News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government06 Aug 2013http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

CLG: Al-Zawahiri is back from the dead, issuing new 'al-Qaeda' terror threats --You just can't keep a good terrorist down (or dead) for long, when the NSA's public relations department is in serious trouble! By Lori Price, www.legitgov.org 06 Aug 2013 Five (or seven) years after his death, the ever-useful Ayman al-Zawahiri is baack, issuing new 'al-Qaeda' terror alerts! These new round of terror alerts issued by the Obama administration will provide cover for the next big, fat false flag which, in turn, will provide cover for the illegal surveillance activities of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and -- as we just learned -- the DEA. Here is the CLG compilation of many of the 're-killings' of this useful al-CIAduh operative, back from the media grave. The original item is titled, Al-Zawahiri is back from the dead again, giving interviews! By Lori Price 28 Nov 2008.

US embassy closures sparked by Ayman al-Zawahiri message 05 Aug 2013 The closure of US embassies across the Middle East was prompted by the intercept of unusual communication between 'al-Qaeda's leader' and the head of its Yemen affiliate, it emerged last night. US intelligence picked up on messages in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of its Yemen branch, to carry out an attack. The messages represent rare coordination between al-Qaeda's core leadership, which is in hiding in Pakistan, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terror group's most dangerous offshoot. [OMG, this is absolute LUNACY. Al-Zawahiri has died so many times, CLG can't even keep track of his obituaries! --Lori Price]

US orders citizens to leave Yemen 06 Aug 2013 The US State Department has ordered citizens and non-emergency government staff to leave Yemen "immediately" due to security threats. It comes after the sudden closure of 20 US embassies and consulates on Sunday. This was prompted by intercepted conversations between two senior al-Qaeda figures, including top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, US media said.

US urges citizens to leave Yemen 'immediately' 06 Aug 2013 The US State Department on Tuesday ordered all non-essential staff out of Yemen and told US citizens to leave the country "immediately" over terrorism concerns. The latest warning comes after the closure of some two dozen US missions across the Middle East and Africa and reports of intercepted messages from Al-Qaeda's top leader ordering its Yemen franchise to carry out an attack. Intercepts between 'Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri' and the leader of the group's Yemen affiliate sparked the closure of the US missions and a global travel alert, US media reported Monday. The New York Times said in its online edition that the electronic communications last week revealed that Zawahiri had ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday. CNN meanwhile reported that Zawahiri told Wuhayshi to "do something," causing officials in both Washington and Yemen to fear an attack was imminent.

Federal Officials Boosting Security Efforts Inside US Homeland 03 Aug 2013 Federal authorities are boosting security in the United States after intelligence agencies detected a 'credible threat' to Western interests overseas and the government began closing diplomatic posts in some Muslim countries, according to homeland security officials. The Department of Homeland Security is increasing security measures at airports, train stations and other transportation hubs, and expanding scrutiny of visitors coming into the United States, two officials told ABC News. The FBI, meanwhile, is "working sources" and taking other "logical steps" to monitor any potential threat, an FBI official said.

U.S. directs DEA agents to cover up secret surveillance program used to investigate Americans 05 Aug 2013 A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial.

Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA 04 Aug 2013 Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate. From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. But members of Congress, including those in Obama's party, have flatly denied knowing about them. Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, have provided the Guardian with numerous letters and emails documenting their persistent, and unsuccessful, efforts to learn about NSA programs and relevant FISA court rulings.

Source: CIA Was Smuggling Weapons to Syrian 'Rebels' During Benghazi Embassy Attack 02 Aug 2013 The CIA was smuggling weapons from Libyan weapons depots to the Syrian rebels [aka cannibals and terrorists] during the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Benghazi. According to a report by CNN, an unnamed source has leaked that the alleged cover-up of the circumstances around the attack is to hide the reality of the smuggling, which occurred before the escalation of the Syrian civil war. This shows that the CIA has been arming the Syrian rebels since at least September 2012. The agents were running the operation out of the Benghazi "annex," which has been reported as a secret safehouse of the CIA in the city, not far from the embassy.

Federal Officials Boosting Security Efforts Inside US Homeland 03 Aug 2013 Federal authorities are boosting security in the United States after intelligence agencies detected a 'credible threat' to Western interests overseas and the government began closing diplomatic posts in some Muslim countries, according to homeland security officials. The Department of Homeland Security is increasing security measures at airports, train stations and other transportation hubs, and expanding scrutiny of visitors coming into the United States, two officials told ABC News. The FBI, meanwhile, is "working sources" and taking other "logical steps" to monitor any potential threat, an FBI official said.

EU warrant opt-out 'could free Julian Assange': Campaigners warn of four-month loophole before UK rejoins treaty 04 Aug 2013 Julian Assange could walk free from his Ecuadorian embassy hide-out next year if he takes advantages of a new legal loophole, campaigners say. The WikiLeaks founder, wanted in Sweden to answer sexual assault charges that he denies, could "evade the law" for up to four months if his European Arrest Warrant (EAW) becomes invalid, according to experts. Last month, David Cameron formally notified the EU council that the UK will repatriate police and criminal justice powers. It will "opt out" of 133 measures, including the EAW.

Monotonous, rigid military prison life awaits Manning 04 Aug 2013 Bradley Manning, the soldier convicted in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, faces the prospect of years of monotony with no Internet access in a small military prison cell but he would likely be allowed to mix with other inmates and exercise outdoors. The 25-year-old Manning, who has yet to be sentenced, would be able to nominate friends and relatives for visits pending official approval... Legal experts said the case was highly unusual and they were reluctant to predict the sentence.

Man in Custody Over Bomb Statement at Bradley Airport 05 Aug 2013 Connecticut state troopers took a man into custody after he told TSA agents he had a bomb while being screened at Bradley Airport this afternoon, a Transportation Security Administration spokesperson said. "At 3:12 p.m. ET, a male traveler who was passing through the security checkpoint at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., claimed that he had a bomb," TSA said in a statement. According to state police, Jordan Rickard, 26, of Charlotte, N.C., was chosen for additional screening while walking through the security checkpoint. When TSA asked Rickard if he had anything in his pockets, Rickard replied "Yes, I have a bomb," police said.

Radioactivity levels in Fukushima groundwater increase 47-fold over 5 days 06 Aug 2013 Radioactivity levels soared 47-fold over just five days in groundwater from a monitoring well on the ocean side of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator said Aug. 5. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said 56,000 becquerels of radioactive substances, including strontium, were detected per liter of groundwater sampled on Aug. 5 in the "No. 1-5" monitoring well, which is adjacent to the turbine building for the No. 1 reactor. Highly radioactive water has been detected for some time in groundwater near reactor and turbine buildings of the nuclear plant.

*****

CLG needs your support.

http://www.legitgov.org/donate.html

Or, please mail a check or money order to CLG: Citizens for Legitimate Government (CLG)
P.O. Box 1142
Bristol, CT 06011-1142
Contributions to CLG are not tax deductible.

Feel free -- and CLG encourages you -- to forward this newsletter to your lists and friends!
Those who wish to be added to the list can go here: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg and add your name. Please mark clg_news@legitgov.org as 'not spam' and do not delete from a sp*m or 'junk' folder, as such actions trigger false sp*m complaints against the CLG. If you have any inquiries/issues with your subscription, please write: signup at legitgov dot org.

CLG Editor-in-Chief: Lori Price. Copyright © 2013, Citizens for Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved.

Japan Marks Hiroshima Bombing 68th. Anniversary8/6/13 http://www.voanews.com/content/japan-marks-68th-anniversary-of-hiroshima-nuclear-bombing/1724114.html
Japan observed a minute of silence Tuesday to mark the 68th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Survivors and relatives of victims were among 50,000 people gathered at a peace park in Hiroshima for a somber ceremony. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the crowd Japan has a unique responsibility to push for the end of nuclear weapons....About 140,000 were killed following the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima August 6, 1945. Three days later, U.S. planes dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, killing about 70,000 more. The U.S. and its allies argue the bombings were necessary and helped save lives by convincing Japan to surrender, bringing a quicker end to World War II....

HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI 65 YEARS AGO REVEALED THE INHERENT FASCIST OBJECTIVES, MEANS AND NATURE OF U.S. IMPERIALISM'
The Soviet Union, a then revolutionary socialist beacon was the obstacle to U.S. global domination it would stop at nothing to defeat, with WW2 to the GWOT

Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds6/8/10 by Jacques R. Pauwels http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20478The unspoken objective of the atomic bomb was US Hegemony in Asia and the Pacific

Jacques R. Pauwels, author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2002

...War Department study 'Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan' written in 1946 .declassified in the Seventies, found "the Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies."...Eisenhower recorded telling Stimson "Japan was already defeated and dropping the bombs was completely unnecessary" and by Admiral William D Leahy "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."...as soon as the bomb was proven to work at the Alamagordo base in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 - the US military and civilian leadership no longer needed Russia. In fact, the bomb was a weapon against Russia. As Secretary of State-designate Byrnes explained, "our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe"... limiting its claims on a postwar set-up in the Far East.

Nagasaki voices protest "new" type U.S.nuclear test

9/25/12 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/25/c_131872548.htm

OSAKA, Sept. 25 -- Japan's city of Nagasaki expressed outrage and protest against a new type of U.S. nuclear test conducted for the sixth time in August. Local press reported the USconducted the nuclear test, which simulated a nuclear blast using intense X-ray beams and how plutonium would react, at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico August 27. Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue sent a letter of protest, dated September 24, to U.S. President Barack Obama....

The myths of Hiroshima and NagasakiBy Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, LA Times 8/05/05

...Americans were told the use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. "The truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed he had pulled it out of thin air to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.
The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in Asian influence and the occupation of Japan. They used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned from the Potsdam Conference Aug. 3 that the Japanese were suing for peace...
Today, in the 9/11 era, it is critically important to face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue nuclear bombs are legitimate weapons belonging in a democracy's arsenal....as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," ...Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an America unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today
6/8/8 By John Pilger

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting... At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite... I met Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped. He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. The first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times...which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," he reported in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people who had no visible injuries dying from "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried, smeared --- and vindicated...
The U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale.... premeditated mass murder...refuged in the mythology of the "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton said allowed the it... to promote 60 years of rapacious war, beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None were pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, US secretary of war Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength"... eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." ...
In waging their bogus "war on terror", the governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous.... just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the US created Iraqi National Congress...The question begs: will we be bystanders, claiming like 'good' Germans that "we did not know"?

The birth of 'mere terror' Hiroshima wasn't uniquely wicked. It was part of a policy for the mass killing of civilians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1543124,00.html

Making war on civilians took a further turn in the Far East... Before August 1945, many Japanese had already been killed by "conventional" bombing. One night in Tokyo in March, US bombers killed 85,000 civilians - more than would die at Nagasaki - and at least 300,000 more were incinerated in great fire raids over the following months.And so it was that, as Evelyn Waugh put it...in 1948: "To the practical warrior the atom bomb presented no particular moral or spiritual problem. We were engaged in destroying the enemy, civilians and combatants alike. We always assumed destruction was roughly proportionate to the labour and material expended. Whether it was more convenient to destroy a city with one bomb or a hundred thousand depended on the relative costs of production." Hiroshima was but one more step.

"Toxic legacy of US in Fallujah exceeds reports of Hiroshima survivors"July 24, 2010, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault...

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study. Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have since 2005 been overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents. Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait. Dr Chris Busby, ... one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said ... "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened". US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munition

"Attitudes toward western democracy and nonviolence are key markers"US post-9/11 Strategy in the Muslim World: Promote Sunni, Shiite, Arab and non-Arab DividesRand Corporation Study Conducted on behalf of the US Air Forcewww.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG246.pdf

The U.S. Air Force asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to study the trends that are most likely to affect U.S. interests and security in the Muslim world. Researchers developed an analytic framework to identify the major ideological orientations within Islam, to examine critical cleavages between Muslim groups, and to trace the long-term and immediate causes of Islamic radicalism. This framework will help U.S. policymakers understand the political and military strategies available to respond to changing conditions in this critical part of the world. The Muslim world encompasses a band of countries stretching from Western Africa to the Southern Philippines as well as diaspora communities throughout the globe with critical implications for U.S. interests and strategy ...
....The Rand study called for madrassa and mosques reforms in the Muslim world and suggested that US should “support the efforts of governments and moderate Muslim organizations to ensure that mosques and the social services affiliated with them, do not serve as platforms for the spread of radical ideologies.”... the Rand Study suggested there should be government appointed and paid professional imams in all mosques to promote “civil Islam”. “While only Muslims can effectively challenge the message of radical Islam, there is much the US and like-minded countries can do in this ideological struggle. The struggle in the Muslim world is essentially a war of ideas, the outcome of which will determine the future direction of the Muslim world and profoundly affect vital U.S. security interests” explained Angel Rabas, RAND senior policy analyst and lead author of the report.

"Full spectrum dominance""Joint Vision 2020" United States Department of Defense

www.fs.fed.us/ fire/ doctrine/ genesis_and_evolution/ source_materials/ joint_vision_2020.pdf

...US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained, and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information. Given the global nature of US interests and obligations it must maintain its overseas presence and the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance....

Posture Statement - US Strategic Command www.stratcom.mil/files/2013-03-05-posture.pdf
5/5/13 ...all domains—air, sea, land, space and cyberspace—threaten U.S. interests, allies, partners and homeland...maintain safe and effective nuclear deterrent

Socialist Kshama Sawant wins 35% - Seattle Gives Green Light to Oust Richard Conlin from City Hall Printer-Friendly E-Mail This Aug 7, 2013 By Kshama Sawant Campaign for Seattle City Council Seattle voters sent a clear message to an out-of-touch political establishment yesterday that they are fed up with business as usual, and are looking for an alternative to corporate-pandering politicians like Richard Conlin. Kshama Sawant, who was recently written off by The Seattle Times as “too hard left for Seattle,” won a stunning 35% of the vote, a number that will likely rise as late ballots are counted. A majority of primary voters voted against 16-year Seattle City Council incumbent, Democrat Richard Conlin, who despite a massive fund-raising advantage and name recognition, received only 49%. Sawant and a second challenger to Conlin, Brian Carver, won the majority of the vote in the City Council Position 2 race. “Working people in Seattle have a clear political choice for a change. If you want to fight for an alternative to the status quo, join us in the struggle for a citywide $15/hour minimum wage, a major expansion of public transit by taxing Seattle’s millionaires, increased investment in affordable housing, and implementing rent control,” said Sawant. Sawant has earned the endorsements of The Stranger newspaper, four labor unions, and prominent community activists such as Real Change founder Tim Harris. Unlike Conlin, Sawant refuses to accept corporate donations. Her grassroots campaign has raised $25,000, predominantly in the form of small donations of $25 or less, and has mobilized over 125 volunteers. “We will make history by raising a grassroots army of over 300 volunteers, and run one of the biggest door knocking campaigns this city has seen to defeat Richard Conlin,” Sawant declared. “Conlin has made clear where he stands, with corporations and the elite. By not representing the majority of struggling working people in this city, he has made himself obsolete.” Please Support our Campaign: 1) Donate on-line at www.VoteSawant.org/donate 2) Like our Facebook page www.facebook.com/VoteSawant 3) Volunteer at www.votesawant.org/get_involved 4) Endorse our candidate at www.VoteSawant.org/endorsements 5) Join Socialist Alternative! (206) 486-0099 VoteSawant@gmail.com Twitter: @VoteSawant [Vote percentages updated 8/08/13 as more ballots were counted.]

Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145 Phone: (206)526-7185 Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org

Bradley Manning Should be a Hero, Not a Prisoner Printer-Friendly E-Mail This Aug 2, 2013 By Socialist Party (CWI Ireland) This article is produced by the Socialist Party which is a section of the Committee for a Workers' International in Ireland. In 2005 US Marines murdered 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. Over the last eight years, what punishments have been imposed by the US military on the killers? Well, one soldier got a rank reduction and a pay cut. That’s it. Compare this to the fate of Bradley Manning: a 136-year prison sentence for exposing a host of similar atrocities and crimes. Seeing the true nature of the war while stationed in Iraq, Bradley Manning (also known as Breanna) leaked diplomatic cables, war logs and classified videos. He showed that the killing of civilians and the torture of prisoners was routine, told the world of diplomatic spying and hypocrisy, and revealed tens of thousands of hushed-up civilian deaths. Manning was betrayed and arrested in 2010 and had to wait three years in solitary confinement before even getting a trial. He has been confined to a tiny cell, frequently put in chains and stripped naked. But the verdict shows that this is only the beginning of the ordeal that US imperialism wants to impose on him. Prosecutors wanted to convict Manning of “aiding the enemy” to top off a heap of other “crimes” and open up the possibility of execution, but this was too much even for these hacks who vilify a person of immense courage as a “traitor”. Had Manning kept his head down and followed orders like so many other soldiers, he would then indeed have been guilty of “aiding the enemy” – because the corporate-military machine that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq is the enemy of the American people, and of the human race. As millions of soldiers realized in the closing years of World War One, “The real enemy is at home” – in the corridors of power where big business and its pet politicians decide the fate of whole nations. Like Manning, huge numbers of ex-US soldiers drew the same conclusion and were to the forefront of 2011’s Occupy movement. Obama has added another exhibit to the vast parade of evidence that he is not an agent of “hope” or “change”, but just another stooge for the 1%. The US government has proved once more that atrocities and war crimes are not just committed by a few “bad apples” in the military, but are woven into the fabric of the US war machine. How else but by brutality, terror and torture could US imperialism hope to conquer and loot an entire country? And how else but by terror such as that inflicted on Manning can they make ordinary soldiers fight this war? The US Army Field Manual says it’s the duty of soldiers to report war crimes. But like Obama’s promises to protect whistleblowers, legal defenses for those who expose crimes are just so many pieces of paper. The contrast between Manning and the Haditha murderers is clear, and their different sentences do not reflect any legal or moral logic – they just reflect the interests of US imperialism. The 136-year sentence shows that the US government and military are anxious to scare the hell out of anyone who wants to do what Manning did and expose the truth. Edward Snowden, who recently blew the whistle on the US government’s internet surveillance networks, knew about the revenge being taken on Manning but did the right thing anyway. This shows that US imperialism can’t scare people into silence. In Manning’s own words, “I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy.” The jail sentence shows that any blissful fantasies anyone had about Obama, US foreign policy or American “democracy” have to give way to painful truths. From the huge prison population, the PATRIOT Act and the military clampdown on Occupy to recent weeks with the acquittal of racist murderer Zimmerman and the sentencing of Manning, democratic rights are being constantly eroded in the US. With the country mired in economic decay and unpopular, unending wars, the 1% are increasingly resorting to repression to maintain their power. Democratic rights are not safeguarded by laws or by the privately-owned media, but in the final analysis by the confidence and organisation of workers and young people, and their ability to fight for those rights. In a situation where the lower 80% of the people only own 11% of the wealth, the erosion of democratic rights is obviously inevitable. As long as the resources and enterprises remain in the hands of super-rich private individuals, there will always be unjust wars of aggression, and there will always be oppression at home. But equally there will always be a working class, which, when organised and militant, as in the Wisconsin strike in 2011, has the potential to make the rich back down, and even to break their power. There will always be brave young people like Manning who will risk everything to stand up for truth and freedom. When Bradley Manning walks free again, it will be thanks to mass movements of young and working-class Americans against the power of US capitalism and imperialism.

Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145 Phone: (206)526-7185 Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org

From The Marxist Archives-For Class Struggle Defense !

Workers Vanguard No. 912 11 April 2008 LENIN For Class-Struggle TROTSKY Defense! (Quote of the Week) Writing in mid-August 1927 after a temporary stay of execution was granted for anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, James P. Cannon, founder of the International Labor Defense and later of American Trotskyism, upheld the necessity for class-struggle defense against the liberals and reformists who preached reliance on the capitalist courts. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on 23 August 1927. The eleventh-hour reprieve for Sacco and Vanzetti was brought about by the thunderous clamor of the laboring masses of the world who demonstrated their international working class solidarity in an imposing manner. It did not for a moment mean, as some naive people believe, that the Massachusetts Bourbons whose whole energy is bent on continuing their horrible torture of Sacco and Vanzetti until they can safely destroy them in the electric chair, have experienced any change of heart. On the contrary, the reprieve only enabled them to create most dangerous illusions and to gain for themselves some relief from the aroused world’s millions. To believe otherwise is to fall victim to just those illusions that the reactionaries are anxious to spread. Not to realize that this latest action is a maneuver to gain time, during which to demoralize and split and weaken the protest movement, is to fail to see the fundamental question involved. Those who from the beginning had seen the class issue in the case, and based their activities and confidence on the mass movement of the workers, were entirely correct, and all events have proved this.... The case has always been an issue of the class struggle and not merely one of an exceptional miscarriage of so-called justice. The Massachusetts Bourbons know this well, and they recognize the magnificent protest movement as a distinctly class movement against which there must be, and is being, organized a counter-campaign.... No faith in capitalist justice and institutions! That is the lesson of history confirmed by every development in the Sacco and Vanzetti case. —James P. Cannon, “Class Against Class in the Sacco and Vanzetti Case,” Labor Defender, September 1927, reprinted in Notebook of an Agitator (1958) **************** Leon Trotsky At the Fresh Grave of Kote Zinzadze (January 1931) Written: 7 January 1931. Source: The Militant, Vol. IV No. 4, 15 February 1931, p. 4. Transcription/HTML Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive. Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0. It took altogether extraordinary conditions like czarism, illegality, prisons and deportations, long years of struggle against the Mensheviks and especially the experiences of the three revolutions to produce militants like Kote Zinzadze. His life was bound up entirely with the history of the revolutionary movement for a period of more than a quarter of a century. He passed through all the stages of proletarian, uprising, beginning with the very first propaganda circles to the barricades and the seizure of power. For long years he conducted menial labors of illegal organization, and at the time when the revolutionists were tied up in the net of the police he devoted himself to untying them. Later on he was at the head of the extraordinary Commission of Transcaucasia, that is, at the very center of power, during the most heroic period of the proletarian dictatorship. When the reaction against the October had changed the composition and the character of the party apparatus as well as of its policies, Kote Zinzadze was one of the first to begin a struggle against the new tendencies hostile to the spirit of Bolshevism. The first conflict took place during Lenin’s illness Stalin and Ordjonikidze, supported by Djerjinsky, had made a coup d’etat in Georgia, replacing the nucleus of old Bolsheviks by careerist functionaries of the type of Eliava, Orechakashvili and others. It is precisely on this question that Lenin was preparing to launch an implacable battle against the Stalin faction and the apparatus at the twelfth congress of the party. On the 6th of March 1923, Lenin wrote to the Georgian group of old Bolsheviks, of which Kote Zinzadze was one of the founders: “I am wholeheartedly with your cause. I am outraged by the coarseness of Ordjonikidze and the connivance of Stalin and Djerjinsky. I am preparing for you some notes and a speech.” The subsequent march of developments is sufficiently well known. The Stalin faction crushed the Lenin faction in the Caucasus. This was the first victory for reaction in the party and opened up the second chapter of the revolution. Zinzadze, tubercular, bearing the weight of decades of revolutionary work, persecuted by the apparatus on every step, did not for one moment desert his post of struggle. In 1928 he was deported to Bakhshi-Sarall where wind and dust did their disastrous work on the remnants of his lungs. Later on he was transferred to Alioubcha where the rainy winter completed the work of destruction. Some friends wanted to gain admittance for Kote to the Goulpriche Sanatorium at Suchom, where Zinzadze had already several times before succeeded to save his life during some particularly acute aggravations of his sickness. Of course, Ordjonikidze had “promised”, Ordjonikidze “promises” much and to everybody. But the cowardliness of his character (coarseness does not exclude cowardice) has always made of him a blind instrument in the hands of Stalin. While Zinzadze was literally fighting against death Stalin struggled against all attempts to save the old militant. Send him over to Goulpriche on the coast of the Black Sea? And if he recovers? Connections might be established between Batum and Constantinople. No, impossible! With the death of Zinzadze one of the most attractive figures of older Bolshevism has disappeared. This fighter who more than once risked his life and who knew well how to chastise the enemy, was a man of exceptional mildness in his personal relations. A debonaire mockery and an almost malicious sense of humor were combined in this tested terrorist with a tenderness one might almost call feminine. The serious illness which did not for an instant release him from its hold not only could not break down his moral resistance, but did not even succeed in overpowering his ever jovial state of mind and his tender affection for humanity. Kote was not a theoretician. But his clear thinking, his revolutionary flair and his immense political experience – the living experience of three revolutions – armed him better, more seriously and more firmly than does the doctrine formally digested by those who lack the fortitude and perseverance equal to Zinzadze’s. As the Lear of Shakespeare he was every inch a revolutionary. His character revealed itself perhaps even more strikingly during the last eight years – years of uninterrupted struggle against the advent and the entrenchment of the unprincipled bureaucracy. Zinzadze fought organically against everything resembling treachery, capitulation and disloyalty. He understood the significance of the bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev. But morally he never supported this group. His letters testify to all the simplicity of his repugnance – it is impossible to find another word – toward revolutionaries who while wanting to safeguard their formal membership in the party, deceive it by renouncing their ideas. No. 2 of the Bulletin of the Russian Opposition has published a letter from Zinzadze to Okudjara. It is an excellent document of tenacity, clearness of thought and conviction. Zinzadze, as has been said, was not a theoretician, and he voluntarily left it to others to formulate the tasks of the revolution, the party and the Opposition But every time he detected a false note, he took his pen into his hand and no “authority” could prevent him from expressing his suspicions and from making his replies. His letter, written on the 2nd of May last year and published in the Bulletin No. 12–13 (p. 27), testifies best to this fact. This practical man, this organizer safeguarded the purity of doctrine more attentively than some theoreticians. In Kote’s letters we often encounter the following phrases: “a bad ‘institution’ these hesitations”. And further: “woe to the people who can’t wait”, or “in solitude weak people easily become subject to all sorts of contagion”. Sentiments of an unshakable fortitude penetrated Zinzadze and upheld his feeble physical energy. He considered even his sickness as a revolutionary duel. According to one of his letters he was solving in his struggle against death, the question: “who will conquer?” “In the meantime the advantage remains on my side,” he adds, with the optimism which never abandoned him, several months before his death. In the summer of 1928, speaking of himself, that is, of his sickness, Kote writes to the author of these lines from Bakhshi-Sarail: “... many of our comrades and friends have been forced to separate themselves from life, in prison or in some place of deportation but in the final analysis all this will only serve to enrich revolutionary history which educates new generations. The Bolshevik youth, clarified by the struggle of the Bolshevik Opposition against the opportunist wing of the party, will understand on whose side the truth rests ...” These words, simple and yet sublime, Zinzadze could write only in an intimate letter to a friend. Now that the author is no longer among the living, these lines may and must be published. They resume the life and the morale of a revolutionist of a high order. They must be made public precisely because the youth must be brought up not only with theoretical formulas but also by examples of revolutionary tenacity. The communist parties of the West have not yet produced militants of the type of Zinzadze. There is their principal weakness, which is determined by historic reasons, but which for all that does not cease to be a weakness. The Left Opposition of the western countries is not an exception – in this case – and it must well take note of it. It is precisely to the Opposition youth that the example of Zinzadze can and ought to serve as a lesson. Zinzadze was the living negation of every sort of political careerism, that is to say, of the capacity to sacrifice the principles, the ideas and the tasks of the cause for personal ends. This does not at all mean the negation of justified revolutionary ambitions. No, political ambition is a very important force in the struggle. But the revolutionary begins there where personal ambition is entirely subservient to a great idea, submitting itself voluntarily to it and merging with it. To flirt with ideas, to dabble in them for purposes of a personal career – that is what Zinzadze pitilessly condemned through his life and through his death. The ambition of Zinzadze was an ambition of unshakable revolutionary loyalty. It should serve as a lesson to the proletarian youth. January 7th, 1931

***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night- The Rich Really Are Different –“ Fear In The Night”-A Film Review

DVD Review

Fear In The Night, DeForest Kelley, Paul Kelly, directed by Maxwell Shane, Paramount Pictures, 1947
Okay here is the familiar rote. Not all crime noir is top shelf, top shelf like Out Of The Past or The Maltese Falcon. By now that proposition has been pretty well established after more than a score of crime noir reviews in this space. Still some of these things can be sleepers, of a sort. Take the film under review, Fear In The Night. On the face of it looking at the unfamiliar cast, the no-name director and the B-movie quality of the production one would throw this one in the has- been bin. And mainly that would be right, except that the story line possibilities, never fully exploited, save it for the justly deserved extinction of many of the films in this genre.

Let me show you. A bank clerk (played by Deforest Kelley), an average just -trying- to- get- ahead- in- this- wicked- old- world 1940s marble building bank clerk, has a terrible dream, a nightmare really and cannot figure it out, cannot figure out why he would have, dream or not, murdered an unknown stranger. Moreover in the fresh light of day he cannot figure it out when many parts, too many parts, of the dream wind up being reality. So said clerk takes his problem to a very convenient brother-in-law who just happens to be a homicide detective (played by Paul Kelly). After a ton and one half of skepticism the detective finally sees that this is one bank clerk who is in serious trouble. And solving this riddle is what makes this thing kind of twist and turn a little before the real bad guy is caught.

And the real bad guy, or rather his maniacal plan of operation, is what could have made this thing jump better than it did. Seems a Mayfair swell, a very jealous Mayfair swell, with a young wandering wife finds out she has been keeping company with someone else on his time. So he, the Mayfair swell Mr. Belknap by name, sees red but knowing that crime doesn’t pay or rather that he doesn’t want to pay for the crime sets our bank clerk up, sets him up big-time, through hypnosis. That little off-beat technique makes all the difference in the world. And the theme that could have better explored the social tensions in this film as we know all too well as of late- the rich don’t want to pay for nothing from taxes to their crimes-never gets it full workout. Why? Well, easy on that one. Something that also has become a mantra in this space. Crime, well crime in crime noir, doesn’t pay. Just ask our Mayfair swell.

***Once Again- Out In The Be-Bop 1950s High School Dance Night-Save The Last Dance For Me

A YouTube film clip of The Drifters performing their classic Save The Last Dance For Me. Please, pretty please.

CD Review

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Last Dance, Time-Life Music, 1990

Hey, I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” reviewing many aspects of 1950s American teenage culture (and maybe it spread to Europe too. Think about the Beatles and Rolling Stones and what they were listening to out in the English,especially that Chess Record-driven Chicago blues with Muddy, Howlin' Wolf and the gang). I have honed in here on that inevitable school dance and its also inevitable last dance. John and Mick had to ask too, remember. A last dance, by the way, that I have been at great pains to describe elsewhere as the last chance for glory for shy boys like me (or girls, for that matter, but they can speak for themselves). That seminal event also ritualistically involved setting off the wallflowers from the “in” crowd in the school social pecking order. And from there by some mysterious process that pecking order was set in stone through three or four long serf-like years of high school. Or, perhaps, for you and your crowd, your guy crowd, it acted as a test to prove that you had that something, some moxie to ask that certain she for the last one.

Of course, the critical question, the world historic question, was whether the last one was to be a slow one that meant that you had to dance close and pray to high heaven that you did not ruin your partner’s feet or shoes in the process. And that the hair cream (Wildroot, a little dab will do ya, of course)had kept your cowlick in place, that using your Gillette steel-edged razor hadn't caused terminal blood lost but only a tissue sop wound, that the deodorant that was suppose to get you through the night did not wear off although you seem to be sweating, excuse me, perspiring through your tee-shirt, and that that surefire kiss mouthwash that tasted, well, tasted like mouthwash held up as well.

Or would it be, with hosanna relief, a fast one, that you could kind of fake that you knew how to dance to, but was not as bound up with the ending of your rising social status like those slow ones. And no worry about hold-your nose mouthwash, hair cream, shaving cream or Right Guard.

This compilation will let you have memory either as both types of songs are included so you can get “nostalgic” for what did, or did not, transpire in the old days. Or for the younger set to giggle over what your parents or grandparents got all heated up about and thank somebody that you came along in the days of hip-hop nation and avoided all that. Whee!

Standouts here include: Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast and great doo-woppy back singing parts so you could sing along while you are not paying attention to your partner just in case things didn't work out); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, swoony, ouch, I am thinking about that razor-induced neck wound); the legendary late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy, sassy 'cause girls who liked Bo, well, they "did' it, didn't they, and you know what "did it" means, with all that Afro-Carib beat); and, the Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow, and only if that certain she turned you down and you had to dance with your sister's best girlfriend, or something like that). How is that for deejaying even-handedness?

***The Dancer –With Eli Wallach’s The Line-Up In Mind-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Dancer was a craftsman alright, a perfect artist just like you see at the ballet or in the art galleries, places like that. He had beautiful moves, knew how to do his work right, once I broke his flame temper and got him to see each action as something to be thought through, planned, and then executed. Incidentally, in case you might have heard otherwise, I was the one who gave him the name Dancer after bringing him around, bringing him around from a rough-hewn kid, a punk maybe if left to his own devises, a punk with no sense of that perfect artist that I knew he had in him.

See we were partners for about a decade, actually maybe more like twelve years, but that decade is what counts because it probably took me two years to cut off Dancer’s rough edges, those rough edges that were holding back his artistry, so let’s call it a decade. I was his coach, at least that is the way I looked at it and after a while that was the way he looked at it too. See Dancer, and me too, were professional “hit men,” guys who big- time guys, guys with no names, no public names, but plenty of dough for what they wanted done, would hire to do what had to be done. And we were good, known far and wide in the right circles as being good, and so there you have it. Here’s the funny thing, funny in a way, I never fired a gun on a job, not in anger anyway, hated the damn things, hated the sight of blood, hated when the job called for a rub-out and nothing else. After a while though I got less squeamish, maybe more indifferent, but I never really liked it. So like I say the Dancer did his part, and I did mine and for that decade we were the walking daddies of the hired killer night.

Let me tell you a little about how I met Dancer, how we moved up the food chain in our chosen profession, and then maybe you will see how an artist was created out of pure rough stuff, almost from scratch except for that potential I saw in him. The Dancer grew up, or at least he told me he grew up and I had no reason to not believe him, in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, a rough place all the way around. You either figured out some stuff early, figured out fast or you were just another guy to be pushed around by guys who had figured things out. Before we met he was maybe jack-rolling drunks in some dark alley for fives and tens and leaving a bloody mess from what I could gather about his style back then, maybe pimping a couple of whores when times were tough and he needed quick dough, maybe an off-hand armed robbery, some freaking gas station or Mom and Pop variety store, Jesus, or a low level hit from some third-rate hood with a grudge. On that last thing that “hit” work was where he started to get a little wise about where the serious dough was for a guy who knew, knew deep in his bones he was slated to be just another soldier in this world of ours.

It went something like this, this low-level hit stuff, something like some guy needed dough bad, real bad, maybe was into the wise guys way too deep, gambling, drugs, women, an overdue loan, and so he would hire the Dancer to off his wife, or his partner, someone worth something, insurance something and he would do the deed. See rough stuff, kid’s stuff really. Wasting his talent on low-rent outings like that. I could hardly believe he never got caught working off some ten- percent commission stuff. Even our first jobs working our way up the food chain had bigger payouts, and came with expenses paid too. Jesus.

And the Dancer might have stayed there, stayed doing nickel and dime stuff, working hard, too hard for cheap dough, except Big Chief, that is the only name you need to know, the wise guy of wise guys had hired me to take care of some business, some business having to do with an underling of his in the drug trade, in the heroin trade to be exact, who was skimming way too much off the top in their international operations. So he had to fall, fall hard in order to be made an example of for other punks who might get too greedy as the money from the drug trade exploded a couple of decades back .

Now I had regular guys who I worked with, who I coached and planned with, but just that moment they were all either in stir or working some other job. So I asked Soldier McGee, one of the low-rider chieftains of the New York City bike crowd and a middle-level distributor of goods, whether he knew somebody who needed dough, and was not afraid to get his hair all mushed up. Oh yeah, and who did not, I repeat, did not have a criminal record, nothing. Soldier thought about it, thought about my requirements and came up with Sid Lorraine, the Dancer.

I almost didn’t take Sid on when we met, when I quizzed him on his approach his idea of a plan was all wild, all shoot ‘em up, bang-bang and collect the dough. Yeah, and then walk right up to Sing-Sing. So on that caper I showed him how to really do the thing right, how to do the thing with style, no muss, no fuss and gone. My idea was to get the underling’s confidence, play to his weak side, the side that was all wreck-less skim. So the deal was that Dancer was going to be a Big Chief “mule,” a rogue mule looking to go independent, and contact the underling about moving the material letting him cut himself in for a large slice of the proceeds for his efforts.

That underling went for it, went like a lemming to the sea. So when the meet occurred over in the Jersey marshes the Dancer had no problem with the problem guy. The cops as usual never ever found the guy, if they were ever looking for him once he wasn’t around anymore. That job was our ticket up the food chain, and the Dancer started taking my instructions more seriously, although like I said it wasn’t all a bed of roses because there was always a little bang-bang and done in him.

Once we moved up as far as we could go in our profession we were given nothing but high-end assignments. All strictly high-end drug deals. This is how it worked (the cops even if they saw this wouldn’t believe it anyway, or would take their cut and look the other way like usual). The Big Chief had agents all over the world, but with the heroin trade mainly in the Far East, places like the Golden Triangle, or South Asia, like maybe Afghanistan. Those agents would procure the stuff (cheap too, cheap to our eyes anyway), and then use “marks,” mostly unknowing people, tourists, businessmen, people like that, who purchased something, a vase, a doll, a figurine, for whatever reason and they would “carry” the stuff through customs. Beautiful right. Then when the dope got state-side we went to work. We went to“collect” the dope. Anyway we could.

That, after a while, was how the Dancer became a perfect artist. See, he would know who he would have to “hit”and who he wouldn’t. Say some sailor brought the stuff in. Dancer knew, knew deep in his bones, that there was no other way than a hit to get the merchandise. So we planned accordingly, set the bait, did the deed, got the merchandise then vanished, no trace. Other times, with the tourists though, he could almost just con his way into letting him have the carrier object and be done with it. And it worked like clockwork for that decade I mentioned before but like all things it went off the tracks.

We had a job set-up in Frisco, a town neither of us knew, but which looked like an average job. The China Star out of Hong Kong was coming in with three marks, all tourists, all carrying heroin in respectively, a horse figurine, a rag doll, and an intricate jade necklace. We had to kill the first guy because he just wasn’t going to give up the damn figurine, he had brought it back for his wife, paid big dough for it and so that was that. The second guy, or really his daughter, gave it up with, well, a little struggle but she lived for another day. . The third, a woman, we had to waste since she would not take off the necklace, no way, but we kind of figured that the way dames are about jewelry. So that part was no big deal.

But this is where some guys get kind of squirrely no matter how much training they get. No matter how you teach them the fact of life, the facts of our professional lives. The Dancer decided, after realizing that the three packages were worth a huge amount on the street, decided all by himself, that he was keeping this stash, was going into business for himself (or for us, the way he figured it at first). That was a problem a big problem, a Big Chief big problem.

I tried to talk him out of it, tried to say it couldn’t work out right no matter how it was cut up, that we had a our place in the food chain, a pretty good place. That we were soldiers and nothing else. Naturally he would not listen and naturally I had to “hit” him when Big Chief sent the word once the packages were not delivered. I was to do the hit myself, no outsiders, no assistants. Here was the beauty of it though. Dancer never knew what hit him I set the thing up so well. See, I pretended to go along with him, him and his rogue operation. We were supposed to meet some guy, some guy from down in Los Angeles over at the Sutro Baths, over on the Frisco ocean side of town. Now this Sutro Baths was a big attraction for the tourists and a place that was not only baths and swimming, stuff like that, but had an amusement park. In other words plenty of noise, kid noise especially. So all I did was get Dancer off in a corner, a corner near a drain pipe that led into the ocean, him in the lead, me behind, and plug him. Then slipped his body down the pipe and done, no muss, no fuss.

Sure I was nervous, what did you expect. My first kill. I still didn’t like it, still didn’t, don’t, like guns, still don’t like the sight of blood, didn’t like sending him out with the Japan Current like some easy mark. But I did it. I went solo after that, went solo out of respect for Dancer’s magic. And now these many years later, now that I have “retired”all I have is the memory of the Dancer, the perfect artist.

***A Bit Of The “Odd Manner”- Irish Style- The Childhood Saga Of Frank McCourt-“Angela’s Ashes”

Book Review

Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir Of Childhood, Frank McCourt, Flamingo, London, 1997

Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is probably the easiest review that I have had to write since I have been doing such reviews in this space. Why? Frank McCourt’s book of childhood memoirs is my story. No. Not in the details of his life’s story, or mine. But rather how the fact of being Irish, of being poor, and of being uprooted affected your childhood, and later times as well. And those traumas, for good or evil, crossed generational lines. McCourt, we are told as his story unfolds, was born in America of immigrants of the diaspora after Irish independence who, for one reason or another, returned to the old country in defeat in the 1930’s. As McCourt noted right at the beginning, that fact in itself provides a rather ironic twist if one is familiar with Irish history and the endless waves of migration (at least until very recently and now that has again been reversed with the latest “troubles”).

McCourt was, in any case, thus a child of the Great Depression and World War II, the generation of my parents, as it was refracted through Ireland during that period. I, on the other hand, am a child of the 1960’s, the “Generation of ‘68” here in America born of the dreaded Irish Catholic-English Protestant combination- and raised in an Irish Catholic enclave. Nevertheless the pages of this memoir are filled to the brim with the results of the emotional (and sometimes physical scars) of being “shanty” Irish (and decidedly not “lace curtain” or “chandelier,” the other “classes” of the dispensation) in this world that hit home, and hit home hard, to this reader.

That said, we do not share the terrible effect that “the drink” (nice way to put it, right) had on creating his dysfunctional family with his father’s, Malachi McCourt’s, crazed need for the alcohol “cure” in order to drown his sorrows and his bitternesses and the fact that his great moment in life, his "fifteen minutes of fame" was his bit for “the cause” (of Irish independence). A familiar story in the Irish community here, and in the old country, but my father, my poor old shambles of a father, seldom drank, although he too was constantly out of work and shared with Frank’s father that same bitterness about his fate.

A quiet despair bitterness that touched the whole family, and touched every even small event, good or bad, sometimes the good worst than the bad. My father was uneducated, lacking in skills, and prospects and as a “hillbilly” Protestant Southerner from coal country down in Kentucky was thus, an ‘outsider’ in the Boston milieu like Frank’s father had been in Limerick. That is the commonality that caught my eye (and sometimes my throat) as I read of Frank’s youthful trials, tribulations and adventures. McCourt’s ability to tap into that “mystical” something is what makes this a fine read, whether you are Irish or not.

Throughout the book McCourt’s woe-begotten but fatally prideful father is constantly referred to in the Irish-town working class poor ghetto of Limerick (and elsewhere, as well, but the heart of the story is told from there) as having an "odd manner." This reflects a certain clannishness against those from the North of Ireland (Dare I say it, the area then known as Ulster) and a sneaking suspicion amount that crowd of some alien (meaning English Protestant) heritage. As the book progresses that odd trait is transferred (by heredity?) to Frank in his various wanderings, enterprises, and desires. What joins us together then is that "odd manner" that gets repeatedly invoked throughout the book. Frank survived to tell the tale. As did I. But in both cases it appears to have been a near thing.

There is more that unites us. The shame culture, not an exclusive Irish Catholic property but very strong nevertheless, drilled in by the clannishness, the closeness of neighbors, the Catholic religion and by the bloody outsiders- usually but not always Protestants of some sort (as least for blame purposes- you know, the eight hundred years of British tyranny in the misty past, although very real to be sure). All driven, and driven hard, by not having nearly enough of this world’s goods.

Every time I read a passage about the lack of food, the quality of the food, the conditions of the various tenements that the McCourt family lived in, the lack of adequate and clean clothing, I cringed at the thoughts from my own childhood. Or during the various times when his family was seriously down and out and his mother, the beloved Angela of the title, had to humble herself and beg for charity, of one form or another, from some institution that existed mainly to berate the poor. I can remember own my mother’s plaintive cry when my brothers and I misbehaved that the next step was the county poor farm.

And how about the false pride and skewed order of priorities? Frank’s father was a flat-out drunk and was totally irresponsible. From a child's perspective, however, he was still your dad and must be given the respect accordingly, especially against the viciousness of the outside world. But life’s disappointments for the father also get reflected in the expectations of the son. The dreams are smaller. Here, the horizons are pretty small when a governmental job with its security just above the “dole” is the touchstone of respectability. Sean O’Casey was able to make enduring plays from the slums of Dublin out of this material. And Frank McCourt enduring literature. Thanks, brother.

Note: The movie version of “Angela’s Ashes” pretty fairly reflects the intentions of Frank McCourt in his childhood memoirs and follows the book accordingly, without the usual dramatic embellishments of that medium. The story line is so strong it needs no such “touch-ups.” Particularly compelling is the very visual "piss pot" sense of utter poverty down at the base of Irish society in Frank McCourt’s childhood.

The two songs below are constantly being sung by Frank McCourt's father when he is "on the drink" to give a little musical flavor to this entry.

"Roddy McCorly"

O see the fleet-foot host of men, who march with faces drawn,
From farmstead and from fishers' cot, along the banks of Ban;
They come with vengeance in their eyes. Too late! Too late are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

Up the narrow street he stepped, so smiling, proud and young.
About the hemp-rope on his neck, the golden ringlets clung;
There's ne'er a tear in his blue eyes, fearless and brave are they,
As young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

When last this narrow street he trod, his shining pike in hand
Behind him marched, in grim array, a earnest stalwart band.
To Antrim town! To Antrim town, he led them to the fray,
But young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

There's never a one of all your dead more bravely died in fray
Than he who marches to his fate in Toomebridge town today; ray
True to the last! True to the last, he treads the upwards way,
And young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

"Kevin Barry"

In MOUNT JOY jail one Monday morning
High upon the gallows tree
Kevin Barry gave his young life
For the 'cause of liberty
Just a lad of eighteen summers
Yet no true man can deny
As he walked to death that morning
He proudly held his head up high

Another martyr for old Erin
Another murder for the crown
The British laws may crush the Irish
But cannot keep their spirits down

Just before he faced the hangman
In his dreary prison cell
The British soldiers tortured Barry
Just because he would not tell
The name of all his brave companions
And other things they wished to know
Turn informer or we'll kill you
Kevin Barry answered no

Another martyr for old Erin
Another murder for the crown
Whose cruel laws may crush the Irish
But CANNOT KEEP their spirits down