle, The Internationale.

Markin comment:

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- Winter 1969-1970

 I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
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Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
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Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
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Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle around the effects of containerization of shipping on the West Coast docks, a question that we now know costs many union jobs by the failure of longshoremen’ union to tie in technological improvement with unionized labor employment. And, of course, the union bureaucracy’s penchant for making “sweetheart” deals rather than a class struggle fight over the issue.

This issue does pose the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1969 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later, in 1970, take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.

The other section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, union caucus organizing. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. Once again this says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.  

From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog

 

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Markin comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  
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BOOK REVIEW

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP
AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.
I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.

Revised-June 19, 2006

"Viva La Quince Brigada"- The Abraham Lincoln Battalion In The Spanish Civil War (2006)
BOOK REVIEW

THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994.

AS WE HEAD INTO THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY IN JULY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO STUDY THIS IMPORTANT EVENT OF INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS HISTORY. THE WRITER WILL BE REVIEWING AND COMMENTING ON SEVERAL ASPECTS OF THAT FIGHT FOR MILITANTS TODAY.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 since I was a teenager. My first term paper was on this subject. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist 'front' group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues... Some Remembrances-The First Small Anti-War Cries-Leon Trotsky-The First Year of War (1915)
 

 

 
 
 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

The events leading up to World War I from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those war-hungry parties in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history.

Also decisive, although shrouded in obscurity early in the war as he languished in exile, was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre held over from the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts for the slightest opposition. That alias moniker business not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International although not for long as that “mailbox drop” organization went from bad to worse), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experience in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century, particularly the Paris Commune which was a short-lived but decisive event for all revolutionaries after Karl Marx’s sterling stirring defense), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of progressive capitalism, and the hard fact that the then current system was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order.

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already in the first year a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht, who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to give rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s prisons. That last, that prison business the only honorable place for a socialist deputy once the bloody capitalists got their war lusts up. Voices like Rosa Luxemburg with her cryptic Junius pamphlets which brought reason into play ( she, the rose of the revolution, also honorably prison-bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and who got out of their respective places of exile just in time), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war) and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, to “club fed” in Atlanta and ran for president in 1920 on the Socialist Party ticket out of his jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                   

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

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Leon Trotsky-The First Year of War (1915)

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Written: 1915
First Published: Originally published on 4 August 1915 in Nashe Slovo (Our Word), a Paris-based newspaper for Russian revolutionaries. The original Russian article was published in Nashe Slovo on August 4, 1915 and it appears in Volume IX of Trotsky’s Sochineniia. You can read the original Russian version here.
Source: Socialism Today Issue 180 July/August 2014
Translated: Pete Dickenson for Socialism Today 2014
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters
Copright: Socialism Today. Republished here with their permission.

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On the first anniversary of the start of the war, LEON TROTSKY wrote this perceptive assessment of the situation, and the need for a Marxist analysis and programme. Originally published on 4 August 1915 in Nashe Slovo (Our Word), a Paris-based newspaper for Russian revolutionaries, this is the first time it has been translated into English – by Pete Dickenson.

The past year – 365 days and nights of continuous mutual extermination of the peoples – will go down in our history as a staggering testament to how deeply humanity is still imprisoned in shameful blind barbarism by its social roots.
In order to stigmatize the German Mausers, which have a bigger diameter than the Allied guns, and the German shells, which spread their suffocating stench further than those of the Quadruple Entente¹, Allied rhetoric created a special term, ‘barbarie scientifique’ or scientific barbarism. The perfect term! It is only necessary to extend it to the entire war and its socio-historical background – regardless of state and national borders. All those technical forces that created human progress moved to the business of the destruction of the cultural foundations of society and, above all, of the annihilation of mankind: this is the ‘mobilisation of industry’, which is now spoken about in all the languages of European civilization. Educated barbarism is armed with all the conquests of human genius – from Archimedes to Edison – to erase from the surface of the earth everything created by humanity collectively, by Archimedes and Edison. If the Germans stand out in this bloody, insane competition, it is only because they are more widely, systematically and efficiently organised than their mortal enemies.
As if to give the fall of mankind the most humiliating character, the war, using the latest proud technological conquest of aviation, has driven man into trenches, into dirty earthen caves, sewers, where the rulers of nature, eaten away by parasites, lying in their own filth, lie in wait for other troglodytes, covered with lice, and newspapers and politicians in various languages all say that it is precisely this that is now serving civilization. Crawling on all fours from the dark primordial swamp, humanity brought its organised mind to bear in the struggle with nature. By heroic revolutionary upheavals, it brought elements of reason to state structures, displacing blind inertia, ‘by the Grace of God’, with the idea of popular sovereignty and a parliamentary regime. But in the very foundations of its social life, in its economic organisation, humanity remains entirely in the grip of dark forces, beyond rational control, which are always threatening to spontaneously explode with accumulated contradictions and then bring them down onto the head of mankind, in the form of global catastrophes.

Colossal, shameful war

Europe, torn by capitalist development from medieval provincialism and economic inertia, in a series of revolutions and wars, created incomplete ‘national’ states, from both large and small powers, and linked them in a transient and ever-changing scheme of antagonisms, alliances and agreements. Nowhere having achieved national unity, capitalist development came into conflict with the state framework it had created, and for the last half-century sought a way out in continuous colonial plunder, leading, untypical for Europe, to an ‘armed peace’. This system, in which the ruling upper classes economically, politically and psychologically adapted themselves to the monstrous growth of militarism, gave birth to a war for world domination – the most colossal and shameful war that history has known.
The war has already involved seven of the eight great powers and threatens to involve the eighth²; in order to broaden its base, it draws in the minor powers one after the other (all the work of diplomacy now consists of this). It automatically dissolves individual subordinate aims into the mechanics of mutual debilitation, exhaustion and extermination. With the generality, formlessness and multiplicity of its aims, combining and throwing against each other all races and nationalities, all state systems and all stages of capitalist development, this war of usurpation wants to show that it is completely free from any racial or national origins, religious or political principles – it simply expresses the bare fact of the impossibility of the further coexistence of peoples and states on the basis of capitalist imperialism.
The system of alliances, as it developed after the Franco-Prussian war, was generated by a desire to create a guarantee of stability of states through a rough military balance of opposing forces. This equilibrium, demonstrated by the current ‘guerre d’usure’ (war of attrition), precludes the possibility of a fast and decisive victory of one party and makes the outcome of the war dependent on the gradual depletion of the approximately equal material and moral resources of the opponents.
On the western front, the thirteenth month of the war finds the trenches in about the same place they were in the second month. Here they have moved tens of metres in either direction – through the bodies of thousands and tens of thousands of soldiers. On the Gallipoli Peninsula, as well as on the new Austro-Italian front, the lines of trenches immediately signified lines of military hopelessness. On the Russian-Turkish border it is the same picture on a provincial scale. Only on the eastern (Russian) front, giant armies, after a series of movements in both directions, now roll back to the east onto the body of ravaged Poland, which each party promises to ‘liberate’.
In this picture, generated by the blind automatism of capitalist forces and the conscious shame of the ruling classes, there are absolutely no points of reference that, from a military point of view, would allow, in any way whatsoever, any hopes and plans to be linked with a decisive victory for either side. If only the ruling powers of Europe had as much historical good intent as bad, then they would still have been powerless by force of arms to resolve the problems that caused the war. The strategic situation in Europe gives a mechanical expression to the historical impasse, into which the capitalist world has driven itself.

International’s bloody crime

Even if the socialist parties were powerless to prevent the war in its first period, or to hold the rulers to account, if from the outset they had declined to take any responsibility for the global carnage, and the parties had used their close links to warn the people against the rulers and to denounce them, played a waiting game – in the sense of revolutionary action, counting on the inevitable turn in the mass mood – how great would now have been the authority of international socialism to the masses. Deceived by militarism, weighed down by mourning and increasing want, all the more would the masses have turned their eyes to the true shepherd of the peoples!
Look! In a condition of desperation, both groups of military powers are now grasping for every small state: Romania, Bulgaria or Greece, for the l’etat du Destin (the country of destiny), whose weight could finally tip the balance in one direction or another. What really would be a ‘make or break’ weight under these conditions is the International, the great power of international socialism, whose every word would find an ever greater echo in the minds of the masses! The liberation programme, which individual sections of the broken International are now dragging through the bloody filth in the tail of the General Staff baggage train, would become a powerful reality in an international appeal of the socialist proletariat against all the forces of the old society.
But history, even at this time, remained stepmother to the oppressed class. Its national parties incorporated into their organisations not only the initial successes of the proletariat, not only its desire for total liberation, but also all of the indecision of the oppressed class, its lack of self-confidence, its instinct for submission to the state. These parties have been passively dragged into the world catastrophe and, making a cowardly virtue of necessity, took it upon themselves to cover up an unprincipled bloody crime with the lie of liberation mythology. Arising from a half-century of world antagonisms the military catastrophe was a disaster transferred onto the edifice of the fifty year-old International. The anniversary of the war is also the anniversary of the most terrible fall of the strongest parties of the international proletariat.

The only way out

And yet we meet the bloody anniversary without any mental decline or political scepticism. Revolutionary internationalists had the inestimable advantage that they held their position in the face of the world’s greatest catastrophe, with analysis, criticism and revolutionary foresight. We renounced all the ‘national’ point-scoring issuing from the General Staff, not only those with a cheap price tag, but even those with a surcharge. We continued to see things as they are, to call them by their names and anticipate the logic of their further movement. We have seen how, in a mad kaleidoscope in front of bleeding humanity, old illusions were adopted and new programmes hastily adapted to them, they were approved and, in the maelstrom of events, failed, yielding place to new illusions and more new programmes that hurtled to the same fate, all the more exposing the truth. And the social truth is always revolutionary!
Marxism, the method of our orientation to the historical process and the instrument of our intervention in this process, is able to withstand the blows of 75mm guns, as well as the 42cm Mausers. It prevailed when the parties standing, it seemed, under its banner were shattered. Marxism is not a snapshot of working-class consciousness – it gives the laws of historical development of the working class. In its struggle for liberation the working class can be unfaithful to Marxism – by sheer force of circumstances, the analysis of which constitutes Marxism – but in betraying Marxism, the working class betrays itself. Through downfall and disappointment, through tragic disasters, arriving at new, higher forms of self-knowledge, the working class again comes to Marxism, consolidating and deepening in its consciousness its latest revolutionary conclusions.
This is the process that we have seen over the last year. The logic of the situation of the working class powerfully drives it out everywhere from under the yoke of the national bloc and – an even greater miracle! – clears out from many socialist brains the mould of possibilism. Despite their apparent success, how pathetic and contemptible seem the hasty efforts of the official parties once again to proclaim at their meetings, the revolutionary role of the states’ melinite³ and to inculcate, through multiple repetition, the slavish illusion of ‘the defence of the fatherland’, not leaving the great imperialist road!
The hopeless military situation, the parasitic greed of the ruling capitalist cliques feeding on this hopelessness, the widespread growth of armed reaction, the impoverishment of the masses and, as a result of this, a slow but steady sobering of the working class – this is a genuine reality, the further development of which will not be held back by any force in the world! In the bowels of all the parties of the International is a process, as yet only an ideological revolt, against militarism and chauvinist ideology – a process that not only saves the honour of socialism, but also indicates to the nations the only way out of the war, with its slogan ‘to the end’, this finished formulation coming up against the blind alley of ‘scientific barbarism’.
To serve this process is the highest task which now exists on our bloody and dishonoured planet!

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1. Quadruple Entente referred to the alliance of Britain, France, Russia and Japan.
2. The seven powers were Germany, Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Japan and Italy. The eighth referred to was the USA.
3. A chemical used to make explosives.   
 

The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind

 

The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind

Funny how trends get started, how one person, or a few start something and it seems like the whole world follows, or the part of the world that hears about the new dispensation anyway, the part you want to connect with. That new dispensation for my generation began back in the late 1950s, early 1960s so maybe it was when older guys started to lock-step in gray flannel suits (Mad Men, retro-cool today, okay) and before Jack and Bobby Kennedy put the whammy on the fashion and broke many a haberdasher’s heart topped off by a soft felt hat. It would be deep into the 1960s before open-necks and colors other than white for shirts worked in but by then a lot of us were strictly denims and flannel shirts or some such non-suit combination. Maybe it was when one kid goofing off threw a hard plastic circle thing around his or her waist and every kid from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon had to have one, to be tossed aside in some dank corner of the garage after a few weeks when everybody got into yo-yos or Davey Crockett coonskin caps. Or maybe, and this might be closer to the herd instinct truth, it was after Elvis exploded onto the scene and every guy from twelve to two hundred in the world had to, whether they looked right with it or not, wear their sideburns just a little longer, even if they were kind of wispy and girls laughed at you for trying to out-king the “king” who they were waiting for not you.  

But maybe it was, and this is a truth which I can testify to, noting the photograph above, when some girls, probably college girls (now called young women but then still girls no matter how old except mothers or grandmothers, go figure) having seen Joan Baez on the cover of Time (or perhaps her sister Mimi on some Mimi and Richard Farina folk album cover)got out the ironing board at home or in her dorm and tried to iron their own hair whatever condition it was in, curly, twisty, flippy, whatever  don’t hold me to hairstyles to long and straight strands. (Surely as strong as the folk minute was just then say 1962, 63, 64, they did not see the photo of Joan on some grainy Arise and Sing folk magazine cover the folk scene was too young and small then to cause such a sea-change).

Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from Carver High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.                   

My old friend Sam Lowell, a high school friend who I re-connected with via the “magic” of the Internet a few years ago, told me a funny story when we met at the Sunnyville Grille in Boston one time about our friend Julie Peters who shared our love of folk music back then (and later too as we joined a few others in the folk aficionado world after the heyday of the folk minute got lost in the storm of the British invasion). He had first met her in Harvard Square one night at the Café Blanc when they had their folk night (before every night was folk night at the place when Eric Von Schmidt put the place on the map by writing Joshua Gone Barbados which he sang and which Tom Rush went big with) and they had a coffee together, That night she had her hair kind of, oh he didn’t know what they called it but he thought something like beehive or flip or something which highlighted and enhanced her long face. Sam thought she looked fine. Sam (like myself) was not then hip to the long straight hair thing) and so he kind of let it pass without any comment.

Then one night a few weeks later after they had had a couple of dates she startled him when he picked her up at her dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. She met him at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made her face even longer. When Sam asked her why the change Julie declared that she could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing her idol Joan Baez (and later Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish.

Of course he compounded his troubles by making the  serious mistake of asking if she had it done at the beauty parlor or something and she looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go, So she joined the crowd, Sam got used to it and after a while she did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things she used to wear).     

By the way let’s be clear on that Julie thing with Sam back the early 1960s. She and Sam went “dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. Sam and Julie were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after the first few dates but folk music was their bond. Despite persistent Julie BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time listening to her albums on the record player they had never been lovers. A few years later she mentioned that Club Blue night to Sam as they waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Laura Talbot, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.

He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.

As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk time (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother Julie was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yeah, we have the photo.           

 

From The Marxist Archives On The Communist International (1919-1943) -A View From The Left 

 

Hello antiwar friends of UNAC and Supporters of the UNAC Conference, Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad, May 8-10, Seacaucus, NJ  (UNACconference2015.org). Our national conference is developing nicely with an exciting and Impressive array of speakers, panels and workshops.  Be sure to see the latest details on the conference website. We believe this national gathering of activists from a wide range of antiwar and social justice movements is not only timely, but critical to movement building in the U.S. today.  It has been a long time since a conference of this scope has been held.  While the U.S. government and military is busily expanding its wars for profit, at home, Washington is targeting communities of color, voting rights, women’s rights, unions, while militarizing the police and enforcing the surveillance state. By uniting all the struggles at home and abroad, we will connect activists from different movements to forge a common understanding and unity of purpose.  As we know through experience, we can’t rely on elections as the vehicle for peace and social change. Change can happen, but only if we join together as a mighty force and take action The conference looks good on paper but we will only be effective if large number of activists attend.  That is why we need your help and participation. This is what we ask you to do: Come to the conference.  Register now (whether you are able to pay now or not).  Presenters are asked to register as well.  If you can’t attend, please make a donation so that we can subsidize those who need financial help. Publicize the conference widely among your associates and organizations.  Ask your organizations to endorse and build the conference.  Organize transportation and subsidies. Put an ad in the Conference Journal.  (Details on the website.)  Add your name to the list of supporters. Join UNAC and support our coalition efforts.  There is a form to fill out on the UNAC website (UNACpeace.org) or write to us at UNACpeace@gmail.com. (If you would like to help in the organizing of the conference and learn more about UNAC’s current activities, you are invited to join the UNAC Coordinating Committee conference call on Sunday, March 29, 7:30.  Let us know if we should send you the call-in numbers. Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo Co-Coordinators Join Hatem Abudayyeh, Susan Abulhawa, Pam Africa, Abayomi Azikiwe, Ajamu Baraka, Media Benjamin, The Cuban 5, Lamis Deek, Steve Downs, Bernadette Ellorin, Glenn Ford, Sara Flounders, Bruce Gagnon, Teresa Gutierrez, Lawrence Hamm, Chris Hedges, Joe Iosbaker, Charles Jenkins, Antonia Juhasz, Chuck Kaufman, Kathy Kelly, Jeff Mackler, Christine Marie, Ray McGovern, Cynthia McKinney, Michael McPhearson, Malik Mujahid, Lucy Pagoada, Lynn Stewart, David Swanson, Clarence Thomas, Ann Wright, Kevin Zeese & many more at ... A national conference to connect all the issues: “Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad!” (to register now, click the link below) The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) invites you to attend the “Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad!” conference, to be held May 8-10, 2015, in Secaucus, N.J, just outside New York City. More and more, we can see how all the problems of the world are connected. The trillions of dollars being spent on wars-for-profit abroad could be used here at home to rebuild our cities, educate our youth, employ our jobless, repair damage to the environment – and try to make up for the endless suffering the Pentagon is inflicting on people around the world, most of them people of color, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with threatening us or anyone else. Some of the connections are even more striking. Some of the very same kinds of military equipment used in Iraq was seen this past summer on the streets of Ferguson, Mo. Surveillance drones developed for use by the military are now being used by domestic police departments. The endless “war on terror” is being used to justify taking away our civil liberties here at home. Wars for oil in the Middle East keep fossil fuels flowing, accelerating the climate change that threatens all humanity. This conference will be an opportunity to meet and network with activists from across the country and learn about the many struggles going on today, both at home and around the world. Speakers with decades of experience will be joined by members of the new generations of activists who are bringing fresh energy and ideas into the movement. Together, we will learn from and inspire each other. Most conferences cost many hundreds of dollars to attend, but UNAC organizers are doing their best to keep this one affordable for young activists and working people. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to expand your knowledge, make many new progressive friends and build the movement for fundamental social change.    Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad! For more information and to register for the conference, see:  www.unacconference2015.org To place an ad in the conference journal, see: http://www.unacconference2015.org/p/endorsers.html   UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COALITION (UNAC) P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054  ●  Ph:  518-227-6947 Email:  UNACpeace@gmail.com  ●  Web:  www.UNACpeace.org To view this email in your browser, please go to: http://nepajac.org/blast.html

Tax Day: A Time to Speak up for our Values

This year, Republicans control both houses of Congress. They are sharpening their knives to cut vital programs the country needs. At the same time, both Congress and the President are calling for increasing the Pentagon budget, going to war and spending billions to upgrade our vast nuclear weapons capability.

Meanwhile the highest income groups and corporate tax cheats merrily go their way instead of paying their fair share.

But there are voices everywhere in the country speaking up for common sense, peace, public programs that our families need, and a country we can be proud of. On Tax Day we will join our voices to theirs and insist on budget priorities and tax policies that match our values.

We need a Budget for All!

Tax Day Forum

Saturday, April 11, 2:00 pm

Old South Church

645 Boylston St, Boston

 

Mel King
Jimmy Tingle
Grace Ross
Sen. Jason Lewis
Sen. Jamie Eldridge
Rep. Jay Livingstone
Sen. Sal DiDomenico

Court Accepts DOJ's 'State Secrets' Claim to Protect Shadowy Neocons: A New Low By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept 27 March 15   truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here. At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself €œUnited Against Nuclear Iran€ (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging €œeconomic and psychological warfare€ against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by a roster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN €œanalyst€) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran. This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim €” advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos €” that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital €œstate secrets.€ The court€™s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else €” including the lawyers for the parties €” kept in the dark. In May 2013, UANI launched a €œname and shame€ campaign designed to publicly identify €” and malign €” any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the €œname and shame€ campaign destroyed his reputation. Up until that point, there was nothing unusual about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis€™s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case to proceed would damage national security. When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the €œstate secrets privilege,€ it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times€™s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that €œthe group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so­-called state­ secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.€ He quoted the ACLU€™s Ben Wizner as saying: €œI have never seen anything like this.€ Reuters€™s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ€™s involvement a €œmystery€ and said €œthe government€™s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.€ Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the €œstate secrets privilege,€ it is because they are a party to the lawsuit, being sued for their own allegedly illegal acts (such as torture or warrantless surveillance), and they claim that national security would be harmed if they are forced to defend themselves. In rare cases, they do intervene and assert the privilege in lawsuits between private parties, but only where the subject of the litigation is a government program and one of the parties is a government contractor involved in that program €” such as when torture victims sued a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen, for its role in providing airplanes for the rendition program and the Obama DOJ insisted (successfully) that the case not go forward, and the victim of U.S. torture was thus told that he could not even have a day in court. But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. At least based on what they claim about themselves, UANI is just €œa not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group€ that seeks to €œeducate€ the public about the dangers of Iran€™s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess €œstate secrets€? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or could it be that the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which happens to be illegal? What else could explain the basis for the U.S. government€™s argument that allowing UANI to be sued would risk the disclosure of vital €œstate secrets€ besides a desire to cover up something quite untoward if not illegal? What €œstate secrets€ could possibly be disclosed by suing a nice, little €œnot-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group€? We don€™t know the answers to those questions, nor do the lawyers for the plaintiffs whose lawsuit the DOJ wants dismissed. That€™s because, beyond the bizarre DOJ intervention itself, the extreme secrecy that shaped the judicial proceedings is hard to overstate. Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the €œstate secrets privilege,€ at least some information is made public about what they are claiming: which official or department is invoking the privilege, the general nature of the secrets allegedly at risk, the reasons why allowing the claims to be adjudicated would risk disclosure, etc. Some redacted version of the affidavit from the government official making the secrecy claim is made part of the case. Here, virtually everything has been hidden, even from the plaintiffs€™ lawyers. Not only did the U.S. government provide no clue as to what the supposedly endangered €œstate secrets€ are, but they concealed even the identity of the agency making the claim: was it the CIA, the Treasury Department, the State Department, some combination? Nothing is known about any of this, not even who is making the secrecy claim. Instead, the DOJ€™s arguments about why €œsecrecy€ compels dismissal of the entire lawsuit were made in a brief that only Judge Ramos (and not even the parties) gets to read, but even more amazingly, were elaborated on in secret meetings by DOJ lawyers in the judge€™s chambers with nobody else present. Were recordings or transcripts of these meetings made? Is there any record of what the U.S. government whispered in the ear of the judge to scare him into believing that National Security Would Be Harmed„¢ if he allowed the case to proceed? Nobody knows. The whole process is veiled in total secrecy, labeled a €œjudicial proceeding€ but containing none of the transparency, safeguards or adversarial process that characterizes minimally fair courts. This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit (see below). As a result of the DOJ€™s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge€™s ear that national security will be damaged if €” like everyone else in the world €” UANI must answer in a court of law for their conduct. And subservient judicial officials like Judge Ramos will obey the U.S. government€™s dictates and dismiss your lawsuit before it begins, without your having any idea why that even happened. Worse, in his written ruling, the judge expressly acknowledges that dismissal of the entire lawsuit at the start on secrecy grounds is what he calls a €œharsh sanction,€ and also acknowledges that €œit is particularly so in this case because Plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why€ (emphasis added). But he does it anyway, in a perfunctory 18-page opinion that does little other than re-state some basic legal principles, and then just concludes that everything the government whispered in his ear should be accepted. Just read for yourself what Judge Ramos said in defending his dismissal to see how wildly disparate it is from everything we€™re propagandized to believe about the U.S. justice system:  [see image at right] ...the Court has also held two ex parte, in camera meetings with the Government prior to its assertion of the privilege, during which the information as to which the privilege was being asserted was initially disclosed and discovered. What kind of €œjustice system€ allows a neocon €œadvocacy€ group to be immunized from the law, because the U.S. government waltzed into court, met privately with the judge, and whispered in secret that he had better dismiss all claims against that group lest he harm national security? To describe what happened here is to illustrate what a perverse travesty it is. Restis€™s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement this week: We are disappointed that some secret relationship between UANI and the government allows UANI to hide from disclosing that association or to defend what has now been proven to be its false and defamatory allegations directed at Mr. Restis and his company. We are mystified that the U.S. government has such a stake in this case that it would take such extraordinary steps to prevent full disclosure of the secret interest it has with UANI or others. And, we are concerned that, in our court system, such a result could occur on the basis of sealed, one-sided filings and meetings in which we were not allowed to participate. Even more critical is what this says about the Obama DOJ. One of the earliest and most intense grievances of civil libertarians during the Bush presidency was its radical abuse of the €œstate secrets privilege.€ That doctrine began as a narrowly crafted evidentiary rule whereby parties to litigation would be barred from using specific documents that could reveal sensitive national security secrets. But it morphed into the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb whereby the U.S. government could literally demand not that specific documents be excluded but that U.S. courts dismiss entire lawsuits before they began €” even when those lawsuits alleged criminal behavior by top U.S. officials €” on the ground that the subject matter of the lawsuit was too sensitive to be safely adjudicated. The Bush Justice Department used this weapon to prevent its torture, detention, rendition and surveillance victims €” even those everyone acknowledged were completely innocent €” from having a day in court. They would simply say that the treatment of the plaintiffs was classified, and that disclosure would risk harm to national security, and subservient U.S. federal judges (an almost redundant term) would dutifully dismiss the lawsuits before they even began. It literally removed high U.S. government officials from the rule of law: if you commit crimes or brutally abuse people, you will be immunized from legal accountability if you did it in a classified setting. When Obama was in the Senate and then running for President in 2007, he was highly critical of the Bush use of the €œstate secrets privilege€ to get rid of troublesome lawsuits. His official campaign website cited Bush€™s abuse of the privilege as a hallmark of excessive secrecy. But like so many of his purported views, this concern about the use of the €œstate secrets privilege€ was abandoned almost immediately upon his inauguration. His DOJ invoked the privilege to demand victims of Bush programs of torture, rendition, detention, and surveillance be denied any opportunity to be heard in court even when the U.S. government itself acknowledged they were innocent. Obama lawyers even invoked secrecy to argue that a lawsuit challenging the legality of their own targeted assassination program against a U.S. citizen could not be heard in court. As an early headline in the Obama-supporting TPM site recognized: €œExpert Consensus: Obama Mimics Bush On State Secrets. And it worked in virtually every case.