From Veterans For Peace-U.S. People's Treaty with North Korea

U.S. People's Treaty with North Korea Alarmed by the threat of a nuclear war between the U.S. and North Korea, Veterans For Peace, joined by other U.S. peace groups have come together to send an open message to Washington and Pyongyang that we are strongly opposed to any resumption of the horrific Korean War. What we want is a peace treaty to finally end the lingering Korean War! Inspired by the Vietnam-era People’s Peace Treaty, we have initiated a People’s Peace Treaty with North Korea, to raise awareness about the past U.S. policy toward North Korea, and to send a clear message that we, the people of the U.S., do not want another war with North Korea. This is not an actual treaty, but rather a declaration of peace from the people of the United States.   Help us collect as many signatures as possible by the end of 2017, and to publicize the People's Peace Treaty in conjunction with nationally coordinated peace actions on Armistice Day, November 11.  Please add your voice for peace by signing the People’s Peace Treaty with North Korea. People’s Peace Treaty with North Korea  A Message of Peace from the People of the United States  Deeply concerned with the increasing danger of the current military tensions and threats between the Governments of the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea), which may re-ignite the horrendous fighting in the Korean War by design, mistake or accident,  Recalling that the United States currently possesses about 6,800 nuclear weapons, and has threatened the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea in the past, including the most recent threat made by the U.S. President in his terrifying speech to the United Nations (“totally destroy North Korea”),  Regretting that the U.S. Government has so far refused to negotiate a peace treaty to replace the temporary Korean War Armistice Agreement of 1953, although such a peace treaty has been proposed by DPRK many times from 1974 on,  Convinced that ending the Korean War officially is an urgent, essential step for the establishment of enduring peace and mutual respect between the U.S. and DPRK, as well as for the North Korean people’s full enjoyment of their basic human rights to life, peace and development – ending their long sufferings from the harsh economic sanctions imposed on them by the U.S. Government since 1950,  NOW, THEREFORE, as a Concerned Person of the United States of America (or on behalf of a civil society organization), I hereby sign this People’s Peace Treaty with North Korea, dated November 11, 2017, Armistice Day (also Veterans Day in the U.S.), and  1) Declare to the world that the Korean War is over as far as I am concerned, and that I will live in “permanent peace and friendship” with the North Korean people (as promised in the 1882 U.S.-Korea Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation that opened the diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Korea for the first time);  2) Express my deep apology to the North Korean people for the U.S. Government’s long, cruel and unjust hostility against them, including the near total destruction of North Korea due to the heavy U.S. bombings during the Korean War;  3) Urge Washington and Pyongyang to immediately stop their preemptive (or preventive) conventional/nuclear attack threats against each other and to sign the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons;  4) Call upon the U.S. Government to stop its large-scale, joint war drills with the armed forces of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Japan, and commence a gradual withdrawal of the U.S. troops and weapons from South Korea;  5) Call upon the U.S. Government to officially end the lingering and costly Korean War by concluding a peace treaty with the DPRK without further delay, to lift all sanctions against the country, and to join the 164 nations that have normal diplomatic relations with the DPRK;  6) Pledge that I will do my best to end the Korean War, and to reach out to the North Korean people – in order to foster greater understanding, reconciliation and friendship.  Welcome back! For your convenience, we have filled out your form with the information you provided previously from postal code 02452.  Click to see and manage your information.  Not alfredjohnson34@comcast.net? Please click here. Thank you!  Email* Even though you are logged in, we still require all information marked with '*' Veteran Status*   Veteran Non Veteran  The People's Treaty was drafted in collaboration with representatives from Veterans For Peace, Women Cross DMZ, United for Peace & Justice, Code Pink, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Western States Legal Foundation, World Beyond War, and Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security For more on Veterans For Peace efforts on Korea, please see the Korea Peace Campaign, that includes many resources.

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The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Several years ago, I guess about five years now, in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement with the shutting down of its campsites across the country (and the world) I wrote a short piece centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I ran into in the various campsites and on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses. Now a few years later it is apparent that they have, mostly, moved back to the traditional political ways of operating or have not quite finished licking their wounds.

Although I initially addressed my remarks to the activists still busy I also had in mind those intellectuals who had a radical streak but who then hovered on the sidelines and were not sure what to make of the whole experiment although some things seemed very positive like the initial camp comradery. In short, those who would come by on Sunday and take a lot of photographs and write a couple of lines but held back. Now in 2014 it is clear as day that the old economic order (capitalism if you were not quite sure what to name it) that we were fitfully protesting against (especially the banks who led the way downhill) has survived another threat to its dominance. The old political order, the way of doing political business now clearly being defended by one Barack Obama with might and main is still intact. The needs of working people although now widely discussed (the increasing gap between the rich, really the very rich, and the poor, endlessly lamented and then forgotten, the student debt death trap, and the lingering sense that most of us will never get very far ahead in this wicked old world especially compared to previous generations) have not been ameliorated. All of this calls for intellectuals with any activist spark to come forth and help analyze and plan how the masses are to survive, how a new social order can be brought forth. Nobody said, or says, that it will be easy but this is the plea. I have reposted the original piece with some editing to bring it up to date.          

*******

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon, a founding member of the American Communist Party and the founder of the Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined. A century later with some tweaking, unfortunately, those same theories and the same need for organization are still on the agenda although, as Trotsky once said, the conditions are overripe for the overthrow of capitalism as it has long ago outlived its progressive character in leading humankind forward.   

The conclusion that I originally drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them, and plenty of them, especially those who can write, is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders, guys like Cannon, like Debs from the old Socialist Party, like Ruthenberg from the early Communist Party, to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. He led the anti-war movement in Germany by refusing to vote for the Kaiser’s war budgets, found himself in jail as a result, but also had tremendous authority among the left-wing German workers when that mattered. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have, as mentioned previously, held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. Not so Communist Party leaders like William Z. Foster and Earl Browder (to speak nothing of Gus Hall from our generation) or Max Shachtman in his later years after he broke with Cannon and the SWP. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spent a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. I find that position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to lead the struggle to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, rather than some tweaking, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.

It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the “new” working class or a “new” vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an idea that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on, frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray (in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. The late Mandel’s students from the 1960s have long gone on to academia and the professions (and not an inconsiderable few in governmental harness-how the righteous have fallen). Debray’s guerilla foci have long ago buried their dead and gone back to the cities. The “cities” of the world now including to a great extent China had broken the third world countryside. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

From Veterans For Peace On November 11th-Armistice Day

From Veterans For Peace On November 11th-Armistice Day   

Armistice Day

Veterans For Peace calls on all members and all peace-loving people to take a stand for peace this Armistice (aka Veterans Day), Saturday November 11. We call for nationally coordinated local actions to demand diplomacy not war with North Korea, and the abolition of nuclear weapons and war. Veterans For Peace joins with the wider peace movement for actions before and after November 11th.   

In 2017, ninety-nine years after the end of  World War I, “the war to end war”, the world finds itself on the brink of a nuclear war, again. The threat of a horrific nuclear exchange is possibly higher than it has ever been. The President of the United States Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - DPRK), going so far as to say, while speaking to the U.N., that the U.S. will “totally destroy” the country. North Korea has also caused great alarm with its own threats, while testing long-range missiles and nuclear bombs. Twitter confrontations and saber rattling have only served to escalate tensions.

The road to war is a slippery slope on which one misstep can lead to the beginning of catastrophic war. Even the use of conventional weapons would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Millions will die if there is a nuclear exchange. Such horrific acts of violence can spread like a virus and easily lead to further global instability and a new world war. The people of North and South Korea should not face the possibility of horrible killings and destruction that they experienced during the 1950-53 period in the Korean War. The people of the world must speak out and act together to demand peace.

Veterans For Peace calls for the observance of November 11 to be in keeping with the holiday’s original intent as Armistice Day, to be “a day dedicated to the cause of world peace," as it was celebrated at the ending of World War I when the world came together to recognize the need for lasting peace. After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand November 11 as Veterans Day. Honoring the warriors quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day, as a result, has been flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.

This year with a rise of hate and fear around the world it is as urgent as ever to ring the bells of peace. We in the U.S. must press our government to end reckless rhetoric and military interventions that endanger the entire world.

Instead of celebrating militarism, we want to celebrate peace and all of humanity. We demand an end to all forms of hate, patriarchy and white supremacy and we call for unity, fair treatment under the law and equality for all. We call for a tearing down of walls between borders and people. We call for an end to all hostilities at home and around the globe.

Today the U.S. has a president who says diplomacy with North Korea is a waste of time. Diplomacy is in fact the only hope, no matter the cost. War is the immoral and tragic waste. The world has said it before and is saying it again now.  NO to WAR!

If you need tabling materials or VFP promo items for Armistice Day, please e-mail casey@veteransforpeace.org! No matter what action you decide to take, please let us know so we can promote the work that you're doing.

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Take Action - Here are some ideas! Let us know what you have planned here!

• Join together with others for local actions (peace march, rally, vigils) to call for No War on North Korea. March in the Veterans Day Parade with signs calling for “No More Korean War; From Armistice to Peace Treaty with N. Korea; End the Korean War Now; Yes to Talks, No to Bombings, etc.

• Sign this Urgent Petition to Presidents Trump & Moon: “Negotiate don’t escalate” 

• Partner with local peace groups to hold an event (forum, film showing, etc.) in honor of Armistice Day.

• Ring bells at 11am on November 11th, as was done at the end of World War One. (Approach churches and ask them to ring bells at 11am on November 11th)

• Support SOAW Border Encuentro. This year's theme "Tear Down The Walls, Build Up The People."   Please join us, November 10-12, and many other peace and justice groups on the border.

• Write an op-ed or letter to the editor. Please send to casey@veteransforpeace.orgfor inclusion on our website

• Share Your Vision of Peace! Submit a 10–20 second video illustrating your vision of peace. When you create your video, please state your name and city/state and complete the following sentence: "As a veteran, I believe peace is possible when _______________."

• Take action on Twitter! Use these sample tweets:
  • I will be celebrating #VeteransDay as a day dedicated to peace #ArmisticeDay @VFPNational
  • Veterans will ring 11 bells this year to remember #ArmisticeDay, a day of #Peace @VFPNational  

Resources For Your Armistice Day Event

• Armistice Day Statement (pdf)
• Buy a Flag from the Store to march in your local Veteran's Parade
• Hand out Membership Brochures

Contact Casey (casey@veteransforpeace.org) for other VFP items and Literature

Quick Links

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• Request Your Military Service Records
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For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King Utah Phillips

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King Utah Phillips   

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

DVD REVIEW

American Experience: Riding The Rails, PBS Productions, 1998

Growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those above-mentioned abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-continental trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel. Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that being looked at in this American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were merely as a paying passenger. Theirs was anything but. The only common thread between them and me is the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE.

This tale of a significant number of youth in the 1930’s is held together by film footage of the time, some nice background music from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers and Doc Watson that evokes the ‘romance of the rails’ and ‘talking head’ interviews with the itinerant travelers, male and female. Despite various motives, from the desire to leave the parents’ house to being thrown out during those tough times, the stories they tell are of cold nights in open box cars, overcrowded jails, beatings by the ever present railroad "bulls" and the struggle to find a little work in order to be able to move on to the next locale and maybe some ‘peace’. Mainly this was the eternal heading West of the famous Professor Frederick Turner Jackson thesis- with this proviso- by then the land had run out and maybe the possibility of the dreams. A few interviewed are still driven by the lore of the rails, many had no regrets but mainly this is a very interesting trip down memory lane in a time before the automobile became readily accessible to teenagers.

No review of the life of the rails can omit the special jargon developed by those on the road, the ‘class distinctions' (hobo, bum, and tramp) between them and the rough and ready ‘code of honor’ of the rails (honored more in the breach than in the practice from what I can gather). This tradition has survived best in song by the likes of Woody Guthrie in any number of his songs written in the 1930’s, the classic Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train" and the work, including a song with the same title as the headline to this piece, of the recently deceased old Wobblie, folksinger, writer and rail rat extraordinaire Utah Phillips. Starlight On The Rails, indeed!

Daddy What's A Train? Utah Phillips

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

When I was just a boy and living by the track
Us kids would gather up the coal in big 'ole gunnysacks
Then we heard the warning sound as the train pulled into view
The engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through

She blew so loud and clear, we had to cover up our ears
And we counted cars just as high as we could go
I can almost hear the steam those big old drivers scream
A sound my little kids will never know

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

I guess the times have changed, kids are different now
'Cause some don't even seem to know the milk comes from a cow
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars

The Wabash and the TP, Lackawanna, the IC
The Nickel-Plate and the good old Santa Fe
Just names out of the past, I guess they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

We climbed into the car, drove down into town
Right out the depot house, but no one was around
We searched the yard togheter for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so

All the things I did when I was just a kid
How far away those memories appear
I guess it's plain to see they still mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

Starlight On The Rails

This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.
I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.
We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.

Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?




I think about a wife and family,
My home and all the things it means;
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams.

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time;
A man who spends his life just ramblin'
Is like a song without a rhyme.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips


FREIGHT TRAIN
(c) 1957 by Elizabeth Cotten. Sanga Music

Chorus:
Freight train, Freight train, run so fast
(rep.)

Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I've gone

When I am dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
Tell them all that I've gone to sleep.

When I die, Lorde, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut street
Then I can hear old Number 9
As she comes rolling by.

A View From The Left- For a United Independent Kurdistan! Iraqi Kurds Vote for Independence, Baghdad Seizes Kirkuk

Workers Vanguard No. 1120	20 October 2017

For a United Independent Kurdistan!

Iraqi Kurds Vote for Independence, Baghdad Seizes Kirkuk

Kurdish Leaders’ Alliance with U.S. Betrays National Liberation

OCTOBER 17—Three weeks after Iraqi Kurds voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum, the U.S.-trained and -supplied forces of the Baghdad regime, supported by Iranian-backed Shia militias, took control of the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields from the Kurdish pesh merga, which is also trained and supplied by the U.S. As pesh merga forces retreated, Iraqi troops moved in, taking the city of Kirkuk itself and tearing down Kurdish flags. The Iraqi government’s assault is a clear reprisal for the September 25 referendum and a slap in the face of the Kurdish people’s longing for independence. The situation has the potential to explode, especially if Baghdad’s forces continue north into Iraqi Kurdistan.

As Baghdad captured Kirkuk, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) denounced as “shameful” the “silence” of their American imperialist patrons. In fact, while Trump declared, “We’re not taking sides,” a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad endorsed the Iraqi government’s actions: “We support the peaceful reassertion of federal authority, consistent with the Iraqi constitution, in all disputed areas.” Washington had earlier condemned the independence referendum, as did virtually all the regional powers. As we have repeatedly asserted, the Kurdish nationalists’ alliance with U.S. imperialism—most recently by acting as ground troops in the U.S.’s war against the Islamic State (ISIS)—sets up the masses of Kurdistan for more betrayals.

The historically Kurdish city of Kirkuk was captured in 2014 by pesh merga troops tied to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), as the Iraqi army disintegrated in the face of ISIS. The PUK co-governs the KRG alongside its more dominant bitter rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by KRG president Massoud Barzani. While in the October 16 assault there were some skirmishes between pro-Baghdad forces and elements in the pesh merga, Iraqi troops retook Kirkuk without much of a fight.

According to the KDP, a secret deal was worked out between pro-Baghdad forces and the PUK to give up the city and its oil fields to Iraqi forces. Today, KDP forces also withdrew as Iraqi troops captured more territory that had been taken by the pesh merga in 2014. As with all the alliances and maneuvers that both the KDP and PUK routinely carry out with the imperialists and regional powers, it is the Kurdish people who will pay the price.

In last month’s referendum, the Kurdish people made clear their desire for independence from their national oppressors. The referendum was held in territory administered by the KRG and in disputed areas then held by the pesh merga, including Kirkuk. Voters were asked in Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and Assyrian: “Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the Region’s administration to become an independent state?” With a turnout of over 72 percent, the referendum passed with an overwhelming 92.73 percent voting “yes.”

As Leninist fighters against national oppression, we welcome the referendum and its result, while giving no political support to the bourgeois nationalists. Voting “yes” was the only principled position for Marxists committed to the struggle for working-class rule in the Near East and elsewhere. As for Kirkuk and other historically Kurdish areas, we would have no opposition to their going over to the KRG or an independent Kurdistan. Kirkuk in particular has undergone massive “Arabization” over the past several decades, especially under Saddam Hussein, with Kurds expelled in large numbers and replaced by Arabs. In recent years, it has been the Kurdish nationalists who have expelled Arabs and others. Today, it is the Kurds being driven out, with thousands fleeing Kirkuk in fear of pogromist attacks. Whatever the formal status of such mixed cities, we vehemently oppose “ethnic cleansing” or forced population transfers of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrians and other residents.

Kurdish Nationalist Stooges for U.S. Imperialism

The carve-up of the Near East by the British and French imperialists following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I resulted in the Kurdish nation being denied a state of its own over the last century. Divided between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Kurds have endured the suppression of their language, culture and history and have been the victims of brutal repression by both the imperialists and local capitalist regimes. 

The Kurdish people have a long history of struggle against their oppressors. But their bourgeois-nationalist leaders have just as long a history of sacrificing these struggles for illusory support from the imperialists or their regional lackeys. The very Kurdish leaders who called last month’s referendum are an obstacle to Kurdish independence, and they had no intention of implementing the referendum’s outcome. Both the KDP as well as the PUK have long been in a military alliance with U.S. imperialism, acting as its willing tools. To maintain that alliance, they have subordinated the struggles of the Kurdish people for independence to the interests of U.S. imperialism.

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the KDP and PUK operated under U.S. command and then served as military auxiliaries to the occupation forces. More recently, they—along with Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is allied with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey—have enlisted in Washington’s crusade against the reactionary ISIS jihadists. The fact that Kurdish fighters have fought alongside the U.S. in suppressing Iraq’s Sunni Arabs has served to reinforce anti-Kurdish prejudices among Arabs in the region, to further fuel communalism and to maintain the national oppression of the Kurds.

As Marxists, we underline that U.S. imperialism is the greatest enemy of the world’s working people and oppressed, not least the Kurds. Thus, while we despise everything that ISIS stands for, we understand that the blows it strikes against U.S. military forces and their proxies are objectively in the interests of the international working class. These proxies include the PYD’s military and the pesh merga as well as the Baghdad regime’s army and the Iraqi Shia militias. U.S. out of the Near East!

The very premise of the Kurdish nationalists’ alliance with the U.S. is to sacrifice any struggle for independence. U.S. imperialism is a committed enemy of the Kurdish masses. When Saddam Hussein was gassing Kurdish civilians in Halabja in March 1988, he was an ally of the U.S. After America’s rulers turned on their former client during the first Gulf War in 1990-91, they sought to rouse the Kurds (and Shias) against Hussein, and then abandoned them as he brutally suppressed them.

The U.S. is opposed to Kurdish independence, which would redraw the map of the Near East, and has made clear that it will not countenance anything beyond “autonomy” in a unitary—and therefore inherently oppressive and Arab-dominated—Iraq. When Barzani announced the referendum, his Washington paymasters rebuked him. A September 15 White House statement condemned the referendum as “distracting from efforts to defeat ISIS.”

Today, with ISIS on the verge of defeat, the military situation in Iraq is evolving. As journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote in a September 29 article in the London Independent, “The US no longer needs the Iraqi Kurds as it did before the capture of Mosul from Isis in July,” which he notes was taken by the Iraqi army, not the pesh merga. He added: “The military balance of power is changing and Baghdad, not Irbil [the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan], is the gainer.” Once the imperialists deem their stooges in Kurdistan of little value, they will discard them, as they have repeatedly done before.

The multinational and multiethnic proletariat of the Near East must be won to the struggle for a united, independent Kurdistan. This struggle includes defending the right of Kurds in the individual countries to secede. Anti-Kurdish sentiment is promoted by the regional powers to cement their rule over their “own” workers. By championing Kurdish self-determination, the working class of the region would be taking a stand against their own capitalist exploiters and helping to undercut U.S. imperialism’s capacity to manipulate the Kurds’ grievances to further its interests. This perspective requires the forging of internationalist workers parties that fight for a Socialist Republic of United Kurdistan, part of a socialist federation of the Near East.

Vultures Circle Kurdistan

For the KRG, the motivation for the referendum was not the struggle for independence. In 2014, the Iraqi government of then prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, a consummate Shia-Arab sectarian, withheld virtually all funding to the KRG. The KRG responded by stopping oil deliveries to the central government, instead selling the oil directly to Turkey via a new pipeline. With negotiations stalled, KRG leaders hoped that the referendum would provide them a bargaining chip to wrest more financial concessions and greater autonomy from Baghdad. It remains to be seen how such negotiations will proceed given recent events in Kirkuk.

In Iraqi Kurdistan itself, the economic situation is dire; some 30 percent of the population live below the poverty line. In addition to losing funding from Baghdad, the KRG has expended a great deal of resources on the U.S.-led war on ISIS and is suffering from the decline in oil prices. The region is on the verge of bankruptcy, with government employees receiving their pay sporadically. In October 2015, teachers, hospital workers and others in the public sector held strikes and protests to demand three months of back pay. The KRG responded by unleashing riot cops.

In addition to growing disillusionment with the corruption and graft of both the KDP and the PUK, there is widespread anger at Barzani himself, whose term of office expired in 2015. Since then, he has unilaterally extended his term, suspended the KRG parliament and is ruling by fiat. By launching this referendum, the KDP was aiming to restore its credibility ahead of KRG presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for next month.

Whatever the intentions of the KRG leaders, the referendum has jolted Iraq’s neighboring countries—in particular Turkey and Iran. The rulers of these countries, as well as the embattled Syrian regime, fear that any expression of separatism in Iraqi Kurdistan could ignite similar movements among their “own” Kurds. Shortly after the referendum, Turkey’s would-be sultan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been waging a brutal war of annihilation against the PKK, flew to Tehran to meet with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Both leaders emphasized, “We will not accept changing borders in the region.” Turkey has threatened to shut down its border with Iraqi Kurdistan and to “starve” it by refusing to purchase oil. Working in collaboration with the Baghdad regime, both countries have reinforced their troops along their borders with Iraqi Kurdistan.

The only regional power that supported the referendum is Israel, whose government, which lords it over the oppressed Palestinian people, declared, with no sense of irony, that Kurds have a right to self-determination. There is a long history of cooperation between Israel’s Mossad and the Barzani clan, which has also worked with the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Tel Aviv sees an independent Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential base for operations against Arab regimes, and especially against Iran.

Israel’s support for the referendum has been seized on by anti-Kurdish forces in the region. A rally by Turkish chauvinists in Ankara on September 15 raised banners declaring, “We Won’t Allow a Second Israel.” Likewise, in a meeting with Turkey’s Erdogan, Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that his country would not allow the establishment of “a new Israel in the region.”

For the Kurdish nationalist leaders, the national aspirations of the Kurdish people are little more than a negotiating tool. But for the Kurdish masses, the referendum represented a concentrated expression of their desire for independence. And the impact of that vote has the potential to spiral out of the control of those who set it in motion. In Iranian Kurdistan, under martial law conditions and the fierce tyranny of the “Revolutionary Guards,” thousands of Kurds courageously took to the streets to support the referendum; dozens were arrested. The referendum drew a line between Kurds throughout Kurdistan and the imperialists and regional tyrants.

For Leninist Parties in the Near East!

Recent events in the region underline the historical fact that Iraq is not a nation, but a patchwork of different peoples and ethnicities cobbled together by the imperialists. The borders of Iraq were arbitrarily drawn to encompass oil concessions, forcing together hostile populations. The British imperialists are historically most responsible for dismembering the Kurdish national body; it was Britain that created “Iraq” in 1921 and then forcibly incorporated the Kurds into it.

But Kurds are not simply victims. The struggle for Kurdish independence has the potential to upend the entire set of relations established by the colonial powers and today defended by the regional regimes and the imperialist overlords. The fight for Kurdish self-determination will shape and be shaped by the future struggles of the region’s proletariat. The aim of national liberation could itself be a motor force for a proletarian upsurge. Kurdish struggle in Iran could shake up the entire structure of that theocratic prison house of peoples, where the Persian-chauvinist regime presides over a population nearly half of which is non-Persian. In Turkey, the struggle for proletarian revolution is inconceivable without a fight for Kurdish self-determination. Anti-Kurdish chauvinism is a key pillar of Turkish nationalism and the Turkish capitalist state.

We seek to link the struggle for Kurdish independence with the fight to overthrow capitalist rule throughout the Near East. Kirkuk has a history of militant Kurdish workers struggles. But for the most part, the Kurdish proletariat is to be found outside of Kurdistan, including in the industrial centers and mining regions of Turkey. It is in the urban centers, among the industrial proletariat, that the power exists to lead the Kurdish people, and all the exploited and oppressed of the region, to freedom.

The future of the working class of the Near East will not simply be determined in that volatile region, but is intimately tied to the struggle for workers rule in the imperialist centers. As part of the proletariat of the Near East, Kurdish workers can play a leading role in bringing down the rotten structure set up to serve the imperialists. The millions of Kurdish and Turkish workers in Germany can serve as a living bridge linking the struggle for independence to the fight for socialist revolution in the Near East and West Europe.

Such a perspective must be brought to the proletariat of the Near East through the instrumentality of Marxist leadership. What is desperately needed is the forging of revolutionary Leninist parties committed to the equality of all nations and peoples. We fight to build workers parties that are sections of a reforged Fourth International, parties that will fight for the liberation of all the oppressed as a vital part of the struggle for workers rule.