Hands Off Edward Snowden! Free Chelsea Manning!

'Washington Post' accuses Snowden of aiding Al Qaeda
by Tom Carter	07 Aug 2014
From: World Socialist Web Site - 7 August 2014 The US media campaign to smear National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden continues. On August 3, an article appeared in the Washington Post entitled, “As evidence mounts, it’s getting harder to defend Edward Snowden.” Authored by Stewart Baker, the article claims that Snowden’s disclosures aided Al Qaeda. Specifically, Baker writes that a study by a company called Recorded Future proves that “Snowden’s revelations about NSA’s capabilities were followed quickly by a burst of new, robust encryption tools from Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” “This is hardly a surprise for those who live in the real world,” Baker continues. “But it was an affront to Snowden’s defenders, who’ve long insisted that journalists handled the NSA leaks so responsibly that no one can identify any damage that they have caused.” The article goes on to denounce at length cyber security expert Bruce Schneier, who defended Snowden against the charge that his disclosures aided Al Qaeda. On June 11, 2013, Schneier wrote in the New York Times: “The argument that exposing these documents helps the terrorists doesn’t even pass the laugh test; there’s nothing here that changes anything any potential terrorist would do or not do.” Baker’s “mounting evidence” that Snowden’s disclosures helped Al Qaeda consists of a single “study,” released in May of this year, by Recorded Future, a start-up company that produces online data-mining software that it calls “web intelligence.” The company advertises its “capabilities” in “cyber threat intelligence,” “corporate security,” “competitive intelligence” and “defense intelligence.” The study itself, if it is accurate, simply indicates that in the period after Snowden’s disclosures, various Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda, apparently began using three types of encryption software that had not been previously used. Before Snowden’s disclosures, these groups had already implemented two types of encryption software. “Of course, this could be random, but it seems unlikely,” wrote Christopher Ahlberg, CEO of Recorded Future, in an email to the New York Times. Despite its flimsy factual foundations, the allegation that Snowden’s disclosures have aided Al Qaeda continues to echo throughout the establishment media. In any event, whether or not Snowden’s revelations of government crimes against the US Constitution and the American people tipped off Al Qaeda is beside the point. The clear implication of Baker’s argument, which is echoed by virtually all intelligence officials, politicians and media pundits who attack Snowden, is that, in the interests of a supposed “war on terror,” the Bill of Rights should be scrapped and some form of dictatorship established. In his article, Baker conceals his own background and bias from his readers. What he does not tell his readers—but what one can learn by visiting Wikipedia—is that Baker is a former general counsel of the National Security Agency (1992–1994). He has held various other positions over the years within the military-intelligence apparatus, and was appointed by George W. Bush as assistant secretary to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security. As far as his accusations that Snowden helped Al Qaeda are concerned, the word “hypocrisy” does not seem strong enough. Snowden is being denounced for aiding Al Qaeda on behalf of a political establishment that, in fact, has a long history of providing weapons, finances, and intelligence to Al Qaeda and its affiliates throughout the world. In the Syrian civil war, stoked up by Washington, the CIA has operated training camps for Al Qaeda-linked fighters in Turkey and Jordan. Through these countries, the US has funneled weapons and finances to the Islamist fighters (see: ISIS: The jihadist movement stamped “Made in America”). Thanks to the American “war on terror,” Al Qaeda offshoot ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has established its own sectarian state purporting to be a caliphate stretching across vast swathes of western Iraq and eastern Syria. If supporting Al Qaeda is a crime, then it is necessary to prosecute not Snowden, but tens of thousands of personnel within the American military-corporate-intelligence complex, beginning with those who helped organize Al Qaeda in the 1980s during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, all the way through to those who built up Al Qaeda and its affiliated forces in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in recent years. The “study” itself proves nothing. There is absolutely no evidence that Snowden directly or indirectly assisted Al Qaeda in any way. The study merely purports to show that a list of groups (not limited to Al Qaeda) began using different encryption methods in the time period after Snowden’s revelations. The accusation that Snowden “aided Al Qaeda” mirrors the “aiding the enemy” charges against Bradley Manning (see: US government charges Manning with “aiding the enemy” in court martial). Baker’s article is evidence that this bogus theory would be invoked against Snowden, should he ever find himself in the clutches of the American judicial system. The media campaign to confuse the issues surrounding Snowden’s disclosures is acquiring a note of hysteria and desperation. The claim that Snowden is growing “harder to defend” turns reality on its head. In fact, it is the US military and intelligence apparatus, caught in countless lies and violations of law, that is being exposed as a criminal operation. Snowden continues to enjoy broad support throughout the world. The statement that Snowden is “harder to defend” comes on the heels of revelations, derived from documents disclosed by Snowden, concerning the close intelligence relationship between the United States and Israel (see: New Snowden leak highlights collaboration between NSA and Israeli intelligence). In addition, Glenn Greenwald reported this week that over 40 percent of the 680,000 people on the US government’s “Terrorist Screening Database” have “no recognized terrorist affiliation” (see: US terror list ensnares hundreds of thousands). The online comments on Baker’s article are overwhelmingly hostile. One commenter observes that Baker’s article “is obviously just propaganda designed to defend his criminal gang that is still running the government today.” Documents disclosed to journalists in May of last year by Edward Snowden exposed a massive conspiracy on the part of the National Security Agency against the US Constitution and against the world’s population. Snowden lifted the lid on unrestrained and illegal mass surveillance, caught president Obama and senior officials in lies, and exposed the so-called “war on terror” as a fraud. In doing so, he performed an invaluable service to working people in the US and around the world. While the American political establishment and media claimed that its spying activities were limited to terrorist groups seeking to harm ordinary Americans, Snowden revealed that the NSA’s own “collection procedure” is: “Collect it All,” “Process it All,” “Exploit it All,” “Partner it All,” “Sniff it All,” and “Know it All.” Snowden exposed as a lie Obama’s claim that “nobody is listening to your phone calls.” Snowden also revealed that Director of National Security James Clapper had committed perjury while testifying under oath before Congress. Clapper was asked, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” He replied, “No, sir.” In the upside-down world of establishment America, it is Snowden (who became trapped in Russia when the US unilaterally revoked his passport) who is being hounded and threatened with prosecution. The actual criminals that Snowden exposed remain at large. On August 5, a watchdog computer program that monitors the activity of the Internet addresses on Capitol Hill caught someone with an anonymous address in the US House of Representatives editing Wikipedia to smear Snowden. A Wikipedia article was edited to refer to Snowden as “the American traitor who defected to Russia.” http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/07/snow-a07.html

Hiroshima Day 2014 - Noam Chomsky
by Noam Chomsky	06 Aug 2014
Why National Security Has Nothing to Do With Security
Click on image for a larger version
Noam Chomsky and Tom Engelhardt, August 06, 2014 Think of it as the true end of the beginning. Last week, Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the final member of the 12-man crew of the Enola Gay, the plane (named after its pilot’s supportive mother) that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died at age 93. When that first A-bomb left its bomb bay at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, and began its descent toward its target, the Aioli (“Live Together”) Bridge, it was inscribed with a series of American messages, some obscene, including “Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis.” (That ship had delivered to the Pacific island of Tinian parts of the very bomb that would turn Hiroshima into an inferno of smoke and fire – “that awful cloud,” Paul Tibbetts, Jr., the Enola Gay’s pilot, would call it – and afterward was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine with the loss of hundreds of sailors.) The bomb, dubbed Little Boy, that had gestated in the belly of the Enola Gay represented not only the near endpoint of a bitter global war of almost unimaginable destruction, but the birthing of something new. The way for its use had been paved by an evolution in warfare: the increasing targeting of civilian populations from the air (something that can be seen again today in the carnage of Gaza). The history of that grim development extends from German airship bombings of London (1915) by way of Guernica (1937), Shanghai (1937), and Coventry (1940), to the fire bombings of Dresden (1945) and Tokyo (1945) in the last year of World War II. It even had an evolutionary history in the human imagination, where for decades writers (among others) had dreamed of the unparalleled release of previously unknown forms of energy for military purposes. On August 7, 1945, a previous age was ending and a new one was dawning. In the nuclear era, city-busting weapons would be a dime a dozen and would spread from the superpowers to many other countries, including Great Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Targeted by the planet’s major nuclear arsenals would be the civilian inhabitants not just of single cities but of scores and scores of cities, even of the planet itself. On August 6th, 70 years ago, the possibility of the apocalypse passed out of the hands of God or the gods and into human hands, which meant a new kind of history had begun whose endpoint is unknowable, though we do know that even a “modest” exchange of nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan would not only devastate South Asia, but thanks to the phenomenon of nuclear winter also cause widespread famine on a planetary scale. In other words, 70 years later, the apocalypse is us. Yet in the United States, the only nuclear bomb you’re likely to read about is Iran’s (even though that country possesses no such weapon). For a serious discussion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, those more than 4,800 increasingly ill-kept weapons that could incinerate several Earth-sized planets, you need to look not to the country’s major newspapers or news programs but to comic John Oliver – or TomDispatch regular Noam Chomsky. ~ Tom How Many Minutes to Midnight? By Noam Chomsky If some extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of Homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NWE (the nuclear weapons era). The latter era, of course, opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but – so the evidence suggests – not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts. Day one of the NWE was marked by the “success” of Little Boy, a simple atomic bomb. On day four, Nagasaki experienced the technological triumph of Fat Man, a more sophisticated design. Five days later came what the official Air Force history calls the “grand finale,” a 1,000-plane raid – no mean logistical achievement – attacking Japan’s cities and killing many thousands of people, with leaflets falling among the bombs reading “Japan has surrendered.” Truman announced that surrender before the last B-29 returned to its base. Those were the auspicious opening days of the NWE. As we now enter its 70th year, we should be contemplating with wonder that we have survived. We can only guess how many years remain. Some reflections on these grim prospects were offered by General Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controls nuclear weapons and strategy. Twenty years ago, he wrote that we had so far survived the NWE “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” Reflecting on his long career in developing nuclear weapons strategies and organizing the forces to implement them efficiently, he described himself ruefully as having been “among the most avid of these keepers of the faith in nuclear weapons.” But, he continued, he had come to realize that it was now his “burden to declare with all of the conviction I can muster that in my judgment they served us extremely ill.” And he asked, “By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear-weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestations?” He termed the U.S. strategic plan of 1960 that called for an automated all-out strike on the Communist world “the single most absurd and irresponsible document I have ever reviewed in my life.” Its Soviet counterpart was probably even more insane. But it is important to bear in mind that there are competitors, not least among them the easy acceptance of extraordinary threats to survival. Survival in the Early Cold War Years According to received doctrine in scholarship and general intellectual discourse, the prime goal of state policy is “national security.” There is ample evidence, however, that the doctrine of national security does not encompass the security of the population. The record reveals that, for instance, the threat of instant destruction by nuclear weapons has not ranked high among the concerns of planners. That much was demonstrated early on, and remains true to the present moment. In the early days of the NWE, the U.S. was overwhelmingly powerful and enjoyed remarkable security: it controlled the hemisphere, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the opposite sides of those oceans as well. Long before World War II, it had already become by far the richest country in the world, with incomparable advantages. Its economy boomed during the war, while other industrial societies were devastated or severely weakened. By the opening of the new era, the U.S. possessed about half of total world wealth and an even greater percentage of its manufacturing capacity. There was, however, a potential threat: intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. That threat was discussed in the standard scholarly study of nuclear policies, carried out with access to high-level sources – Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years by McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies. Bundy wrote that “the timely development of ballistic missiles during the Eisenhower administration is one of the best achievements of those eight years. Yet it is well to begin with a recognition that both the United States and the Soviet Union might be in much less nuclear danger today if [those] missiles had never been developed.” He then added an instructive comment: “I am aware of no serious contemporary proposal, in or out of either government, that ballistic missiles should somehow be banned by agreement.” In short, there was apparently no thought of trying to prevent the sole serious threat to the U.S., the threat of utter destruction in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Could that threat have been taken off the table? We cannot, of course, be sure, but it was hardly inconceivable. The Russians, far behind in industrial development and technological sophistication, were in a far more threatening environment. Hence, they were significantly more vulnerable to such weapons systems than the U.S. There might have been opportunities to explore these possibilities, but in the extraordinary hysteria of the day they could hardly have even been perceived. And that hysteria was indeed extraordinary. An examination of the rhetoric of central official documents of that moment like National Security Council Paper NSC-68 remains quite shocking, even discounting Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s injunction that it is necessary to be “clearer than truth.” One indication of possible opportunities to blunt the threat was a remarkable proposal by Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin in 1952, offering to allow Germany to be unified with free elections on the condition that it would not then join a hostile military alliance. That was hardly an extreme condition in light of the history of the past half-century during which Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia twice, exacting a terrible toll. Stalin’s proposal was taken seriously by the respected political commentator James Warburg, but otherwise mostly ignored or ridiculed at the time. Recent scholarship has begun to take a different view. The bitterly anti-Communist Soviet scholar Adam Ulam has taken the status of Stalin’s proposal to be an “unresolved mystery.” Washington “wasted little effort in flatly rejecting Moscow’s initiative,” he has written, on grounds that “were embarrassingly unconvincing.” The political, scholarly, and general intellectual failure left open “the basic question,” Ulam added: “Was Stalin genuinely ready to sacrifice the newly created German Democratic Republic (GDR) on the altar of real democracy,” with consequences for world peace and for American security that could have been enormous? Reviewing recent research in Soviet archives, one of the most respected Cold War scholars, Melvyn Leffler, has observed that many scholars were surprised to discover “[Lavrenti] Beria – the sinister, brutal head of the [Russian] secret police – propos[ed] that the Kremlin offer the West a deal on the unification and neutralization of Germany,” agreeing “to sacrifice the East German communist regime to reduce East-West tensions” and improve internal political and economic conditions in Russia – opportunities that were squandered in favor of securing German participation in NATO. Under the circumstances, it is not impossible that agreements might then have been reached that would have protected the security of the American population from the gravest threat on the horizon. But that possibility apparently was not considered, a striking indication of how slight a role authentic security plays in state policy. The Cuban Missile Crisis and Beyond That conclusion was underscored repeatedly in the years that followed. When Nikita Khrushchev took control in Russia in 1953 after Stalin’s death, he recognized that the USSR could not compete militarily with the U.S., the richest and most powerful country in history, with incomparable advantages. If it ever hoped to escape its economic backwardness and the devastating effect of the last world war, it would need to reverse the arms race. Accordingly, Khrushchev proposed sharp mutual reductions in offensive weapons. The incoming Kennedy administration considered the offer and rejected it, instead turning to rapid military expansion, even though it was already far in the lead. The late Kenneth Waltz, supported by other strategic analysts with close connections to U.S. intelligence, wrote then that the Kennedy administration “undertook the largest strategic and conventional peace-time military build-up the world has yet seen… even as Khrushchev was trying at once to carry through a major reduction in the conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence, and we did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States.” Again, harming national security while enhancing state power. U.S. intelligence verified that huge cuts had indeed been made in active Soviet military forces, both in terms of aircraft and manpower. In 1963, Khrushchev again called for new reductions. As a gesture, he withdrew troops from East Germany and called on Washington to reciprocate. That call, too, was rejected. William Kaufmann, a former top Pentagon aide and leading analyst of security issues, described the U.S. failure to respond to Khrushchev’s initiatives as, in career terms, “the one regret I have.” The Soviet reaction to the U.S. build-up of those years was to place nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962 to try to redress the balance at least slightly. The move was also motivated in part by Kennedy’s terrorist campaign against Fidel Castro’s Cuba, which was scheduled to lead to invasion that very month, as Russia and Cuba may have known. The ensuing “missile crisis” was “the most dangerous moment in history,” in the words of historian Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy’s adviser and confidant. As the crisis peaked in late October, Kennedy received a secret letter from Khrushchev offering to end it by simultaneous public withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The latter were obsolete missiles, already ordered withdrawn by the Kennedy administration because they were being replaced by far more lethal Polaris submarines to be stationed in the Mediterranean. Kennedy’s subjective estimate at that moment was that if he refused the Soviet premier’s offer, there was a 33% to 50% probability of nuclear war – a war that, as President Eisenhower had warned, would have destroyed the northern hemisphere. Kennedy nonetheless refused Khrushchev’s proposal for public withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba and Turkey; only the withdrawal from Cuba could be public, so as to protect the U.S. right to place missiles on Russia’s borders or anywhere else it chose. It is hard to think of a more horrendous decision in history – and for this, he is still highly praised for his cool courage and statesmanship. Ten years later, in the last days of the 1973 Israel-Arab war, Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser to President Nixon, called a nuclear alert. The purpose was to warn the Russians not to interfere with his delicate diplomatic maneuvers designed to ensure an Israeli victory, but of a limited sort so that the U.S. would still be in control of the region unilaterally. And the maneuvers were indeed delicate. The U.S. and Russia had jointly imposed a cease-fire, but Kissinger secretly informed the Israelis that they could ignore it. Hence the need for the nuclear alert to frighten the Russians away. The security of Americans had its usual status. Ten years later, the Reagan administration launched operations to probe Russian air defenses by simulating air and naval attacks and a high-level nuclear alert that the Russians were intended to detect. These actions were undertaken at a very tense moment. Washington was deploying Pershing II strategic missiles in Europe with a five-minute flight time to Moscow. President Reagan had also announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) program, which the Russians understood to be effectively a first-strike weapon, a standard interpretation of missile defense on all sides. And other tensions were rising. Naturally, these actions caused great alarm in Russia, which, unlike the U.S., was quite vulnerable and had repeatedly been invaded and virtually destroyed. That led to a major war scare in 1983. Newly released archives reveal that the danger was even more severe than historians had previously assumed. A CIA study entitled “The War Scare Was for Real” concluded that U.S. intelligence may have underestimated Russian concerns and the threat of a Russian preventative nuclear strike. The exercises “almost became a prelude to a preventative nuclear strike,” according to an account in the Journal of Strategic Studies. It was even more dangerous than that, as we learned last September, when the BBC reported that right in the midst of these world-threatening developments, Russia’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States, sending its nuclear system onto the highest-level alert. The protocol for the Soviet military was to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own. Fortunately, the officer on duty, Stanislav Petrov, decided to disobey orders and not report the warnings to his superiors. He received an official reprimand. And thanks to his dereliction of duty, we’re still alive to talk about it. The security of the population was no more a high priority for Reagan administration planners than for their predecessors. And so it continues to the present, even putting aside the numerous near-catastrophic nuclear accidents that occurred over the years, many reviewed in Eric Schlosser’s chilling study Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. In other words, it is hard to contest General Butler’s conclusions. Survival in the Post-Cold War Era The record of post-Cold War actions and doctrines is hardly reassuring either. Every self-respecting president has to have a doctrine. The Clinton Doctrine was encapsulated in the slogan “multilateral when we can, unilateral when we must.” In congressional testimony, the phrase “when we must” was explained more fully: the U.S. is entitled to resort to “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.” Meanwhile, STRATCOM in the Clinton era produced an important study entitled “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” issued well after the Soviet Union had collapsed and Clinton was extending President George H.W. Bush’s program of expanding NATO to the east in violation of promises to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev – with reverberations to the present. That STRATCOM study was concerned with “the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era.” A central conclusion: that the U.S. must maintain the right to launch a first strike, even against non-nuclear states. Furthermore, nuclear weapons must always be at the ready because they “cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict.” They were, that is, constantly being used, just as you’re using a gun if you aim but don’t fire one while robbing a store (a point that Daniel Ellsberg has repeatedly stressed). STRATCOM went on to advise that “planners should not be too rational about determining… what the opponent values the most.” Everything should simply be targeted. “[I]t hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed… That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project.” It is “beneficial [for our strategic posture] if some elements may appear to be potentially ‘out of control,’” thus posing a constant threat of nuclear attack – a severe violation of the U.N. Charter, if anyone cares. Not much here about the noble goals constantly proclaimed – or for that matter the obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to make “good faith” efforts to eliminate this scourge of the earth. What resounds, rather, is an adaptation of Hilaire Belloc’s famous couplet about the Maxim gun (to quote the great African historian Chinweizu): “Whatever happens, we have got, The Atom Bomb, and they have not.” After Clinton came, of course, George W. Bush, whose broad endorsement of preventative war easily encompassed Japan’s attack in December 1941 on military bases in two U.S. overseas possessions, at a time when Japanese militarists were well aware that B-17 Flying Fortresses were being rushed off assembly lines and deployed to those bases with the intent “to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu.” That was how the prewar plans were described by their architect, Air Force General Claire Chennault, with the enthusiastic approval of President Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall. Then comes Barack Obama, with pleasant words about working to abolish nuclear weapons – combined with plans to spend $1 trillion on the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the next 30 years, a percentage of the military budget “comparable to spending for procurement of new strategic systems in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan,” according to a study by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Obama has also not hesitated to play with fire for political gain. Take for example the capture and assassination of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs. Obama brought it up with pride in an important speech on national security in May 2013. It was widely covered, but one crucial paragraph was ignored. Obama hailed the operation but added that it could not be the norm. The reason, he said, was that the risks “were immense.” The SEALs might have been “embroiled in an extended firefight.” Even though, by luck, that didn’t happen, “the cost to our relationship with Pakistan and the backlash among the Pakistani public over encroachment on their territory was… severe.” Let us now add a few details. The SEALs were ordered to fight their way out if apprehended. They would not have been left to their fate if “embroiled in an extended firefight.” The full force of the U.S. military would have been used to extricate them. Pakistan has a powerful, well-trained military, highly protective of state sovereignty. It also has nuclear weapons, and Pakistani specialists are concerned about the possible penetration of their nuclear security system by jihadi elements. It is also no secret that the population has been embittered and radicalized by Washington’s drone terror campaign and other policies. While the SEALs were still in the bin Laden compound, Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was informed of the raid and ordered the military “to confront any unidentified aircraft,” which he assumed would be from India. Meanwhile in Kabul, U.S. war commander General David Petraeus ordered “warplanes to respond” if the Pakistanis “scrambled their fighter jets.” As Obama said, by luck the worst didn’t happen, though it could have been quite ugly. But the risks were faced without noticeable concern. Or subsequent comment. As General Butler observed, it is a near miracle that we have escaped destruction so far, and the longer we tempt fate, the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to perpetuate the miracle. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2014/08/05/hiroshima-day-2014/

In The 74^th Anniversary Year Of The Assassination Of Great Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky A Tribute- DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED-THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1929-1940

 

BOOK REVIEW

 

If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20^th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s internal political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.

To set the framework for these reviews I will give a little personal, political and organizational sketch of the period under discussion. After that I will highlight some of the writings from each volume that are of continuing interest. Reviewing such compilations is a little hard to get a handle on as compared to single subject volumes of Trotsky’s writing but, hopefully, they will give the reader a sense of the range of this important revolutionary’s writings.

After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can count easily, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to naught. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.
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In Honor Of Leon Trotsky On The 74^th Anniversary Of His Death- To Those Born After-Ivan Smirnov’s Journey

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Ivan Smirnov came out of old Odessa town, came out of the Ukraine (not just plain Ukraine like now but “the” then), the good black earth breadbasket of Russian Empire, well before the turn of the 20^th century (having started life on some Mister’s farm begotten by illiterate but worthy and hard-working peasant parents who were not sure whether it was 1880 or 1881 and Mister did not keep very good records up in the manor house) although he was strictly a 20^th century man by habits and inclinations. Fashioned himself a man of the times, as he knew it, by developing habits favored by those who liked to consider themselves modern. Those habits included a love of reading, a love of and for the hard-pressed peoples facing the jack-boot (like his struggling never- get-ahead parents) under the Czar’s vicious rule, an abiding hatred for that same Czar, a hunger to see the world or to see something more than wheat fields, and a love of politics, what little expression that love could take even for a modern man stuck in a backward country. 

Of course Ivan Smirnov, a giant of a man, well over six feet, more like six, two, well-build, solid, fairly muscular, with the Russian dark eyes and hair to match, when he came of age also loved good food when he had the money for such luxuries, loved to drink shots of straight vodka in competition with his pals, and loved women, and women loved him. It is those appetites in need of whetting that consumed his young manhood, his time in Odessa before he signed on to the Czar’s navy to see the world, or at least  brush the dust of farmland Ukraine and provincial Odessa off his shoes as the old saying went. Those loves trumped for a time his people love (except helping out his parents with his wages), his love of liberty but as we follow Ivan on his travels we will come to see that those personal loves collided more and more with those larger loves. 

So as we pick up the heart, the coming of age, coming of political age, Ivan Smirnov story, he was no kid, had been around the block a few times. Had taken his knocks on the land of his parents (really Mister’s land once the taxes, rents, and dues were taken out) when he tried to organize, well, not really organize but just put a petition of grievances, including the elimination of rack-rents to Mister which was rejected out of hand and which forced him off the land. Forced him off under threat to his life. He never forgot that slight, never. Never forgot it was Mister and his kind that took him away from home, split his family up. So off he went to the city, and from there to the Black Sea Fleet and adventure, or rather tedium mixed with adventure and plenty of time to read.

Ivan also learned up close the why and wherefores of modern warfare, modern naval warfare. Knew too that come some minor confrontation the Czar’s navy was cooked.  As things worked out Ivan had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game). And so Ivan came of war age and political age all at once.

More importantly after that debacle he applied for, and had been granted a transfer into in the Baltic fleet, the Czar’s jewel and defending of citadel Saint Petersburg, headquartered at later famous Kronstadt  when the revolution of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. Most seaman had gone over the rebels or stood on the sidelines, the officers mainly played possum with the Czar. He had gone wholehearted with rebels and while he did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over. That was where his love of reading from an early age came in, came and made him aware of the boiling kettle of political groupings trying to save Russia or to save what some class or part of a class had an interest in saving Russia for their own purposes. He knew, knew from his dismal experience on the land, that Mister fully intended to keep what was his come hell or high water. He also knew that Mister’s people, the peasantry like his family would have a very hard time, a very hard time indeed bucking Mister’s interests and proclaiming their own right to the land all by themselves. Hadn’t he also been burned, been hunted over a simple petition.

So Ivan from the first dismissed the Social Revolutionary factions and gave some thought to joining the Social Democrats. Of course being Russians who would argue over anything from how many angels could fit on the head of a needle to theories of capitalist surplus value that party organization had split into two factions (maybe more when the dust settled). When word came back from Europe he had sided with the Mensheviks and their more realistic approach to what was possible for Russia in the early 20^th century. That basic idea of a bourgeois democratic republic was the central notion that Ivan Smirnov held for a while, a long while, and which he took in with him once things got hot in Saint Petersburg in January of 1905.       

That January after the Czar’s troops, his elite bloody Cossack troops in the lead, fired on (and sabre-slashed) an unarmed procession led by a priest, damn a Russian Orthodox priest, a people’s priest who led the icon-filled procession to petition the Czar to resolve grievances, great and small, Ivan Smirnov, stationed out in the Baltic Fleet then after the reorganization of the navy in the wake of the defeat by the Japanese the year before had an intellectual crisis. He knew that great things were going to unfold in Russia as it moved into the modern age. He could see the modern age tied to the ancient agrarian age every time he had leave and headed for Saint Petersburg with its sailors’ delights of which Ivan usually took his full measure. He could see in the city within a city, the Vyborg district, the growing working-class district made up of fresh recruits from the farms looking for higher wages, some excitement and a future.

That was why he had discarded the Social Revolutionaries so quickly when in an earlier generation he might very well have been a member of People’s Will or some such organization. No, his intellectual crisis did not come from that quarter but rather that split in the workers’ party which had happened in 1903 far from Russia among the émigré intellectuals around who was a party member. He had sided with the “softs,” the Mensheviks, mainly because he liked their leader, Julius Martov, better than Lenin. Lenin and his faction seemed more intent on gaining organizational control, had more hair-splitters which he hated, and were more [CL1] wary of the peasants even though both factions swore faith in the democratic republic for Russia and to the international social democracy. He had sided with the “softs” although he saw a certain toughness in the Bolshevik cadre that he admired. But that year, that 1905 year, had started him on a very long search for revolutionary direction.           

The year 1905 had started filled with promise after that first blast from the Czarist reaction. The masses were able to gather in a Duma that was at least half responsible to the people, or to the people’s representatives. At least that is what those people’s representatives claimed. More importantly in the working class districts, and among his fellow sailors who more likely than not, unlike himself, were from some strata of the working class had decided to set up their own representative organs, the workers’ councils, or in the Russian parlance which has come down in the  history books the soviets. These in 1905, unlike in 1917, were seen as supplementary to other political organizations. As the arc of the year curved though there were signs that the Czarist reaction was gathering steam. Ivan had trouble organizing his fellow sailors to action. The officers of his ship, The Falcon, were challenging more decisions. The Potemkin affair brought things to a head in the fleets. Finally, after the successes of the Saint Petersburg Soviet under the flaming revolutionary Leon Trotsky that organ was suppressed and the reaction set in that would last until many years later, many tough years for political oppositionists of all stripes. Needless to say that while Ivan was spared the bulk of the reprisals once the Czarist forces regained control his career in the navy was effectively finished and when his enlistment was up he left the service.       

Just as well Ivan that things worked out as they did he had thought many times since then because he was then able to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think. Think and go about the business of everyday life like marriage to a woman, non-political but a comfort, whom he met through one of his fellow workers on the Neva quay and who would share his home and life although not always understanding that part of his life or him and his determination to break Russia from the past. In those days after 1905, the dogs days as everybody agreed, when the Czar’s Okhrana was everywhere and ready to snatch anyone with any oppositional signs Ivan mostly thought and read, kept a low profile, did as was found out later after the revolution in 1917, a lot of low-level underground organizing among the dockworkers and factory workers of the Vyborg district. In other words developing himself and those around him as cadre for what these few expected would be the great awakening. But until the break-out Lena River gold-workers strike in 1912 those were indeed dog days.     

 

 

And almost as quickly as the dog days of the struggle were breaking the war clouds over Europe were increasing. Every civilized nation was arming to the teeth to defend its civilization against the advancing hordes pitched at the door. Ivan could sense in his still sturdy peasant-bred bones that that unfinished task from 1905, that fight for the land and the republic, hell maybe the eight hour day too, was going to come to a head. He knew enough too about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid.  Glad he had learned enough to earn a hearing, to spread the word.     

As the war clouds came to a head after the killing of the archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West, Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the other day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan hoped for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had definitely separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war fever just because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that the party wished to emulate in Russia.

He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible. Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committee men in Russia and among their Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yea this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s tunnel vision, with great events working in the world. 

Jesus, thought Ivan once the Czar declared his allegiance to the Entente, once he had gotten the Duma to rubber-stamp his war budget (except for a remnant of the Bolsheviks who were readied for Siberian exile), he could not believe that Plekhanov, the great Plekhanov, the father of the Marxist movement in Russia and mentor to the likes of Lenin, Martov, Dan, hell even flea-bitten free-lancer Trotsky, had declared for the Czar for the duration and half of Ivan’s own bloody Menshevik party had capitulated (the other half, the leadership half had been in exile anyway, or out of the country for some reason) this was going to be hell.

There would be no short war here, no quick victory over the land hungry Huns, nothing but the stench of death filling the air overcoming all those mobilization parades and the thrown flowers, the kissed girls, the shots of vodka to fortify the boys for the run to the front. The Czar’s house, double eagles and all was a house of cards or rather of sawdust like those villages old rascal Potemkin put up to fool Catherine in her time. Most of the peasant boys marching to the front these days would never see Mother Russia again, never get to smell the good Russian earth. Yes but if he had anything to say about it those who survived, those who would have to listen if not now ten sometime, would have their own piece of good Russian earth unlike their fathers who toiled on the land for Mister’s benefit for nothing. And went to early graves like his father.

And so in the summer of 1914 as if led by blinders Europe, along with solid phalanxes of its farm boys and factory workers, went to bloody stalemated war.

---

 [CL1]

***In Sunnier Times- When The North Adamsville Class of 1964 50^th Reunion Rose Was In Bloom

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman   

Introduction

If anybody, if I can, say anything about Sam Lowell it is that he is intrepid. Sam, an old corner boy known to me from the streets of North Adamsville, specifically from standing alongside of him on the corner of Main and Hancock “up the Downs” in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, “holding up the wall” as we called it all through high school. A while back, maybe a few months now after we got back contact through his work in publicizing the 50^th anniversary North Adamsville Class of 1964 reunion after not having seen each other for several years, I told a rather long story about how he, via the magic of the Internet, in the fall of 2013 got in touch with a woman classmate, Melinda Loring, on the website established by the Class of 1964 reunion committee. Well with that contact one thing or another happened and he wound up having a short, painfully short, fling with her which broke apart for some reasons that he never could understand and some like that fact that he was “married” which he could. Short or not, that affair wound up breaking up in an acrimonious way with bad blood, very bad blood with ugly words and vows never to speak to each other again, between the two before the flame flickered out (those vows not a good thing since each had planned to go to the reunion, initially they were to go together).

Nevertheless Sam, who also wound up drafting himself onto that reunion committee early on, continues for his own arcane reasons to spread the word about the reunion, encouraging one and all to get on board. Here is the odd thing though due to that bad blood parting between them Sam has no intention of going to that reunion, although she will be going since unlike Sam she has gone to several previous ones. That is why Sam rightly deserves the designation “intrepid” although I think he is foolish to keep touting the event if he is not going. By the way this little piece will not find its way onto the class website so nobody should know yet that he is not going. Here is something that is no secret I never had any intention of going so I don’t care who knows that fact or when. But enough of this. Sam wanted me to write up a little something for him about his work to get people to the reunion. Here goes, and thanks Sam for your efforts whatever I think of their worth.

 

This is genesis:

As I noted in my introduction in the late fall of 2013 Sam Lowell was getting antsy about putting something together, or helping to put something together, for the 50^th reunion of our class, the North Adamsville (Massachusetts) Class of 1964. This was something of a surprise to me since a while before, maybe a year before, we had both mentioned that we had not gone to the 40th anniversary reunion when somehow through the then current technologic wizardry that reunion committee was able to send invitations to both of us. In that intervening time Sam had softened his stance after a few visits to the old town, and a couple of family deaths, and he kind of dragged me along in his enthusiasm, although not enthusiastic enough to attend the reunion, even though it had been a long time since we were close, corner boy close in high school days.

So Sam started putting out feelers, logically starting from the names he remembered from the 40^th reunion committee. That logic was aided by the fact that one of the committee was a woman, Sonia Loft, who also happened to be the secretary to the headmaster of the high school, and when he checked that lead it turned out she was still working at that position. He thereafter sent the following e-mail gathered from the North Adamsville High School website (praise be, Internet):     

 

“Hi Sonia Loft (sorry I do not know your married name if you are married but on the NAHS website you are listed under that name)- If I recall from a flyer I received then you and Jerry Doherty, who I remember you dated in high school and who lived next door to my grandparents, the Rileys, over on Young Street, if you don’t recall who I am without recourse to the Magnet [class yearbook],were the central organizers for the 40^th reunion of the NAHS Class of 1964 in 2004 so I wanted to contact you and see if there are any plans afoot for the 50^th next year. If so I would be happy to work on the organizing committee. If not, are you up for forming a committee to do that organizing? If we can get five or six people from the area to meet that would get us started. You are listed as the Headmaster’s   secretary at NAHS. That is invaluable. Also below is a note I want to send around to various sites (NA Alumni, Classmates, Facebook, etc.) once I know what is up in order to get a feel for whether we would have enough attendees to make it worthwhile.  Thanks for your time. Later Sam Lowell–samuellowell86@comcast.net”  

As a result of that e-mail Sonia sent Sam her private telephone number at NAHS and urged him to call her for information about a reunion committee that was then just being formed. He did so and was given information about a soon occurring meeting of the committee and, more importantly (or as turned out more ominously as later events testified to), information about a new class website that was being constructed by Donna Wells, the class vice president back in the day:

“Hi Donna- I talked to Sonia Loft today informing her that I want to be on the reunion committee. She informed me that there is a meeting next week, December 5th, in Rutland. I will attend (from the North Adamsville64 website it looks right now like there are only women on the committee so I will help balance things out) if you could please send the time and address and anything else needed I would appreciate it. Also I had set up a Facebook website North Adamsville Class of 1964 Reunion before I found out from Sonia today that a committee had already been formed so perhaps we could link this site with that one since many people use Facebook who might not know this site. I will update the new information about this site there now- Later Sam Lowell- samuellowell86@comcast.net

https://www.facebook.com/pages/North-Adamsville-High-School-Class-Of-1964-Reunion/547771395433314”  

That done Sam started working the common North Adamsville-related sites that he found through Google looking to see what the interest level was and for volunteers. Here is an example of the basic e-mail pitch: 

 

“Hi Jim - I am starting to try to get people together to organize a 50th reunion (Ouch!) –Don’t ask me why but I am feeling some old time breeze coming from Adamsville Bay smacking me in the face to help put this together. Are you up for it? Would you attend? Are you still in contact with 1964 NAHS in your social network (nice term, huh)? Let them know what's afoot -Right now this is just in the startup phase but we want to see who is in, and who wants to help organize this thing. I have set up an event page on Facebook- North Adamsville  High School Class of 1964 Reunion-Check it out- Later Sam Lowell- Sam Lowell- samuellowell86@comcast.net ”

 Once the class website (NA64.com, easy right) had been set up with a complete class list and space for individual profile pages Sam put the following pitch on his profile page:     

 

“Hi Class of 1964- I would like to help get people together to organize our 50th reunion (Ouch!) –Don’t ask me why but I am feeling some old time breeze in my bones coming from the tepid waters of Adamsville Bay, coming from the dusty old tree-named, Indian-named (oops, Native American-named) streets, and ocean-named streets of our town smacking me in the face. Coming too from some old bleeding Raider red and black nostalgia that I have not, well, have not felt since the day in June 1964 when we threw our collective caps in the air at Veterans Stadium and went out to face the world, a world that we didn’t create and were not asked about but which we faced as best we could. Coming, hell, from mind’s memory of steamy summers at Adamsville Beach, HoJo’s ice cream, deathly school lunches, running around tracks and on the streets in shorts subject to the whims of irate drivers and old lady pedestrians, also irate, cheering myself silly at those titanic football battles, especially senior year, on those granite-grey leafy autumn afternoons (nice, huh).

And too reflecting on that fresh clean breathe of the “newer world” that was in the air just then. (As I write this on November 22, 2013, no need to ask what happened on that date or where we were not with this audience, overwhelmed by that little sadness that our dreams, our outrageous over-sized youthful dreams, might have been shortened up just a bit, that that day some portentous ebb of history would hold us back.)   

All this telling me to help put this reunion idea together since this is effectively our last shot at coming together under the sign of a significant anniversary. To see our respective old gangs collectively for probably the last time that the clan would be able to gather on a significant occasion what with death, disability, forgetfulness and just plain fright at the idea of a next time taking their toll. That the next significant milestone, the 75^th , assuming that the mania for oddball celebration years like 30^th , 45^th , and 60^th , or worst 38^th ,48^th or 68^th has no fully taken root by then we would all be at or approaching ninety-three. A very scary thought, the thought of holding a reunion at some assisted living site or nursing home. No thank you. Now or never.

Are you up for it? Would you attend? Are you still in contact with 1964 NAHS in your “social network” (nice term, huh, formerly known as friends and acquaintances)? Let them know what's afoot – As well as this site I have also set up an event page on Facebook - North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 Reunion- and other sites to reach out. Later Sam Lowell”

And Sam was not finished as he set up event pages and made contacts on various sites. Here is an early example:

 

“First Notice Updated (Made Simple I Hope- Just Click Below) –Save The Date -Spread The Word To Any Class Of 1964 People You Are In Contact With

 

Fellow classmates from the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964- On behalf of the Reunion Committee I invite you go to the newly established class website- click here-

 

http://www.northadamsville 64.com/class_index.cfm

 

-to find out more information about the planned 50^th anniversary class reunion. The reunion is scheduled for the weekend of September 20^th 2014 at the Best Western Adams Inn in North Adamsville (adjacent to the Neptune Bridge and river if you haven’t been to NA lately). We also invite you to join the website, create your own profile page, and share whatever you want to share with your fellow classmates. Sorry for the generic nature of this message. Sorry also if you received this message more than once if you belong to various NA-related sites.”      

And Sam individualized some information as well:

 

“Jim- Thanks for note- I noticed that you are not on our class website yet-here is the link-

http://www.northadamsville64.com/class_index.cfm

 

It is user-friendly. People are starting to join as we spread the news. If you are in contact with any NA64ers let them know. Are you retired yet? Sorry to hear about your medical problems. I just wrote to Joe Zaras who had sent me an e-mail which ended with “getting old sucks”- I said you will get no argument from me there, brother. Thanks for offer of help and since you live in Morristown as we get things firmed up and need help I will call on you. Later Sam- BTW some very nice pictures of you and yours where was that last one taken, Venice? They should go on your personal profile on NA64 to show that you have done well in life. Later Sam Lowell- Sorry about the football mix-up I was working from memory (ouch!) [Sam had assumed that Jim a big husky kid had been on the football team.] “  

And then as people came onto the website Sam became the “unofficial” class-greeter:

“Hi- Welcome to our class website-

For those who have, uh, lost, misplaced or sold off their Magnet [class yearbook] to the highest bidder here is a link to the Timothy Clark Public Library site so you can take that big trip down memory lane. By the way (BTW, okay) the theme for this reunion is “Try To Remember” so everybody better check that site out. Spread the word to others from NA64 who you are in contact with and sent any information that might help us to find missing classmates. Yes, and write stuff, put photos and video on your site too.    

https://archive.org/stream/magnet1964nort#page/n5/mode/2up”

 

And so Sam went along (with the Melinda Loring affair deep in the background sometimes making him work harder, sometimes acting as a deterrent ) and winding up with this short piece encouraging classmates to attend (done even as he was telling me at Jimmy’s that he was not going for the reasons listed above. And I was telling him to run for cover as fast as possible):

“On Freaking Out About Going To The Reunion

Hi-I have recently been reaching out to classmates on the site expressing a hope that they attend the reunion in September. I have met a certain resistance in some quarters so I am here as a pitchman. Some classmates have pleaded distance, infirmities and other commitments. I have no quarrel with them. Who I am trying reach here are those kindred who are scared, okay, okay afraid to go to the reunion. You know who are worrying about what to say to people they have not seen in a long time, about giving the details of their lives which seem kind of like they haven’t done anything once they have spelled it out, or about trying to avoid certain classmates who inflicted some ancient [or modern] hurts on them.

You are not alone. Although I am more than happy to write ten- thousand written words without working up a sweat on whatever subject is at hand, if you can believe this, I am a shy, very private person otherwise. I am, like those classmates, scared to death of actually going to the reunion. This will be my first reunion so I have not seen almost everybody who is going for 50 years. Worse, worst of all, worse than being scared of not being able to carry on a conversation, not remembering somebody I was life and death buddies with back then is that I can’t dance. Since this is a confessional age I freely admit I have two left-feet. A definite wall-flower guy. We are having dancing and a DJ and everything. I can feel my hands getting clammy already.  What, if unlike back in the day, somebody asks me to dance. Oh poor partner shoes, shins and who knows what else. And you think you have problems.

But hear me out. This is our 50th anniversary reunion. Realistically for those of us who have survived thus far this is the last time short of some assisted living common room or nursing home day room we will be able to do this event standing up. Or close to it. So think very hard about attending this reunion and remember there will be at least one other person in that huge room who will be scared too. Later Sam Lowell”