No War on Iran!
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Friday, June 21, 2019
No War on Iran Veterans For Peace firmly opposes U.S. attempts to increase tensions in the Persian Gulf and create the conditions for war against Iran.
In The End Forgery My Friend, But Only In The End-With Melissa McCarthy’s _Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018) In Mind
In The End Forgery My Friend, But Only In The End-With Melissa McCarthy’s "Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018) In Mind
By Laura Perkins
When I was a kid, a young girl growing up in a heavy religious atmosphere Second Awakening “burned over” area of upstate New York and stuck, and I use that word correctly, on an isolated truck farm one way that I entertained was collecting stamps, postage stamps mainly U.S. postage and what were called First Day covers, meaning that you got an envelope with a stamp usually with a cachet postmarked on the first day of issue from whatever place it was issued. Very early First Day of Issues were much rarer and worth more although less likely to have a commercial cachet. My overall collection was based mainly on stamps and covers from the 1950s onward that were both inexpensive but also produced in enough qualities that they except for maybe printing errors to this day have had no serious appreciation in value. I kept those covers and stamp album and gave them to a granddaughter who expressed some passing interest in collecting such materials. That in itself is unusual since you hardly ever see or hear of young people, kids, getting into philately (that is just the technical name for stamp-collecting not some coded sexual reference for any evil-minded readers).
Many years later after my second divorce with two young daughters to raise on a fairly meager settlement I came back to philately (remember that is not a bad word) using part of my settlement to start a mail order (quaint, right) stamp and covers business via various stamp publications and doing weekend shows at places like hotels and stamp clubs. I would buy, starting out at least, stamp albums at auction or via dealers and break them up for individual sale of the stamps (and plenty of postage for the latter stuff that wasn’t worth selling). I would buy bulk First Day covers and do the same creating a tough but profitable little business which along with an occasional writing assignment or printing order would keep a roof over my head and my daughters until things stabilized. As I expanded my reach I would also scour out of the way flea markets and “antique” stores looking for postcards with interesting postmarks (not for the scene on the front buy for say a postmark from some railroad train or tram). That later expansion is important below in reviewing this film because along the postcard trail you would also find old letters and contents from various famous or well-known people. In those days I had a market for such material among certain types of collectors. I did that work for several years until the interest in stamp-collecting except for very rare investment type items dried up among the young. Also on-line operations like E-Bay and mainline auction houses were taking away mail order (remember quaint) business and shutting down physical shows when the customer based dried up. I haven’t been in touch with this field for a while so I am not sure about the condition of the industry except when I did a quick Google search again and didn’t see much market except for those rare portfolio items and one of a kind pieces which will always have some market.
All of this foreknowledge to address the main issue, the main criminal issue in the film under review Melissa McCarty’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? -the market for literary material from famous writers, a market I never got involved with but which the main character Ms. Israel in this based on fact story delved into in order to keep herself afloat when she was going under after having some early success as a historical novel writer. But fame is fleeing and so forgery became her friend (along with a mad monk gay con man and man about town Johnny Too Bad, take that as you will who glided the path for her). Frankly I do not remember being part of any stamp show or attending any auction where famous authors had their personal mostly typewritten notes and letters on sale but perhaps that was a separate market. I do know because I sold many such items that letters from Presidents or just their signatures had some value and formed a collectible market as did sports figures and celebrities.
What joins my experiences and Ms. Israel’s conscious if seemingly minor criminal activity was around the question of forgeries, and its subset authentication. In philately there have been many such forgeries, some quite famous and stamp dealers have been known to do a few things to stamps to sell them as more expensive items like taking stamps you get by the sheet and turning them into coil stamps by cutting the perforations, adding so-called lines between such stamps which make them more valuable, things like that. Various fixes although for the most part with expensive items, and even not so valuable items but ones that should be authenticated there are agencies including the American Philatelic Society who for a fee will do the service. The almost shocking part of the Israel story in that the dealers she was dealing with took whatever she had to offer without much fuss until she went too far on a playwright Noel Coward intimate letter which had to be fake since it would have revealed too much about his sexual preferences when such knowledge would have subjected him to criminal sanctions.
That is the technical part of Ms. Israel’s operation but the film is as much about her being on the ropes as a writer and desperate to keep herself (and a beloved cat) afloat even though she was not nature’s noblewoman by any stretch of the imagination. Mostly she had moped along assuming that having written a few successful works that she should have been on easy street and took her fall pretty hard. Things looked really bad until she “discovered” she could con supposedly sophisticated New York City booksellers into buying her forgeries. Thereafter she made a cottage industry out of it. Along the way the seemingly asexual Ms. Israel made what could only be called an association with one Johnny Too Bad who after she told what she was doing became something like her confederate. That is until the heat came down on his soft head and he ratted her out to save his own ass. She would take the fall although not serving any prison time but her operation was over if not in the end her friendship with ugly Johnny Too Bad. She was forced to write her own stuff and face the hard realities of the hard copy publishing business. Having been down and out myself despite her disagreeable nature I had some sympathy for her situation despite myself. A well done job here by Melissa McCarthy and Brother Grant as the mad monk Johnny.
Quebec: Down With Anti-Muslim Headscarf Bill! No Illusions in Canadian “Multiculturalism” — Independence for Quebec! The following article is translated from République ouvrière No. 3 (Winter/Spring 2019), French-language newspaper of our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste au Québec et au Canada. The bill described in the first paragraph is to be voted on shortly by the Quebec National Assembly.
Workers Vanguard No. 1156
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31 May 2019
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Quebec: Down With Anti-Muslim Headscarf Bill!
No Illusions in Canadian “Multiculturalism” — Independence for Quebec!
The following article is translated from République ouvrière No. 3 (Winter/Spring 2019), French-language newspaper of our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste au Québec et au Canada. The bill described in the first paragraph is to be voted on shortly by the Quebec National Assembly.
One of the first decisions of the new CAQ [Coalition avenir Québec] government, elected in October 2018, was to confirm its intention to ban the wearing of religious symbols by teachers, judges and police officers. The bill, which is expected to be introduced this spring, will likely present state employees “in a position of authority” with the following choice: either remove their religious symbols or lose their jobs. Under the false pretext of defending “secularism” and gender equality, this is in fact the latest in a long series of racist attacks, carried out successively by the Liberals and the Parti québécois [PQ] when they were in power, particularly targeting the Muslim minority. Throughout this hysterical campaign, Québec solidaire [QS] has joined the racist chorus, putting forward its own measures against Muslims.
This whole campaign really took off in 2006, with the Bouchard-Taylor commission inquiry into the question of “reasonable accommodation” [of religious and cultural differences]. Since then, Quebec society has been afflicted by outbreaks of anti-Muslim racist fever triggered by capitalist politicians when they deemed it useful. In 2013, during the PQ’s “Charter of Values” affair, assaults on veiled women soared in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec. In January 2017, as the Liberals were taking up the torch of this “identity debate,” the fascist terrorist Alexandre Bissonnette burst into a Quebec City mosque and killed six Muslims. Just a few months later, the Liberals passed Bill 62, which became the “Act to Promote Respect for the State’s Religious Neutrality.” That bill’s Article 10, which prohibited anyone whose face was covered from providing or receiving public services (including boarding public transportation), was suspended by the Superior Court in December 2017.
The CAQ’s proposed bill would extend the Liberals’ Bill 62 to include the “Bouchard-Taylor consensus”—which prohibits public sector employees in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols—while adding teachers to the mix. Although [Quebec premier] Legault claims that the bill will apply to all religions equally, it is clearly aimed in particular at the Muslim headscarf (as well as the Jewish kippa and the Sikh turban) and would allow the state to preserve a “public face” that is fully compatible with Catholicism. It is in the vital interest of the labor movement to mobilize its social power to combat these racist attacks!
The “official” attacks from the National Assembly not only encourage the fascists and all sorts of reactionary riffraff to commit their own racist attacks, but also aim above all to divide the multiethnic working class in order to facilitate the capitalists’ austerity onslaught against all workers. State persecution of Muslim women, who are among the most oppressed in society, is poison for workers’ struggles. The leaders of the main education unions (FNEEQ-CSN, FAE, CSQ) have taken a stand against the ban on the Islamic headscarf. A class-struggle leadership in the unions would immediately mobilize school employees of all categories to defeat the bill. Down with the racist anti-Muslim attacks! An injury to one is an injury to all!
The Veil and Bourgeois Hypocrisy
The false pretext of “protecting” gender equality through government bans is completely hypocritical. As Marxists, we are opposed to the headscarf and veil, which are symbols and instruments of women’s oppression, embodying a reactionary social program to confine women in the family, in the home and in a position of servitude. The institution of the family is the main source of women’s oppression and is, along with the state and religion, one of the three reactionary pillars of the capitalist system of exploitation. We stand in solidarity with women struggling to escape the tyranny of this oppressive “tradition” of the veil and all other reactionary religious traditions.
But the laws that prohibit female employees from wearing headscarves or from receiving and providing services while wearing a face-covering veil reinforce the oppression of these women. Our opposition to the veil and the headscarf is in fact one of the reasons we oppose these laws, which can only result in even greater isolation and oppression for the women who wear them. It is this oppression that fuels religious beliefs.
As Marx said:
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
— “Introduction to Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law” (1844)
This means that to combat religion, we must struggle to destroy the source of oppression. It is necessary to overthrow capitalism and its state through workers revolution, not strengthen the capitalist state by increasing its powers through repressive laws.
These laws, which encourage racist attacks and pose legal threats to employees who refuse to abide by them, will worsen the seclusion of veiled women. Many of them will be pushed even more into the arms of their family and reactionary milieu. Ahlam Ghatoussi, a special education technician who wears the veil, evoked these consequences when she said:
“It discourages me because during the PQ government’s charter of values, my friends and I were attacked on the streets because of our veil. When the door opens, people feel free to attack. I’m afraid it will again be like it was four years ago....
“I think I have stayed home enough.... I had my three children back to back, and my [last] child is in kindergarten. Now I am driven by the desire to work with people.”
—La Presse, 5 October 2018
Legault’s bill clearly opens the possibility of attacking not only veiled teachers but also teacher assistants and others working in education on the grounds that when a teacher is absent or out of the classroom, they might find themselves in a “position of authority.” These are often lower-paying jobs held by a relatively high number of Muslims. This underlines the extent to which the unity of all education workers requires a determined struggle against the headscarf ban.
Making the Quebec government’s hypocrisy all the more obvious is the fact that François Legault recently announced that the ban on religious symbols would not apply to subsidized private schools, which have historically been religious. More than half of private schools in Quebec are associated with a religious tradition, and 86 percent of students attending religious schools are in Catholic schools. So much for the “secularism of the state”! Schools of religious minorities (Jews and Muslims) account for only 1.3 percent of all students in Quebec. In fact, the majority of Jewish and Muslim minority students attend public schools, which are becoming more and more decrepit and abandoned. For free, quality secular public education in French! As a rational way to help immigrant students transition from their mother tongue to French, we demand free, quality bilingual programs.
Although the Catholic church’s almost total hold on Quebec society was shattered by the [1960s] “Quiet Revolution,” its influence remains strong today. Witness the crucifix that still hangs above the Speaker of the National Assembly. At bottom, the Catholic hierarchy and its ideology (like all religions) are just too useful to the bourgeoisie in maintaining conservatism and sanctifying capitalist class rule. For decades the Catholic clergy preached submissiveness and obedience to French-speaking workers in order to sell them as cheap labor to English-speaking bosses; they forced women to continuously have babies. Catholic “values” are the values of the bourgeoisie, not those of the proletariat! In Quebec, the dominant religion remains Catholicism. Islam will always be the religion of an oppressed minority.
We are for secularism, the principle of the separation of church and state that goes back to the time of the French Revolution. The aim was to wrest the emerging bourgeois society from the oppressive hold of an established religion (in that case, Catholicism). It was not meant to prevent people from professing or displaying their religious beliefs. Quite the contrary. It was to prevent the state from imposing a dominant religion on atheists and followers of other faiths. Religion was to become a private affair with respect to the state. This is in stark contrast to the Catholic “secularism” of Legault and the anti-Muslim “secularist” zealots of the PQ and QS.
Racism and oppression of women are inherent in any capitalist society and are necessary to maintain the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie. It will take a socialist revolution, which smashes the capitalist state machinery—at its core, the army, the police, the prisons and the courts—and replaces it with a workers state based on the collectivized ownership of the means of production, to begin to tackle the material basis of these forms of oppression. The October 1917 Russian Revolution, which was the most liberating act to date for the international proletariat (and also for women and minorities, such as the Jews, oppressed under the tsarist empire), remains our model. The decisive factor in that revolution was the leadership of a vanguard party, the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, which is the kind of party we must build today.
For a Workers Republic of Quebec!
Faced with repeated racist and anti-Muslim attacks in Quebec, some are turning to Ottawa as a supposedly progressive bulwark against the [right-wing] “identitarian” nationalists. This is a fatal mistake! The Anglo-Canadian bourgeoisie is not only just as racist as the Quebec bourgeoisie but also responsible for the national oppression of Quebec, with all the anti-francophone racism that this entails.
The national question of Quebec is the strategic question in this country. The national oppression of Quebec is, along with the British crown (the queen, who is head of the Anglican church), the glue that holds the reactionary Canadian state together. Quebec’s national liberation struggle can therefore serve as a powerful motor force for socialist revolution in this country. It is crucial to fight the lies and illusions against Quebec independence propagated by the Anglo-Canadian bourgeoisie, particularly among immigrants and minorities.
Thus, unlike the overwhelming majority of the left, which grants the reactionary and xenophobic right a monopoly on criticism of Canadian “multiculturalism,” the Ligue trotskyste is committed to exposing the hypocritical anti-Quebec and anti-immigrant lie of “multiculturalism,” an instrument in the hands of the Anglo-Canadian bourgeoisie. As we explained previously:
“From the start, the politics of ‘multiculturalism’ instituted by the progenitor of the current [prime minister] Trudeau—and always supported by the pro-capitalist NDP social democrats—have had the aim of denying the national rights of Quebec, forcibly contained within Confederation. At the same time, they serve to set Québécois workers and ethnic minorities (and anglophone workers in Quebec) against one another.”
[— “Fascist Terror Attack on Muslims in Quebec,” WV No. 1106, 24 February 2017]
Specifically, Canadian “multiculturalism” denies Quebec’s national rights by presenting the people of Quebec as simply one “culture” among many others in a great mosaic. Thanks to the “official” policy of “multiculturalism,” the Liberal Party of Canada has historically been able to line up cultural communities against the independence of Quebec, while securing their vote virtually for life, notably by providing generous subsidies. It was also able to strengthen support for the government among some of the immigrant (as well as the Québécois) petty bourgeoisie and to act as a force of social conservatism to repress cultural minorities. In the name of “multiculturalism,” the Ontario Liberal government in 2004 considered the possibility of establishing sharia (Islamic law) religious courts having legal power in family disputes, while Christian and Jewish courts have been in place since 1991. We are opposed to these reactionary tribunals, which cruelly demonstrate that Canadian “multiculturalism” is the enemy of the liberation of women, Muslims and others.
Furthermore, the hypocritical lie of Canadian “multiculturalism” is but a thin gloss on the police repression that is the daily lot of many immigrants and minorities. For years, under the pretext of the “war on terror,” Muslims across the country have been persecuted by the federal state, not to mention the atrocities perpetrated by Canadian troops in Afghanistan and their crimes today in Iraq and Mali. The true face of “multicultural” Canada is seen in deportations by the thousands, which continue unabated under Trudeau. Notably, Haitian refugees have been deported since November, after a brief pause. It is crucial for the labor movement to demand: Down with deportations! Full citizenship rights for everyone here!
Immigrants, minorities and English-speaking workers have no interest in maintaining the oppressive and reactionary state that is Canada. Quebec’s independence would be a major blow to the Anglo-Canadian bourgeoisie; it coincides directly with the interest of all the workers exploited by that bourgeoisie. As a Greek immigrant said in Comfort and Indifference (Denys Arcand’s documentary on the 1980 Quebec independence referendum):
“All the capitalists of the Greek community are voting No. Why?... I am a worker and I want to support the Quebec workers. Because if I support Quebec workers, and if these people gain power, I too gain power.”
Indeed, Quebec’s liberation from under the boot of the dominant Anglo-Canadian nation would also be a step forward for immigrants and minorities. Québécois and immigrant workers share the same interests. For a workers republic of Quebec!
The racist and anti-Muslim attacks of the “identitarian” nationalists are a real gift to the Anglo-Canadian bourgeoisie. This clearly shows that after two failed referendums [on Quebec independence], the bourgeois nationalists are willing to scuttle the struggle for independence by pushing immigrants into the arms of the federalist reactionaries, thus isolating Quebec workers from their combative class brothers and sisters among immigrants and minorities. For the capitalists, profits come before the fight against national oppression.
It is urgently necessary to fight to break the ties that bind Quebec workers to their bourgeois nationalist leadership, particularly through the union bureaucrats and their allegiance to the PQ. Insofar as Quebec workers are so firmly tied by nationalism to their own bourgeoisie, it is precisely because they are subjected to national oppression. Since the federal government oppresses Quebec and the English-speaking labor movement echoes the chauvinism of their bourgeoisie, it is easy for Quebec nationalists to exploit the legitimate anger against national oppression and push the lie that the Quebec capitalists and workers have a common interest. Far from strengthening nationalism, the creation of a separate Quebec would instead allow for more clearly exposing that the interests of the multiethnic working class and the nationalist bourgeoisie are irreconcilable.
What is needed today is a struggle to build a revolutionary binational workers party that will be the most committed champion of Quebec independence. This party will also fight to win over the workers and immigrants of English Canada to the cause of independence for Quebec, against the Anglo-chauvinist poison spread by the bourgeoisie and the social democracy of English Canada. This party will be a crucial tool to unite the struggle of the proletariat, the struggle for national liberation and the defense of immigrants and oppressed minorities in the fight for a workers republic of Quebec and a socialist revolution in Canada and beyond. This perspective is reflected, in particular, in our call to build a binational party made up of 70 percent Québécois and oppressed minorities, until two parties in two separate states are established.
The “Secularism” of QS: Same Anti-Muslim Poison
Québec solidaire is in no way a “lesser evil” amid the racist and anti-Muslim attacks of the CAQ, the PQ and the Liberals. QS is simply a new version of bourgeois populism, which seeks to channel social struggles into parliamentarism by exploiting widespread illusions in the capitalist state (see “QS et GND: charlatans populistes,” République ouvrière No. 1, Automne/hiver 2017-2018). QS is a capitalist party that simply aspires to administer the bourgeois state and give it a “left” veneer. This would not change the nature of the capitalist state; the cops, prisons and courts would still serve to repress the working class and terrorize minorities.
The current attempts by QS to posture as the “left” opposition to Legault’s anti-Muslim attacks are totally hypocritical. QS, which put forward its own anti-Muslim measures, is in tune with the other parties of the National Assembly regarding “secularism.” In 2013, QS proposed its own so-called “Charter of Secularism,” which included the denial of public services to women wearing the niqab [full-face veil]. In 2017, QS parliamentary deputies stood to the right of the Liberals when QS sought to add to the Liberals’ Bill 62 a ban on the wearing of religious symbols by magistrates, Crown attorneys, police and prison guards, as well as the president of the National Assembly. The longstanding position of QS on religious symbols is therefore that of the CAQ, minus the teachers. Regardless of the “discussion” that QS is currently pursuing to appear less racist, as a small capitalist party, it is committed to maintaining the economic and social system that is at the root of the oppression of immigrants and minorities.
QS may claim to be for Quebec independence, but with the electoral trouncing of the PQ last October, its attempts to position itself as the alternative sovereignist party have instead placed it in the camp of...Trudeau. [A QS leader] Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, in the guise of criticizing Legault’s intention to reduce immigrant admissions, reinforced illusions in the Canadian prime minister:
“We rarely agree with Justin Trudeau, but keeping a number of refugees, which allows us to play our role of solidarity with the most wretched of the planet, is a good thing.”
— ICI.Radio-Canada.ca, 14 November 2018
Legault’s anti-immigrant measures, including the recent cancellation of 18,000 immigration applications, are an integral part of his racist attacks to divide workers. This poison must be fought in the working class. However, the struggle for Quebec to have its independent state cannot be separated from the struggle to control its borders. Thus, Legault’s current demand that immigration, which is now under federal jurisdiction, be brought back under the jurisdiction of Quebec is legitimate from this standpoint. Ultimately, only the seizure of power by the proletariat can lay the ground for a just and fair society for all. The current political bloc between QS and Justin Trudeau clearly shows the hypocrisy of QS’s “pro-independence” and left-sounding rhetoric.
The pseudo-socialist groups (like Alternative socialiste or La Riposte socialiste), which have committed a class betrayal by completely liquidating into QS and which sow illusions in that petty-bourgeois formation, are obstacles to the construction of a Leninist party. Only the Ligue trotskyste fights for a truly revolutionary perspective and dedicates itself, going forward, to the construction of a binational and multiethnic revolutionary workers party, the essential tool for achieving a socialist revolution. For our comrades here, these tasks go hand in hand with the building of strong communist sections internationally as part of the struggle to reforge the Fourth International.
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Thursday, June 20, 2019
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love-Before The Gonzo Wave Receded- The Life and Work Of Hunter Thompson- A Second Look
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love-Before The Gonzo Wave Receded- The Life and Work Of Hunter Thompson- A Second Look
DVD REVIEW
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride, Indeed
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride: The Life And Times Of Doctor Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson and various commentators, 2007
Since Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s death by suicide and the extravaganza of the funereal flight of his ashes at Woody Creek in 2005 there has been a veritable avalanche of documentaries, books and other forms of tribute by his friends, like Ralph Steadman and Johnny Depp, his associates, like Jann Wanner and David Brinkley, and others. Whatever other intention each tribute may have they all have in common a desire to influence that crucial “first draft of history” in order to assure Thompson’s place in the pantheon of 20th century American letters. There is no question that Thompson belongs there and furthermore no question that his work will be read even by future digitally-centered 'cyberspace' generations (who will, I am sure, get a kick out of that old mojo wire of his as we did in our time on discovering something like an old antique crank-up telephone). What is at question is the extent that each tribute, including this 2007 documentary, adds or detracts from that commemoration.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this space on the subject of albums of musical tributes to legendary folk, rock and blues stars not all such efforts are create equally. Nor, in the case of Thompson, do such tributes all cover the same ground (although on such a narrow subject as the hey day of Hunter Thompson’s best work there is bound to be, and is, overlap). In the very recent past I have reviewed another Thompson documentary tribute- “Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson”- that concentrated on his rising career as a hip 1960’s journalist and political commentator. The center of that piece was Thompson’s journalistic efforts in the period from the mid-1960’s, including the personally decisive 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, to the rise of Jimmy Carter’s presidential candidacy in the mid-1970’s.
The current film tends to concentrate more on Thompson’s emergence as an icon at a later period and on the effect that two films about him- “Where The Buffalo Roam” and “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” contributed to that status. Moreover, unlike “Gonzo” that was filled with commentary by more political types, like former presidential candidates George McGovern and Gary Hart, or on the evolution of his journalism by the likes of his "Rolling Stone” boss Jann Wanner and the writer Tom Wolfe (of “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” fame) this work features more Hollywood film-types like Thompson friends Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and John Cusack. I, thus, give the edge to “Gonzo” as the more important and informative film because, in the final analysis Thompson’s legacy for future generations will be those many, many printed words that keep us going on many a hard night out on the edge.
Finally, I would make this comment that I have made in “Gonzo” and in reviews of some of Hunter’s books.
“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.”
Hunter, I hope that you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Damn, the 2008 campaign, despite the hoopla, was boring without your knife even if at the end it was not as sharp as in the old days. Watch this DVD. And then “buy the ticket, take the ride” and read his books.
Zack James’ comment June, 2017:
Sometimes you just have to follow the bouncing ball like in those old time sing along cartoons they used to have back in say the 1950s,the time I remember them from, on Saturday afternoon matinees at the old now long gone Stand Theater in my growing up town of North Adamsville. Follow me for a minute here I won’t be long. Earlier this spring my oldest brother, Alex, took attended a conference in San Francisco which he has done periodically for years. While there he noticed an advertisement on a bus for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. That ad immediately caught his attention he had been out there that year and had participated in those events at the urging of his friend Peter Paul Markin who was something of a holy goof (a Jack Kerouac term of art), a low rent prophet, and a street criminal all in one. When Alex got back to the East after having attended the exhibition he got in contact with me to help him, and the still standing corner boys who also had gone out West at Markin’s urging to put together a tribute booklet honoring Markin and the whole experience.
After completing that project, or maybe while completing it I kept on thinking about the late Hunter S. Thompson who at one time was the driving force behind gonzo journalism and had before his suicide about a decade ago been something of a muse to me. At first my thoughts were about how Thompson would have taken the exhibition at the de Young since a lot of what he wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s was where the various counter-cultural trends were, or were not, going. But then as the current national political situation in America in the Trump Age has turned to crap, to craziness and straight out weirdness I began to think about how Thompson would have handled the 24/7/365 craziness these days since he had been an unremitting searing critic of another President of the United States who also had low-life instincts, one Richard Milhous Nixon.
The intertwining of the two stands came to head recently over the fired FBI director James Comey hearings where he essentially said that the emperor had no clothes. So I have been inserting various Thompson-like comments in an occasional series I am running in various on-line publications-Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked-Tales From The White House Bunker. And will continue to overlap the two-Summer of Love and Age of Trump for as long as it seems relevant. So there you are caught up. Ifs not then I have included hopefully for the last time the latest cross-over Thompson idea.
************
Zack James comment, Summer of 2017
Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days. What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion, photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful expression.
That project subsequently got me started thinking about the late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of 1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.
Here is what is important today though, about how the dots get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today. Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are you when we need, desperately need, you.
*******
Zack James comment, Summer of 2017
You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In the times of this 50th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20th of this year.
Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now
DVD REVIEW
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride, Indeed
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride: The Life And Times Of Doctor Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson and various commentators, 2007
Since Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s death by suicide and the extravaganza of the funereal flight of his ashes at Woody Creek in 2005 there has been a veritable avalanche of documentaries, books and other forms of tribute by his friends, like Ralph Steadman and Johnny Depp, his associates, like Jann Wanner and David Brinkley, and others. Whatever other intention each tribute may have they all have in common a desire to influence that crucial “first draft of history” in order to assure Thompson’s place in the pantheon of 20th century American letters. There is no question that Thompson belongs there and furthermore no question that his work will be read even by future digitally-centered 'cyberspace' generations (who will, I am sure, get a kick out of that old mojo wire of his as we did in our time on discovering something like an old antique crank-up telephone). What is at question is the extent that each tribute, including this 2007 documentary, adds or detracts from that commemoration.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this space on the subject of albums of musical tributes to legendary folk, rock and blues stars not all such efforts are create equally. Nor, in the case of Thompson, do such tributes all cover the same ground (although on such a narrow subject as the hey day of Hunter Thompson’s best work there is bound to be, and is, overlap). In the very recent past I have reviewed another Thompson documentary tribute- “Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson”- that concentrated on his rising career as a hip 1960’s journalist and political commentator. The center of that piece was Thompson’s journalistic efforts in the period from the mid-1960’s, including the personally decisive 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, to the rise of Jimmy Carter’s presidential candidacy in the mid-1970’s.
The current film tends to concentrate more on Thompson’s emergence as an icon at a later period and on the effect that two films about him- “Where The Buffalo Roam” and “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” contributed to that status. Moreover, unlike “Gonzo” that was filled with commentary by more political types, like former presidential candidates George McGovern and Gary Hart, or on the evolution of his journalism by the likes of his "Rolling Stone” boss Jann Wanner and the writer Tom Wolfe (of “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” fame) this work features more Hollywood film-types like Thompson friends Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and John Cusack. I, thus, give the edge to “Gonzo” as the more important and informative film because, in the final analysis Thompson’s legacy for future generations will be those many, many printed words that keep us going on many a hard night out on the edge.
Finally, I would make this comment that I have made in “Gonzo” and in reviews of some of Hunter’s books.
“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.”
Hunter, I hope that you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Damn, the 2008 campaign, despite the hoopla, was boring without your knife even if at the end it was not as sharp as in the old days. Watch this DVD. And then “buy the ticket, take the ride” and read his books.
In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Jeremy Hammond -Free All The Whistle-Blowers
In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Jeremy Hammond -Free All The Whistle-Blowers
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
HAMMOND, JEREMY
Anarchist-computer hacker POLITICAL PRISONER
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels- An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels- An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that "westbound freight" by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class differences department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was ready to face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of the dark pages, the ranch war stuff, the water stuff not the polygamy stuff which was nobody's business except the parties involved of those latter day saints.
For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.
Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, travelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too, still made him grind his teeth. but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.
So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents" reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.)
That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”
That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”
Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the late Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about.
So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.
So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.
Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was.
Several years later after getting washed clean from liquor and drugs, at a time when Jack started to see that he needed to get back into the real world if he did not want to wind up like his last travelling companion, Denver Shorty, whom he found face down one morning on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge and had abandoned his body fast in order not to face the police report, he noticed that Utah was playing in a coffeehouse in Cambridge, a place called Passim’s which he found out had been taken over from the Club 47 where Sam had taken Jack a few times. So Jack and his new wife (his and her second marriages) stepped down into the cellar coffeehouse to listen up.As Jack waited in the rest room area a door opened from the other side across the narrow passageway and who came out but Utah. As Jack started to grab his attention Utah blurred out “Daddy Two Cent, how the hell are you?” and talked for a few minutes. Later that night after the show they talked some more in the empty club before Utah said he had to leave to head back to Saratoga Springs in New York where he was to play at the Caffé Lena the next night.
That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.
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