Action Alert!!! The trial of the Dallas 6 is going forward on Monday August 24. PACK THE COURT for

Please circulate widely!
	Action Alert!!! The trial of the Dallas 6 is going forward on Monday August 24.  PACK THE COURT for Pennsylvania Prisoner Whistleblowers Stop the abuse and torture of prisoners!
	The Dallas 6 are six African-American prisoners who, while in solitary confinement in SCI Dallas PA prison, blew the whistle on & peacefully protested against abuse and violence by prison guards.  They were charged with “rioting.”  Without the benefit of cell phones that have exposed police violence on the street, we are dependent on whistleblowers to expose abuse by guards behind bars.  After dragging on for five years, the trial of the remaining three Dallas 6 members begins on Aug 24 in Luzerne County (infamous for the “kids for cash” scandal).	Why support the Dallas 6? They are whistleblowers who put their lives on the line by taking action to stop the rampant abuse and violence by guards at SCI Dallas and other PA prisons. We all depend on prisoners like the Dallas 6 to tell the truth about our society and to defend all our civil and human rights. They are part of a movement of prisoners taking action and speaking out through hunger and work strikes such as in Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia and California. Torture must remain illegal in this country.  Charles Graner honed his torture skills in PA where he was a prison guard before moving on to Abu Ghraib.  We should not have to go to Iraq to find out what is happening here, not when there are prisoners telling it like it is. Solitary confinement is torture according to Juan Méndez, UN Special Rappateur on Torture, who has called for an absolute ban on solitary for longer than 15 days. Mass incarceration has meant many prisoners are inside for non-violent offenses such as minor drug convictions, immigration and parole violations & not paying fines, or are innocent of any offense. But whatever the offense, the sentence does not include torture.  Their trial is taking place in the infamous Luzerne ‘Kids for Cash’ County where judges were convicted of kickbacks for incarcerating children. Legal help is needed to navigate those dirty waters.
	What can you do? ► Help to pack the court on Aug 24.  Sign up here if you are planning to come, need or can offer housing or transportation. ► Set up a speaking engagement for Shandre and Derrick who give dynamic presentations (see video below).   ► Sign the Petition to Indict Corrupt Luzerne County Officials. ►  Make a Donation!
	Your support is needed to ensure that these men receive a fair trial, that the abuses that they faced in prison do not continue, and, for the legal precedent that this court case will establish. If the Dallas 6 are justifiably cleared of all charges Pennsylvania prisoners will be able to speak up against abuse and torture without fear of retaliation.  Derrick Stanley of the Dallas 6 (at right) with Shandre Delaney (center), mother of Carrington Keys of the Dallas 6 and campaign coordinator
	For more information   Video from Press Conference outside the courtroom on Nov. 10th    Community Forum featuring Shandre Delaney, Derrick Stanley, and Isaac Sanchez    Shandre Delaney in Truthout: Torture and Retaliation Against Prisoner Whistleblowers    Victoria Law in Solitary Watch, On Trial for Protesting Conditions in Solitary Confinement    Mumia Abu Jamal, The Dallas Six and earlier commentary     Shandre Delaney’s Thursdays 9:30pm blogtalkradio
	Justice for the Dallas 6 Support Campaign: Abolitionist Law Center; Every Mother is a Working Mother Network; Fight for Lifers West; Germantown Friends Meeting Mass Incarceration Working Group; Global Women’s Strike & Women of Color@GWS – US; Human Rights Coalition – Fed Up; Human Rights Coalition – Philadelphia; Marcellus Shale Earth First; Mishkan Shalom New Jim Crow Study-Action Group; Payday men’s network; Peacehome Campaigns; Shalefield Organizing Committee.  Endorsements: Brandywine Peace Community; California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC); The Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC); Decarcerate PA; Defending Dissent Foundation; Global Women’s Strike & Women of Color@GWS – UK; Human Rights Defense Center – Lake Worth, Florida; Jewish Voice For Peace - Philadelphia; Sin Barras – Without (Prison) Bars – Santa Cruz; T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights; WHAT’S UP?! Pittsburgh; Welfare Warriors; Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) – Philadelphia. Individual Endorsements: Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Patrice Armstead, Building People’s Power and Coalition Demanding Reinstatement of Dr. Monteiro; Malik Aziz, Founder, Men United for a Better Philadelphia and Chairman, National Exhoodus Council; Pastor Antoinette Johnson, King Solomon Baptist Church; Dr. Anthony Monteiro; Rev. Bob Moore, Executive Director, Coalition for Peace Action (for id purposes only); Dr. Heather Ann Thompson, Professor of African American Studies & History, Temple University; Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University; Dr. Carla Willard, Africana Studies Program, Franklin & Marshall College.  Partnering with: AFSC Prison Watch.
	Phone: 412-403-6101  Email: sd4hrc@gmail.com   Website: scidallas6.blogspot.com
	Background
	Six African-American prisoners from the State Correctional Institute (SCI) in Dallas, PA are facing charges of “rioting” for blowing the whistle on the abuse of prisoners in solitary confinement. On April 10, 2010, illegal and barbaric conditions at the hands of prison guards at SCI Dallas led these inmates, held in solitary confinement, to stage a protest. For over a year they had suffered food deprivation, destruction of mail, beatings, neglect of medical conditions, use of a torture chair and the deaths of some other prisoners, including the coerced suicide of an older white prisoner with mental health issues. After guards kept prisoner Isaac Sanchez confined in a torture chair overnight, six protested by covering their cell door windows with their bedding. The prisoners demanded that the abuse stop, and requested access to their counselors, state police, the District Attorney and the Public Defenders’ Office. They had no access to telephones or computers and their incoming and out-going mail were being destroyed to undermine their ability to expose the corruption. Prison guards responded with an armed assault against the unarmed men locked inside individual cells. They attacked the six men with electroshock shields, tasers, fists and pepper spray. The guards involved suffered no injuries and initially no charges were filed against the Dallas 6, who were left bloodied, naked, burnt and in pain. Although some of the men were transferred to other prisons, they were able to file complaints and initiate civil actions against the prison guards and officials involved. Prison officials, state police and the Luzerne County DA retaliated four months later by charging the Dallas 6 with rioting. The Dallas 6 believe that they are facing these trumped up charges because they contributed to Institutionalized Cruelty, Human Rights Coalition Report 1, and, then subsequently stood up for their lives, which is documented in Resistance & Retaliation, Report 2. The US has the largest prison population in the world with Black and Brown communities disproportionately impacted.  Prisoners across the US are taking action and speaking out against their inhumane and tortuous conditions, including prisoner hunger and work strikes in Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia and California. As a result of their actions, prisoners are retaliated against by prison authorities.  The trial of the Dallas 6 will represent a moment of truth and exposure about wide-spread use of solitary confinement and torture in prisons.   We call on all who believe in justice and equality to support the Dallas 6.

In Memory of Leon Trotsky On The 75th Anniversary Of His Death

In Memory of Leon Trotsky On The 75th Anniversary Of His Death  Workers Vanguard No. 1072	7 August 2015

TROTSKY

LENIN

In Memory of Leon Trotsky

 

(Quote of the Week)

 

Seventy-five years ago, on 20 August 1940, Leon Trotsky was killed by a Stalinist agent in Mexico. Co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Trotsky was an intransigent fighter against the Stalinist bureaucracy’s betrayal of that revolution, founding the Fourth International in 1938. Today, we in the ICL fight to reforge the Fourth International, destroyed by liquidationist forces in 1951-53, as the indispensable prerequisite for the victory of world socialism. We print below excerpts from a statement by the National Committee of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party on Trotsky’s assassination.

 

Leon Trotsky, organizer of the Russian Revolution and its true representative, has finally been done to death by Stalin, the betrayer of the Revolution and the mass murderer of the whole heroic generation that made it....

 

But the great fruit of Trotsky’s more than forty years of dauntless work and struggle remains imperishable. For Trotsky, who stands on a historical eminence by the side of Marx and Lenin, worked like them not for a day, but for eternity. The richest products of his genius are preserved in his writings. They constitute both a faultless analysis of the decay of capitalism and a clear program of struggle for the socialist future of humanity.

 

Armed with these weapons the oppressed of all the world will arise out of the bloody welter of the present society and fight their way to freedom. They have been deprived of the physical presence of Trotsky. But no power on earth can destroy the mighty inheritance he has left behind—the gift of his incomparable genius to the cause of humanity....

 

Comrade Trotsky was not only the teacher of the vanguard of the proletariat. He was also its organizer. He was the architect of the Fourth International, the new international association of revolutionary workers. It is arising on firm foundations in all countries of the world. The Fourth International will be the greatest monument to the memory of Trotsky. It will be the instrument for the final realization of the aim to which he devoted his entire life—the liberation of all humanity from slavery, exploitation and war.

 

—“Fight Now as Never Before, Comrades!” Socialist Appeal, 24 August 1940

 

Yeah, Listen To The Babies By Jasiri X-Black Lives Matter-Got It

Yeah, Listen To The Babies By Jasiri X-Black Lives Matter-Got It

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Sam Eaton turned about sixty shades of red when George Brent, a young friend of his and his old friend Ralph Morris from the anti-war and black liberation struggles of the past several years, told him to “pipe down” in his leading the chants at a Black Lives Matter support rally held in downtown Boston a few months back. That remark hit Sam hard. First because he had been a chant-master since the days back in the late 1960s when he had gotten “religion” on the anti-war issue during the Vietnam War after his boyhood friend, Jeff Mullins, from Carver had been killed in the Central Highlands of that benighted country and he had in letters back home to Sam begged him to tell the world (or the part the world that would listen) what a hell-hole the place was if he did not make it back.

That started the thing rolling and increased study about such issues and many conversations with his oldest political friend still standing Ralph had led to a life-time commitment as best he could to the “struggle.” And in the time honored task of giving spirit to various rallies, vigils, speak-outs and acts of civil disobedience he had with his droll voice cranked up the “troops’ with his sing-song chants from Bring the Troops Home to the current Hands Up, Don’t Shoot of the Black Lives  Matter. What was the matter with that.  

Now Sam had no problem with the fact that the BLM movement is being led, should be led, by the young, mostly black militants who have the most to lose, and gain. As an old white guy only getting older he had already faced that prospect when he attended his first such BLM rallies and noticed that the language of struggle among the young centered more on identity politics than the broader social struggle aspects that drove him and Ralph in their youths (not that the languages were naturally mutually exclusive but there was an emotive value to the difference in language that might turn out to be). But to be called to task by an old (younger) comrade closer in age to the young blacks organizing things these days seemed out of place. Particularly when some young black women militants enthusiastically helped him through a couple of chants when his voice faltered (not having had much occasion of late to chant for any purpose). So after some reflection he took George’s remarks with a certain amount of good grace at the time. Although in the back of his mind the question gnawed at him.

The question being mainly what role others had in the movement, whites, latinos, labor militants, Asians, women, the LGBTQ community, young and old in the burgeoning and ever-present BLM, especially his old white AARP guys in the movement. That question and how he (and Ralph) could impart whatever wisdom they had gathered over the years of struggle to pass on to the new politically awakened generation. Yeah, the kids would make their own mistakes just like he, Ralph and their generation of ’68 had done ignoring the older generations of their time but was it really necessary to re-invent the wheel every time a new generation rose up in arms against the same entrenched class and race enemies.     

Then one night Ralph and he were sitting in Jack’s a bar, an old-time radical hang-out over in Cambridge where Sam lives sipping high-shelf whiskeys and discussing how back in their respective working class youths in Troy, New York and Carver, Massachusetts they imbibed the racial attitudes of their time and white neighborhoods. Ralph confessed that he had stood shoulder to shoulder with his father, Ralph, Senior,  back then physically trying to keep black people from moving into the Tappan Street neighborhood where they lived (black people called the “n” word freely back then in that neighborhood without the ironic, desperate sense of today’s usage). Sam told Ralph that he had never even seen a black person in Carver and did not know a single black person until he went to work in Boston. So that night they began to sense something existed more than a generational gap between them and the youth of the BLM. A whole missing link about experiences.     

That new understanding came to a head when Ralph mentioned that he had heard on the radio one day a white woman talking on some talk show that she had been before Trayvon Martin, before Ferguson and Michael Brown, before Eric Garner clueless about the plight of black people in current time America, especially young black men. Ralph mentioned that she had said that she had lived in Barrington up in Podunk New Hampshire and so maybe she just did not get around enough. But her remarks got Ralph thinking that even with all their political experiences doing support work for the Black Panthers when they were under the guns of the state, the struggle to free Nelson Mandela in South Africa and support of the African National Congress they were probably now out of the loop about the black struggle.

Maybe Malcolm X was right that the gap between white and black experiences could not be bridged in this country together. Sobering thoughts, no question. Sobering too though that the BLM needed allies, many allies in this deeply bedrock racist slavery-born country. So they would study some more, get out more and try like hell to figure out what the words to The Babies above from YouTube really mean. 

Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"Literature And Revolution"

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review

Literature and Revolution, Leon Trotsky, 1924
Trotsky once wrote that of the three great tragedies in life- hunger, sex and death- revolutionary Marxism, which was the driving force behind his life and work, mainly concerned itself with the struggle against hunger. That observation contains an essential truth about the central thrust of the Marxist tradition. However, as Trotsky demonstrates here, Marxist methodology cannot and should not be reduced to an analysis of and prescription for that single struggle. Here Trotsky takes on an aspect of the struggle for mass cultural development.

In a healthy post-capitalist society mass cultural development would be greatly expanded and encouraged. If the task of socialism were merely to vastly expand economic equality, in a sense, it would be a relativity simple task for a healthy socialist society in concert with other like-minded societies to provide general economic equality with a little tweaking after vanquishing the capitalism mode of production. What Marxism aimed for, and Trotsky defends here, is a prospect that with the end of class society and with it an end to economic and social injustice the capacity of individual human beings to reach new heights of intellectual and creative development would flourish. That is the thought that underpins Trotsky’s work here as he analyzes various trends in Russian literature in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. In short, Marxism is certainly not a method to be followed in order to write great literature but it does allow one to set that literature in its social context and interrelatedness.

You will find no Deconstructionist or other fashionable literary criticism here. Quite the contrary. Trotsky uses his finely tuned skill as a Marxist to great effect as he analyzes the various trends of literature as they were affected (or not affected) by the October Revolution and sniffs out what in false in some of the literary trends. Mainly, at the time of writing, the jury was still out about the prospects of many of these trends. He analyzes many of the trends that became important later in the century in world literature, like futurism and constructivism, and others- some of which have disappeared and some of which still survive.

The most important and lasting polemic which Trotsky raised here, however, was the fight against the proponents of ‘proletarian culture.’ The argument put forth by this trend maintained that since the Soviet Union was a workers' state those who wrote about working-class themes or were workers themselves should in the interest of cultural development be given special status and encouragement (read: a monopoly on the literary front). Trotsky makes short shrift of this argument by noting that, in theory at least as its turned out later, the proletarian state was only a transitional state and therefore no lasting ‘proletarian culture’ would have time to develop. Although history did not turn out to prove Trotsky correct the polemic is still relevant to any theory of mass cultural development.

One of the results of the publication of this book is that many intellectuals, particularly Western intellectuals, based some of their sympathy for Trotsky the man and fallen hero on his literary analysis and his ability to write. This was particularly true during the 1930’s here in America where those who were anti-Stalinist but were repelled by the vacuity of the Socialist Party were drawn to him. A few, like James T. Farrell (Studs Lonigan trilogy), did this mostly honorably. Most, like Dwight MacDonald and Sidney Hooks, etc. did not and simply used that temporary sympathy as a way station on their way to anti-Communism. Such is the nature of the political struggle.

A note for the politically- inclined who read this book. Trotsky wrote this book in 1923-24 at the time of Lenin’s death and later while the struggle for succession by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev was in full swing. While Trotsky did not recognize it until later (nor did others, for that matter) this period represented the closing of the rising tide of the revolution. Hereafter, the people who ruled the Soviet Union, the purposes for which they ruled, and the manner in which they ruled changed dramatically. In short, Thermidor in the classical French revolutionary expression was victorious. Given his precarious political position why the hell was he writing a book on literary trends in post-revolutionary society at that time?

***Artist's Corner- "Nighthawks " -The Work Of Edward Hopper

Click below to link to site that has information about the famous American realist (?) artist Edward Hooper. Tom Waits lyrics and Edward Hopper's art (at least his famous "Nighthawks At The Diner") definitely fit together.

The Specter Haunting….British Intelligence-With Heroic Soviet Spy Kim Philby In Mind

The Specter Haunting….British Intelligence-With Heroic Soviet Spy Kim Philby In Mind

Kim Philby via Wikipedia  




Click below to link to a BBC segment on alleged Soviet spy Cedric Belfrage:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34012395

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

There is a specter haunting British intelligence, you know, MI5, MI6, the spooks, the James Bond wanna-be’s who wind up as cut-rate George Smileys. That specter has a name even seventy-five plus years later, the heroic Kim Philby. Oh sure there were others, Burgess, MacLean, Blount, the Cambridge Five boys, but Philby is the one that got under their skin, the one who still gets under their skin as the latest report out of BBC details. Philby’s fingerprints are over everything that touches British intelligence from the late 1930s until the 1960s when he got away, breezed right through their fingers.

Here is the beauty of what Philby knew, counted on. See he knew that when the deal went down, the good old boys clubs that dotted the upper edges of British class life (still do just ask David Cameron) starting back in early childhood would never ever do anything to do harm to his or her majesty’s realm. So the spy boys never thought, at least in time, even if they claim otherwise post hoc they had to worry about one of their own. (Forget all the lying subterfuge stuff by James Jesus Angleton to the contrary.) Never thought to worry about that six generations or more of being on top against the insurgent up-start Soviets. And so never know what hit them.

Yeah, no question, when the old Soviet Union was around, warts and all, it was good to have a “class traitor” like Philby on your side. Damn, wish we had some serious prospects these days of socialism (not of the necessary of that system that has been there since Marx’s time, maybe before)     in order to find some guys like Philby to defend it. Still I am willing to bet in another seventy-five plus years they will still be scratching their heads wondering how they “missed” the six million signs that Philby was working the other side of the street.        

 

 

 

On The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Jefferson Airplane's First Album -From The Archives-Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion-Or When Owsley Turned The World Upside Down.

On The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Jefferson Airplane's First Album -From The Archives

 

CD Review

1967: Blowin’ Your Mind, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Byrds Filimore West-driven classic wa-wa song, So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star .

Phil Larkin, now road-weary “Far-Out” Phil Larkin, for those who want to trace his evolution from North Adamsville early 1960s be-bop night “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the vocal terror of every mother’s daughter from six to sixty (and, occasionally, secret delight, secret delight of one Minnie Callahan, damn him, for one of some girl classmates), to full-fledged merry prankster now sits on a 1967 be-bop night San Francisco hill with his new flame Butterfly Swirl, and his old flame, Luscious Lois, now transformed into Lilly Rose, transformed at the flip of a switch, as was her way when some whim, or some word in the air, hit her dead center. (Sometime, but not now, remind me to give you my take on this name-changing epidemic as not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. Yes, remind me.) A nameless hill, nameless to first time ‘Frisco Phil, although maybe not to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland the sea out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.

But enough of old-time visions, of old time rites of passage, and of foundling dreams. Phil, and his entourage (nice word, huh, no more girlfriend solo, or as here paired, lovingly paired, to be hung up about, just go with the flow). Phil, Butterfly, hell, even jaded Lilly Rose (formerly known as Luscious Lois in case you forgot, or we not paying attention) are a “family,” or rather part of the Captain Crunch extended intentional family of merry pranksters (small case, so as not to be confused with their namesakes and models legendary mad man writer Ken Kesey and his La Honda Merry Pranksters, okay) who just yesterday hit ‘Frisco and have planted their de rigueur day-glo bus in the environs of Golden Gate Park after many months on the road west, and some time down south in La Jolla. After hearing the siren call they have now advanced north to feast on the self-declared Summer of Love that is guaranteed to mend broken hearts, broken spirits, broken rainbows, broken china, and broken, well broken everything. The glue: drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, although not just any old-timey be-bop fifties rock and roll but what everybody now calls “acid” rock. And acid, for the squares out there, is nothing but the tribal name for LSD that has every parent from the New York island to the Redwood forests, every public official from ‘Frisco to France, and every police officer (I am being nice here and will not use the oink word) from the Boston to Bombay and back, well, “freaked out” (and clueless). Yes, our Phil has come a long way from that snarly wise guy corner boy night of that old town he lammed out from (according to his told story) just about a year ago.

Or has he? Well, sure Phil’s hair is quite a bit longer, his beard less wispy and more manly, his tattered Chuck Taylor sneakers transformed into sensible (West Coast ocean sensible) roman sandals and his weight, well, his weight is way down from those weekly bouts with three-day drug escape, and fearful barely eaten four in the morning open hearth stews, and not much else. And as he sits on that nameless hill with his “ladies” he no longer has the expectation of just trying LSD for the hell of it, having licked it (off a blotter), or drank it (the famous, or infamous, kool-aid fix), several times down in La Jolla, watching the surf (and surfers) splashing against the Pacific world with blond-haired, blue-eyed, bouncy Butterfly, and the raven-haired, dark as night-eyed Lilly Rose, or both listening to the music fill the night air. Not square music either (anything pre-1964 except maybe some be-bop wild piano man Jerry Lee Lewis, or some Chicago blues guitar fired by Muddy Waters or microphone-eating Howlin’ Wolf), but moog, boog, foog-filled music.

Just that nameless hill minute though, and to be honest, while in the midst of another acid trip (LSD, for the squares just in case you forgot), Phil sensed that something had crested in the Pacific night and that just maybe this scene will not evolve into the “newer world” that everybody, especially Captain Crunch, keeps expecting any day now. Worst, now that he knows he can’t, no way, go back to some department clerk’s job, some picket-fenced white house with dog, two point three children, and a wife what is to happen to him when Butterfly, Lilly Rose, and even Captain Crunch “find” themselves and go back to school, home, academic careers, or whatever. Heavy, man, heavy.

A View From The Left- For Socialism In Greece- Greece: For Workers Struggle Against EU Starvation Diktat

Workers Vanguard No. 1072	7 August 2015

Greece: For Workers Struggle Against EU Starvation Diktat

Down With the EU! No to Syriza Sellout!

 

Greek voters decisively rejected the bloodsucking “bailout” of the country pushed by the imperialists of the European Union (EU) and the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a referendum on July 5. Just one week later, the Syriza-led capitalist government trampled on the referendum results and sold out to the imperialists. In exchange for the prospect of 86 billion euros ($96 billion) in new loans, Syriza prime minister Alex Tsipras agreed to punishing austerity measures that are even harsher than those rejected in the referendum.

While final agreement on the bailout has not yet been reached, the Greek government has hiked the regressive VAT (sales taxes) and has pledged to slash pensions and rip up union contracts. Trampling on the remnants of Greece’s national sovereignty, the EU is demanding reorganization of the judiciary and government administration. Public assets, including utilities, airports and real estate, are to be placed in a trust fund administered by Greece’s imperialist creditors, with the aim of selling them off to raise 50 billion euros to be mainly used to pay off debts and recapitalize the banks.

Since 2010, the EU and the IMF have imposed draconian austerity measures on Greece in exchange for a series of “rescue packages.” Those “rescued” have not been the Greek people, but Greek and international banks: 90 percent of the bailout money has gone to debt repayment. The EU is an unstable consortium of capitalist countries that works to increase profits by squeezing the workers throughout Europe, while its dominant members—Germany and, to a lesser extent, France and Britain—use it to further subordinate the weaker, dependent European countries.

Greece is in a profound economic and political crisis triggered by the 2007-08 global financial meltdown, and Greek working people are being bled white to pay for it. Today, over half of Greek youth are unemployed; 300,000 people have no access to electricity; and an estimated 800,000 have been cut off from medical care due to poverty or lack of insurance. What industry did exist in this country of 11 million people has been decimated by the German-dominated EU “single market.” Factories across the country stand empty.

The fascists of Golden Dawn and other right-wing forces will seek to take advantage of Syriza’s sellout and posture as the populist “saviors” of the nation from the EU. If the ruined petty bourgeoisie and masses of unemployed do not see the working class leading a fight to combat crushing joblessness and poverty, they will be increasingly attracted to the “radical” solutions offered by the fascists. Golden Dawn is known to be supported by large numbers of cops and has historic ties to the military, including the junta that seized power in 1967 and ruled Greece until 1974. Today, two retired army generals are among its Members of the European Parliament. The fascists are a deadly threat to immigrants, gay people and all working-class organizations. Urgently needed are mass, united-front mobilizations centered on the power of the organized proletariat to stop the fascists.

Faced with the ever-worsening economic crisis and the growing menace of fascism, it is vital to unite the toiling masses against the attacks of the imperialists, the Greek bourgeoisie and the Syriza government. To this end, our comrades of the Trotskyist Group of Greece initiated a call on July 17 to build workers action committees to fight for the burning needs of working people and their allies (see “ENOUGH!” page 10). It urges Greek workers and the oppressed to repudiate Syriza’s sellout agreement and the Greek debt as well as to repudiate the EU and the euro currency. Our perspective is premised on the need to imbue the proletariat with the understanding of its own class interests and potential social power. As the TGG-initiated call states, building workers action committees would be a step toward “a government which will act in the interests of the working people and be subordinated to them.” We of the International Communist League seek to foster common class struggle of workers internationally, in this case particularly in the European imperialist centers of Germany, France and Britain, against the bourgeois exploiters.

The TGG aims to mobilize larger forces in this defensive struggle, while recognizing that those forces will not share our political outlook. Comrades from the TGG and other ICL sections have distributed thousands of copies of the united-front call to key sectors of the working class in Athens and Thessaloniki (Greece’s second-largest city). We have approached other organizations, including trade unions, leftist and immigrant rights groups, urging them to take up the call themselves and organize workers committees. Our comrades leafleted a massive rally on July 22 in Athens organized by PAME, the trade-union front of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), in opposition to the Greek parliament’s vote that day for further measures dictated by the imperialists, as well as to a smaller rally of other leftists and trade unionists at the same time. The call has been received with interest and sparked debate.

No Support to Syriza!

Syriza was voted into office in January based on its pledge to ease the burden of austerity and to negotiate better terms from the imperialist creditors, while keeping Greece within the EU and maintaining the euro as Greece’s currency. While most left groups either voted for Syriza or enthused over its victory, the TGG opposed any vote to Syriza because of its class character as a bourgeois party. Moreover, we made clear before the election that Syriza’s commitment to keeping Greece in the EU amounted to a pledge to enforce more hunger and joblessness. This is now being demonstrated in practice to many working people who voted for Syriza. (For more on the left and Syriza, see “Syriza Is Class Enemy of Workers!” WV No. 1068, 15 May.)

Within a month of forming a coalition government with the right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL), Syriza agreed to come up with its own raft of austerity measures, but Greece’s creditors demanded more. With the imperialists and the Greek bourgeoisie whipping up fear of total economic collapse if Greece didn’t accept a new bailout, Syriza organized a July 5 referendum on the latest EU austerity proposal, calling for a “no” vote with the stated intention of using the vote as a bargaining chip to secure better terms from the EU.

Our comrades of the TGG issued a statement for the referendum, “Vote NO! Down With the EU! No Support to the Syriza Government!” (reprinted in WV No. 1071, 10 July). Our comrades explained that “a ‘no’ vote would help rally the working people in Greece and throughout Europe against the EU capitalists and their bloodsucking banks.” At the same time, our statement sharply opposed the Syriza-led government.

In the referendum, the KKE, a mass reformist party, called for casting an invalid ballot, claiming that a “no” vote was an indirect vote for Syriza’s alternative austerity plan. No! The “no” vote was nothing other than a message to the imperialist leaders of the EU and IMF to go to hell. In the January elections, our comrades had given critical support to the KKE, which opposed Syriza and the EU. At the same time, we sharply criticized their nationalist-populist program, which is a major political obstacle to the struggle for socialist revolution. The KKE leadership’s refusal to mobilize for a victory for the “no” vote in the referendum is in complete contradiction to its stated opposition to the EU.

In fact, many KKE members ignored their leadership and voted “no,” and this was a good thing. In voting against the austerity package, the Greek population delivered a well-deserved slap in the face to the EU imperialists. By rushing after the referendum to lick the imperialists’ boots and agree to more austerity, Syriza now stands far more exposed as lackeys of the EU imperialists than they would have if the “yes” vote had won.

For a Workers Europe!

The struggle against the EU is a question of vital importance for working people throughout Europe. The ICL has stood against the imperialist EU and the euro from the beginning. The common euro currency has allowed the German bourgeoisie to keep its industrial exports cheap throughout the eurozone. At the same time, the German capitalists, with the able assistance of the social-democratic SPD party and the trade-union bureaucracy, have driven down wages in Germany.

The imperialists and the Greek ruling class have stoked fears that exiting the EU and the euro would result in the economic isolation of Greece, a small country that is heavily reliant on imports, including for more than half of its food. The reality is that there is no way out of the spiral of debt and untrammeled imperialist looting of Greece within the framework of the EU. Greece should leave the EU and the euro.

Control over currency is one of the basic prerequisites for national sovereignty. Ordinarily, a debtor country can get some relief and regain economic competitiveness by devaluing its currency. But this is not possible within the euro. As the recent experiences of Argentina and Iceland show, default and currency devaluation, while initially harsh, may lead quickly to economic recovery and a rise in employment as the weakened currency makes exports more competitive.

Bourgeois elements, including the likes of German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, have argued that Greece should leave the eurozone, seeing that as a better way to maintain capitalist profits. In contrast, our opposition to the EU and the euro is based on the interests of the working class internationally. Repudiating the debt and leaving the EU would of course not end the exploitation of the working class by the Greek capitalists, nor would it free this dependent country from the ravages of the global imperialist system. However, it would create more favorable conditions for the working class to struggle in its own interests. Moreover, Greek exit from the EU would undermine that entire imperialist-dominated bloc. What is needed is a Socialist United States of Europe!

The catastrophe in Greece is part of a global capitalist economic crisis, which cannot be resolved within the borders of any single country, particularly one such as Greece with a low level of industry and resources. To build a society free of hunger, want and oppression requires a series of socialist revolutions that will expropriate the capitalist rulers, including in imperialist centers like the U.S. and Germany, and establish an international planned economy based on workers rule. What is needed is the construction of revolutionary workers parties, sections of a reforged Fourth International, to lead the working class to power, sweeping away the rotten capitalist-imperialist system.

When The Wild West Really Was The Wild West- “Wild Bill”- A Jeff Bridges Retrospective

When The Wild West Really Was The Wild West- “Wild Bill”- A Jeff Bridges Retrospective

 

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Wild Bill Hickok.

DVD Review

Wild Bill, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Barkin, John Hurt, directed by Walter Hill, 1995

 

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s, those of now AARP-worthy , in the early days of television, black and white television, got our heroes, our Western cowboy heroes strictly in white hat, and our bad guys, mal hombres, strictly in black. And the Indians (a.k.a. Native Americans or indigenous people but don’t hold me to either moniker since they may be passe by now as terms of identification although whatever the designation that hasn’t helped the hard pact that the problems of hard economic troubles and social isolation have not gotten one whit better under any of the designations not matter what) well, the less said about the treatment of those benighted and betrayed people the better. Of course this view was all hokum, or worst. It took the likes of Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCormack and others in literature to give us a more realistic view of the rawness, untamed rawness of the Old West. And the likes of Walter Hill to give us a more truthful cinematic view, a view with muddy streets, whiskey breathe, fistfights at the drop of a hat, white or black , treachery among enemies, treachery among friends, many social diseases and all. And that was on the good days. The good director here has taken on the legend of Wild Bill Hickok, generally given the better of it in Western lore as an associate of Buffalo Bill, a civilizing influence, and a king hell gunfighter.

 

Of course, the subtext for this review is that the actor playing Will Bill is none other than Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges for his “modern” cowboy role (singer-songwriter, okay) in Crazy Hearts. My argument underlying the choice of subtext is that Bridges was born to play theses good old boy Western parts and has done mainly stellar work in the genre ever since he cut his teeth on the modern Texas good-old-boy-in-the-making Duane Jackson in the film adaptation of McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. And at the acting level that is true here, although the existential characterization and the Bridges cool wit is perhaps a little over the top for the nitty-gritty West of the late 19th century.

 

One comes away from this film feeling, and maybe not incorrectly, that the distance between hero and villain (here in this contrived concoction about the manner of Bill’s untimely end, and as avenger -villain, the son, the driven son of “spurned” mother whom was once Wild Bill’s lover) is who is left standing at the end. And for most of his life from his service in the Union Armies during the American Civil War until that fateful day that Bill was just one step too cool Will Bill was the last one left standing. But, see there was that little matter of the spurned woman, and that driven son to lay old Bill low.

 

In any case if you have not seen a Western since the 1950s (although I guess I would want to know where you have been) you will be hard-pressed to sort out the heroes from the villains in this film. The Indians (a.k.a. Native Americans) as usual, in real life or fiction, get short shrift.

Hey, Who Made Caitlyn Jenner The Trans-Poster Person Flavor Of The Month Anyway-Free Chelsea Manning Now!

Hey, Who Made Caitlyn Jenner The Trans-Poster Person Flavor Of The Month Anyway-Free Chelsea Manning Now!

 

 

 

 

Click below for links to the latest on Caitlyn Jenner and Chelsea Manning

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/20/entertainment/caitlyn-jenner-accident-investigation/

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/19/politics/chelsea-manning-new-convictions/ 

 

 

From The Pen of Ralph Morris

 

Hey, I don’t normally write anything on my own although I have plenty of ideas to give to my old-time political associate, Sam Eaton. Sam and I met on the of floor of RFK Stadium in Washington on May Day 1971 when I along with a contingent of Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and he along with a motley crew of Cambridge radicals and revolutionaries (his description) were being held for trying to as the slogan went “shut down the government if it did not shut down the Vietnam War” and got the bastinado for our efforts. That meeting started for a whole bunch of reasons mainly around our common working class backgrounds from Troy, New York and Carver, Massachusetts respectively a now life-long attempt to stop the endless wars that the American imperium has saddled us with. Particularly to support the efforts of military resisters and other anti-war political dissenters.

 

Lately those efforts have centered on the struggle to free Chelsea Manning, the heroic Army soldier who is currently serving a stiff thirty-five year sentence for basically telling us, the American people and the world, about the military atrocities committed by its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, most infamously the “Collateral Murder” video which anybody now, if you have the stomach for it, can access on YouTube. In addition she revealed plenty of other nefarious doings of the American government maybe not as directly shocking as the revelations made by the heroic NSA whistle-blower-in-exile Edward Snowden but bad enough to make even the plentiful hardened “my country, right or wrong” devotees winch.

 

And that is why I am pissed off enough to write this little piece. See before Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce for the three people in the world who don’t know each and every detail of her transition) this year became the “official” media darling transgender poster person for the current politically correct flavor of the month oppressed identity grouping now that same-sex marriage has become passe, become just another bourgeois yesterday’s story Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley for the many who don’t know before she identified herself to the world as Chelsea immediately after her brutal 35 year sentence by a military judge down at Fort Meade in August 2013) had some traction as a worthy poster person for the cause of transgender transition and birth misidentification. But as usual once the rich, famous, and in this case Republican put themselves out front for any reason the air get sucked out of the political atmosphere for everybody else, for all those others who are struggling less publically to “be what they are.”       

 

I will get to the specific reason that I am pissed off at Ms. Jenner in a minute although even with the rich, famous and Republican I (and Sam) obviously can appreciate the troubles any person  who is struggling with race, sex, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination has to go through to survive in this wicked old world with a little dignity. Not that such sympathy was always true in my growing up days in Troy where I was as capable as the next guy in my corner boy world around Nick’s Variety Store in the Tappan section where we would mercilessly fag/dyke/transvestite bait anybody who seemed slightly “light on their feet” (an actual expression we used). Sam and I have had more than a few laughs lately when we meet in Cambridge when I go to that city to see him and we toss a few drinks at Jack’s while we cut up old touches and we think back to those days when if you weren’t Irish Catholic and straight you would be at our respective vicious baiting mercies. What gives us the biggest laugh, given our backgrounds, is how improbably it is that two 60-something guys would be desperately busting their asses to get freedom for a transgender soldier, heroic whistle-blower or not in the year 2015 (and have been since 2010 when we first heard about then-Bradley’s plight through Veterans for Peace , VFP an organization we both support and Courage to Resist out in Oakland who support military resisters including the legal and fund-raising efforts for Chelsea Manning).

 

But even old codgers can learn something in this wicked old world as well. See I served in the Central Highlands in Vietnam for eighteen months between 1968 and 1970 (the last six months by extending my tour to get out of my enlistment a little earlier for no other reason than to get out earlier). That extension really brought the craziness of the war home to me about the American government forcing me and my buddies to become nothing but animals toward people who we had no personal quarrel with. I do not do thing number one about my anti-war feelings though until I got out of the Army. I got along because I went along to my eternal sorrow. That is why over forty years later I support a person who stepped forward despite all the hell she has gone through to do some “penance” for my sin of omission. Sam, deferred from military service because he was the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his drunken ass father had a massive heart attack in 1965 did not get anti-war “religion” until his closest corner boy friend Jeff Mullins was killed in Vietnam in 1968 and in letters back home had made Sam promise to let everybody know what a hell-hole place Vietnam was if he did not make it back to do so himself. H has supported Chelsea as an extension of that promise to Jeff. That is the background to why we would almost inevitably meet in D.C. in 1971.

 

But enough of cutting up old touches because this is about Chelsea and about a recent event that has not gotten nearly enough attention since the world must breathlessly await the latest news from Caitlyn whether it about some proposed date she is deciding to go on, or not, or slightly more seriously whether she will have to go to court over a misdemeanor manslaughter charge from an accident in early 2015. Strangely the latest Chelsea Manning legal problem can partially be laid at Caitlyn’s door. When I was in the Army one of the things that kept us in line was the refrain from the First Sergeant or some such figure that we had better not do wrong thing number one or we would wind up in Leavenworth, the toughest Army prison then, and while reconstructed in recent years still a place you don’t want to find yourself in (and I won’t even speak to the problem of being a woman in an all-male facility).

 

Chelsea recently as will occur from time to time had her quarters inspected for “contraband” (a long list of things that a prisoner cannot have whether the reason for not having the items is reasonable or not). Among the improper items found in her quarters was a copy of Vanity Fair, the issue which had Annie Leibowitz’s photograph of Caitlyn as she transitioned on the cover. Obviously a subject of interest to Chelsea for lots of reasons. Here is where as I told Sam the Army really got “chicken shit” since they wanted to put Chelsea up on charges for these infractions and put her in the “hole” (solitary confinement). They actually brought such charges this week which an Army board “convicted” her on. Fortunately an Internet petition campaign which gathered over 100,000 on-line signatures probably helped to let Chelsea avoid the bastinado. Chicken shit, pure chicken shit but still those convictions have meaning going forward since they affect good time, clemency, and other possible reductions of sentence.

 

So you wonder why I am pissed. And you wonder why I question why the media has anointed Caitlyn the trans poster person flavor of the month and left our sister Chelsea behind. Hell Sam and I are wise to the ways of the world so we know the deal is done, the air is sucked out of the rest of the transgender universe for now. But couldn’t Caitlyn at least wear a Free Chelsea button or sign the Amnesty International on-line petition asking for a pardon for her from President Obama. Free Chelsea Manning –we will not leave our sister behind.

Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind

Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind

 

 

 

 
 

Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mister James Dandy To The Rescue-With LaVern Baker In Mind

 

 

 

 

No question a lot of the classic works of rock and roll, say from the mid-1950s until the end of that decade were driven by those twangy guitars (hopefully provided by the genius of Les Paul and other pioneers working in their little garages in places like Nowhere, Texas trying to get more hyp out of that damn acoustic guitar, knowing, knowing like we all know now that whatever musical jail-break breeze was blowing was going to need plenty of electricity before it was through), those big blast sexy saxs blowing out to high heaven (think about that sax player who backed up Bill Halley on something like See You Later, Alligator and almost inhaled that sax driving that be-bopping first touch of rock coming out of about six musical traditions), and big brush back beat drums. Driven mainly by guys, hungry guys, guys with huge wanting habits trying to run away from the farms and small towns trying to break free from that life of farmer’s son or small store hardware clerk. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee, Warren, Carl and a lot more. But in that mix, maybe somewhat neglected, intentionally or not, maybe there was no room for lilting voices when the music got all sweaty and from jump street, were female performers like Wanda Jackson (who really could have held her own with the big boys and had a fetching look to boot), Ruth Brown and the Queen of the popping fingers, Miss LaVern Baker.         

Strangely the rise of the “girl” singers in rock and roll, usually in groups, did not really get a jump until toward the end of the 1950s decade but I would argue that LaVern Baker is the “godmother” who set the latter grouping up with her sweet life rhythm which had us all snapping our fingers. It is no secret that a lot of young guys then, a lot of guys like me with two left feet, almost instinctively overcame our shyness, overcame our desire not to be made fools of when something like LaVern Baker’s Jim Dandy popped out of the school dance DJs hands and on to that creaky old record player in that sullen gymnasium which passed for a dance floor come Friday night keep the kids off the streets time. Or come last dance chance time and having broken the ice, and hopefully no ankles or toes of that eyed partner (as for possible damage imposed on yourself, well, we all, guys anyway, learned early on around our streets that it is a dangerous world and that is that), you closed out the evening with her soulful version of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night. There is still a lot to be written about the women of early rock and roll but Miss Baker is definitely in the mix.     

[Another thing that could use some addressing is the fate of those artists who had center stage for a minute and then faded from mass view when the next best thing came along but who continued to perform out in the back streets, out in the bandstand bowling alleys, out in the motel lounges, out in the road houses. In the mid-1990s long after her heyday 1950s I heard LaVern Baker in a jazz bar in Cambridge. She had just gotten out of “rehab” for a knee or hip replacement, I forget which, and performed in a wheelchair, performed a lot of her old stuff and the highlight of the performance was a rousing version of Jim Dandy. Still working, still popping. I know my youthful memory fingers were popping that night.