Sunday, March 02, 2014

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Open Letter of the Communist Organisation of Bolshevik-Leninists (Archeiomarxists), Greek Section of the International Left Opposition, to the Executive Committee of the Communist International(1933)

PRESENT AT THE CREATION

I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. See his The Case of Comrade Tulayev. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.

The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And then stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated that Russia as the weakest link in the international capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its own road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as, at best, utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the Russian Question as a factor in world politics on a day to day basis anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

 


Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm


Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 

******** 

Open Letter of the Communist Organisation of Bolshevik-Leninists (Archeiomarxists), Greek Section of the International Left Opposition, to the Executive Committee of the Communist International

As the Archeiomarxists encountered the Communist Party on a far more level footing than many of the much smaller Trotskyist organisations in the rest of the world, they were also the ideal vehicle for posing the politics of the Left Opposition to the Communist movement on the international level, especially after the German debacle of 1933. One example of this is the following open letter.
Within a few months a crisis arose in the relations between the organisation and the world Trotskyist movement. For some time Giotopoulos had been functioning as International Secretary in an arbitrary way. When he reported on the British Trotskyists on 22 September 1933, he let them know that opinion was not unanimous on the International Secretariat regarding entry into the ILP (cf. Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, London 1986, pp.142, 153, 157 n67) and supported the French Trotskyists who opposed entry into the SFIO (cf. L.D. Trotsky, A Good Omen for Joint Work in Britain, 9 April 1936, in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1935-36, New York 1977, p.298, and A False Understanding of the New Orientation, 8 October 1933, in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1933-34, New York 1975, pp.30-1). Trotsky therefore framed the resolution that removed Giotopoulos from his position as International Secretary (L.D. Trotsky, Comrade Witte’s Violations of Bolshevik Organisational Principles, 28 September 1933, in Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement 1929-33, New York 1979, pp.308-11). Witte’s absolute control over his Greek organisation brought about a split with the International Communist League in 1934, and the Archeiomarxists then affiliated to the London Bureau (cf. L.D. Trotsky, The Crisis of the Greek Section, 5 April 1934, in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1933-34, New York 1975, pp.279-84). The result of this, however, was the formation of a Trotskyist faction inside the leadership of the Archeio opposed to the split with the Trotskyists led by George Vitsoris, which gained a majority of the membership and set up a new organisation publishing the weekly paper The Bolshevik (cf. L.D. Trotsky, Reproaching the Dutch Section, 17 March 1934, in Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement 1934-40, New York 1979, p.462, and Stinas, Memoires, pp.149, 156). This remained the official representative of the Trotskyist movement in Greece up until the unification of all the groups in 1938.
The parent group gradually dwindled away in a series of obscure splits. Giotopoulos went to Spain at the time of the Civil War, and was for a while imprisoned in close confinement whilst ill by the Stalinists (Revolutionary History, volume 1 no.2, Summer 1988, p.45). On his release he went to Paris, where he was encountered by Ernie Rogers, who was amazed at his authority among Greek workers abroad. He went back to Greece, and during the Metaxas dictatorship the Archeiomarxists supported the defence of the Soviet Union, and found themselves in the prisons and the camps along with the Stalinists and the Trotskyists. But during the occupation they supported the EAM, and large numbers of them were murdered by the Stalinist OPLA. At one point it was mistakenly reported that Giotopoulos had been killed at Thessalonica along with large numbers of Archeiomarxists and Trotskyists by the Germans (David James, Greek Patriots Sentenced by Fascists, in Socialist Appeal (RCP), volume 6 no.4, August 1944), and Ernie Rogers was told the same story by some Greek seamen whom he met when in prison at this time. But both Giotopoulos and the Archeiomarxists survived – after a fashion. During the Greek Civil War they sided with the anti-Communist ‘national army’, which they claimed was defending ‘democracy’ against the KKE, which they claimed was a fascist movement (to begin with they equated ‘Royalist reaction’ with ‘Russian totalitarianism’ – cf S.T. Witte, The Situation in Greece, in Left, the theoretical organ of the ILP, no.122, December 1946, pp.269-71), and their paper circulated freely during the fighting and repression (for details cf. A. Stinas, Memoires, pp.149-50, 297-8). This was effectively their end as a Socialist movement of any sort, and a sad decline. Witte himself died in 1965.
Comrades
Before the entire world working class, before the millions of the oppressed on earth, we, the Bolshevik-Leninists (Archeiomarxists) Greek Section of the International Left Opposition, address ourselves to you, the highest body of the international Communist movement, the official representatives of the October Revolution, in order to denounce the greatest and most vulgar betrayal which has occurred against the proletariat for the sake of its class enemies by the corrupted clique appointed by you which leads the KKE.
The historic importance of this betrayal is so great, and its consequence so tragic for the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, that even the most merciless punishment of those responsible will be unable to erase the filth which has covered the heroic and bloodstained flag of the October Revolution in Greece.
On 2 July the second round of the parliamentary elections occurred in Thessalonica. In today’s tragic situation for the oppressed, and with the frightful intensification of the contradictions in the bourgeois camp, these elections took on a lively form, and the struggle between the two camps of the bourgeoisie reached the point of mutual conflict. The oppressed masses, paying the most heavy price for the politics of the bourgeois parties, started, particularly in the most recent period, to turn decisively towards Communism.
The decisive and bloody battles, the truly revolutionary insurrections of May-June 1932, December 1932 and March 1933, and a stable increase in the influence of the Communists (55,000 votes in elections in September 1932, 67,000 votes in the elections of March 1933) showed that we were in a new period of upturn of the revolutionary movement. In these favourable objective circumstances a correct Communist line would lead to a higher stage in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
Under the conditions of these elections an exceptional chance was given to the KKE to come ever closer to the oppressed masses, to fly its revolutionary flag, to develop its revolutionary programme, to win the trust of new layers, to advance steadily, and take important steps forward. That is what the advanced workers and poor peasants have been expecting from their revolutionary party – the party which officially represented the October Revolution in our country.
But the KKE has abandoned the arena of struggle. The KKE, which has in its leadership an irresponsible and ignorant clique, which you appointed without asking the opinion of the party, betrayed the proletariat, betrayed the revolution and betrayed its flag. The KKE has denied its ideology and defended the party of big finance capital, the party of Venizelos, the executioner of the Greek workers, the mortal enemy of the revolutionary workers, and the murderer of hundreds of Communists and advanced workers and peasants; the party which many times in the past in this same city of Thessalonica, had organised the most violent slaughter against the workers in the places where they met to find work, a slaughter which surpassed in victims and barbarity anything that had occurred previously; and the party which voted for the anti-Communist law. This is the party which filled the prisons and barren islands of the Aegean with Communists, reaching the point of murdering them inside the prisons, as occurred with the Archeiomarxist Pampakopoulos.
For the sake of this party the revolutionary party of the proletariat essentially withdrew from the elections with a stupid and sensational manoeuvre, placing the list of its candidates two days after the time limit laid down in the law. For the sake of the party of capital, the KKE left the workers without Communist ballot papers. Its candidates entered the elections as individuals ‘isolated’ and independent. For the sake of this party the KKE betrayed the workers. Six thousand Communist votes were given to Venizelos’ party, thus guaranteeing its victory.
Why? How could such a horrific crime occur?
Not only in the upper echelons of both bourgeois parties, but also in the circles which are closely associated with the upper echelons of the KKE, the question appears thus: as regards the Venizelos party, Sofianopoulos, the peasant representative is commonly accused by Rizospastis of being a “peasant-Fascist” – whilst also being a “Friend of the USSR” closely related to the Soviet Embassy and a Legal Adviser of the Soviet Trade Mission!
For the sake of the bourgeois oppositionist parties who have started trading, he has held discussions with the leadership of the KKE and the Soviet Delegation, and concluded a deal on the following basis: Venizelos’ politics are a turn towards approaching Turkey and Russia. Tsaldaris’ politics turn instead towards France. If the KKE supported Venizelos in the elections, apart from the immediate gains they would have from that, they would support the foreign policy of the USSR. Around this question, the bourgeois parties which are governing today have started a campaign of slander which is aimed not only against the KKE, but also against the Communist International and Soviet Russia, who are accused as those directly responsible for the alliance of the Communists with Venizelos.
What is happening, comrades? Has your reactionary ‘National Socialist’ theory of ‘Socialism in one country’ made it possible to lead you to this point? We cannot believe it, despite the fact that we have in front of us the disgusting fact that Comrade Potemkin, ex-Ambassador of the Soviet Embassy in Athens, has sent a congratulatory message to Venizelos concerning the saving of his life after an attempted murder which the ‘populists’ had organised against him – a message with which he expressed his great joy for the saviour of this “precious life” of the most bloodstained and maniac executioner of the Greek workers. It is up to you to clarify your position on this question.
Also, along with all the working class of this country, we have in front of us the most vulgar betrayal, which has marred the flag of Communism, a betrayal for which the Central Committee of the KKE has still not given an explanation and whose consequences are frightfully disastrous. A whole era of work by millions of militant has been destroyed and been thrown into the mud. Today the word ‘Communist’ has become synonymous with ‘traitor’.
In a country where all the objective conditions are leading to a revolutionary insurrection, in a country which in the immediate period could become a new revolutionary arena, Communism, the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat, the ideology of Bolshevism, has suffered the heaviest blow from its own representatives. Using, the theory of the ‘lesser evil’, the Central Committee has led the party into the enemy’s camp. For the workers, the KKE has ‘sold out’. The KKE has erased itself in the most dreadful manner from the consciousness of the workers. Neither our superhuman efforts nor our independent participation in the elections for the rehabilitation of the Communist flag, could hold back the wavering of the workers.
Comrades!
You are the ones mainly responsible for this situation, independent of the fact of whether in this particular instance you are guilty or not. From 1923, from the time you took the leadership of the Communist International from Lenin and Trotsky’s hands, you did whatever you could to destroy its prestige, and to squander in an unconscious way all the capital of Bolshevism and the October Revolution. You have subjugated the Communist parties into being your esteemed subjects, who have, as their only obligation, to support and applaud your empirical and disastrous policies. You have strangled their will, you have strangled their thoughts, you have established in their internal regimes a vulgar bureaucratic machine abolishing control by the base, and crushing democratic centralism, which constitutes their fundamental organising principle. You have expelled every courageous revolutionary who dared to raise his voice against your crimes, and every Bolshevik who defended Lenin’s politics against your centrist policies, which led to the vulgar compromises and destruction of the Chinese Revolution, the ludicrous tactics of the ‘Third Period’ and the dreadful betrayal in Germany.
You have expelled Trotsky, Lenin’s most able co-worker, the organiser of the October Revolution and the creator of the Red Anny. You have exiled Rakovsky. You have murdered Blumkin, Zingantie, Rabinowitz, Smirnov. Riazanov and Tsoulokitze. You have thrown in the Siberian gutters the elite of Bolshevism. You have hounded all the parties who had the courage to give their opinion, and you have based yourselves on the most bankrupt, corrupted. most suspect, most adventurist and opportunist elements, whom you with your prestige as leadership of the Communist International have imposed on those parties.
Here are the consequences. After the Communist Party of Germany, the KKE has now sunk deep into the swamp of the most vulgar betrayal. It has become a nest of provocateurs and traitors against the Oppositionists, now having nothing more than a vestigial influence amongst the masses, who having been won over by the October Revolution, once saw in the party the representative of the Revolution. Today it is seen as traitorous. And this is how they view Communist ideology along with it. New and fierce struggles and new incalculable sacrifices are needed to rebuild what was destroyed in a day.
In the presence of the loud protests of the workers and a flag that has been stained – this party of traitors cannot present itself again to the working class. It is rotten to the core. No further attempts can save it.
In the name of the working class which has been betrayed, in the name of the victims of the class struggle who, with their life and blood have watered the tree of Communism. we demand the convocation of an Extraordinary Congress of the Greek Communists with the participation of the Left Opposition.
Above all, we demand from you a reply to the working class of our country and the entire world – who is responsible for this betrayal? Who delivered Thessalonica's workers to their executioner'?
With Communist Greetings
The Political Bureau of the Communist Organisation of Bolshevik-Leninists (Archeiomarxists), (KOMLEA),
Greek Section of the International Left Opposition

July 1933

UNAC
  (please forward widely)
Please see the call for Spring Days of Action to End Drone Killing, Surveillance and Global Militarization.  As you can see, the call is initiated by leading anti-war activists and groups including UNAC.  Please start your plans today for actions during the months of April and May.  Add your name and your organization to the growing list of supporters by clicking on the link below.  There will be a page set up to let people know of activity in their area.  For now, please send any information on planned actions to UNACpeace@gmail.com and they will appear on the national list.  We want to make this campaign international.  For any groups outside of the US who are interested in endorsing this campaign and/or building actions in your own country, please let us know.
 
                    CALL FOR SPRING DAYS OF ACTION – 2014

Today we issue an international call for Spring Days of Action – 2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to:
 
          End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global Militarization
 
The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.
 
The campaign will provide information on:
 
1. The suffering of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.
 
2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.
 
In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama's "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60% of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership.  We will show, among other things, how this surge of "pivot" forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the US military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival.  In short, we will connect drones and militarization with "austerity" in America.
 
3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.
 
We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor US citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.
 
The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
 
The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers
and to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
 
The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.
 
The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call:
 
Lyn Adamson – Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Dennis Apel – Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California
Judy Bello – Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars
Medea Benjamin – Code Pink
Leah Bolger – Former National President, Veterans for Peace
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Sung-Hee Choi – Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea
Chelsea C. Faria – Graduate student, Yale  Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace
Sandy Fessler – Rochester (NY) Against War
Joy First
Bruce K. Gagnon - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Holly Gwinn Graham – Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA.
Regina Hagen - Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany
Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Malachy Kilbride
Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo – Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition
Tamara Lorincz – Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada
Nick Mottern – KnowDrones.org
Agneta Norberg – Swedish Peace Council
Pepperwolf – Director, Women Against Military Madness
Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American
  Bases  CAAB UK
Mathias Quackenbush – San Francisco, CA
Lisa Savage – Code Pink, State of Maine
Janice Sevre-Duszynska
Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck- Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany
Cindy Sheehan
Lucia Wilkes Smith – Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) – Ground
   Military Drones Committee
David Soumis – Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin
Debra Sweet – World Can’t Wait
David Swanson - WarisACrime.org
Brian Terrell – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
United National Antiwar Coalition
Veterans for Peace 
Dave Webb – Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)
Curt Wechsler – Fire John Yoo! (a project of World Can’t Wait) – San Francisco, CA
Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s)
Loring Wirbel – Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO)
Women Against Military Madness
Ann Wright – Retired US Army colonel and former diplomat
Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation



To add yourself to the UNAC listserv, please send an email to: UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
 


See the documentary film:

‘Wounds of Waziristan’: The Story of Drones

As Told By the People Who Live Under Them

Hear from the Director:  Madiha Tahir,

a Pakistani-American journalist who filmed interviews with the people who live in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan under the constant presence of the U.S.-launched drones, and in the wake of their destruction.

SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 2:00 PM

MIT – 4-231

 

77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

 


Drone victims – Are they terrorists?

Sponsors:

Eastern Mass. Anti-Drone Network Task Force of United for Justice with Peace, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia,

Mass. Global Action, MIT Western Hemisphere Project
justicewithpeace.org, (617) 776-6524





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Dear Al,
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) groups will march in South Boston on March 16 in the welcoming and inclusive Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, that follows the first parade on the same parade route, organized by Veterans For Peace.
For the fourth year in a row, LGBT Groups will march in the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade in South Boston. “Some day these walls of exclusion and division will come tumbling down," said Carisa Cunningham, the Director of Public Affairs for the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). "It will be a proud day for the City of Boston when one’s sexual orientation is not a litmus test for who can participate in a parade”.
Veterans For Peace is organizing what parade organizers call the only “Peace Parade” in the country. The Peace Parade is energizing, with great music, great messages and just a lot of fun for everyone!
The Allied War Veterans Council (AWVC), the group that runs the traditional Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, has again snubbed the LGBT community and Veterans For Peace. Mayor Marty Walsh has attempted to negotiate an acceptable compromise with the AWVC with no results as of today. Mayor Walsh, as his predecessor before him, has announced that he will not walk in the traditional parade because of the parade’s exclusionary practices.
For the past four years Veterans For Peace has organized their own alternative welcoming and inclusive parade after being denied to walk in the traditional parade in 2011. “We have never been denied permission to walk in any parade except for this parade”, stated Pat Scanlon, the Coordinator for Veterans For Peace for the greater Boston area and principal organizer of the Peace Parade. “I am a decorated Vietnam Veteran, with seventeen years of Catholic education, born on Saint Patrick’s Day and I can’t walk in their parade because my fellow veterans and I stand for peace. That is shameful and the exclusion an embarrassment to this great city”.
“Bravo” said Scanlon, “to the new mayor of Boston Marty Walsh for standing on principle and announcing that he will not walk in the traditional parade unless LGBT groups can march under their own banners. It is 2014 and time for these antiquated divisive practices to come to an end,” added Scanlon. “We hope every politician follows Mayor Walsh’s lead and not participate in the first parade until every group who wants to celebrate Saint Patrick and the proud Irish traditions can”. 
This year will be quite different. Street sweepers, that for the past three years have been placed behind the first parade, dispersing onlookers, will now be behind the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade allowing all the revelers in Southie to see and hear both parades. Scanlon added, “it is our hope that someday there will be one, welcoming, inclusive parade in South Boston, with everyone invited to celebrate Saint Patrick and the proud Irish traditions. Sadly, that probably will not happen this year -- maybe next."

People's Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social & Economic Justice

Unite, Participate, Celebrate

Sunday, March 16, 2014, 1:00 pm
D Street & West Broadway, South Boston • Look for white "Vets for Peace" Flags

Assemble: 1pm.  Parade start: 2pm   Sign Up to Attend and Bring your Organization's Banner!
There are several DIVISIONS marching in the parade, as well as two marching bands, Duck Boats, bagpipers, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.. The DIVISIONS are: Veterans groups; Peace groups; LGBT groups; Faith groups; environmental groups; social and economic justice groups; labor groups; political groups. Please invite your group(s) to come!
Contact: Massachusetts Peace Action, Cole Harrison, info@masspeaceaction.org, 617-354-2169; Veterans for Peace, Pat Scanlon, info@massvfp.org, 978-475-1776; faith groups contact Lara Hoke, minister@uuandover.org.
Please join us for our Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative People’s Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social and Economic Justice.

Logistics & Directions

Sign Up to Attend and Bring your Organization's Banner!
The parade route is 4.5 miles and ends at Andrew Station.
Rides along the parade route are available for those who need them, but please let us know ahead of time that you may need a ride.
Come by T if at all possible as the area will be very congested. Broadway is the closest MBTA subway station.
Parking is available for participants in the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade. Vehicles must enter from the north from Summer Street onto D Street; the parking lot is at 383 D Street. Look for the lot with 40 foot white truck trailers.   Allow extra time for traffic.

Directions

From North Route I-93 to South Station exit (20 A). Merge onto Purchase Street to light (100 feet). Make a left onto Summer Street (will pass South Station on right). Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag)
From South
Route I-93 – Take exit 20 toward South Station. Follow signs for Chinatown, continue straight onto Lincoln Street, turn right onto Kneeland Street, turn left onto Atlantic, south Station will be up on your right. Take a right onto Summer Street. Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag)
Be sure to bring your Chapter’s or Organization’s banners, signs and costumes and join us in our fabulous Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade. 
On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee.
Thank you,
Pat Scanlon (VN '69)
Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade
Vets4PeaceChapter9@gmail.com     Phone: 978-475-1776
Cole Harrison
Executive Director, Massachusetts Peace Action


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Worst Man for the Job
What the Hell is Obama Thinking?


3/01/2014

Nothing is quite as nauseating as watching the hypocrisy and hubris with which President Obama 'warns' the Russian president not to 'interfere' in Ukraine, telling the Russians there would be 'costs to pay.' It's a surreal move, echoed by his equally creepy and out-of-touch consigliore and chief "diplomat," the morally bankrupt John Kerry. Astonishing in its audacity and lack of regard for history, truth or facts, this bellicose blather seems aimed only at the idiots over whom he presides, the fools and tools in congress and the press, and his bought-and-paid-for lackeys in European capitals.

Outside the bubble, the sabre rattling is alarming and threatening. Having stood the issue completely on its head, No Drama Obama ignores how it looks to Russia, China and anyone with a skeptical mind. It is so jarring that it leaves only two options: is he crazy or does he really want war? That's why the Russian Senate, offended to the core, asked President Putin to recall the US ambassador over Obama's remarks.

[PHOTO: Kharkov, Ukraine: Russian flag raised over government building]

How oblivious or arrogant do you have to be to spend $5 billion dollars destabilizing a country (the actual total is undoubtedly much higher), have your diplomats caught on tape planning a coup, bring a gang of fascist thugs to power on Russia's doorstep--whose first order of business is to outlaw the Russian language, conduct a purge of opposing parties, threaten the Russian-speaking population, threaten to restore Ukraine's nuclear status and provoke and threaten Russia non-stop... and have the *balls* to lecture anyone about interfering? Oh, add to the pot that you have done the same exact thing in several other countries in the past few years alone. It simply boggles the mind.

Continue poking Putin by suggesting he is being a "bully" when he moves to protect the Russian naval base, protect Russians, and listen to the wishes of the elected government of the region who ask for his support, as as new protests erupted across eastern Ukraine rejecting the putschists in Kiev, with  Russian flags being raised over government buildings and protesters brandished signs saying "In Russia We Have Brothers. In Europe We Are Slaves" and "Where We Are, It is Also Russia." This is called an 'invasion' by the people who bought and organized a fascist coup. Bizarro World.

But why do I focus on Obama? After all, he is little more than an irrelevant placeholder president, a sort of ventriloquist's dummy for the vested interests and forces that put him where he is. Furthermore, I am not a fan of any Great Man theory of history that implies superhuman powers to people instead of historical forces. Accordingly, I don't really go in for ad hominem attacks, which seems to be the only stock-in-trade of the western media, whose searing, eternal question seems to be who is the next Hitler.




Maybe it's because I'm in the grip of the question the rest of the world is pondering: is he crazy or does he really want war? I can't get past wondering whether he is sleepwalking through his presidency, having given over control of his administration to a foreign policy apparatus gone wild--or if he indeed believes the hypocritical warmongering crap that escapes his mouth. In short, Either he eats babies for breakfast or he has no clue that he is being led by the nose by psychopaths.

It's important because in either case he is perhaps the most dangerous man who has ever held the office. His chief flaw is *exactly* the puzzle piece that is *least* amenable to being a leader at this historical juncture. It is a horrific perfect storm, and one that has allowed him to blunder disastrously close to World War III on at least two occasions.

The measure of the man has always told us he was an extremely glib politician. On watching an early speech of his, my wife was shocked at what all the fuss was about, and actually quoted King Herod out loud to the TV: "Take him away/ He's got *nothing* to say!" Yeah, she's funny like that. But still, glibness isn't always hollowness. We got more of a glimpse when he joked casually about sending drones after any boys who had designs on his precious daughters. Later, referring to the boys he actual did mow down with his drones, he joked to aides--equally casually, we assume--that he never thought he 'would wind up being so good at killing people.'

But the clincher for me is one memory still haunts me from campaign 2008: a late rally in some Florida dump where Clinton explained (actually apologizing for going off script) that Obama was The Guy because he had said to the council of elders behind closed doors--you tell me what's the right thing to do and I'll sell it. At the time I did a double take, and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. This is not a leader, a president, or even a thinker at all, but a glorified and willing Pitchman-in-Chief, a sort of real life Clayton Bigsby selling an ideology he is too blind to see.

It was a bit of the mask slipping... and it was incredibly ominous. I felt it and said so to my wife at the time, but she had checked out long before. Never thought he was anything more than a charlatan and a whore - from the first time she heard him, actually. Damn, I envy her clarity sometimes. It's like they made a clone of Truman in a test tube, only this time not a hick... scary. Jimmy Burns led Truman around on a leash, and this misplaced trust in Wise Men led to war crimes such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others.

In another famous example, Kennedy stupidly let the Bay of Pigs invasion proceed, as he was advised by 'wiser men' who told him it was already in the pipeline. However, he wisely vetoed air support, realizing that is was a stupid plan laid out by zealots. Obama has neither the balls nor the intelligence to pull off any such thing. There was a flicker over Syria in August, but it appears to have been a mirage brought on by Russian missiles and wiser generals. He has the fatal flaw which makes all smart men stupid: heeding the counsel of fools and those with their own secret agenda masquerading as Wise Men.

The zealots who have his ear have been in power for a long time, and they are the kind of fanatics who avoid scrutiny in public and accountability even to themselves, so stupid or proud that they still see chasing the Russians out of Afghanistan as their greatest triumph, and take no responsibility for having created, from the ground up, the very concept of militarized global jihad.

[PHOTO: Ukranian Anti-Maidan slogan: We will not live under Banderism. We will not forget the deed of our grandfathers. Ukraine, Stand up!" ]

Even cutting him the most possible slack, he listens to them--and that makes him delusional, a hollow man issuing idle threats. As logic dictates, it is the US who should be worrying about costs, starting with billions to set the coup in motion. That will turn out to have been a pittance.

He is now a dangerous man being counseled by dangerous men. Just today, listening to his smug, arrogant self humiliate a heckler, someone trying to shout a tiny bit of truth through the noise, is truly chilling. The trouble is, Obama may not be lying. He really doesn't know what the guy is talking about, and doesn't know that this is the plan--at what may be the most dangerous moment in history--and will go along with whichever three loudest advisers tell him is the right thing. The saddest and scariest part is that he doesn't even seem to know it--a true button pusher. Soulless.

But this is a measure of the man. At a friendly, fundraising event, with full control and no opposition, he could have said anything he wanted, could have made some sensible retort. Instead he chose to be mean and demeaning, calling the guy a drunk and implying that he is crazy. So now I have to add Bad Man to my list. No lie lives forever, and some day is uppance will come, as Stewie Griffin says. He richly deserves the place he has earned in history, and I have lost interest in splitting hairs:.enabler, dupe or antichrist--take your pick.




(c) 2014 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School.. Translations of articles are available in in up to 30 languages. Links to the website are appreciated.








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Worst Man for the Job
What the Hell is Obama Thinking?


3/01/2014

Nothing is quite as nauseating as watching the hypocrisy and hubris with which President Obama 'warns' the Russian president not to 'interfere' in Ukraine, telling the Russians there would be 'costs to pay.' It's a surreal move, echoed by his equally creepy and out-of-touch consigliore and chief "diplomat," the morally bankrupt John Kerry. Astonishing in its audacity and lack of regard for history, truth or facts, this bellicose blather seems aimed only at the idiots over whom he presides, the fools and tools in congress and the press, and his bought-and-paid-for lackeys in European capitals.

Outside the bubble, the sabre rattling is alarming and threatening. Having stood the issue completely on its head, No Drama Obama ignores how it looks to Russia, China and anyone with a skeptical mind. It is so jarring that it leaves only two options: is he crazy or does he really want war? That's why the Russian Senate, offended to the core, asked President Putin to recall the US ambassador over Obama's remarks.

[PHOTO: Kharkov, Ukraine: Russian flag raised over government building]

How oblivious or arrogant do you have to be to spend $5 billion dollars destabilizing a country (the actual total is undoubtedly much higher), have your diplomats caught on tape planning a coup, bring a gang of fascist thugs to power on Russia's doorstep--whose first order of business is to outlaw the Russian language, conduct a purge of opposing parties, threaten the Russian-speaking population, threaten to restore Ukraine's nuclear status and provoke and threaten Russia non-stop... and have the *balls* to lecture anyone about interfering? Oh, add to the pot that you have done the same exact thing in several other countries in the past few years alone. It simply boggles the mind.

Continue poking Putin by suggesting he is being a "bully" when he moves to protect the Russian naval base, protect Russians, and listen to the wishes of the elected government of the region who ask for his support, as as new protests erupted across eastern Ukraine rejecting the putschists in Kiev, with  Russian flags being raised over government buildings and protesters brandished signs saying "In Russia We Have Brothers. In Europe We Are Slaves" and "Where We Are, It is Also Russia." This is called an 'invasion' by the people who bought and organized a fascist coup. Bizarro World.

But why do I focus on Obama? After all, he is little more than an irrelevant placeholder president, a sort of ventriloquist's dummy for the vested interests and forces that put him where he is. Furthermore, I am not a fan of any Great Man theory of history that implies superhuman powers to people instead of historical forces. Accordingly, I don't really go in for ad hominem attacks, which seems to be the only stock-in-trade of the western media, whose searing, eternal question seems to be who is the next Hitler.




Maybe it's because I'm in the grip of the question the rest of the world is pondering: is he crazy or does he really want war? I can't get past wondering whether he is sleepwalking through his presidency, having given over control of his administration to a foreign policy apparatus gone wild--or if he indeed believes the hypocritical warmongering crap that escapes his mouth. In short, Either he eats babies for breakfast or he has no clue that he is being led by the nose by psychopaths.

It's important because in either case he is perhaps the most dangerous man who has ever held the office. His chief flaw is *exactly* the puzzle piece that is *least* amenable to being a leader at this historical juncture. It is a horrific perfect storm, and one that has allowed him to blunder disastrously close to World War III on at least two occasions.

The measure of the man has always told us he was an extremely glib politician. On watching an early speech of his, my wife was shocked at what all the fuss was about, and actually quoted King Herod out loud to the TV: "Take him away/ He's got *nothing* to say!" Yeah, she's funny like that. But still, glibness isn't always hollowness. We got more of a glimpse when he joked casually about sending drones after any boys who had designs on his precious daughters. Later, referring to the boys he actual did mow down with his drones, he joked to aides--equally casually, we assume--that he never thought he 'would wind up being so good at killing people.'

But the clincher for me is one memory still haunts me from campaign 2008: a late rally in some Florida dump where Clinton explained (actually apologizing for going off script) that Obama was The Guy because he had said to the council of elders behind closed doors--you tell me what's the right thing to do and I'll sell it. At the time I did a double take, and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. This is not a leader, a president, or even a thinker at all, but a glorified and willing Pitchman-in-Chief, a sort of real life Clayton Bigsby selling an ideology he is too blind to see.

It was a bit of the mask slipping... and it was incredibly ominous. I felt it and said so to my wife at the time, but she had checked out long before. Never thought he was anything more than a charlatan and a whore - from the first time she heard him, actually. Damn, I envy her clarity sometimes. It's like they made a clone of Truman in a test tube, only this time not a hick... scary. Jimmy Burns led Truman around on a leash, and this misplaced trust in Wise Men led to war crimes such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others.

In another famous example, Kennedy stupidly let the Bay of Pigs invasion proceed, as he was advised by 'wiser men' who told him it was already in the pipeline. However, he wisely vetoed air support, realizing that is was a stupid plan laid out by zealots. Obama has neither the balls nor the intelligence to pull off any such thing. There was a flicker over Syria in August, but it appears to have been a mirage brought on by Russian missiles and wiser generals. He has the fatal flaw which makes all smart men stupid: heeding the counsel of fools and those with their own secret agenda masquerading as Wise Men.

The zealots who have his ear have been in power for a long time, and they are the kind of fanatics who avoid scrutiny in public and accountability even to themselves, so stupid or proud that they still see chasing the Russians out of Afghanistan as their greatest triumph, and take no responsibility for having created, from the ground up, the very concept of militarized global jihad.

[PHOTO: Ukranian Anti-Maidan slogan: We will not live under Banderism. We will not forget the deed of our grandfathers. Ukraine, Stand up!" ]

Even cutting him the most possible slack, he listens to them--and that makes him delusional, a hollow man issuing idle threats. As logic dictates, it is the US who should be worrying about costs, starting with billions to set the coup in motion. That will turn out to have been a pittance.

He is now a dangerous man being counseled by dangerous men. Just today, listening to his smug, arrogant self humiliate a heckler, someone trying to shout a tiny bit of truth through the noise, is truly chilling. The trouble is, Obama may not be lying. He really doesn't know what the guy is talking about, and doesn't know that this is the plan--at what may be the most dangerous moment in history--and will go along with whichever three loudest advisers tell him is the right thing. The saddest and scariest part is that he doesn't even seem to know it--a true button pusher. Soulless.

But this is a measure of the man. At a friendly, fundraising event, with full control and no opposition, he could have said anything he wanted, could have made some sensible retort. Instead he chose to be mean and demeaning, calling the guy a drunk and implying that he is crazy. So now I have to add Bad Man to my list. No lie lives forever, and some day is uppance will come, as Stewie Griffin says. He richly deserves the place he has earned in history, and I have lost interest in splitting hairs:.enabler, dupe or antichrist--take your pick.




(c) 2014 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School.. Translations of articles are available in in up to 30 languages. Links to the website are appreciated.








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I've been writing for many years about US-NATO efforts to militarily surround Russia.  The oil-i-garchy wants to get ahold of the natural gas (the world's largest supply) that sits on Russian territory.  It also wants full control of the Arctic region now that climate change will make it possible to drill for oil there.  Russia has a huge northern coastal border with the Arctic and thus stands in the way of western oil control.

Already the war drums are sounding after Russia moved more troops into Crimea to protect its Navy base and the large pro-Russian population in the region.

Writing yesterday in Foreign Policy Admiral James Stavridis (Ret) called for NATO to immediately increase " all intelligence-gathering functions through satellite, Predator unmanned vehicles, and especially cyber" and to sail "NATO maritime forces into the Black Sea and setting up contingency plans for their use."  This is full-blown war talk - with Russia. Admiral Stavridis was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013. He is currently dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

If Stavridis is saying these things you can just imagine what plans are underway inside the Pentagon and at NATO HQ in Europe.

The Russians know that they are being set up.  Reporting for Asia Times, Pepe Escobar wrote, " Even before neo-con Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland’s intercept, [Russian intelligence] had already identified the wider mechanics of the CIA-style coup – including Turkish intelligence financing Tatars in Crimea... And what will the Tatars in Crimea do? Stage a jihad? Wait: the “West” will surely try to FINANCE THIS JIHAD."

It's Syria all over again, this time right on the Russian border.

Except this time the US-NATO are messing with a country that has the capability to fight back.  This is how world wars get started.  The Russians are not going to idly sit by and watch US-NATO set up a right-wing fascist state right on their border.  Hitler tried that during WW II and at least 20 million died defending the Soviet Union.  Ever since then the Russian people have been 'sensitive' about defending their immediate borders. 

The decision adopted on March 1, by the Federation Council, upper house of the Russian parliament, which allows Putin to send troops to Crimea, an autonomy within neighboring Ukraine, aims to protect life and security, Irina Yarovaya, chair of the Security and Anti-Corruption Committee in the State Duma (lower house of parliament), said.

“Terrorism is the most dangerous crime around the world. But it is fascism and terrorism that have proclaimed their power in Ukraine and pose a real threat to the life and security of Russian citizens living in Ukraine and undoubtedly to the brotherly people of Ukraine,” she said.

“We have repeatedly warned the international community and the US against interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine,” she said, adding “some European and US politicians bear direct responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine, for the bloodshed and for the coup.”

She believes that Obama’s latest statement on Russia “has fully exposed the US policy of brutal interference in the sovereign rights of other countries and aggressive imposition of its interests.”

Of course the Obama administration is saying that Russia is violating international law by moving more troops into Crimea.  Obama is threatening Russia with "severe consequences".  And now you can be sure that NATO is indeed preparing 'contingency plans'.

The open question is how will the American people react to all of this.  They rightly opposed Obama's desired cruise missile attack on Syria.  Will they be as wise about planting the cancerous NATO flag on Crimean soil?

Clearly Putin and Russia have been thoroughly demonized in the passive minds of most American citizens.  But will they shake the cobwebs from their brains and see the absurdity and sheer recklessness of US-NATO saber rattling on the doorstep of Mother Russia?
Now is the time for all peaceful people to speak out.  Before the real shooting starts.
 
 
Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/  (blog)
 

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.  ~Henry David Thoreau
The Class Struggle Continues

"a glorified and willing Pitchman-in-Chief, a sort of real life Clayton Bigsby", Worst Man for the Job....
had never heard of him :-)   LOL!!!!  hilarious

click on photo for comedy central video:






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Poet’s Corner- Claude McKay-If We Must Die-In Honor Of The 95th Anniversary Of The Communist International- Take Five

 
 

…they had heard that a group of White Guards, a first detachment on horse, maybe from the dreaded mercenary Czech Legion that were running amok from Siberia to the Urals, paid for by who knows who, some said the English, some said the French, or worst maybe the dreaded Cossacks, who needed no outside pay but only their  Ataman’s word to bend contemptible peasant heads to size, and who took no prisoners, none, were heading their way, heading right for their line of defense in the city. Ready to take back Kazan for the asking, or so those Whites thought. Kazan fallen then the road to Moscow lay wide open and perhaps the end of the Soviet experiment in that dragged on second year, 1918, of hellish civil war.

But Commissar Vladimir, assigned that title because he was a little more literate, and a little cooler under pressure having faced the enemy before Moscow in the early days of the revolution, than the vast bulk of  lumpish peasants under his command was ready for them. That lump, that ageless, vast undifferentiated lump, mostly from Monsieur Orlov’s land around Omsk, who had signed up to fight and to die for the land, their land from what they had heard, listened to him unlike the city boy reds from Moscow and Saint Petersburg (now the secular Petrograd but name traditions die hard in the country). Listened to Vladimir  and his band of comrade brothers, five in all, (and one sixteen year old sister, one stray Red Emma, they called her who learned of revolution and sex, young love smitten sex even in war-torn Kazan  with young Zanoff, in that exact order while in their company and proved as fierce a fighter both ways, according to that same Zanoff, as any man). Listened as they, the comrades, harangued the last remnant from the old Orlov estate who survived the bloody endless Czar war  and who swore, swore a blood oath on their tattered red flag, the previous day that they would retreat no further, that here was their stand, their last stand if necessary, but no more moves away from Moscow.     

It had not always been that way with them, not even with Vladimir, not by a long shot. They had all farmed, like their fathers going back eons before them, the same fruitless task (for them) land for Orlov, the richest landowner in Omsk, and had never lifted their heads when the Social Revolutionaries had come before the war and during that last revolution, the one back in 1905, with glad tidings (and before them other city radicals, narodniks or something like that, had spoken to their fathers and grandfathers). They just shoveled the dirt, kept shoveling, and kept their heads down.

Then the war came, the bloody world war as it turned out, and the Czar’s police (Orlov’s really but in the name of the Czar so the same thing) came and “drafted” them into some vast ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-armed peasant force which proved no match for the methodical Germans as they were slaughtered by the millions in and around those foul trenches. And still they kept their heads bent, Vladimir and his four Orlov surviving farm brothers the only healthy alive ones left from the twenty-two that had started out from Omsk in the summer of 1915. Kept them bent until the February revolution stirred things up although they held to the front line trenches even then since no one told them not to leave and in the fall of 1917 they had just followed their fellows out of the trenches and went home. Not the first ones out, nor the last but just out. Went home to farm Orlov’s land again they figured with bent heads again.  Even when the Bolsheviks took power in November and decreed the land of Orlov’s theirs they kept their heads bent. It was not until Orlov, his agents, and his White Guard friends came back and took the land, their now precious land, theirs, that they roared back. And they had joined one of Trotsky’s red brigades passing through on a recruiting drive. They had moved here and there as the lines of battle shifted but mainly back, mainly retreats or break-ups since then and hence the blood oath, and no more retreats. The peasant slows in them had been busted, busted good. 

Just then a messenger came to their line, a messenger from the river in front of Kazan, from the wind- swept Volga. The message said that Trotsky himself , Trotsky of the phantom armored train rushing to this and that front, seemingly everywhere at the same time, that put fear in the hearts of whites and reds alike, had decided to fight and die before Kazan if necessary to save the revolution, to save their precious land. Vladimir and his comrades, including Red Emma, Red Emma who if the truth be told despite her tender years of sweet sixteen was the best soldier of the lot, and should have been the commissar except those lumpish peasants would not have listened to her, reaffirmed their blood oath. They were not sure of Lenin, thinking him a little too smart, and maybe he had something up his sleeve, maybe he was just another Jew, he looked the part with that bald head of his, but stout-hearted Trotsky, if he was willing to die then what else could they do.   If they must die they would die in defense of Kazan, and maybe just maybe somebody would hear of their story, the story of five peasant boys and a pretty red-hearted city girl as brave as they, and lift their heads and roar back too….    

[Vladimir, Vladimir Suslov (whose grandson, Misha, would become a high Soviet dignitary in the 1980s) also deserves some additional mention so one does not get the impression that they had dug deep into the bottom of the barrel and he was all they could come up with from the loutish lumpish peasant mass that decided, decided almost just yesterday, that they should first raise their heads and then actually go out and fight for their land, come hell or high water. No Vladimir, even as a child was a leader of the boys, the peasant boys who spent more time avoiding work and hiding in the woods than bending to the plow. And contrary to his stolid appearance (added to, and aided by, those miserable years in the trenches) which endeared him to his fellows, made him appear older than his thirty years, he was a good reader,  and could write some, including fancying himself a minor peasant poet. Like he told the political commissar of his unit one night when things had dusted up it paid to NOT appear too much brighter than the fellows or else you would be treated like poor Red Emma, Nana, who actually had the heart, the heart of a red warrior princess. And so Vladimir led, led by just being a little ahead, being a little bit better able to read maps, and people and get his fellows out of more than a few scrapes. Of such men revolutions flourish, for a time. Then the grandsons, the Mishas, come along and think they have done it all themselves. ]  

 [Red Emma, real name Nana Kamkov, deserves a better fate that to written off as some play thing for some loutish peasant boy, Grisha  Zanoff by full name, no matter how Red Army brave he was just that moment and no matter how peasant handsome he was, and he was, to Nana’s eyes. Nana had come off the land as a child, as fate would have it Orlov’s land, when after the last revolution, the one in 1905, the government encouraged capitalist exploitation of the land in order to break down the backward-looking peasant communes. Her parents had abandoned the land had travelled to live in Kazan and her father had set up shop as a locksmith, a good one. Nana had gone school and had been an outstanding student if somewhat socially backward (she had not been like the other girls boy-crazy) and desperately wanted to become an engineer although the family resources precluded such a fate.

One day in the summer of 1917 at the height of the revolutionary fervor she ran across a Bolshevik agitator in Kazan (later killed in Kiev fighting off some White Guards in that location) who told her, young impressionable her, aged fourteen, no more, that if the Soviets survived she would be able to pursue her engineering career, hell, the Bolsheviks would encourage it. From that time she had been a single-minded Red Guard soldier performing many dangerous tasks until the Whites threatened Kazan and she was trapped in the city and had joined Vladimir’s remnants as a result. And there she spied Grisha among his soldiers, loutish, foolish Grisha, although handsome she admitted. Perhaps it was the time of her time, perhaps she still had a little foolish schoolgirl notion to be with a man just in case things didn’t work out and she was killed, or worse, executed but one cold night she snuggled up to the sleeping Grisha and that was that. She was teaching him to read better and to think about things just in case they weren’t killed, or worse executed. Practical young woman, very practical. And so young Nana enters the red pantheon, and maybe she will drag Grisha along too.]               

 
If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
 

So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
 

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

 

Saturday, March 01, 2014

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Neil Young's I Believe In You  

 

Peter Paul Markin comment December 2013:

A while back, maybe a few years ago, I started a series presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs that I thought would get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Posted at a time, 2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of uprising against the economic royalists (chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the response from the American and world working classes has if anything entrenched those interests. So as the dog days continue I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

**********

WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.”  Meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                 

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.   

The origin of my emergence into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest.

I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.

And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) - Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin would surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.