This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Monday, August 11, 2014
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel -Rally In Boston-Monday August 11th-City Hall Plaza-5:30
PLEASE SEND TO YOUR LISTS - THANKS Ann
We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.
As the Israeli assault on Gaza enters a month, with over 1900 Palestinians killed already, join us in a march of solidarity with the Palestinian people to demonstrate against the US government's enabling role in the massacre, including the $3 billion in aid every year as well as its unconditional political support for the land siege and naval blockade that renders Gaza as the world's largest "open air prison."
The march will also be targeting Hewlett Packard (HP), as one of the companies complicit in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and hence a target for the Palestinian called - and led - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Besides providing numerous other services to the IDF, HP developed and maintains the automated biometric access management system that controls the movement of Palestinians and specifically Palestinian workers through checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.
We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts
City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Defend The
Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !
In The 74th Anniversary Year Of The Assassination Of Great Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky A Tribute- DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED-THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1929-1940
LEON TROTSKY AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, PART I
BOOK REVIEW
THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1923-25), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975
If you are interested in the history of the International Left 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. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.
Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.
Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.
While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the trio. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor (from an analogy with the period of the French Revolution where the radical regime of Robespierre and Saint Just was overthrown by more moderate Jacobins) and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.
The most important document in this volume is clearly and definitely Trotsky’s Lessons of October. Although there are a couple of other documents of interest- The New Course, his program to try to bring the agrarian and the industrial crisis into focus-and The Problems of Civil War- Trotsky’s contribution to the so-called “literary discussion” in the party far outdistances those documents in importance. When this document hit the press there was definitely gnashing of teeth by the ruling trio in the Kremlin- Why? Lessons of October is essentially a polemic against fainted-hearted, opportunist failure to appreciate both the rarity of a revolutionary moment and the necessity to have a sharp combat- tested organization to take advantage of that situation. Moreover, this polemic was a direct attack on Zinoviev and Kamenev for their position against insurrection at the time of revolution and on Stalin’s March, 1917 call for political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government.
George Bernard Shaw once called Trotsky the “Prince of Pamphleteers” and he certainly earns that title in Lessons of October. Alas, those who write the best polemics do not necessarily win the power. Those 200,000 plus politically immature or careerist new party members beholding to the increasingly Stalinist bureaucracy drafted under the “Lenin Levy” saw the writing on the wall differently. That was decisive. Nevertheless, Lessons of October is not just any political document- it is an essential document for the education of today’s militants. It bears reading, re-reading, and reading again. I know I always get something new out of it each time I read it.
*********
In Honor Of Leon Trotsky On The 74th Anniversary
Of His Death- For 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 20th
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 20th 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
leastbrush 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 20th
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.
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 thehistory 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.
Went without Ivan just that minute declared too old to fight
and relegated to the home guard. There would come a day, a day not too long in
the future when the “recruiting sergeants” would be gobbling up the “too old to
fights,” like Ivan the lame and the halt, any man breathing to fill the depleted
trenches on the Eastern front. By then though Ivan would have already clamored
to get into the ranks, get in to spread the new wave message about the
meaningless of the fight for the workingman and the peasant and that the fight
was at home not out in the trenches. But that was for the future, the music of
the future. Ironically Ivan’s unit wound up guarding the Peter Paul Fortress
for the Czar. The same place that would
see plenty of action when the time for action came.
The home guard was a loose operation, especially in Saint
Petersburg, which entailed not much more than showing up for guard duty when
the rotation called your turn and an occasion drill or assembly. The rest of
the time, or most of it, Ivan spent reading, reading clandestinely the sporadic
anti-war materials that were being smuggled in from various point in Europe by whatever
still free exiles groups had enough gall and funds to put together those first
crude sheets proclaiming the new dispensation. Ivan had time to think too
during those first eighteen months or so of war. Thought about how right he had
been that this “glorious little war” would not be over soon, would devour the flower
of the European youth and if enough lived long enough chance the face of
half-monarchial Europe. Thought about how, when, and where street organizers
like him (he admitted long ago that he was not a “theory man” would get an
opening to speak to the troops in order to end the mounting slaughter and the
daily casualty lists.
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel -Rally In Boston-Monday August 11th-City Hall Plaza-5:30
PLEASE SEND TO YOUR LISTS - THANKS Ann
We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.
As the Israeli assault on Gaza enters a month, with over 1900 Palestinians killed already, join us in a march of solidarity with the Palestinian people to demonstrate against the US government's enabling role in the massacre, including the $3 billion in aid every year as well as its unconditional political support for the land siege and naval blockade that renders Gaza as the world's largest "open air prison."
The march will also be targeting Hewlett Packard (HP), as one of the companies complicit in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and hence a target for the Palestinian called - and led - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Besides providing numerous other services to the IDF, HP developed and maintains the automated biometric access management system that controls the movement of Palestinians and specifically Palestinian workers through checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.
We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts
City Hall Plaza. We will move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the march starts at 5:30pm.
No New U.S. War
In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!Stop The Bombing!
Workers and the oppressed have no
interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary
Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely
has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the
immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism
that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and
downtrodden.
Protest Monday, August 11
5:30pm Rally at City Hall Plaza and JFK Federal Building, then march to Hewlett-Packard Convention at the Westin Hotel
Massachusetts Peace Action is one of over 20 sponsoring organizations of this broad coalition action
Say “NO” to
Our Government Underwriting the Massacre in Gaza
Say “SHAME” to
US Corporations like Hewlett-Packard (HP) which enable the Israeli Occupation
Lift the Siege of Gaza that collectively punishes 1.8 million people
Stop US military, diplomatic and financial aid to Israel
Boycott and Divest from companies which profit from Israeli crimes
End the Illegal Occupation and Settlement of Palestinian Lands
On HP’s role in maintaining the Israeli occupation and supporting its armed forces,see here.
In the US, HP is one of the government’s top military contractors.
* * * *
The killing in Gaza has not stopped and the Israeli seige continues. As was reported in the Dorchester People for Peace newsletter:
US is the Accomplice and Enabler of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !
Monday In Boston: March for Gaza! End the Israeli Siege, No more US Tax Dollars, Boycott, March on HP
WE DEMAND:
End the Israeli Siege of Gaza
No more US tax dollars for Israel
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Join US to March on HP and let them know Occupation is a Crime
Hewlett Packard makes billions off the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
HP supplies computers to the Israeli army, and manages the Israeli Navy’s IT infrastructure, which has been criticized for war crimes.
HP manufactures and maintains a computer system of Israeli biometric ID cards (with fingerprints, retinal and facial data), which are labeled with ethnicity and nationality. IDs are used to control movement of Palestinians going to and from work in Israel and even between their own villages.
The rally will start at the US Federal building in Boston to call for an end to US aid to Israel; the US a major supplier of weapons and money. The march will proceed through downtown Boston to the Westin Hotel near the waterfront convention center, where Hewlett Packard is sponsoring a convention for HP employees. Hewlett Packard is a major supplier of Israel and enabler of the occupation.
Sponsored by Boston BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), Jewish Voice for Peace Boston, United for Justice with Peace, Northeastern University Students for Justice in Palestine, Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Boston Alliance for Water Justice, Suffolk Law National Lawyer’s Guild, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, International Socialist Organization - Boston, Communist Party of Boston, Massachusetts Peace Action Download the flyer as a PDF.
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 On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action
On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!
On The 40th Anniversary Of The Resignation Of One
Richard M. Nixon -CONFESSIONS OF AN OLD MILITANT-A CAUTIONARY TALE
Markin comment on one Richard Milhous Noxious (oops-Nixon):
In politics, hard bourgeois politics,
one needs a very high degree of amnesia in order to survive the crooked deals,
the humiliating compromises, and the desperate need to trim around the edges of
political opponents because who knows who you might need for your own deals,
compromises and trimmings. History has been kinder to one Richard Milhous Nixon
than he ever desired, kinder due to the above characteristics of bourgeois
politics and its companion, revisionist history, by those who were old-time
opponents and those who are younger who knew not what a truly treacherous and
dangerous man he was, to friend and foe alike. That said, anybody who wants to
“rehabilitate” that man should consult the series of articles that the late
Hunter S. Thompson, “Doctor Gonzo,” wrote for Rolling Stone and which can be found in the compilation entitled The Great Shark Hunt before writing or
uttering word one on the subject. Of course for me, and others, at the time the
idea of impeachment for Nixon was not enough. What a number of us were calling
for in those days, those 1974 days when the man was going under by virtue of
his own hubris, was that he be tried by the victims of his massive bombings of
Vietnam and other places in Southeast Asia. That would have been real justice
and the right verdict of history on the man.
************ THIS CONFESSION IS NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED-BE FOREWARNED.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY
I VOTED FOR VICE PRESIDENT HUBERT HORATIO HUMPHREY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1968. MOREOVER, I ACTIVELY CAMPAIGNED FOR THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET IN THE FALL OF THAT YEAR. AND AS AN ASPIRING YOUNG POLITICAN I WAS PERFECTLY WILLING TO ACCEPT AN ENTRY-LEVEL POSITION IN A VICTORIOUS HUMPHREY ADMINISTRATION.
The thought of that rash youthful action as I am writing this piece still brings a blush to my cheeks. Of all the political mistakes I have made in my life this is the one that is still capable of doing that. In today’s confessional age, however, it is good to get it off my conscience. Right? Please, let me tell you the story. If at any point it sounds awfully familiar concerning today’s political choices please feel free to stop.
First, I must plead my youth as a mitigating circumstance. And as this is also an age when victims give voice to their travails you must realize that I was a victim of circumstances throughout all of this experience. Those circumstances most certainly had a name. That name, one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, common war criminal, and political sociopath now residing in one of Dante’s circles of hell. You knew, didn’t you, that at least one of the villains had to be a Republican- some things never change. It may be hard for today’s militants to understand how much THAT man dominated our political hatreds in those days. To put it in perspective just remember that Mr. Nixon was the ‘godfather’ of the current president, Mr. Bush, common war criminal, political sociopath and a prime candidate for one of Dante’s circles of hell. Enough said.
In the early and mid- 1960’s this writer defined himself as a left-liberal of the Americans for Democratic Action school of politics. He had worked for civil rights for blacks and against war, particularly the Vietnam War then beginning to take center stage in national politics. When it became apparent that Mr. Nixon was going to be a serious candidate for president I made a very calculated political decision. Despite his war follies the writer was fully committed to supporting one Lyndon Baines Johnson, one time President of the United States, common war criminal, political sociopath and now also residing in one of Dante’s circles. Those readers who supported the pro- Iraqi War Democratic presidential candidate, one John Forbes Kerry, in 2004 know the surreal mental gymnastics entailed to justify my position at that time. Why Johnson? Because he was the only candidate that could defeat the main villain of the piece, Mr. Nixon.
At no time did I consider the candidacy of the anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota viable by the above-mentioned standard. It must have been something about Irish poets and wits. In any case, after Mr. Johnson announced that he was not going to run again I easily switched my allegiance to Senator Robert Kennedy of New York. Even today I have a little soft spot for the memory of that man. If ever a bourgeois politician could move me it was Bobby. Remember this, it was Robert Kennedy was nailed on the head what Mr. Nixon represented politically- the dark side of the American spirit. However, in the final analysis, what drove me to the Kennedy campaign was the belief that he was the only candidate who could defeat Mr. Nixon.
After the Kennedy assassination in June 1968 and after a little confusion I moved on to support Mr. Humphrey, one time Vice President of the United States, common war criminal and political sociopath now at the Dante residence. Why? Because he was… (you can fill in the rest now). You were warned that this story was not for the faint-hearted. Why did I turn against the Democratic Party? Well, I finally got it about the nature of the American imperialist political system. How did I come to that conclusion? A little thing called the draft into the Army during Vietnam. But that is a story for another time. However, the story has a happy ending. Over the years I have voted for various socialist and labor party candidates and propositions and have not regretted one of those votes. Still, old habits die hard. I am still looking for that entry-level government job- in a victorious workers government.
Protest Monday, August 11
WE DEMAND:
