Click on the title to link to an on line copy of the "Workers Vanguard" article on the subject mentioned in the headline.
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Thursday, August 11, 2011
From "The Rag Blog" -Ed Felien : Breivik's Norwegian 'Putsch' Has Historical Echoes
Click on the headline to line to The Rag Blog entry listed in the headline.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- In Search Of Home-Grown Terrorists- “Arlington Road”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the movie trailer for Arlington Road.
DVD Review
Arlington Road, starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, 1999
I have been on something of a tear lately in the wake of Jeff Bridges’ Oscar victory this year for his portrayal of broken-down country singer/songwriter Bad Blake in the film Crazy Hearts. In my previous reviews my main premise had been that there was a strong thread running through many of Bridges’ performances that harked back to his role as future good old boy, Duane Jackson, in the classic Texas-based coming of age film The Last Picture Show and that culminated in Crazy Hearts.
This film, Arlington Road, speaks to another thread, the intrepid, if sometimes foolhardy warrior prince fighting against evil (or at least the unknown). A previous well-known example was Blow-Up where he held off the Irish Republican Army (IRA) single-handedly (well, one agent in Boston anyway). This political thriller filled a niche after the tragic Oklahoma City bombings by native terrorists and before the axis shifted to 9/11 type foreign-based acts of terror. Thus, the notion to put a microscope to view a small but extensively-engaged proto-survivalist right wing-conspiracy against the federal (or state for that matter) government for some grievances had a certain timeliness then.
Bridges, as an undaunted professor, out to solve some baffling mystery (and also as a grieving victim of a governmental screw-up which killed his wife) that has cropped up and ensnared him in its web and Tim Robbins as the avenger bad angel and ensnarer battle this one out. Not Bridges' best performance because he is just too manic (and the script is a little too politically heavy-handed and obvious) in the end but kind of an interesting period piece just the same. The nuts are always with us, on film and in real life.
DVD Review
Arlington Road, starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, 1999
I have been on something of a tear lately in the wake of Jeff Bridges’ Oscar victory this year for his portrayal of broken-down country singer/songwriter Bad Blake in the film Crazy Hearts. In my previous reviews my main premise had been that there was a strong thread running through many of Bridges’ performances that harked back to his role as future good old boy, Duane Jackson, in the classic Texas-based coming of age film The Last Picture Show and that culminated in Crazy Hearts.
This film, Arlington Road, speaks to another thread, the intrepid, if sometimes foolhardy warrior prince fighting against evil (or at least the unknown). A previous well-known example was Blow-Up where he held off the Irish Republican Army (IRA) single-handedly (well, one agent in Boston anyway). This political thriller filled a niche after the tragic Oklahoma City bombings by native terrorists and before the axis shifted to 9/11 type foreign-based acts of terror. Thus, the notion to put a microscope to view a small but extensively-engaged proto-survivalist right wing-conspiracy against the federal (or state for that matter) government for some grievances had a certain timeliness then.
Bridges, as an undaunted professor, out to solve some baffling mystery (and also as a grieving victim of a governmental screw-up which killed his wife) that has cropped up and ensnared him in its web and Tim Robbins as the avenger bad angel and ensnarer battle this one out. Not Bridges' best performance because he is just too manic (and the script is a little too politically heavy-handed and obvious) in the end but kind of an interesting period piece just the same. The nuts are always with us, on film and in real life.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
*From The Archives Of The "Spartacist" Journal- "Terrorism And Communism"- A Guest Commentary
Click on the headline to link to a Spartacist theoretical journal entry (August-September 1970) from The International Communist League (via the International Bolshevik Tendency website) on Terrorism and Communism.
Markin comment:
This above-linked article is still a pretty good general Communist exposition on this subject.
Note: In the interest of political clarity please be aware that the material provided here from the early issues of the Spartacist theoretical journal archives of what is now the International Communist League (ICL, formerly International Spartacist Tendency, ISpT) is posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website. I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, although, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense- legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
Markin comment:
This above-linked article is still a pretty good general Communist exposition on this subject.
Note: In the interest of political clarity please be aware that the material provided here from the early issues of the Spartacist theoretical journal archives of what is now the International Communist League (ICL, formerly International Spartacist Tendency, ISpT) is posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website. I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, although, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense- legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- "Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism"
Click on the title to link to the "Leon Trotsky Internet Archives" article mentioned in the headline.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A Short Note On The United States Supreme Court Decision On The Guantanamo Prisoners
Commentary
By a 5-4 vote, during the week of June 6, 2008, the United States Supreme Court has held that when the courts are open (in short, when martial law is not a factor) the bedraggled prisoners being held in the American 'prisoner of war' camp in Guantanamo are entitled to access to the federal courts to seek redress of grievance. Of course, as always this decision will have to be fleshed out in real cases but the Justice Kennedy-authored decision, he of swing vote fame, as least gives defense lawyers a chance to argue someplace other than a rigged military tribunal in the future.
Do militant leftists see this as an important decision? A victory even? Well, yes we will take our victories, large or small, anyway we can get them today. Look, the import for us is this. The details of cases fighting for democratic rights, or in this case just basic democratic decency, like the details in criminal cases do not always make for pretty reading. Islamic fundamentalists, indiscriminate suicide bombers and the like, if that is what they have down in Guantanamo (rather than some guys that they indiscriminately scooped up along the way which appears to be true in at least some of the cases), are not out friends. In the end we will be crossing our own swords with these guys. Today, however, the fight for their basic democratic rights to a hearing denied so long by the Bush Administration and this same Supreme Court in previous cases is our fight. If they can disappear these guys that nobody really likes what happens when we get ‘uppity’? That too would not be pretty reading as witnessed by the “red scare” roundups of our predecessors after World War I and World War II.
As a last point the other interesting thing about this decision is the minority position led by one Justice Antonin Scalia and his little cabal of upfront, in-your-face reactionaries. Scalia, in particular, went out of his way to demonstrate once again why as a general rule we place no faith in the courts (basically when Kennedy votes the other way with the four serious Neanderthals). Scalia and his cohorts on the bench and outside in the Federalist Society are all hard-core original intent theorists. This means that the world, and here they mean the constitutional world, stopped about 1791 (at the latest). Thus, drawing and quartering, public hangings, even the occasional governmental agent kicking down the door and such do not offend their sensibilities. Here is the really scary part though- remember we have actually had over two hundred years of human evolution and understandings about the nature of law and society. If these august justices are scandalized today by allowing access to the courts to foreigners (and that is what this is really all about) then can you image their political positions then- God Save the King, I assume. No, Antonin Scalia and his boys are no James Madisons.
By a 5-4 vote, during the week of June 6, 2008, the United States Supreme Court has held that when the courts are open (in short, when martial law is not a factor) the bedraggled prisoners being held in the American 'prisoner of war' camp in Guantanamo are entitled to access to the federal courts to seek redress of grievance. Of course, as always this decision will have to be fleshed out in real cases but the Justice Kennedy-authored decision, he of swing vote fame, as least gives defense lawyers a chance to argue someplace other than a rigged military tribunal in the future.
Do militant leftists see this as an important decision? A victory even? Well, yes we will take our victories, large or small, anyway we can get them today. Look, the import for us is this. The details of cases fighting for democratic rights, or in this case just basic democratic decency, like the details in criminal cases do not always make for pretty reading. Islamic fundamentalists, indiscriminate suicide bombers and the like, if that is what they have down in Guantanamo (rather than some guys that they indiscriminately scooped up along the way which appears to be true in at least some of the cases), are not out friends. In the end we will be crossing our own swords with these guys. Today, however, the fight for their basic democratic rights to a hearing denied so long by the Bush Administration and this same Supreme Court in previous cases is our fight. If they can disappear these guys that nobody really likes what happens when we get ‘uppity’? That too would not be pretty reading as witnessed by the “red scare” roundups of our predecessors after World War I and World War II.
As a last point the other interesting thing about this decision is the minority position led by one Justice Antonin Scalia and his little cabal of upfront, in-your-face reactionaries. Scalia, in particular, went out of his way to demonstrate once again why as a general rule we place no faith in the courts (basically when Kennedy votes the other way with the four serious Neanderthals). Scalia and his cohorts on the bench and outside in the Federalist Society are all hard-core original intent theorists. This means that the world, and here they mean the constitutional world, stopped about 1791 (at the latest). Thus, drawing and quartering, public hangings, even the occasional governmental agent kicking down the door and such do not offend their sensibilities. Here is the really scary part though- remember we have actually had over two hundred years of human evolution and understandings about the nature of law and society. If these august justices are scandalized today by allowing access to the courts to foreigners (and that is what this is really all about) then can you image their political positions then- God Save the King, I assume. No, Antonin Scalia and his boys are no James Madisons.
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