As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Poet's Corner- Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth (1914) 

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.                             

***An Old Geezer Sighting In North Quincy-Another 50^thAnniversary, Of Sorts –With A North Star-Gazer In Mind    

A YouTube clip of Johnny Cash’s I Still Miss Someone to set the mood for this sketch.

 

My old friend Peter Markin and I have over the years sat down in some locale, in the old days usually a bar, and told each other stories, some true, some stretched.  I first met Markin  down at the Surf Ballroom in Hull in the summer after we had graduated from high school (he from Hull High) when we chased the same girl on the dance floor (a girl who eventually dumped both of us, me first). One afternoon last fall over lunch I told him the story of my 50^th anniversary “jog” around the old North Quincy cross-country course which I had done a few weeks earlier. He insisted on writing something up about the event. He did so but left the piece in a folder and forgot about it until now.  Since this site was created to propagandize such events we both thought it would be an appropriate place to tell the gruesome tale. Here are Markin’s recollections from that afternoon:   

Writers, or at least people who like to write, know, know deep in their souls, or hell, maybe only know by instinct that some things should not be written. Or if written then discarded (and in the age of cyberspace one can just press the DELETE button, praise be). That was my initial response when my friend from the old days, Alfred Francis Johnson, hell just Al which is what everybody except nerdy girls called him, when he insisted that I write a little something for him. That “little something” that he was all exercised about was “jogging” in the fall of 2013 on the old North Quincy cross-country course in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the last time he ran it as a member of the team in 1963. Jesus.

Yes I know, although these days the media and others on slow news days are prone to commemorate all kinds of anniversaries of events including odd-ball years like 30^thand 40^th, this was a weird request. But that afternoon Al argued his case as he does when he is exercised about something and I had to hear him out. He said that if he had actually run that course after 50 years of statutory neglect I should tout that fact to all who would listen.

Al had told me previously that he had taken up jogging a few years before to while the time away and keep the extra pounds off. I remember looking at him then like he had three-heads. I said that personally I would have a hard time running one hundred yards (or meters, whatever the short distance is they run these days) without crying out desperately for oxygen and many other medicals services.

Al then went into high gear. He mentioned that a few years back, it must have been about 2010, he had written a sketch about his current running prowess to commemorate the 50^thanniversary of when he began running as a sport. Yeah, it was 2010. He had run a mile over at some practice field, the “dust bowl” he called it which gives you an idea of the condition of the track to prove that he was not over the hill, or something like that. Yes, I know again, like this was some fleet-footed ancient marathon feat worthy of notice. His point was that the sketch which he wrote was well received by the AARP-worthy audience in need of elderly care he was addressing thus throwing down the gauntlet about my ability to match that result. No sale, brother, no sale.

That negative response on my part set him off, had him seeing red. He went into his classic “you owe me” rant. That “you owe me” stems from way back in the summer of 1964 when we first met down in my hometown of Hull which is about twenty miles south of North Quincy. We had met at the Surf Ballroom where there was a weekly live band dance (rock and roll, of course, now called classic rock, damn) and I “stole” a girl from him that we were both interested in. The girl eventually faded but our friendship began. And with that little tidbit he won his argument. Not on the merits of his case, and not even to shut him up, but because I told him that if I wrote something now about his silly anniversary then next year, next summer, I would get to write the real story about the 50th anniversary of the night that I supposedly “stole” that girl from him. And that will not be pretty, brother, it will not be pretty.

So here goes.

Al had mentioned to me before, maybe several years ago, that this North Quincy cross-country course had a storied past. The reason for that distinction was that his best friend, his running mate in both senses, running around the track and running around town, was Bill Cadger. Bill was a great runner who over his career won many races on the course and for many years held the course record. Al stood in his shadow, stood deep in his shadow. That fact is neither here nor there now, except that this course of two and one-half miles which they had run together in practice many times was laid out along the streets of old North Quincy in a way that Al had not noticed back in the day when he was seriously try to run the thing. There were many landmarks of his youth as he ran it this time, this time when he was running, oops, jogging slowly enough to see things. To reflect on things, to remember. And those recollections, that filler, is what I will finish this sketch with. Except to now tell anybody who will listen, anybody who wants to know, that yes Al finished the course, and did not, I repeat, did not need medical attention, none.

The first part of the course started on the side of the high school, the East Squantum Street side. Just seeing the old high school again reminded Al of the tough times he had getting through the place. Not academically, not even socially, except a little, a little shy and unknowing about girls, no knowledge shy with three boys and no girls in the family to ease the way. And a deep-crusted Catholic studied ignorance of things sexual, how to deal with the subject, okay. He was moreover, and Bill too, which is why they got along, filled with all kinds of teenage angst and alienation, feelings of being isolated, and feeling out of sorts with the world. He said he laughed as he thought about that, thought about how someday, now someday he might get over that angst and alienation. Yah, Al said he had to laugh about that, about how they all said back in the day he would get over it when he got older. The only thing better now was that he had a small handle on it, and some helpful medication.

The first leg continued down East Squantum onto Bayfield Road, the cross street before strewn with houses of relatives, some that he liked and some, who later when he joined, joined with abandon (as did I), the “youth nation” that was a-borning in the late 1960s shut their doors to him, called him renegade, called him in the parlance of the times, “red,” “commie,” and “monster.” Jesus. But those street also had houses filled with budding romances, or flirtations in that close- packed community, romances and flirtations. Flirtations that he, girl-shy, had trouble picking up on when the boys’ “lav” Monday morning before school bull- sessions (emphasis on the bull) and he came up on the radar as someone that Sally, Susie, or Marie “liked” on that preternatural teen grapevine that had Facebook beat six ways to Sunday. He wondered as he passed some cross streets after Bayfield what had happened to Sally, Susie, and Marie. Did they too fade from the town’s memory like he had, Had they, like many in their nomadic generation, shaken the dust off of the town unlike their parents, his parents, and definitely his grandparents who stayed anchored to the town and took a certain pride in that fact. He had to laugh again, why not, he was moving slow enough to laugh and look and feel something about things, that even now it always came down to girls, oops, women, even after two marriages and a million short- haul things. And he still was trying to figure them out. Jesus  

 

The second leg brought him along what is now Quincy Shore Boulevard, along the ocean, along the one piece of geography that has defined his life; the old days remembrances of running along in the beach sand, a task too tough now with those wobbly knees and aching ankles, with Bill running a mile ahead, and him, Al, getting all red from the sun; summer afternoons spent on the beach between the Squantum  Yacht Club and the Wollaston Boat Club the “spot” to hang in waiting around for, what else, that certain she you had had your eye on in school, or just what came in on the ocean; Saturday night parking steamed cars with the roar of the ocean drowning out love’s call; end of night stops at Joe’s for burgers and fries to placate a different hunger. Thoughts of  later walks (not runs, hell, no) along Pacific beaches, Malibu, Carlsbad, LaJolla, Magoo Point, with love Angelica, Angelica from Indiana and ocean-deprived, her almost drowning in some riptide not knowing the fierceness of Mother Nature, of Uncle Neptune when the furies were up; solo walks, lonely walks in the 1970s when the booze and dope almost broke him (and he called me, desperately called me for help, and I said “I’ll meet you in Malibu and we’ll get you dried out, brother”).

Much later solitary walks along endless Maine beaches trying to figure out what went wrong with that second marriage, and why his current relationship had run out of steam several years before. Simple stuff as the rush of the foam-flecked waves called out for serenity. As he made the third leg down Atlantic Boulevard  heading back toward  the school he laughed again, twice laughed, first that he was going to finish running the whole course and secondly that no matter what somebody better make sure that he was not buried in some ocean-less place like Kansas when his time came. He had come from the muck of the sea and let him lay his head down there.

As Al travelled that last leg, the leg that brought him to the corner of his old neighborhood he cringed, cringed at the thought of all the misbegotten things that had happened in that vanished shack of a cramped house that he came of age in and of his estrangement from his family, a shame, a crying shame (and I, Hull–born twenty miles away from the same kind of neighborhood, with the same family grievances will not go into detail about that here -see we do not “air our family linens in public,” got it). But he also had a certain nostalgia, a certain sadness as he remembered the various generations of cats that helped make life a little bit bearable when cursed mother got on her sway, father silent, silent as the grave. Joy Smokey, Snowball, Blackie, Big Boy, Sorrowful, Grey Boy, Calico, and many others. Making him think too of later manhood long gone beloved Mums who had helped him get through drugs, booze, depression, angst, a bad marriage and about seven other maladies. And just then recently gone and still filled with sorrows and sadnesses his companion shadow Willie Boy as he shed a tear for him, and them all.

Then past Atlantic Street onto Newbury Street and remembrances of many miles walked getting up the courage to talk to Lydia the first girl he fell hard for, and wonder, wonder too what happened to her, doing well he hoped. And last stop before the finishing hill and kick to the line Grandma’s Young Street house, savoir sainted (everybody agreed, sainted especially with devil Grandpa) Grandma who saved his tender teens from total despair, from starvation too and blessed memories. And regrets, regrets too that he had not been better at the end for her. Sorrows there, joys too.

Ah, streets, all known streets, all blessed streets (not church-blessed but still blessed), all ocean-breezed streets, all memory streets, as he chugged up that Newbury Street hill which led back on to East Squantum and the school. A hill where in memory time, fifty- years ago time, he would put a rush kick to the finish. This day he ambled across the ancient imaginary finish line, fist in the air like some Olympic champion. Done.

***Ain’t Got Not No Time For The Corner Boys-With George V. Higgins’ The Friends Of Eddie Coyle in Mind –Take Two

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Every kid, every “the projects” kid, a kid who would have to know this bit of urban legend wisdom sooner rather than later, know there was “no honor among thieves,” in order to survive out on the edge of society down there where the line between the lumpen and the downtrodden working poor (or can’t work poor) is blurred, very blurred. Know this by heart, by gut, in order to survive childhood in one piece unless he was “connected” or was tough enough, or had a brother or brothers tough enough to protect him. So would every triple-decker Southie/Dot/North Cambridge/Somerville/Revere and on and on Massachusetts Mom and Pop variety store holding up the wall looking for the heart of Saturday night corner boy, ditto on the “no honor among thieves” wisdom. Ditto too on the survival part. All knowing too that that principle though applies as well to “hit” men, stone-cold killers, grifters, drifters, midnight sifters, gunrunners, heist artists and every con man who walks the street going whatever his con is. Those young guys know deep in their hearts, and if not somebody better embed it there, just like Eddie Coyle knew, Eddie “Fingers” if you forgot his real name, and just knew him from his small reputation as a part-time stand-up guy, that despite all that stuff about the sanctified lumpen brotherhood down there in the grime of society, all that noise about keeping the faith as a stand-up guy if you want to stay in one piece, above about not being a “snitch” each of those projects boys or corner boys (could be the same depending on your town and its social structure) has to learn, and maybe the hard way, that down at the bottom of society, down there where the working poor meets the non-working poor meets the bottom feeder, what, Karl Marx, and not just him, called the lumpen that it is dog eat dog and the survivors move up the food chain.

And see the cops, the guys who deal with all of this one way or another as part of their jobs, who maybe lived in the projects coming up themselves or held up some corner storefront brick wall, work that knowledge to their benefit. Work each freaking guy up against it, each guy looking at some serious closed-up and forgotten time, each guy who comes up against their justice system and if you are a projects boy or a corner boy you will come up against that system if only for a search and frisk for being a po’ boy, to sell-out whoever and whatever he can to get right with whatever governmental agency has him by the cajoles. Not only do the cops know this but the guys who prosecute the cases for the government, you know the D.As. (really the Assistant D.A.s except in high profile cases),the judges, the jailers, and the constitutional law professors, most of whom did not come up that way, all know this. Laugh among themselves over drinks about how some poor snook could not figure out the fact that he was being used as an experiment in their “snitch” manipulations (mainly how to get those dockets cleared before noon day after day with ninety-five percent plea outs). The only ones who don’t know, or maybe do a little but don’t know the extent of it, are the average citizens who get bopped on the head, get their cars stolen, or get burgled.       

Hold on though there is another group, well, maybe not a group but a few guys anyway, smart guys in all ways, all important ways. Those of course are maybe guys who used to be in law enforcement now working as security for private businesses, maybe guys who used to try the cases for the government (or better get a negotiated plea out) now in lucrative private practices who make it their business to know so they could use that information when they went out and got real jobs, or maybe write about it, to wise the public up every once in a while.

That’s what this guy I knew once did, the late George V. Higgins, a guy who worked in the Attorney-General’s Office in Massachusetts and when he got tired of that moved up to the “bigs” in the federal district court in Massachusetts. Kind of a stand-up guy in his own way if anybody is asking although as far as I know he always had his nose in a book. He said one that he had done a little corner boy stuff and although he was a “projects” boy he gave up the thrill of the criminal life that beckoned to every corner boy early and from there went straight to the head of his class.

So George knew his stuff, had as they say “seen it all” and while he worked for chump change in the government he made a good living at writing the stuff up later because he knew his former low-rent “clientele” that wound up coming before him for a deal, looking for help, and ready to give up their acquaintances, their close friends, their relatives, hell, their mothers if it would get them out from under some long stretch in Cedar Junction, the old MCI-Walpole or you name your MCI, or down sunny “club fed” Danbury in Connecticut. Knew the Eddie Fingers of the world. Better, had a close ear to the way they talked, talked to each other, talked to the coppers, talked to the bench but most importantly knew how their minds worked, how they skittled the truth, on the job and off. Higgins knew too how to make a lot of guys at Sculler’s over in North Adamsville, guys like me who worked in that town and liked to stop off for a few after work, laugh that knowing laugh about that “honor among thieves” stuff.  (One time he said that North Adamsville was where he was originally from, or so I heard, and so he liked to go back to the old neighborhood taverns looking for “color.”)

I remember one time, it have to have been about thirty or forty years ago, Higgins came dragging his ass into the bar one night after some hardball case for the “feds” whom he was working for then had finished up, had become “case closed” and he was in an expansive mood so he just let it rip. Wanted to give out on about the 227^th version on the “no honor among thieves” thesis. So somebody bought him a high-end Scotch (I forget the brand but he always drank high-end liquor in those days).  See he had been (as had me and a few other guys there listening) a corner boy himself and so could see where going off track might lead, had been in thrall to the “life” for a while until he figured the percentage differently from those corner boys who he grew up with and who choose a different “career” path ending up doing plenty of collective “hard time.”  Yeah, that night he told us about old Eddie Coyle, old Eddie “Fingers” who the day before had wound up face down with about nine slugs in him in the front passenger side of a stolen 1970 two-toned Chevy over at the Fresh Pond Shopping Mall in Cambridge as the prime new example he could give about that honor among thieves stuff.

George didn’t know much about Eddie’s early life but he guessed that like a lot of guys who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s, guys from  Eddie’s “class” like Whitey Bulger who they just grabbed recently, a couple of years ago, grabbed good Eddie started early. Figure: probably a drunken father (like George’s had been, that was the first time I had heard that) who did, or did not beat, the kids (and wife) after a three day toot and who did, or did not, drink away his weekly wages leaving said wife with many empty envelopes for the “on time” bill collectors and repo men but who in whichever case applies was AWOL in bringing up sonny boy. Figure: a nagging mother (who despite the beating or short money would not leave her man, where would she go?) who kept sonny boy in tow for a while with “you do not want to be like your father” but who when he came of age turned more and more like his father-except he was in thrall to easy money, easy money “found on the ground” not whiskey. Figure too: too many kids in the family, too little space to breathe, always climbing over or under somebody, and the kicker- a serious wanting habit that never left him because there was too much to want and not enough to pay for it. Yeah, George did not know every detail, every Eddie detail but those of us on the stools kept nodding our heads as he spoke.

How to get that easy money though. Maybe Eddie started, you know probably with the “clip”, the “five-finger discount” at some cheap jewelry store downtown (and probably for some young girl that he was smitten with and had no dough to buy some harmless trinket. Little did he know then that there was not enough dough in the world when his women got their wanting habits on. That hard-bitten knowledge came later.). Kids’ stuff for kids’ eyes. Later when more serious dough was needed  maybe a quick Mom and Pop variety store robbery throwing a scare in the owners but no weapons (and not in the neighborhood either-funny about the “code” you did not hit the neighborhood stores but some other neighborhood stores with the same hard-working up against it small owners were fair game. Worse though was when the drugs came and distorted a lot so even locals were hit. But in Eddie’s time-stay away).Maybe some silly petty larceny thing finally graduating to more dough armed robberies, selling stolen goods, selling dope, maybe selling women who knows. The way George got to know Eddie though was as a gun-runner, one of the best in New England, and one of the surefire ways to get yourself before the “feds”-if you were looking for a way.

 What Eddie was though, and here he was and is legion, was a career “soldier,” a guy just trying to do a little of this, a little of that to keep the vultures from the door. George said looking at photographs of Eddie when he was younger he looked pretty tough, but also a good- looking guy that would be spending a lot of time buying trinkets for one frail or another. George said think of maybe a young Robert Mitchum, all cleft-chin, barrel-chest, a mass of dark hair, and a little sneer that women, some women anyway, usually make it their business to take off a guy when they have a different set of wanting habits on. They would never make a movie of Eddie’s short unsweet mournful life but if they did he would suggest Mitchum for the role hands down.     

Yeah, so Eddie was just a guy doing the best he could, not an educated guy but “street wise” enough to get noticed by guys who notice such things. (Eddie dropped out of high school over at Rindge Tech in Cambridge after his first successful armed robbery and after he nearly beat one of the teachers, a shop teacher, to death when he asked Eddie where he was going with all shop materials in the back of his car after school).  Most of the time whatever caper he was on worked, a few mishaps, thirty days here, six months there and then back to the streets, back to the “this and that.” But here is where he got dragged into the “code.” One time he was look-out on an armed robbery of a department store on payday. Something went wrong and the guys who actually were to pull the robbery off fled leaving Eddie holding the bag. Eddie was left “holding the bag” (had a weapon on him as he was approached by the called cops.) Eddie, knowing the guys he was working with were “connected’ did his first stand-up guy routine-got a year and served six months. He would stand-up some more later but what was important was after that time, after he proved to be a stand-up guy, was when he began his career as the “armorer” anytime somebody needed some “clean” guns.   

But see guys like Eddie are street smart, or better be if they expect a longest career, but not smart, smart, not covered with about eight layers of protection before they might have to take the big fall, not brain smart and so guys like Eddie make mistakes, and certain mistakes cost a guy. Then George yelled out no that is not right, guys like Eddie were born to take the fall, were born with that chip on their shoulders so they couldn’t see straight, born to have that bull’s-eye target on their backs for anybody to take aim at. George said that hard fact is how Eddie got his moniker. See mostly Eddie was after that youthful mishap stuff, that 30 days here, six months there stuff, a gun-runner, a job which means that he was “connected” if only by a “banker” to guys who mattered. Eddie was the guy who, if you were “connected,” could depend on to get guns for your caper and then you dump them in some river, any river and nobody was the wiser, no cops anyway. That was what Jimmy Smalls did, the case that later put Eddie face down, when he thought up his string of quick armed robberies and then fade out but needed a ton of hardware to pull them all off.

So there was always a demand, especially for guns that didn’t blow up on you when you used them, or blow up on you with a “history” (you know stolen, or from some government inventory storage, or used in some traceable criminal act if you got caught). Eddie made that mistake, once. See Eddie was supposed to give the good-housekeeping seal of approval on all the guns he sold, was to make sure that those guns had no history, had not been used before in some traceable criminal activity. That one time he got sloppy, dealt with a dealer who claimed the guns were clean (Eddie was always the “middle man” on these deals. Like George said where would Eddie get guns, clean guns on his own.). Billy Banks, the old-time bank-robber (who like the more illustrious forbear, Willy Sutton, said he did it because that was where the money was. Nice) depended on an Eddie gun, got into a squeeze with the “Feds” and found out the gun had been used in an unsolved murder. Well, Billy, who was connected from way back, was not going to be the guy who got the lesson. Our boy Eddie was. Here is how “connected” justice works though. They took Eddie’s hand (nicely giving him the choice of which one) and slammed it into a drawer-hard. So Eddie, now Eddie Fingers, had a grotesque set of knuckles on one hand ever after. Hence the moniker.                 

After that object lesson Eddie became cautious, much more cautious, for a long time. Like a lot of career guys, soldiers, he got married, had kids and so he needed a steady flow of cash and the gun trade was somewhat seasonal. So he branched out a little, worked a shipment of stolen goods up in Maine for a couple of guys, and got caught. That shipment turned out to be many, many cases of liquor, untaxed stolen liquor coming over the line from Canada. That is where George came into the story personally with Eddie. See an aging soldier with a wife and kids just can’t do the “time.” They had him solid on the heist, no question, and so Eddie seeing the writing on the wall, saw that being a stand-up guy was going to put him in nowhere land wanted to talk to one of George’s field guys, wanted to “talk to Uncle” George called the process.  And what “talking to Uncle” meant was that Eddie was ready to sell his mother to get out from under his expected two-to-five year sentence.

So Eddie made one of his life’s little compromises. Here is how that went. Eddie needing plenty of cash for family and lawyers got back into the gun-running trade while awaiting sentencing. Eddie was the broker for Jimmy Smalls’ caper like I said which needed much hardware in a short period. Eddie found his dealer, a young guy named Tiny Brown, who had serious connections to some small arms plant where they made the damn things, worked him hard, mercilessly in fact, to get the guns that were necessary for Jimmy’s series of quick bank robberies. Things went well for a while, Eddie got all the guns he needed at a decent price and plenty of dough for himself. The problem was the Feds were wired into the action (through the thoughtfulness of another snitch of course), wired in almost accidently.

In those days, back in the early 1970s, the Feds were up to their knees in trying to keep guns out of hand of black revolutionaries like the Panthers fearing some kind of race war with “whitey” getting the short end of the stick. Also as time went on and America got all crazy over Vietnam some white radicals figured they would start a “second front” in America to aid the Vietnamese revolutionaries over there and the black liberation fighters in America.  They too were looking for guns, heavy-duty M-16 kind of automatic weaponry. And Tiny was the man who could get such weaponry. So at one point on another Tiny dealt with some radicals looking for guns for the revolution at the same time as Eddie needed some quick gun turnaround. The Feds brought down Tiny, the gun-dealer with no problem. Oh yeah, with a little help from Eddie, something about machine-guns in the trunk of his car. George said Eddie’s logic was impeccable-he did not want to see his country overrun by n----rs and commies and why not throw a gun-dealer in the mix to lighten his sentence. Besides Tiny was kind of a snotty-nosed kid

Here is the funny thing about the “stoolie” business though, about when you stop being a stand-up guy. Once you give “Uncle” one thing he wants to put you on the “payroll.” Wants you to sing loud and clear in his choir. See George’s field guy went to bat for Eddie up in Maine but because he neglected to “dime” on the guys who ran the operation (“connected” guys and so you might as well cut your own throat if you brought them down as I am sure Eddie seriously thought about when he looked at his knuckles) the government guy in Maine wasn’t ready to do likewise. So our boy Eddie was going to have produce more than that one gun-dealer, like maybe give up who the guys were who organized that stolen goods shipment up in Maine. Here is where the “code of honor” goes to hell and back. The guy, or one of the guys who organized the stolen goods heist was a guy, Dixie, who ran a bar in Boston and was for his own purposes working for Uncle. And guess what Dixie was worried about. Yeah, Eddie’s problem, whether Eddie would be a stand-up guy when the deal went down.

Eddie became the classic victim of the squeeze. Jimmy’s bank robbery capers were a brilliant piece of work, a tribute to the smart side of the criminal mind (we will not discuss the morality or the sociology of the criminal actions that is for Sunday schools and seminars). Jimmy was always a quick artist guy-do a caper, or series of capers, fast then lay low for long time (meanwhile not letting the brain grow rusty by working on the mechanics of the next caper). Jimmy loved to do bank robberies, was a real pro, but he knew, or had enough  sense to know  that the old time go-in-with-guns-blazing routines from Bonnie and Clyde days would get you facedown fast. And Jimmy was looking to retire to Miami like every smart criminal who survived until retirement age.

So while Jimmy liked to be loaded up with armor he didn’t want to use the stuff, just wanted it for show unless it was necessary. So what Jimmy did first was case out say the bank manager’s house, found out the day to day workday pattern of the guy (mostly guys then) and then when he went for the jugular, went to hit the bank of choice, he held the bank manager’s family as hostages. That would keep the bank employees from getting too brave when Jimmy and his boys moved in and cleaned out the vaults.  Beautiful, except one time a bank clerk felt like a hero, foolishly pulled the bank alarm and took some slugs for his efforts and with that death the heat was on. And that is where Eddie took the fall. See Dixie put it in Uncle’s ear that Eddie was the guy who ratted out on the bank robberies, ratted out on Jimmy’s capers, that were spreading like wild-fire around Boston-using Eddie provided guns.

Here is what got Eddie doomed though, got him over to Fresh Pond. When the coppers, using information provided by a woman scorned girlfriend of Jimmy, a woman who Jimmy was using as a mule to make bank accounts, many accounts, who showed by that clever move that he was the real mastermind of those robberies, closed in for the arrests they killed one of his confederates.   A kid, a “wild boy” kid who would not have had a long career in any case, was like a young Eddie all brass and no brains, but a kid seriously connected to a local Mafia boss who treated the kid like a son. So the contract went out, the contract with one Edward Coyle’s, late of the Cambridge streets, name written all over it.

Here where things get dicey though George’s guy had told Dixie some information about Eddie that he wound up using when he “hit” Eddie, when he carried out the contract from the Mafia don. That had George scratching his head about Dixie for a while but he let it go as Eddie being one more bad guy off the streets. He would get Dixie later after he used him upon, after he squeeze like a lemon (all the guys on the stools laughed an uneasy laugh at that one). An injustice done to Eddie, sure. A bad end, sure. Honor among thieves? Ask Eddie with his face down in the well of some car seat. No, better, ask his widow. Jesus, that George sure could tell a story.                       

 

On Victor Serge

The Latest From The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

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Markin comment:

While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items it is not clear to me that this blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public may be these days.

Additional Markin comment:

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. 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.

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Friday, July 18, 2014

On Victor Serge

Richard Greeman and Ian Birchall reflect on the life and work of a great revolutionary writer

Labels: history, Marxism, Russia, socialism

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel 

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We can do this, but not without you Dear pf, I am writing to ask you to help the upcoming August 2 National March on Washington to Stop the Massacre in Gaza. This is one of those moments in history that grassroots actions can become a real factor in the calculations and policies of governments. Buses are coming to DC on August 2 from all over. People are also coming by car, car caravans, train and many are even flying to join this historic event in solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people. Each bus from New York City costs $2,400. From New Haven the cost is $2,500. From Philadelphia it is about $1,500. We are also producing materials: flyers, posters, logistical materials and more.  Volunteers are working around the clock to make this happen. There is now an amazing grassroots response as people are taking to the streets throughout the country and the world. Please do your part and make as large a contribution as possible. All contributions are tax deductible. You can make your tax-deductible donation online right now to help this mobilization of the people succeed. If you prefer to write a check you can do by making it payable to ANSWER/Progress Unity Fund and mail to 617 Florida Ave., NW, Lower Level, Washington DC 20001. Again, all donations are tax-deductible. We must continue to act together to stop the war crimes and crimes against humanity being perpetrated against our sisters and brothers in Gaza by the Israeli war machine. We, the people of the United States, will stand together on August 2 in front of the White House and demand an end to all U.S. aid to Israel. Please take a moment and show your support. Let Gaza Live! Brian Becker National Coordinator ANSWER Coalition

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/ info@AnswerCoalition.org National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948 Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311 San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-687-7480 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488 If this message was forwarded to you and you'd like to receive future ANSWER updates, click here to subscribe. Having trouble viewing this message? Click here.

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Get on the bus from Boston #2DC4Gaza National March on the White House: End the Siege & Blockade on Gaza! FREE PALESTINE! CLICK HERE TO BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW! Depart Boston: Fri, Aug. 1 at 11pm Depart Washington D.C.: Sat., Aug 2 at 5pm Tickets are $50 per seat to cover the cost of the bus rental.  Please consider buying at the solidarity price of $65 per seat.  We are raising funds to help subsidize youth, students and others who cannot afford the full price. If you want to attend but cannot afford the full price, please call (857) 334-5084 or email boston@answercoalition.org.  Let us know if you have any questions or concerns about the trip. Can't attend? Contact us to see how you can sponsor a seat! The atrocities committed by the Israeli regime keep piling up in Gaza. Over 70 people were murdered by relentless Israeli artillery fire in just one neighborhood alone, al-Shujayeh, and the bombings of hospitals and schools take place on a daily basis.  Over 700 Palestinians have been killed, including entire families, with thousands more injured and displaced. In response to this ongoing massacre, a broad coalition of anti-war, Muslim and Arab-American groups have joined together to organize a national march on the White House on August 2.  Click here to read the call to action and list of co-sponsors. Every day, people across the United States are pouring into the streets to show their outrage at the ongoing Israeli massacre in Gaza. In many cities, these demonstrations are taking place on a near-daily basis – and are growing. Protests have been attended by many thousands in Boston, New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco. While the U.S. government continues to shamefully offer unqualified support for the brutal Israeli regime, the people of the United States are making it clear that public opinion is sharply turning against this long-standing policy. The emerging movement that has brought so many people into the streets in local actions will now converge to illustrate the massive opposition among the American public to Israel’s new war and U.S. support for their atrocities. Join us!

All out: National march on Washington Saturday, Aug. 2! The destruction of a civilian shelter Dear pf, Just when you think that war crimes committed against the people of Gaza can't get worse, the Israeli military goes even further in their barbaric assault. Yesterday, Israel told civilians who sought shelter in the well-known United Nations School in Gaza to leave the compound. When moms and dads hustled their children out of the shelter into an open courtyard to evacuate to another site, they were mercilessly pounded by bombs and missiles. Two hundred people were wounded and 16 were immediately killed. Here's a report from the U.K's Guardian newspaper today (July 25): “Nour Hamid, 17, said: "We were packing up to leave when the attack happened. We were standing outside when they started hitting us, some of the women holding their babies. My sister-in-law was one of the injured. There were bodies everywhere, most of them women and children." “Laila al-Shinbari told Reuters: "All of us sat in one place when suddenly four shells landed on our heads … Bodies were on the ground, [there was] blood and screams. My son is dead and all my relatives are wounded including my other kids." “Ayman Hamdan, medical director at Beit Hanoun hospital, told the Guardian that medical staff were treating multiple shrapnel injuries and damage to internal organs, "Some of the bodies were blown apart. Such a massacre requires more than one hospital to deal with it," she said. “More than 140,000 Palestinians have sought shelter in UN premises during the conflict. Several schools run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, have come under fire in the last week. On Tuesday a school in Maghazi, central Gaza, sheltering about 1,000 people, was hit by Israeli shells as an UNRWA team inspected damage caused by an earlier strike.” The people of this country are mobilizing for the Saturday, August 2 National March on Washington D.C. People are coming by bus, cars, car caravans, trains and planes. Bring your friends and family. We can make a difference. Please make an urgently needed donation to help us pay for the buses and all the other expenses. We can do this with you, but not without you. The world is standing together for Palestine! Brian Becker National Coordinator ANSWER Coalition

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/ info@AnswerCoalition.org National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948 Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311 San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-687-7480 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488 If this message was forwarded to you and you'd like to receive future ANSWER updates, click here to subscribe. Having trouble viewing this message? Click here.

Defend The Cuban Five-Defend The Cuban Revolution!

Workers Vanguard No. 978
15 April 2011

April 1961

Bay of Pigs: Cuban Revolution Defeated U.S.-Backed Invasion
This month we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the defeat of the CIA-organized Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) invasion of Cuba, an attempt to overturn the social revolution that overthrew capitalism in 1960. The attack, launched on 17 April 1961 by counterrevolutionaries and mercenary ground troops using U.S.-equipped bombers, amphibious assault ships and tanks, was defeated within three days by heroic Cuban fighters. The social composition of the invading forces, documented by Cuban authorities, was revealing: 100 plantation owners, 67 landlords, 35 factory owners, 112 businessmen, 179 people living off unearned income, 194 former soldiers of the Batista dictatorship that had been overthrown by Castro’s guerrilla forces.

The Bay of Pigs operation was ordered by Democratic president John F. Kennedy at the beginning of his term as Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism. JFK never forgave the CIA for the fiasco, whose planning had been authorized by the Republican Eisenhower administration a year earlier. Kennedy went on to tighten the U.S. embargo of Cuba and put his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in charge of “Operation Mongoose”—a campaign of sabotage, destabilization and terror mobilizing the CIA and a range of government departments. The operation included repeated assassination plots against Castro and massive funding for a spy base in Miami involving Cuban counterrevolutionary gusanos (worms) and Mafiosi. In the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy took the world to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet nuclear missiles that were placed in Cuba, although later pulled out.

The intrigues and assassination attempts continued under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Last week, an El Paso federal court acquitted 83-year-old Cuban CIA-operative Luis Posada Carriles, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs, of charges of lying at an immigration hearing. This assassin is wanted by both Cuba and Hugo Chávez’s populist capitalist government in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner, which killed all 73 people aboard, and for masterminding hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded 12 other people. The Feds prosecuted Posada Carriles on immigration charges as a way to circumvent extradition attempts by Venezuela. We say: Extradite Posada Carriles to Cuba!

Although under the rule of a nationalist Stalinist bureaucracy, the workers and peasants of Cuba have gained enormously from the overthrow of capitalist rule on the island. When Castro’s petty-bourgeois guerrilla forces marched into Havana in January 1959, the army and the rest of the capitalist state apparatus of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship shattered. The new government had to confront U.S. imperialism’s mounting attempts to bring it to heel through economic pressure. When Eisenhower sought to lower the U.S. quota for Cuban sugar in January 1960, Castro signed an agreement to sell one million tons yearly to the Soviet Union. Refusal by imperialist-owned oil refineries to process Russian crude led to the nationalization of U.S.-owned properties in Cuba in August 1960, including sugar mills, oil companies, and the power and telephone companies. By October of that year, 80 percent of the country’s industry had been nationalized. Cuba became a deformed workers state with these pervasive nationalizations, which liquidated the bourgeoisie as a class.

The elimination of production for profit and the introduction of a semblance of centralized planning on the island provided jobs, housing and education for everyone. To this day, Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world and a renowned health care system, with more teachers and doctors per capita than anywhere else. Infant mortality is lower than in the U.S., the European Union and Canada. We stand for the unconditional military defense of the Cuban deformed workers state while calling for proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy, whose nationalist program of “socialism in one country” is an obstacle to the necessary extension of socialist revolution to the Latin American mainland and, crucially, to the U.S. imperialist heartland.

The fight to defend and extend the Cuban Revolution has been a hallmark of our tendency from its inception as the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Against the SWP majority, which equated the Castro regime with the revolutionary Bolshevik government of Lenin and Trotsky, the RT fought for the understanding that Cuba had become a bureaucratically deformed workers state. Indeed, following the Bay of Pigs, the Castro regime tightened its political grip on the country. The Trotskyist press was suppressed, key labor leaders were replaced by Stalinist hacks, a one-party system was instituted, etc. The RT upheld the need to build Leninist-Trotskyist parties in Cuba and in the U.S., where the SWP majority was increasingly abandoning a revolutionary perspective, instead tailing Castroism and black nationalism.

Based on our analysis of the Cuban Revolution, the SL was able to extend Marxist theory to encompass how bureaucratically deformed workers states were created (see Marxist Bulletin No. 8, “Cuba and Marxist Theory”). In Cuba, a petty-bourgeois movement under exceptional circumstances—the absence of the working class as a contender for social power in its own right, the flight of the national bourgeoisie, hostile imperialist encirclement, a lifeline thrown by the Soviet Union—was able to eventually smash capitalist property relations. But Castroism (like other peasant-based guerrilla movements) could not bring the working class to political power. As stated in the International Communist League’s “Declaration of Principles and Some Elements of Program”:

“Under the most favorable historic circumstances conceivable, the petty-bourgeois peasantry was only capable of creating a bureaucratically deformed workers state, that is, a state of the same order as that issuing out of the political counterrevolution of Stalin in the Soviet Union, an anti-working-class regime which blocked the possibilities to extend social revolution into Latin America and North America, and suppressed Cuba’s further development in the direction of socialism. To place the working class in political power and open the road to socialist development requires a supplemental political revolution led by a Trotskyist party.”

The Soviet Union, which provided Cuba with crucial military support and economic aid, is no more, destroyed in 1991-92 by capitalist counterrevolution after decades of Stalinist misrule and imperialist pressure. The Cuban economy has suffered massively in the aftermath, although not evenly and uniformly. While the predominant section of the U.S. capitalist ruling class seeks to keep a stranglehold on the island through the trade embargo, some elements seek to relax the embargo along with Cuba’s diplomatic isolation from the U.S., seeing this as a more effective means of subverting the gains of the revolution. Meanwhile, Cuba remains in the imperialists’ military crosshairs, a fact that its people are reminded of every day by the presence of the U.S. naval base (and detention-torture center) at Guantánamo Bay. U.S. out of Guantánamo Bay now! Our defense of the Cuban deformed workers state against the class enemy is an integral part of our program for the overthrow of bloody U.S. imperialism through proletarian revolution here, in the “belly of the beast.”
*****
On The 50th Anniversary- Honor The Heroic Cuban Defenders At The Bay Of Pigs-Defend The Cuban Revolution!


Markin comment:

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s, especially those of us who cut our political teeth on defending, under one principle or another (right to national self-determination, socialist solidarity, general anti-imperialist agenda, etc.), the Cuban revolution that we were front row television witnesses to, cherish the memory of the heroic Cuban defenders at the Bay of Pigs. No one cried when the American imperial adventure was foiled and President John Kennedy (whatever else we felt about him then), egg on face, had to take responsibility for the fiasco.

Those of us who continue to adhere to the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist agenda, whatever our differences with the Cuban leadership, today can join in honoring those heroic fighters. Today is also a day to face the hard fact that we have had too few victories against the imperialist behemoth. The imperial defeat at the Bay of Pigs was however our victory. As today’s imperialist activity in Libya, painfully, testifies to those forces, however, have not gotten weaker in the past 50 years. So the lesson for today’s (and future) young militants is to honor our fallen forebears and realize that the beast can be defeated, if you are willing to fight it. Forward! Defend the Cuban Revolution! Defend Libya against the imperialist onslaught!