On MLK Day-The Truthteller-Malcolm X on Racist America

Markin comment:
Read the entries below. Does that first entry sound like a man who was on the same page politically as "DeLawd," Martin Luther King? To pose the question is to give the answer. As close as I was to the King-led movement in those days Malcolm X could still stir me in a way King with all his obvious eloquence could never do. Truth to power-no question.

Malcolm X on Racist America
The text of this telegram to Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party, was read aloud by Malcolm X at a public rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unitv in Harlem on January 24. 1965.

Public Notice to George Lincoln Rockwell
"This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's separatist Black Muslim movement, and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not hand-cuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who believe in asserting our right of self-defense—by any means necessary."

Discussion with American Ambassador in Africa
"He said, 'As long as I'm in Africa, I deal with people as human beings— For some strange reason color doesn't enter into it at all.'

"He said, 'But whenever I return to the United States and I'm talking to a non-white person, I'm conscious of it, I'm self-conscious, I'm aware of the color differences.'

"So I told him, 'What you're telling me, whether you realize it or not, is that it is not basic in you to be a racist, but that society there in America, which you all have created, makes you a racist.' This is true, this is the worst racist society on this earth. There is no country on earth in which you can live and racism be brought out in you— whether you're white or black—more so than this country that poses as a democracy. This is a country where the social, economic, political atmosphere creates a sort of psychological atmos¬phere that makes it almost impossible, if you're in your right mind, to walk down the street with a while person and not be self-concious, or he or she not be self-conscious— But it's the society itself."
*******
From Spartacist- May-June 1964
MALCOLM X

Of all the national Negro leaders in this country, the one who was known uniquely for his militancy, intransigence, and refusal to be the liberals' front-man has been shot down. This new political assassination is another indicator of the rising current of irrationality and individual terrorism which the decay of our society begets. Liberal reaction is predictable, and predictably disgusting. They are, of course, opposed to assassination, and some may even contribute to the fund for the education of Malcolm’s children, but their mourning at the death of the head of world imperialism had a considerably greater ring of sincerity than their regret at the murder of a black militant who wouldn't play their game.

Black Muslims?

The official story is that Black Muslims killed Malcolm. But we should not hasten to accept this to date unproved hypothesis. The New York Police, for example, had good cause to be afraid of Malcolm, and with the vast resources of blackmail and coercion which are at their disposal, they also had ample opportunity, and of course would have little reason to fear exposure were they involved. At the same time, the Muslim theory cannot be discounted out of hand because the Muslims are not a political group, and in substituting religion for science, and color mysticism for rational analysis, they have a world view which would encompass the efficacy and morality of assassination, a man who has a direct pipeline to God can justify anything.

No Program

The main point, however, is not who killed Malcolm, but why could he be killed? In the literal sense, of course, any man can be killed, but why was Malcolm particularly vulnerable? The answer to this question makes of Malcolm's death tragedy of the sharpest kind, and in the literal Greek sense. Liberals and Elijah have tried to make Malcolm a victim of his own (non-existent) doctrines of violence. This is totally wrong and totally hypocritical. Malcolm was the most dynamic national leader to have appeared in America in the last decade. Compared with him the famous Kennedy personality was a flimsy cardboard creation of money, publicity, makeup, and the media. Malcolm had none of these, but a righteous cause and iron character forged by white America in the fire of discrimination, addiction, prison, and incredible calumny. He had a difficult to define but almost tangible attribute called charisma. When you heard Malcolm speak, even when you heard him say things that were wrong and confusing, you wanted to believe. Malcolm could move men deeply. He was the stuff of which mass leaders are made. Commencing-his public life in the context of the apolitical, irrational religiosity and racial mysticism of the Muslim movement, his break toward politicalness and rationality was slow, painful, and terribly incomplete. It is useless to speculate on how far it would have gone had he lived. He had entered prison a burgler, an addict, and a victim. He emerged a Muslim and a free man forever. Elijah Muhammad and the Lost-Found Nation of Islam were thus inextricably bound up with his personal emancipation. In any event, at the time of his death he had not yet developed a clear, explicit, and rational social program. Nor had he led his followers in the kind of transitional struggle necessary, to the creation of a successful mass movement. Lacking such a program, he could not develop cadres based on program. What cadre he had was based on Malcolm X instead. Hated and feared by the power structure, and the focus of the paranoid feelings of his former colleagues, his charisma made him dangerous, and his lack of developed program and cadre made him vulnerable. His death by violence had a high order of probability, as he himself clearly felt.

Heroic and Tragic Figure

The murder of Malcolm, and the disastrous consequences flowing from that murder for Malcolm's organization and black militancy in general, does not mean that the militant black movement can always be decapitated with a shotgun. True, there is an agonizing gap in black leadership today. On the one hand there are the respectable servants of the liberal establishment; men like James Farmer whose contemptible effort to blame Malcolm's murder on "Chinese Communists" will only hasten his eclipse as a leader, and on the other hand the ranks of the militants have yet to produce a man with the leadership potential of Malcolm. But such leadership will eventually be forthcoming. This is a statistical as well as a social certainty. This leadership, building on the experience of others such as Malcolm, and emancipated from his religiosity, will build a movement in which the black masses and their allies can lead the third great American revolution. Then Malcolm X will be remembered by black and white alike ad a heroic and tragic figure* in & dark period of our common history. •

Bay Area Spartacist Committee, 2 March, 1965

From The American Left History Blog Archives (2002) - On American Political Discourse-

 

 

Markin comment:

 

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.     

************

 

 

 

A CALL TO ALL WORKING PEOPLE / ANTI-IMPERIALIST YOUTH: HAVE NO ILLUSIONS-----WAR WITH IRAQ IS COMING!!!

 

BUILD A WORKER/ANTI-IMPERIALIST YOUTH UNITED FRONT AGAINST UNITED STATES/ UNITED NATIONS ATTACK ON IRAQ!

 

DEFEND IRAQ AGAINST U.S./UN ALLIED IMPERIALIST ATTACK!

 

SUPPORT EFFORTS BY IRAQI WORKERS, PEASANTS, RELIGIOUS AND ETHIC MINORITIES TO OVERTHROW THE HUSSEIN REGIME!

 

DOWN WITH THE UN STARVATION BLOCKADE!

 

 

          The war-crazed Bush-led United States government is leading the world to war. Tens of thousands of American and British troops are getting positioned for a full-scale attack on Iraq, while other powers from Australia to Turkey elbow each other for a role in the slaughter and share of the loot. The White House has already revealed plans for a post-Saddam military occupation of Iraq. Look at the war chest of nuclear weapons that the United Sates has and threatens to use today and it is clear that the fate of life on this planet is threatened by the continued existence of this American led world disorder.

          In this war against Iraq workers and students in the United States and elsewhere clearly have a side: we must stand for the military defense of Iraq without giving any political support to the Hussein regime. Hussein is a bloody oppressor of Iraqi workers, leftists, Shiite Muslims, the Kurdish people and others. As such he was in the past a close ally and client of the American government for a full two decades before he made a grab for Kuwait in 1990. Mow the American government wants a more pliant regime and tighter control of the oil spigot, not the least to put economic rivals like Japan and Germany, who are more dependent on Near East oil, on rations. With the latest renewed saber rattling over North Korea, Washington has made it clear that that country will be next on its hit list in the event of an easy win in Iraq. Every victory for the American government and its allies in their predatory wars encourages further military adventures, every setback serves to assist the struggles of the working peoples and the oppressed of the world.

          The tremendous military advantages of the United Sates against neocolonial Iraq- a country that has already been bled white through 12 years of United Nations sanctions which have killed more than one and one half million civilians- underscores the importance of class struggle in the imperialist centers as the chief means to give content to the call to defend Iraq. Every strike, every labor mobilization against war plans, every mass protest against attacks on workers and minorities, and every struggle against domestic repression and against attacks on civil liberties represents a dent in the imperialist war drive. To put an end to war once and for all, the capitalist system that breeds war must be swept away through a series of revolutions and the establishment of a rational, planned, egalitarian socialist economy on a world scale.

 

ANTI-IMPERILALISM ABROAD MEANS CLASS STRUGGLE AT HOME! DEFEND IRAQ AGAINST AMERICAN ATTACK!

 

          The extent to which Washington’s allies in the United Nations, especially Germany, have openly criticized the Bush administration’s rabid provocations in the Near East is a measure of the growth of tensions among the capitalist powers in recent years. But, while objecting to the rudeness of an American cowboy boot on their necks all of the subordinate capitalist states will acquiesce to the dictates of the master of the capitalist ruling classes, the United States, and they want to be rewarded with at least a share of the spoils. As an official of a French oil company stated, “We want the oil and we want to be in the game of rebuilding the country. If there were a new regime and we have not been with the Americans, where will we be?”

 

War: THE CONTINUATION OF POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS

 

          The American ruling class manipulated the grief and horror felt by millions at the criminal and demented attack on the World Trade Center to wage war on Afghanistan. But the patriotic consensus in the United Sates is wearing thin and elsewhere there is massive opposition to a war against Iraq. War demands civil peace and from Los Angeles to London the imperialist war makers are revealed as vicious union-busters and strikebreakers. Declaring that a strike could “threaten national security,” the Bush administration has brought down the force of the capitalist state to coerce the powerful American dockers union, the ILWU, to work under the dictates of the union-busting employers association. Across the seas, British firefighters are threatened with strikebreaking by the army. Plunging stock markets rob millions of workers of their pensions while public scandals expose insatiable corporate greed. Tens of thousands of working people, including the entire workforce at a number of Fiat plants in Italy. Face a future of being unemployed by owners seeking to protect their own profit margins amid the capitalist economic crisis. Civil liberties have been shredded and the capitalists have intensified their assault on social welfare and other gains wrested through decades of workers struggles.

 

          Everywhere the anti-immigrant witch-hunt has been whipped up to fever pitch in an effort by the capitalist rulers to deflect working-class struggle with racism and xenophobia. The anti-immigrant hysteria provokes a tide of blood as thousands of disparate refugees die trying to cross the U.S. border from Mexico or to land a rickety boat in Australia or Europe. Now as the mass of immigrants is not needed the capitalist system shows that it is the biggest threat to workers everywhere. A decade ago the rulers crowed about the supposed “death of communism.” But capitalism has once again brought the world to an impasse which the Iraq war illuminates with the terrifying glare of missiles streaking across the night sky. A workers student united front against these imperialist acts is the only way forward.

          In the United States, not even the dizzying flag-waving or the heavy fist of state repression has induced the masses to embrace war with Iraq. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of workers and anti-imperialist youth have demonstrated their opposition to this war. The problem is that the anti-war protests in Europe have all been channeled into a national-chauvinist direction of getting one’s “own” rulers to stand up to the Americans. In America, antiwar liberals and leftists bleat, “Money for jobs, not for war” and so fuel the lie that fundamental priorities of the capitalist rulers can be altered to serve the interests of working people.

          The truth is that this whole capitalist system is based on the extraction of profit for the owners of the means of production through the exploitation and subjugations of the workers who produce the wealth of society. War is a concentrated expression of this, as competing capitalist ruling classes scramble to steal natural resources and to carve out new markets for export of capital and fresh sources of cheap labor. The leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin, emphasized the difference between bourgeois pacifism, which lulls the masses into passivity and embellishes capitalist democracy, and the yearning for peace of the masses   

          In wars between the imperialist predators and plunderers and their colonial and semi colonial victims. The proletariat has a side. As Lenin stressed in his 1915 pamphlet SOCIALISM AND WAR:   “If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, or India on Britain, or Persia or China on Tsarist Russia, and so on, these would be ‘just,,’ and ‘defensive’ wars irrespective of who would be the first to attack; any socialist would wish the oppressed, dependent and unequal states victory over the oppressor, slave-holding and predatory ‘Great Powers.”

          There are palpable opportunities to organize class-struggle opposition to imperialist war and to break the narrow nationalist and economist limits of strikes contained by the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. During the 1999 U.S./NATO war against Serbia, Italian COBAS unions organized a one-million-strong political general strike against that war. Fiat workers, who today battle plant closings in Italy, organized a campaign of material aid- a campaign supported by all partisans of the international working class- for the workers of the Yugoslav Zastava auto plant, which had been bombed by the imperialists. In 2001, Japanese dock workers at Sasebo pointed the way forward by “hot-cargoing” (refusing to handle) Japanese military goods for the war in Afghanistan.

          What is essential is to draw the class line and unshackle the working people and anti-imperialist youth from capitalist politicians, their agents in the trade unions and others who channel their justified hatred of war into illusory calls for parliamentary reforms of the profit-driven system that breeds war and, in West Europe, into support for their own ruling classes against the Americans. Here, in the heart of the beast the workers and anti-imperialist youth united front can point the way forward building an internationalist perspective in the antiwar protests. Our demands should be: Struggle against the bosses at home- the main enemy is at home Defend Iraq against imperialist attack Down with the United Nations starvation blockade. All U.S./ UN and allied troops out of the Persian Gulf and Near East

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘60s Song Night- The Tune Weavers’ “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby”

THE TUNE WEAVERS
"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby"

Happy, happy birthday, baby

Although you're with somebody new

Thought I'd drop a line to say

That I wish this happy day

Would find me beside you


Happy, happy birthday, baby

No I can't call you my baby

Seems like years ago we met

On a day I can't forget

'Cause that's when we fell in love


Do you remember the names we had for each other

I was your pretty, you were my baby

How could we say goodbye


Hope I didn't spoil your birthday

I'm not acting like a lady

So I'll close this note to you

With good luck and wishes too

Happy, happy birthday, baby

**********
Damn he never should have sent that note, that short, silly, puffed-up cry baby note trying to worm his way back into Lucy’s arms with memory thoughts about this kiss, or that embrace. And bringing up old seawall sugar shack beach nights holding hands against the splashed tides, against full moons, against tomorrow coming too soon; double date drive-in movies, speakers on low, deep-breathing car fog-ups on cold October nights, embarrassed, way embarrassed, when they surfaced for intermission's stale popcorn or reheated hot dogs; and, that last dance school dance holding tight, tight as hell, to each other as the DJ, pretending to be radio jockey Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg, played Could This Be Magic? on that creaky record player used at North Adamsville high school dances since his mother’s time, ancient Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday times.

Damn, a scratchy, scribbly note, a note written on serious stationary and with a real fountain pen to show his sincerity, and not the usual half- lined sheet, pulled out a three-ring subject notebook, and passed to Lucy during their common study class. Notes the passing of which sometimes got them severe looks from the study monitor, Miss Green, and giggles and taunts, usually some lewd or luscious remarks fraught with sexual innuendo from their fellow students, boys and girls alike, about fogged-up cars and trash talk like that who also tried to intercept those precious notes without success. Yah, “the note heard round the world” that would expose him to all kinds of ridicule, endless be-bop jive patter, and snide questions about his manhood from guys, and probably girls too, around the school, hell, all around North Adamsville and maybe already had if Lucy decided to cut his heart out and tell one and all what a square he, Luke Jackson, was when all was said and done.

He could hear it now, and could hear the words ringing in his ears. What a soft guy Luke Jackson really was, a guy known to be a love ‘em and leave ‘em guy before Lucy. A guy, a used to be sharp guy who shrugged off more things that you could shake a stick at and came back swinging but who was getting all misty-eyed and cry baby just because some dame, a good looking dame in all the right places, yes, a dame all the guys were ready to pursue once he was out of the picture, but still a dame, a young high school dame, when all was said and done, got under his skin, like they were married or something. Hell, he thought, thought now too late, to himself, that he would have been better off, much better off, leaving it at calling Lucy on the telephone every few hours and either hanging up before she answered or when she did answer freezing up. But that was costing money, serious add up money, since he had to use a public pay telephone up the street from his house because the telephone service had been turned off for non-payment as his family could not afford to pay the bill the past few months.

Besides it was getting kind of creepy going in and out of the house at all hours, midnight by the telephone waiting like some lonely, awkward girl, walking up the street like a zombie, half mope, half dope, then hesitating before deciding to make the call, making it, or not, and then scurrying like a rat from the public glare of the booth. Christ, one time the cops looked at him funny, real funny, when he was calling at about midnight. And he had to admit that he might have called the police station a few times too after he looked at himself in the mirror upon returning home.

That note, sent the day before and probably in Lucy’s plotting hands right now, was a minute, a quick minute, brain-storm that he had thought up when he was just plain miserable, just plain midnight telephone tired too, and anyone could make such a rash decision under love’s duress, teenage love’s duress. Right then though all he could think of was all the notes, the cutesy, lined-sheet paper school-boyish notes, that he had sent her when love was in full blossom, full blossom before Jamie Lee Johnson came on the scene, came on the scene with his big old ’59 Chevy Impala, his money in his pocket, and his line of patter and stole his “sweet pea” Lucy away from her “sugar plum” Luke. And that picture sent him back to thoughts of when he and Lucy first met, when their eyes first met.

“Let’s see,” Luke said to himself it was probably at Chrissie McNamara’s sweet sixteen birthday party that he first laid eyes on her. Hell, who was he kidding, he knew that it was exactly at 8:32PM on the night of April 25, 1962 that he first laid eyes on her, big almost star-struck staring eyes. Or maybe it was a few seconds before because, to break the ice, he had gone up to her and asked her for the time, asked in his then bolder manner if she had time for him, asked her to dance, she said yes, and that was that. Oh, yah, there was more to it than that but both of them knew at that moment, knew somewhere deep down in their teenage hearts, they were going to be an “item,” for a while. And they were indeed sweet pea and sugar plum, for a while. Although Luke would get mad sometimes, fighting mad, fighting break-up mad, when Lucy teased, no, more than teased, him about his not having a car so that they could go “parking” by themselves and not always be on some clowny double-date down at the seashore on Saturday night (or any night in the summer). And Luke would reply that he was saving money for college, and besides sitting on the seawall (and sometimes in love’s heat down beneath its height), their usual habit, was okay, wasn’t it.

That simmer, that somehow inarticulated simmer, went on for a while, a long while. But Luke had noticed a few months back, or rather Lucy had made her sugar plum notice, that now that they were high school seniors sitting on the seawall was nothing but nowhere kids’ stuff and why did he want to go to college anyway, and wasn’t going to work down at the shipyard where he could earn some real dough and get a car a better idea. The real clincher though, the one that telegraphed to him that the heavens were frowning on him, was the night she, no bones, stated that she had no plans for college and was going right to work after graduation, and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t be able to wait for him. And that’s where things started to really break down between them.

Enter one Jamie Lee Johnson, a friend of Lucy’s older brother Kenny, already graduated from North Adamsville two years before and working, working steady with advancement possibilities according to the talk, as a junior welder down at the shipyard making good dough. Making drive-in movies and even drive-n restaurant good time dough, and driving that souped-up, retro-fitted, dual-carbed, ’59 Chevy, jet black and hung to the gills with chrome to make a girl breathless. And before Luke knew it Lucy’s mother was answering the phone calls for Lucy from Luke saying that she wasn’t in, wasn’t expected in, and that she, Lucy’s mother, would tell Lucy that he had called. The runaround, the classic runaround since boy meets girl time began, except not always done over the telephone. And while Lucy never said word one about breaking it off between them, not even a “so long we had fun,” Luke, although not smart enough to not write that sappy note, knew she was gone, and gone for good. But see she had gotten under his skin, way under, and well, and that was that.

Just as Luke was thinking about that last thought, that heart-tearing thought, he decided, wait a minute, maybe she didn’t get the note, maybe he had forgotten to put a stamp on it and as a result of those maybes he fished around his pocket to see if he had some coins, some telephone coins, and started out of the house prison to make that late night pilgrimage creep, that midnight waiting by the telephone creep. Walking up the street, walking up the now familiar night street-lighted against the deathless shadows Hancock Street he noticed a jet black ’59 Impala coming his way, coming his way with Jamie Lee and Lucy sitting so close together that they could not be pried apart with a crowbar. Luke thought about that scene for a minute, steeled himself with new-found resolve against the love hurts like in the old love 'em and leave ‘em days, threw the coins on the ground without anger but rather with relief, turned back to his house wondering, seriously wondering like the fate of the world depended on it, what pet names they Jimmy and Lucy had for each other.

***When Literature Talked Politics- The Role of Literature In Revolutionary Politics-17th Century Style

Book Review

Politics Of Discourse; The Literature and History Of Seventeenth-Century England, edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zucker, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987

No question these days in modern European democratic societies literature, high literature anyway, and politics do not mix, except by accident. This however has not always been true, and as the academic book under review here, Politics of Discourse, testifies to in the early modern democratic period the fit between the two was far tighter than the modern mind could imagine. And nowhere was this combination more prevalent that in 17th century England, from the immediate pre-revolutionary period through to the late restoration period. The specialized essays that make up this volume give a pretty clear impression that, at least at the level of “high culture” and courtier/bourgeois society, one could not be knowledgeable about the affairs of the day without reading the polemics, parables, and panegyrics of such luminaries as Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Carew, and John Dryden.

Of course the 17th century in England was the high point, or rather one of the high points, in the struggle over the role of religion in public life from such questions as toleration, an established state church, the nature of worship and liturgy, religious qualifications for public office, and the great internal and foreign policy struggles between international Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. So public men, literary sorts or not, had be aware of the stakes involved when they went about the business of polemicizing for their views. No question that given the very undemocratic nature of monarchical society under James I and Charles I (and the later Charles II and James II) that one had to couch their polemics for their positions in oblique terms. This is, after all, the great age of the parable, the masque, and the ethereal epic poem. Moreover, democratic stirrings or not, religious sentiment in public and private life at both the patrician and plebeian cultural levels drove all literary and political conversation, especially the manic drive to prove one’s point by reference to Scripture. Still this period produced some of the masterworks of English literature, none better than John Milton’s defense of Republican England under Cromwell, in Paradise Lost.

That said this book is not for those who are not at least somewhat familiar with the history of 17th century English, especially some knowledge of the issues around the titanic struggles in mid-century in the revolutionary period, the Puritan Revolution proper. With that in mind there are a few outstanding essay here worthy of taking the time to read: a great exposition on the Scottish historical sources that Shakespeare may, or may not, have been familiar with when creating his saga on monarchical legitimacy in Macbeth; an interesting study of a literary patroness, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, to detail the audience that any literary figure needed to address their works to; a generally overlooked subject during this period, that of a courtier literary figure and his defense of the monarchy, Thomas Carew; the trials, tribulations and twists of a literary politician trying to read which way the wind was blowing in creating his works, Andrew Marvell; the usages of the fable in the Restoration period to telegraph dissent (a literary devise still necessarily in use today, unfortunately); and, lastly, a couple of great essays on the great defender of the English revolution and of its republican virtues, John Milton.

Those last essays were my reason for reading this volume, especially the essay on the politics of Paradise Lost by Mary Ann Radzinowicz, featuring some ideas that the great British Marxist historian and Milton devotee Christopher Hill alerted us to in an earlier time, but the others mentioned deserve a reading as well.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground –With Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel” In Mind

…she, June Miller, wanted to make sure, after she was gone, whenever that was, and her attorney went to her private safety deposit book and retrieved her notes, that everybody got the story, the story of her, Eric, and that tramp Stella, right, got it right far away from the way Pop over at his two-bit dinner where Stella worked before the fall had told it,told it so that it entered the common town wisdom just that way he talked it up. Pop, the old goat, who was half in love with Stella himself. Got it right too away from the way the newspapers had blared it out every which way like there was nothing but a sex sin city running in old beat down ocean front Bayside City. Got it right too against Eric who almost took the fall for that damn tramp’s murder. And got it right against Judd, Judd the hick ex-cop from New York City who did take the fall, took the big step for Stella’s murder. And she, June Miller, should know, know all the details, after all she had been the other woman, the mistreated, abused left behind other woman, the angel sticking by her man when the deal when down, according to the newspapers and to old Pop. But let her tell the story, tell it true, although it will never make any newspaper, never be the subject of endless morning breakfast hams and eggs, over easy, with a cup of joe, twenty-five cents please, at Pop’s, or be the subject of pillow talk between she and Eric.

She knew Stella was a tramp, knew like every woman knows, every woman who keeps tabbed up on such things, from the first day she sashayed off that heading north Pacific coastal highway bus that stopped once a day at what passed for downtown Bayside City. She had every guy looking, looking with that Saturday night bed room look, even guys with their woman beside them, all of a sudden bending down to tie their mother taught double-tied shoes to catch a glance of her, and not catch hell. She was a looker all right, tall, long legs and not afraid to show them (hell, glad to show them), big brown hair all wavy to one side, the fashion then, brown eyes, dark silky complexion, big ruby red lips that spoke of sex, sex and more sex. Her clothes though, strictly off the cheap rack, and that bus ride, showed she was from hunger, like a lot of west coast pretty girls were back then, looking to move on from wherever they hailed from, looking for some little ring and respectability, or at least a good time.

Later, after Stella got a job serving them off the arm at Pop’s bringing extra business just by being there, dating every guy who had two dimes to rub together for a dance, quarters for some cheap low- shelf scotch, and dollars for some Woolworth’s faux jewelry, she told everybody her story about being from nowhere San Diego, and how she had to split, after some unexplained hard time with an ex-boyfriend. June though then with those dark features she probably had a little mex in her, a little brown world mex whore all ready to show any man with the dinero some mex love, maybe taught to her early, like a lot of them, from some tio taco, and then on to the streets, on to the streets early. An old tramp story, as old as Adam and Eve, maybe older

Maybe though all women are tramps, or at least a lot of guys go for those who give that appearance and Stella was a step up, just some whore who didn’t have sense enough to cash in big on her looks and her come hither appeal. Maybe working her way up to some Hollywood producer’s concubine. June knew in her own case that if people around town had known what she had done when she went away to college, keeping a married man as a lover, keeping that married man just because he was married and no strings attached, and about what really happened when she took those three day trips every once in a while to North Beach up in Frisco town they would be calling her a tramp too, maybe worst. But she passed, passed easily for the town librarian (which she was) living with a man-scorned older sister in gentile circumstances.

And then he, Eric, blew into town, blew into town like the four winds, blew into town by happenstance, just another guy running away from the east coast after the war, maybe had done some time in battle –torn Europe, or some desolate Pacific atoll and New York, Chi town, Omaha, Denver were too small for him, he had to head to land’s end and try his luck, or fail trying. He, Eric, fresh out of dough, fresh out of luck, and fresh out of ideas, like Stella had some magic magnet wound up at Pop’s for some coffee and cakes. And there she was, any man’s girl, waiting for his line and waiting to see if he was the next best thing. Yah, she got her hooks into him, got her hooks into that smooth- talking guy good, and threw him for a loop. Got him thinking big idea thoughts again, got him all tied up. (He said later, later when it was all over and they, June and he, talked about it one night in bed, that it was probably that jasmine or cactus perfume she wore that drove him over the edge, that and that mex whore way she had about her that promised sweaty nights and cool showers afterward that got him all tangled up).

All balled up (even knowing she was seeing other guys on his dime, even knowing that guys were lined up at her door, even knowing guys were getting cramps from bending down to tie their silly shoes) Eric proposed marriage to Stella when she told him straight, straight through the heart, that was the deal or no deal (although that did not stop her later, after he had gotten his hooks in June, from taking him down the beach one night, down by secluded Seal Rock, to twist him around her finger by rocking him all night long just to make sure. June knew because she had followed then there and watched them for a while, furious).That’s when he headed to June’s door. See his big idea revolved around getting at some serious dough, and the only freed-upserious dough in town was at June’s (and her sister, Clara’s) residence. His bright idea was to con June out of her dough by fast-talking (he did that all right) her out of her virtue and then razzle-dazzlegrabbing the dough. Then he and Stella would blow town, maybe Frisco town, maybe east.

So June played along with him for a while, played the virtuous unworldly maiden ready to be swept off her feet by a fast-talking man who wanted to show her real life. One night he took her down to that same secluded Seal Rock where Stella had taken him and “seduced” her after feeding her with liquor (she would have preferred some reefer that got her hotter, more in the mood) and assumed the deal was done. Assumed he was now on easy street. She, playing ravaged virtuous maiden, insisted they get married, or else. Facing that prospect, and seeing where there might be some sense to that move in order to get some Stella money under the new circumstances, he went along with the deal. (Clara, knowing a two-bit hustler at best or just a fast-talking con man freaked out when she heard they were married but held her tongue.) That done, that marriage deed done (after a night of torrid love-making leaving him exhausted and sleepy since she had been able to score some reefer from a connection from her old school and got him to try some for the first time), they were to head to Frisco for their “honeymoon” and his dough payout.

Then the world fell in, Eric’s world. Stella was found murdered that next morning in her apartment by a neighbor who had earlier heard muffled sounds and someone, man or woman, she was not sure then, running away from Stella’s flat. She, when the police began their investigation, their all-out investigation because murder, murder most foul, in Bayside City was unheard of, claimed that someone was Eric. And so the investigation began to center on Eric, his motives and his opportunity. All the while he insisted that he did not do it, couldn’t have done it despite that witness. June insisted they flee, flee to Frisco, grab the dough she had stashed in a safety deposit box and head, head somewhere. He, shocked at Stella’s death, and then fearful when the frame came forming around his head, finally faced up to the idea that he was the fall guy for the big step-off bought her idea with both hands. They fled. To no avail though. The ex-cop, Judd, working as a special investigator, who was putting the heat on to solve the crime alerted the San Francisco police and they were there that morning at the bank to pick the pair up.

Eric was going to step off, take the big step, unless June did something, and quick before all the accumulating circumstantial evidence became a mountain (Eric’s con artist marriage to June, his being seen watching several times at Stella’s apartment late at night by some undisclosed witness, a bracelet found on the ground outside her apartment which he had given her after that night down at Seal Rock as a reward for her night’s work, and so on). And she found the perfect way to save her man, find the real killer. And she did. Just figured out who beside Eric had been inflamed by Stella. The list was a little long, including a travelling salesman who knew her when he was from hunger down in San Diego, but as it turned out the ex-cop, Judd, who had tried to frame Eric, a guy who had spent plenty of time at Pop’s drinking coffee and drinking Stella in, did it. June had traced the watch that Stella had on her wrist to him, bought at a local jewelry store when she started putting out her net. Judd had hit her too hard after he went up to her apartment to propose marriage and she laughed him out of the room. He didn’t like that, no man, no cop likes that. Case solved.

Well, almost case solved, see June knew, knew all along that Eric had not done it. He had been so reefer-stoned that first married night that he just zonked out after she took him around the world. She wasn’t sleepy thought, reefer made her stay wide awake. So after she took a shower to wash their love off, and got her street clothes on, she started walking toward the beach, toward Stella’s. She saw a man, who turned out to be Judd, fleeing that open door apartment. She went up the stairs, stepped into the apartment, and saw Stella silently stretched out on the floor, although still breathing. She impulsively grabbed a pillow and put it over Stella’s head snuffing the last bit of life out of her. Yah, June, an angel flying too close to the ground, a fallen angel.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –From “The Lonesome Hobo” Series-“Our Homeland The Sea”

Funny, he, call him old man of the sea, although that appellation has been done to literary death in about sixteen different ways not all of them apt, in any case let’s not, definitely not, make it some Hemingway-ish old man, some viejo, some Caribe viejo, fighting some stinking marlin, or some such fish, mano y mano, stinking, man and fish, fighting some life and death literary metaphor struggle, but that name fits as good as any, thought as he watched out over another endlessly enchanted seascape, next stop England or with a wind drift or tide drift homeland, forbear homeland Ireland, how many such scenes he had witnessed in his whitened lifetime. This time the sea-scape, god-brokered, maybe god-forsaken, with furious winds driving white-capped waves thundering to ill-prepared but eagerly waiting to be taken like some overripe maiden beaches (better metaphor that some stinking viejo and fish combine, alright) and already filled with flotsam and jetsam, nature’s jimson, from a million previous rages, nature rages now co-mingled with his own benighted rages, brought another rage (rage against the dying of the light) about how much of his life had revolved around the sea, around trying to get a handles on the sea, trying to see, well, hell at this late date where he fit in, no, where he stood, okay. And after his rant subsided he thought this…

Maybe it was the sheer hard fact, hard to get around fact anyway, of the transcontinental California night calling after too long an absence, the California be-bop, be-bop, be-bop, praise saint be-bop, our lord and king be-bop, late 1960s night, summer of love night and its aftermath when all things were possible and when old Wordsworth had it right, had it poem right, to be young was very heaven.

The afternoon turned back to morning as he headed west, funny, flown, jet-flown these days, no more those old days hitchhike road, waiting alone or with some angel woman by his side on some Route 6, or 66, hailing some lonesome trucker looking for poor boy company, someone to rant to at seventy-five miles an hour to in order to relieve his own desperate life with a road son, waiting too in some forlorn Neola, Winnemucca, Boise, Grand Island, Flagstaff, wherever, waiting a long time. Or on some just hopped flat-bed Denver & Rio Grande, Illinois Central, Southern Pacific train making time with the last of the old time hobos and dreaming his own dreams of some Phoebe Snow left behind in sorrow or anger. Less frequently, strangely, a flat-out car run west riding Route 80, 90 to Frisco town thundering through farmlands, the plains, rockymountain high and down on to the desert before golden-gated blessed land’s end, Frisco .

The eternal California be-bop night after years of Maine solitude, of Maine grey-blue-white washed, white-crested, white-capped, foam-flecked Atlantic ocean-flotsam and jetsam strewn waters. After all not all angel oceans are created the same, just look at the fury-driven pacific ocean in front of him, no friend to man, to beast, or to god, not all oceans speak to one in the same way, speak that siren song whisper, speak hushed tones that no man (and here man means man or woman, okay) dare speak above, nature’s arbitrary law, although they are all old Father (or is it Brother now) Neptune’s thoughtful playgrounds. (Thoughtful for ten thousand thoughtful walks, ten thousand un-thoughtful walks, and eight thousand more or less, indifferent walks, twenty-eight thousand, more or less, chances anyway.

California’s, yes, white-washed, yes, white-crested, yes, white-capped, yes, foam-flecked speak to gentle, warm lapis lazuli blue wealth dreams of the quest, the long buried life long quest for the great blue-pink great American West night, blue-pinked skies of course. Yes maybe it was just that sheer hard fact, hard to get around still, that pushed him, old man of the sea him, out of Eastern white, white to hate the sight of white, snowed-indoors, Eastern gale winds blowing a man against the sand-pebbled seas, and into the endless starless, better, sunless night. Yes, maybe just a change of color, or to color, from the white white whiteness of the sea stretched, white-etched night. Right down to the shoreline white where the waves devoured night and left their mark, their graffiti-etched mark.

Maybe too it was the sheer fact, he would no longer speak of hard to get around facts around since that was enameled into his psyche now, of preparing, against the timetable of that Eastern white night, timetable set and etched by that shoreline outline and that fugitive lover who ravished her shoreline sands and then fled, this and that for the winter California day, and night, the ocean California that set the thoughts of the be-bop night (hell, more than be-bop, be-bop to the nth power) suddenly came brain-storming in waves like that turbulent sea over him not seen or heard from since those first summer of love days, and the quest for the blue-pink skies humming once again in the, admittedly, older-boned voyager, voyeur (some snicker “dirty old man” and save such high society words as voyeur for the professionals) of dreamed once sultry, steamy sex-ridden nights.

And vivid memories of golden Butterfly Swirl (born, Cathy Callahan, corn-fed, no more from hunger okie forbears migration Carlsbad, California, circa 1950) and her sex, her seventeen different little tricks (to match her age in that 1967 summer of love night, if you need a date), learned, learned from who knows where, maybe mother ocean herself or some karma sutra book but certainly not from her former “seeking the perfect wave” surfer boyfriend-where would that fit into his timetable? Such thoughts, such memory thoughts a different proposition, a different proposition altogether, on most days, from preparing to face fierce Maine winter mornings, unaided by the graces, speak freely of the graces please, and forms nature provides its hardier creations. No thoughts today of heavy woolen coats, double-stitched, double-plied, doubled-vested, old nor’ easter worthy, or heavy woolen pants, same chino pants of youth, same black chino pants, no cuffs, except winter weight, not the always summer weight of no knowledge youth (inside sad joke), or heavy boots, heavy clunky rubbery boots mocking against the snow-felt, ocean-edged soft sand streets, or maybe, more in tune with aged-bone recipes heavy-soled, heavy-rubber soled (or was it rubber souled?) running shoes (also known in the wide world of youth as sneakers, better Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s). Of scarves, and caps, full-bodied caps, better seaman’s caps, heavy, wool, dark blue, built to stand against the ocean-stormed waves crashing and thrashing against ships hulls, and gloves, gloves to keep one’s hands from frosty immobility he need not speak. Or will not speak. Of this he will speak…

A memory picture too of boyhood friend Jimmy Leclerc, remember that name like you remember the seas, like you remember certain tales, like you remember, well, like you remember as best you can , that which somebody told you about but which you did not experience (although Jimmy experiences filled his soul, filled his sea-watching soul even this day). Blessed, sainted, sanctified, cradled, born under a certain star, lucky maybe if you believe in making your own luck or having it thrust upon you, Jimmy, young, maybe four or five, no, five, definitely five, school ready, school ready come five year old fall, mucking around the summertime shoreline mucks, low tide, shoreline white-etched ravishes well up the beach, fetid smells from seven kinds of tanker-passing oil slicks, rancid chemicals from the cross-bay industrial plant, human mucks mixed in from ten thousand , ten thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge) sources seeping back to shore and mephitic (thanks, Norman Mailer) seeps as well from the close by marshes that guard the approaches to the sea.

Jimmy, a tow-headed, tow-headed kid, five, portending Adonis and ladies, maybe some Butterfly Swirl and her seventeen little tricks when he gets old enough to know of such tricks, know of teaching such tricks just in case he lands a neophyte, knowing from some savior older brother himself sent to sea at fourteen, or some other worthy sea-mate, that day, that picture day, walking toward the ever-present amateur clam diggers(or maybe professional but it was hard to see how they, or anyone, could make a living out of oil- slicked, fetid, human mucked clams),high rubber boots, high almost to the crotch (although Jimmy would not have pointed that hard fact out, no then), buckets, small buckets, portending small payloads, sea-rakes, sea-shovels, sea-backs and working against time before the relentless seas come back to cover their own.

And just that day, that low tide and mucks days, Jimmy learned a valuable lesson from those vagrant gypsy clam-diggers (literally gypsies, Roma now, if you prefer, but just plain ordinary gypsies then, and called so, mostly seen with travelling carnivals and on city sidewalks selling cheap roses for the lady, and maybe their daughters too, selling that is, they used the clams in some special olio broth magic that kept their race alive in hard times) about only believing half (or less, but that was another lesson another time) of what you hear. He had heard a few days before, heard from some older boys who lived up the street (the name of the street not important, not important to the lesson, but maybe, naming will act as an omen, name Taffrail Road evoking long ago wooden ships and sea-farers worthy of the name, sea-ward pirate cousins of that day’s gypsies) and who were interested in girls, as girls, as opposed to childhood boys leave girls for later pickings and moonings, and not like Jimmy, Jimmy even then girls as foils for his child-like schemes, not all evil, not at all, but not in entangling, intertwining ways like they spoke of, that the sea before them contained mythic submarines, enemy submarines out beyond the breakers. He asked one of the gypsy diggers if he had seen any submarines around while he was digging. The digger spoken to by Jimmy called to his gypsy partner repeating Jimmy’s question and they both let out with a low groan laugh, then a heartier one. The first man laughed some more and then said to Jimmy that while there were not many around anymore since the war (World War II for those who are keeping counts on wars, or just trying to keep them straight), since the bloody Germans has been defeated and good riddance (reflecting the decimation of his kindred in Europe who took a serious beating from the bloody bastard Nazis) but he said on certain moonless nights you could see objects that certainly looked like submarines so be watchful, and be careful. So for a couple of months thereafter whenever the moon was low or it was cloudy Jimmy looked out fiercely at the open sea and then after a while went on to other things. Lesson about half of what you hear learned.

Memory fast forward. A moonless June night, circa 1961 Jimmy Leclerc was sitting in his brother borrowed 1957 two-toned (cherry red and white) Chevy (the old man as he mulled the ancient fact knew , he knew said brother should have been shot, or worse , for letting anybody, even a brother, even a brother who spent the whole afternoon turtle-waxing the damn thing in order to borrow his chariot borrow his chariot) down at the far end of Seal Rock (name also not important except that Seal Rock says beach, says mystery and says, far end says, that this is the local lovers’ lane for the free-spirits who don’t mind the crowds of cars that dotted that place on moonless June nights, and other times too, or mind being seen in a spot that means only one thing, that you will be anywhere from point one to point thirty Monday morning in Olde Saco High School (Maine, okay) before school “lav” talk, boys’ or girls’ lav accordingly, about who did, or did not, do what and with whom (or is it who) over the weekend at Seal Rock. And that week, that week just before school let out for the summer and spoiled all those Monday morning discussed points until September’s deluge, Jimmy and Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, received a number because Jimmy, who had long since learned to believe in making his own luck, has talked his ball and chain sweetie Lorraine into searching for submarines, those mythical gypsy digger submarines. And searching for them very closely, very closely indeed, as it turned out, in the back seat of that brother’s cherry ’57 Chevy.

Pardon Bradley Manning

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM

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Since September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hocand sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us there in calling for Private Manning’s freedom. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!

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The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial now scheduled for June 2013. The news on his case over the past several months (since about April 2012) has centered on the many pre-trial motion hearings including recent defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial. Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at 900 plus days and will be over 1000 days by the time of trial. That motion, still not ruled on as of this writing, is expected to be decided by the next round of pre-trial hearings in late February.

The defense contends that the charges should be dismissed because the military by its own statutes (to speak nothing of that funny old constitutional right to a speedy trial guarantee that our plebeian forbears fought tooth and nail for against the bloody British and later made damn sure was included in the Amendments when the founding fathers“forgot” to include it in the main document) should have arraigned Private Manning within 120 days after his arrest. They hemmed and hawed for almost 600 days before deciding on the charges and a court martial. Nobody in the convening authority, as required by those same statutes, pushed the prosecution forward in a timely manner. In fact the court-martial convening authority, in the person of one Colonel Coffman, seems to have seen his role as mere “yes man” to each of the government’s eight requests for delays without explanation (and without informing the defense in order to take their objection). Apparently the Colonel saw his role as a mere clearing agent for whatever excuse the government gave, mainly endless addition time for clearing various classified documents a process that need not have held up the proceedings. The defense made timely objection to each governmental request to no avail.

Testimony from military authorities at pre-trial hearings in November 2012 about the reasons for the lack of action ranged from the lame to the absurd (mainly negative responses to knowledge about why some additional delays were necessary. One “reason” sticks out as a reason for excusable delay -some officer needed to get his son to a swimming meet and was thus “unavailable” for a couple of days. I didn’t make this up. I don’t have that sense of the absurd. Jesus, a man was rotting in Obama’s jails and they let him rot because of some damn swim meet). The prosecution, obviously, has argued that the government has moved might and main to move the case along and had merely waited until all leaked materials had been determined before proceeding. We shall see.

The defense has also recently pursued a motion for a dismissal of the major charges (espionage/ indirect material aid to terrorists) on the basis of the minimal effect of any leaks on national security issues as against Private Manning’s claim that such knowledge was important to the public square (freedom of information issues important for us as well in order to know about what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs). Last summer witnesses from an alphabet soup list of government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc., etc.) testified that while the information leaked shouldn’t have been leaked that the effect on national security was de minimus. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Leon Panetta, also made a public statement to that effect. The prosecution argued, successfully at the time, that the mere fact of the leak of classified information caused irreparable harm to national security issues and Private Manning’s intent, even if noble, was not at issue.

The recent thrust of the motion to dismiss has centered on the defense’s contention been that Private Manning consciously and carefully screened any material in his possession to avoid any conflict with national security and that most of the released material had been over-classified (received higher security level than necessary).(Much of the materials leaked, as per those parts published widely in the aftermath of the disclosures by the New York Times and other major outlets, concerned reports of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic interchanges that reflected poorly on that profession.) The Obama government has argued again that the mere fact of leaking was all that mattered.That motion has also not been fully ruled on and is now the subject of prosecution counter- motions and a cause for further trial delay.

A defense motion for dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command (a three-star Army general, not the normal concern of someone so far up the chain in the matter of discipline for enlisted personal) while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011 has now been ruled on. In late November and early December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses over several days. Most important to the defense was the testimony by qualified military mental health professionals citing the constant willful failure of those who held Private Manning in close confinement to listen to, or act, on their recommendations during those periods

Judge Lind, the military judge who has heard all the pre-trial arguments in the case thus far, has essentially ruled unfavorably on that motion to dismiss given the potential life sentence Private Manning faces. As she announced at an early January pre-trial hearing the military acted illegally in some of its actions. While every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trial confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slap on the wrist to the military authorities. No dismissal or, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of illegal close confinement which would take years off any potential sentence) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior as the defense tirelessly argued for. And the result is a heavy-handed deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, who already are under enormous pressures to remain silent as a matter of course while in uniform, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.

Some other important recent news, this from the November 2012 pre-trail sessions, is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear the deck and have the major espionage /aiding the enemy issue (with a possibility of a life sentence) solely before the court-martial judge, Judge Lind (the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not some senior officer, senior NCO lifer-stacked panel. A wise move, a very wise move.). Also there has been increased media attention by mainstream outlets around the case (including the previously knowingly oblivious New York Times), as well as an important statement by three Nobel Peace Laureates(including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails. Check the Bradley Manning Support Network -http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for details and future updates.

Notes from the courtroom: Bradley Manning’s motions hearing at Ft. Meade, 11/7/12

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The government deposed two witnesses today to try to explain why it delayed Bradley Manning’s trial beyond what the military law allows. Bradley entered a plea offering that deals with lesser-included offenses, and chooses to be tried before a military judge alone. This means there will not be a jury (of military officers and high ranking NCO’s).
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. November 7, 2012.
Hurricane Sandy delivered the first delay in Bradley Manning’s two-and-a-half-year trial that didn’t come at the unconstitutional whim of the United States government. The storm left the Ft. Meade military base largely unscathed, and Bradley’s trial proceeded today.
The defense has moved to dismiss with prejudice the 22 charges against the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower for lack of a speedy trial, and today the prosecution deposed two witnesses to attempt to justify keeping the young Army private in pretrial confinement for 900 days without bringing him to trial.

Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, at right, as I.O. of Bradley’s pretrial hearing in December 2011. (Sketch by William J. Hennessy Jr.)

Witness 1: Lt. Col. Paul Almanza
First the government called Lt. Col. Paul Almanza to the stand telephonically. Almanza was the Investigating Officer at Bradley’s initial Article 32 pretrial hearing in December 2011. Almanza excluded the government’s delays last December and in January of this year from the speedy trial clock, and today he was asked to explain why.
Last year, the government emailed Almanza, requesting that he authorize a trial delay from December 22, 2011, to January 3, 2012, and that he exclude that delay from the trial clock. Almanza granted that request and excluded it without asking for the defense’s position on the matter.
Almanza said he excluded three days (December 24-26) for Christmas, a federal holiday, two days for New Years Day, also a federal holiday, and four days in between, though he did review evidence on a Secret-clearance laptop at the Military District of Washington on December 23. He excluded the weekend of January 7 and 8, saying he took his son to a swim meet in Pennsylvania.
Almanza sent out memos on January 4 and 11 regarding delays, but in neither did he mention that he had concurrent civilian work with the Department of Justice. Asked why he didn’t mention it, Almanza said that he should have, that omitting it was an oversight. He also said he could’ve requested leave from his civilian work, but neglected to do so. Almanza testified that had he not allowed these delays, he could’ve completed the work that he submitted on January 11 by December 29.
He also said that at last December’s hearing, he would’ve accepted witness testimony regarding the classification of documents if substituted for classification reviews. This method would have obviated the long wait for Original Classification Authorities to submit their reviews.
Witness 2: Bert Haggett
After lunch, the government called Bert Haggett to testify. Haggett promulgates information security policy throughout the Army, and has reviewed documents in Bradley’s case to determine to whom they should be referred for a classification review. Unfortunately, most of Haggett’s responses to many of the defense’s initial questions were, “I don’t recall.” That was the answer he gave to, “When were you first contacted?”, “Did you sign a referral?”, “Did the referral include a deadline?” and “How long did the Original Classification Authority take?”
Haggett suggested that it was possible, or not necessarily unreasonable, for a complex classification review process to take more than a full year. However, he said it only took him 4 days to examine 900 documents and determine to which ‘equity holder’ within the government to send them.
Upon cross-examination and Judge Lind’s questioning, and after the prosecution handed him court documents recounting past proceedings, Haggett began to reveal more about his role, the government’s inexpedience, and the review process. Though he couldn’t remember the date exactly, he agreed that it was likely he was first contacted in April 2011 – more than nine months after Bradley’s arrest. Haggett couldn’t explain why it took the government so long to contact him, but he said that during 2010, “When the WikiLeaks issue occurred, I lived and breathed it.”
Haggett didn’t know too much about the status of documents relating to Bradley Manning’s case after he recommended they be sent to various OCAs, but he spoke more generally about the classification and review process in his experience. He said it was rare that he would review information and decide to declassify it. He also said that he didn’t know if trial counsel (the prosecution) had included deadlines in their requests for classification review.
Bradley’s plea offering
The other main issue of the day was Bradley’s potential plea offering. As lawyer David Coombs has posted to his blog,

“PFC Manning has offered to plead guilty to various offenses through a process known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions.” To clarify, PFC Manning is not pleading guilty to the specifications as charged by the Government. Rather, PFC Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses. The Court will consider whether this is a permissible plea.
PFC Manning is not submitting a plea as part of an agreement or deal with the Government. Further, the Government does not need to agree to PFC Manning’s plea; the Court simply has to determine that the plea is legally permissible. If the Court allows PFC Manning to plead guilty by exceptions and substitutions, the Government may still elect to prove up the charged offenses. Pleading by exceptions and substitutions, in other words, does not change the offenses with which PFC Manning has been charged and for which he is scheduled to stand trial.”

Judge Lind said that Manning’s plea offering deals with Specification 1 of Charge 2 (an 18 US 793(e) offense), and to Clauses 1 and 2 of the Article 134 offense. (Read Manning’s charge sheet here.)
David Coombs also explained today that, “PFC Manning has also provided notice of his forum selection. He has elected to be tried by Military Judge alone.” This means that Judge Lind alone will decide both guilt and possible punishment at court martial. There will not be a military jury, comprised of officers and senior NCO’s, involved.
Starting at 8:00 AM ET tomorrow, the government will depose Col. Carl Coffman, who will finally be forced to explain why he signed off on enough government delays to push Bradley’s arraignment back 635 days.

Notes from the courtroom: Bradley Manning’s motions hearing at Ft. Meade, 11/8/12

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Col. Carl Coffman, former Special Court Martial Convening Authority in Bradley’s trial, answered questions from the defense and prosecution about his role in delaying Bradley Manning’s pretrial confinement, which has exceeded 900 days. (Read notes from Day 1 here.)
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. November 8, 2012.

Col. Carl Coffman, former Special Court Martial Convening Authority.

Col. Carl Coffman had a lot of explaining to do today – about 6 hours worth. That’s how long the former Special Court Martial Convening Authority answered questions on the stand, in the second and final day of this week’s motions hearing for PFC Bradley Manning at Ft. Meade, MD.
Both the government and defense called Coffman to testify for the defense’s motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial, because Coffman signed off to approve all but one of the government’s requests to delay Bradley’s pretrial proceedings (according to the defense, paralegal Monica Carlile signed one of the delays). The defense accuses the prosecution of requesting delays that could have been avoided, it accuses various government agencies (Original Classification Authorities, or OCAs) who took months to complete classification reviews, and it accuses Coffman of both granting needless delays and unjustifiably excluding them from the speedy trial clock.
The prosecution’s Captain White questioned Coffman first for several hours, reviewing each of the government’s eight delay requests spanning August 2010, when Coffman joined the case, and December 2011, when Bradley’s pretrial proceedings finally began.
The prosecution and Coffman worked together so frequently during 2011 that Coffman referred to “my trial counsel” and to Capt. Ashden Fein by his first name during his testimony. In its questioning, the government had Coffman go through each delay request process to try to stress to the court that it frequently updated Coffman on the OCAs’ progress, it couldn’t have done anything to expedite the OCAs’ extremely long review process, and the classification reviews were necessary to conduct Bradley’s Article 32 pretrial hearing.
The defense has long objected to each of these contentions, and elicited testimony from Coffman revealing that the former Convening Authority actually knew very little about the classification review progress, instead “trusting,” in his words, that “trial counsel and the OCAs were doing their jobs.”
The government’s questioning of Coffman was very methodical, and rather long and dry. Eight times before Manning’s first court session, the prosecution requested a delay, citing the OCAs’ still-unfinished classification reviews. The defense objected to each request, arguing that Bradley’s speedy trial rights were being violated, and that the parties could proceed without waiting for the classification reviews. Coffman testified that he took the defense’s objections into consideration, but he didn’t deny a single government request for delay.
But defense questioning revealed even more about the process: we learned that the prosecution wrote all of its own delay approval memos, on which Coffman simply signed his name, after only 10-15 minutes of discussion with the government.
The problem seems to boil down to this: Coffman “trusted” the OCAs to complete their classification reviews expediently, and he “trusted” the prosecution to provide accurate updates about the reviews that in his mind necessitated delays. But the prosecution didn’t give specific progress updates – for example, that half of the documents were completed, or that they needed a certain number of days to finish – instead, the lawyers would merely tell Coffman that the OCAs were continuing to work and needed more time. (Coffman revealed that despite providing him with verbal or informal updates about the classification process, the prosecution missed its deadline to update him in writing on multiple occasions.) Coffman testified that he made no effort to contact or hurry the OCAs himself, saying that because OCAs are “senior officials,” he expected them to do their jobs without needing to be reminded to quicken their work. He couldn’t explain further why he never inquired about how many OCAs there were, how many documents they needed to review, or how much more time they needed.
How long could this have gone on? If the OCAs were still completing those reviews today, would Bradley still be awaiting arraignment? Coffman said he had no deadline in mind: the only time frame he considered problematic was the potential event that the pre-arraignment period continued until the summer of 2012, when Coffman was expecting to change positions, and didn’t know how to proceed in that event.
But even further questioning challenged the idea that Coffman had to wait for the classification reviews at all. In each objection, the defense proffered that instead of waiting on OCAs to complete reviews, the prosecution could have provided summaries or substitutes of the classified material. Coffman rejected this idea repeatedly, saying he needed the reviews to proceed, despite the defense’s multiple demands for a speedy trial.
Coffman also talked about Op Plan Bravo, the plan to prepare Ft. Meade’s logistics and security for PFC Manning’s trial, given the expected media attention and classification information to be discussed. The plan took 30 days, but Coffman didn’t order it until November 16, 2011, so Ft. Meade was ready by the December 16 hearing. But this plan didn’t depend on any classification reviews, and Coffman acknowledged it could have been executed months or a year prior. This is important because the defense requested the Article 32 hearing start on December 12, and Coffman rejected that date because Op Plan Bravo was still in effect. That’s four more days of senseless delays, four more days of Bradley’s already grueling pretrial confinement, and four more days that should count against the government on the speedy trial clock.
When asked flat out by the defense whether he ever considered denying the prosecution’s delay request, Coffman said no. When asked if he ever considered granting the delays but not excluding them from the speedy trial clock, Coffman said no. Despite his stated concern for Bradley Manning’s constitutional right to a speedy trial, Coffman decided that trusting government officials to act expediently was sufficient due diligence on his part.
Judge Lind asked Coffman, who joined the case August 3, 2010, between the first set of charges against Manning on July 5, 2010, and the second set on March 1, 2011, if the newly discovered information and charges played any part in the delay. Coffman seemed to know nothing about how that new information was discovered and how it led to new charges. He said he only conferred with the prosecution for status updates.
She also asked when Army CID completed its investigation, because the CID’s completion of a review was another, though comparatively minor, basis for delay. Coffman answered that he wasn’t sure exactly, but that he could provide a date. This ruffled the prosecution’s feathers. Government lawyer Ashden Fein got up quickly to re-direct questioning to Coffman. He asked if Coffman was aware that Army CID was “still investigating this crime,” and Coffman said, “No.” Fein asked if Coffman was aware that WikiLeaks was “still releasing classified information,” and Coffman wasn’t sure. (A federal judge also said this week that the investigation is still ongoing.)
Perhaps because this was a speedy trial hearing, this session was the first in recent months that didn’t delay the court calendar to come: all dates currently scheduled remain intact, so we’ll return for the Article 13 litigation and continuation of this motion at Ft. Meade November 27 through December 2.