| ||||||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
Sunday, May 26, 2013
| |||||||||||
|
Each week we highlight different aspects of what Bradley Manning has
done for the movement.
| |||||||||||
|
Thank You
Bradley Manning!
“If the
public, particularly the American public, had access to this information, it
could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it
applied to Iraq and Afghanistan, it might cause society to reconsider the need
to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people
we engaged with every day … I felt I accomplished something that would allow me
to have a clear conscience.”
|
 | ||||||||||
|
US opposition to minimum
wage increase in Haiti revealed
WikiLeaks public
cables have showed how the U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory
owners contracted by Levi’s, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom to block an increase to
the minimum wage for Haitian workers.
In 2009, the minimum
wage was $1.75 per day. In June 2009, responding to workers’ pressure, a
parliamentary bill proposed to raise it to $5 per day. Factory owners opposed it
saying they would only pay $2.50 “to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US
clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica”. Backed by the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the US Embassy, they urged then Haitian President
René Préval to intervene.
The Haiti cables
reveal how closely the US Embassy monitored widespread pro-wage increase
demonstrations and the political impact of the minimum wage battle. UN troops
were called in to quell workers and students protests, sparking further demands
for the end of the UN military occupation of Haiti.
|
A
man of exceptional courage and principle
In a statement he
read in court on 28 February 2013, gay US Army PFC Bradley Manning proudly
admitted having leaked information to Wikileaks in order to inform the public of
US war crimes and government skulduggery that was being kept from us.
He faces charges that could lead to life in prison.
| ||||||||||
"200 Gourdes ($5) right now!"
|
Because of these
fierce demonstrations, sweatshop owners and Washington were unable to keep the
minimum wage as low as they had wanted to for long.
In
August 2009, President Preval negotiated a deal with Parliament to have two minimum wages: $3.13/day for
textile workers and $5/day for other workers. But Parliament also adopted a
progressive increase over three years so in October 2012 textile workers minimum
wage finally went up to $5/day ($6.25 for other
sectors).
| ||||||||||
| Was head of UN forces
murdered? On 7 January 2006, Brazilian General Bacellar, head of the UN occupation forces in Haiti, was found dead. Bacellar had resisted pressure from Canada, France and the US to raid grassroots areas; the day before his death he opposed plans to occupy Cité Soleil – a stronghold of support for democratically elected President Aristide who was ousted by a US coup. A Wikileaks cable revealed suspicions of Dominican President Fernandez “that the Brazilian government is calling the death a suicide in order to protect the mission from domestic criticism. A confirmed assassination would result in calls from the Brazilian populace for withdrawal from Haiti.” | |||||||||||
|
1 -
8 June: International Actions to Free Bradley Manning
So far actions in
Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Turkey, UK, USA,
Wales…
| |||||||||||
|
Bradley Manning’s court-martial begins 3 June
The Bradley Manning Support
Network is calling for a week of actions across the US and around the world
from Saturday 1 June to 8 June.
On 23 February, an unprecedented groundswell of international
support for Bradley emerged when 70 communities in 19 countries took action.
Some actions
already planned:
Canada:
1 June, Rally at US Consulate in Toronto Germany: 31
May, Meeting at Clearing Barrel GI Café, Kaiserslautern. 1 June
Solidarity Rally in Berlin, Brandenburg
Gate. South Korea, 3-8 June Press conference and demonstration
at US Embassy in Seoul.
UK: 1 June, 2 pm Picket outside the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London US: 1 June
Rally at Fort Meade, Maryland, where the court-martial will take place.
Join your nearest protest or organize a solidarity event in your
area, register it on the BMSN website, and let us know about it
so we can help publicise.
|
Other ways to support
Bradley
·
Write your local press why you support Bradley’s courageous
whistleblowing.
·
Translate this message and/or send to your networks.
· Demand San Francisco Pride reinstate Bradley Manning as Grand
Marshal
|
 |
"Let us
follow the example of Bradley, let’s battle for peace, let’s battle against
wars, without fear of reprisals, let’s learn from Bradley to be truly
human."
|
 |
“This material [passed
to Wikileaks] has contributed to ending dictatorships in the Middle East, it has
exposed torture and wrongdoing in all the corners of the world”.
Julian
Assange Wikileaks founder, who remains in
the Ecuadorian embassy in London, protected from extradition to Sweden and to
the US
|
|
Queer Strike queerstrike@queerstrike.net
US: PO
Box 14512, SF, CA 94114, / 415-626 4114
UK: PO Box 287 London NW6 2QU / 020 7482 2496
US: PO Box
11795 Philadelphia, PA 19101 / 215 848 1120
UK: PO Box 287 London NW6 2QU / 020 7267 8698 | |||
The Walking Daddy Of Joy Street
See he had fed right in that new scene, fed right into that big cloud puff stuff as the max daddy ganja man in town, at least the white section of town. Christ, the stories they told about him then, about his own mad monk madnesses, and not told by some fried-brained fool all twisted up and brain-mashed from too many hits, way too many, of the pipe making stuff up in order to walk in Walking Daddy’s reflected glory. Stories told straight up in ganga bong pipe smoke-filled rooms and rolled dollar cocaine snort dens about when Walking Daddy turned, or helped turn the town hip.
Walking Daddy was right there at the beginning, at the time when everybody was practically giving as much dope away as they were selling. No sales pitch, no come-on, but just to, well, just to turn the brethren on, new age a-borning turn the sleepy-headed brethren on. He was passing out big rough-edged blunts like they were going out of style, and righteous stuff too. They told a story of some Back Bay bust, booze-busted, dope-busted, maybe some underage sex thing busted too, such things were all kind of mixed up together then on police blotters, where some number, maybe twenty, guys and gals were busted at some too noisy party and hauled into to the stationhouse. Somehow Walking Daddy heard about their plight and through some nefarious connections got a pouch full of Acapulco Gold into the jailhouse and by the time they were done the place smelled was like some college dorm, or some Chinese opium den. Beautiful. (Somebody else had another part of that same story who said that Walking Daddy had gone bail for all of them as well. That sounds right too.)
Then it all kind of turned in on itself. Too much war madness, too much parent anger, too much bad dope, too much, too much. The always lurking greed-heads got greedier, the product got poorer, or really some slap-dash quick- change artists looking for easy money, started passing oregano and other crap as dope to make a fast killing and broke the high. Yah, just broke the high. Walking Daddy just soldiered on though, after all he was a dope- dealer and that was his profession, and had been an honorable one too before the greed-heads burned the thing to the ground, but it was not the same, not the same at all.
Nobody knew his real name, although the name Bob and Tom had been thrown around the place by some young women who seemed to know him more personally, and whom he employed un some unknown conditions to package his product, but Walking Daddy will do just find because this memory blast is not about a name but more a sense of the times (we can skip the reference to Joy Street part too since we know where his kingdom was). A sense of the times and of some of the denizens who survived in that heady atmosphere of late 1970s in Boston before everything turned to ashes, to violence, and to some bizarre behaviors once cocaine became the drug de jus. See Walking Daddy had a sense of that earlier time too, that 60s time, a sense that weed had been played out just like when he had started out and beat had turned to retreat , and people wanted to move on and get their kicks on Route 666 then. Get their kicks on cousin cocaine.
Walking Daddy’s place was smack dab in the center of the action, right there on Joy Street up on Beacon Hill right near the State House. Now the place itself wasn’t anything, maybe less that anything to speak of, two small rooms, a living room and a bed room with a small kitchenette, a studio really. But what made it a magnet was that Walking Daddy, all forty-four years of him, all six-one and one hundred and ninety pounds of him, all long brown hair, beard, eyes of him, was the main man cocaine dealer around that area at a time when cocaine (sister, coke, snow, girl, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood) was just emerging as the drug of choice for those with discretionary incomes who wanted to get their kicks after tiring of marijuana or other lesser drugs. This all happened at a time before guys were winding up very dead in some Sonora dusty dirt road trying to make a score without connections. Guys like his friend Billy Bradley who didn’t know the whole thing was rigged up, and had been since eternity and wound up face down with two slugs in him for trying to go “independent” when the cartels moved in. A time too before cousin cocaine got whipped around in some crack bong pipes and guns started to foul the play. And so Joy Street became a Mecca and Walking Daddy “walked with the king.”
Sure Walking Daddy wanted to make money, make lots of it from an overheard conversation passed on from one of his “employees” but he also had, and this was passed on too, an idea that he would make his Joy Street digs something of an old time opium den, a place when select company could unwind, could do their lines, and get their kicks in a friendly environment. And what allowed Walking Daddy to do that was two, no, really three things. First he was, unlike poor Billy, connected, connected down Mexico way and so would not expect to find himself in some dusty back road ditch, face down. Second he was connected at the State House at just that moment when cocaine was getting to be the marijuana of the 70s generation who wanted good stuff and had the dough to pay for it. (Some wag said that he could have been an honorary member of the Bar Association for his services to that community. Another said he knew more Assistant-Attorneys-General than the Attorney-General did.) So while, once in a while, out on the streets he had to stand for a drug pat-down by some clueless cop who thought he was on the level, was just doing his job, the cop that is, before higher powers stepped in, he was left alone. Third, and this is where Walking Daddy took a certain pride in his work, he was inclined to give away as much stuff as he sold, especially to the bags full of young women college students who dotted the area.
Strangely though he wasn’t tagged with any woman, although there were always plenty of women around including those previously mentioned “employees”and while there was a little talk that maybe he was a fag, gay, a homo, by those who were outside his circle it seemed more like he was just not into sex, or women or stuff like that although a few were more than ready to give him a chase. Oh yes, and he never touched the stuff himself, maybe a little weed like in the old days if it was passed around but no sister.
So on any given day back then, starting in late afternoon Walking Daddy could be seen walking around Cambridge Street, Charles Street, maybe Beacon Street if he was heading to the Common picking up acolytes, picking up a stray a woman or two to add some zest to the nightly doings. Picking up some low-lifes too, some hard-edged corner boys, some North End toughs or Southie hard guys, maybe just out of Deer Island or Walpole, some beat down old winos from Berkeley Street, or some guys from anywhere who had maybe taken too many hits from the bong in the 1960s and never got over it, since Walking Daddy liked to think that he could cater to all kinds with the common denominator of snow to bind his “nation” together. Yah, Walking Daddy was a piece of work.
***The Blues Is Dues –With Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy In Mind
FromThe Pen Of Frank Jackman
Johnny Prescott privately daydreamed his way through the music he was listening to just then, the forbidden blues music, the devil’s music in some quarters but colored music,( nigra music from his Southern- born father, nigra being kinder that the n----r that he had come North with and which Mother Prescott banned from the household under penalty, well, it was not clear what penalty since no Prescott, young or old, was willing to chance what that hellish thing might be in Johnny’s growing up 1950s household). He was listening to that sacred music just then on the little transistor that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his new white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen year old boy. No, he screamed he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn’t have to, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, or Harry James 1940s war drum thing, sentimental journey thing, until the boys come home thing, on the huge immobile radio downstairs in the Prescott living room. That music and that monstrosity declared, Johnny declared, strictly squaresville, cubed.
This blues thing, this roots music had been a recent acquisition as Johnny one night, one Sunday night, got a late night blues station with a big range out of Chicago. Previously he had been entirely happy, innocently happy, to listen to, say, Shangra-la by The Four Coins that a few months back he had been crazy for. Or that Banana Boatsong by The Tarriers that everybody was singing but which upon a recent listen had made him think for a moment as it started its dreary trip through his ears that he was not so sure that those ties wouldn’t have been a better deal, and more practical too, if that was all the radio could produce. Yah, that so-called be-bop Boston rock station, WAPX, had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who had proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move alone, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky, that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town.
The bitter end came one Sunday afternoon as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from he thought) by Russ Hamilton blared on and on and he was then ready to throw in the towel with vanilla music. (Johnny would not get hipped to the roots, to the distinctions between that vanilla music being spoon-fed to he and his white brethren and black-etched blues until much later when he headed south during the early 1960s for the civil rights struggle and learned very quickly the distinctions. Just then thought vanilla was just a feeling not a cultural statement.) Desperately, later that same night, Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice that he knew from some Ike and Tina stuff so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was finished, fish-tailing right after that one, no commercial breaks, was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. There was no need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets, was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.
Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high schooler in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just then like he said before, the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, and some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never listened to it because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little mother bought Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to even have the strength to pick up Be-Bop Benny’s live show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. And so when he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stompand finished up with his Someday he was hooked.
And you know, as he listened to song after song for several weeks, toes tapping, fingers popping, he started to see what Billy, Billy Bradley, from over in Adamsville, meant when one night at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billy and the Jets, mentioned in an intro to a cover of Elmore James’ rendition of Dust My Broom that if you wanted to get rock and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.
Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had, couldn’t understand why that beat, that da, da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head. Sounded like some ten thousand years of human existence seeking to wail, wail in the night. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be embedded somewhere in his own genes.
Memorial Day for Peace
May 27, 2013, 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Christopher Columbus Park
105 Atlantic Ave.
Boston, Massachusetts
Please join us
Please join Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 and Samantha Smith, Chapter 45, Military Families Speak Out, Mass Peace Action and United for Justice with Peace as we commemorate Memorial Day on Monday May 27, 2013
There will be no parade, no marching band, no military equipment, no guns and drums, no Air Force fly-overs.
There will be veterans and supporters who have lost friends and loved ones. There will be veterans who know the horrors of war and the pain and anguish of loss. There will be friends and families of soldiers, remembering their loved ones. There will be Iraqi Refugees who have suffered terrible losses and will join us as we remember and show respect for their loss.
There will be flowers dropped into the harbor for each fallen U.S. soldier from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Flowers will also be also be dropped into the harbor remembering the loss of Iraqi family and friends.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
***Philly Rules- With Silver Lining Playbook In Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Let say you had a Philly guy, a regular Philly guy, a regular Philly guy from one of its Little Italy neighborhoods. You know a guy who would root himself hoarse at a Phillies’ game, or for the Flyers, or the ‘76ers (forget U/Penn though) and would go absolutely bonkers (maybe I sure reserve the use of that would here), would get heated up a lot, okay, at an Eagles football game. A guy who would, maybe, know how to make use of a good buffalo wings recipe or the secrets of a good place to get a good cheese and steak submarine sandwich. See a regular Philly guy, okay. Regular except for a little, uh, mental problem, a bi-polar problem, a little problem that got to be a big problem when his ever-lovin’ wife proved unfaithful to him, as some wives will, proved unfaith though maybe because he spent just a little too much time cheering on those sports teams and not enough time being, well, being a well-rounded modern man. And our regular Philly guy went a little overboard in reaction to that treachery and wound up in a mental institution, complete with “meds” to calm him down. Oh yah, and despite those quirky little characteristics he is a voracious reader, a cowboy intellectual (although perhaps I should also reserve the word cowboy as well). Either way keep that reader thing under your hat since “real” Philly guys are too busy to read.
Let’s say while our regular Philly guy, Pat to give him a name, was getting well (and not getting within shouting distance of his wife under penalty of another stretch, maybe some prison time the next time) and trying to make himself worthy of his wife’s affections when she comes along. The she in question being another of the world’s waif, Tiffany, who has her own set of, uh, mental problems but who came on board to try to get Pat through his rough spots on the road to reuniting with his wife.
And let’s say that Ms. Tiffany is, well, kind of screwy, kind of outdoes Pat in the screwy department. At least for a while. On the face of it one regular Philly guy (albeit with those little problems mentioned above), and one screwy Philly dame with her own set of high octane problems would be strictly oil and fire. No go, nada, get lost. Except she had a thing for regular Philly guys with problems, or for one Philly guy with problems. And so to lure the unsuspecting Pat in she, as part of an agreement to with him to contact his wife, bargains him into becoming her amateur night dancing partner. Just partners that’s all. As it turns out, they aren’t half bad after a ton of practice and a road strewn filled with pitfalls. See too, though as it turned out he developed a thing for regular (if screwy) Philly gals (or gal).
Now let’s say all this happened, plus a few odd-ball things around Pat’s family issues, then you would have a very amusing and well-produced romantic comedy for the 21st century. Hey, I’ll take the Eagles and three points, okay Pat. See this one, okay, even if you aren’t a regular Philly guy or gal.
***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night -Sweet Dreams, Baby- With Thanks to Mister Roy Orbison
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sixteen and sex. Hold on a minute let me explain, although the clued in of any generation know what I mean without having to write a thesis about it. The clueless, any generation, well maybe they will or maybe they won’t but don’t say I didn’t try to tell them what it was like back then, back in the late 1950s, early 1960s night. So sixteen and sex. No, not touchy feely stuff in some backseat coupe (maybe a “boss” ’57 Chevy and if not then any old car, hell, maybe your father’s borrowed Buick that you better bring back in one piece, or else). No, right now I am not, hear me, not talking about some back seat down by the seashore, up some hilled lovers’ lane, or in some midnight minute motel kind of thing, at least not yet. This is just about getting to know her (and the young woman reader can change the gender and draw her own diagram), easy know her, and let things take their course from there. No more of this frenzied, heated, beating some other guy’s time (or trying to) like he had just got finished doing with Lucy. No more Lucys, and as an amendment, make it a constitutional amendment if you want, no more dog-eat-dog fighting over girls, women, you know, frails.
That is exactly what Johnny Prescott had on his mind as noticed this cool looking frill (girl) across the field heading his way. The field being, for those not from Clintondale, unofficially known as “the meadows,” a family outing place not well-used now that they had the big Gloversville Amusement Park going full blast but just the place to go and think through, well think through, sixteen and sex, boy sixteen and sex. So he knew, knew as sure as he knew he own think through habits that this frill (girl) was also here to do some thinking. Maybe some getting over a boy think like he was getting over Lucy. Or maybe thinking that the way the boy meets girl rules were set up were just flat-out screwy. He hoped so.
And as she, this girl okay, approached he recognized her from school, from Clintondale High. At least he thought so because although the high school was fairly big it was small enough so that he should have recognized her, even if only from the “caf.” As she came very close in view he noticed that it was none other than Timmy Riley’s younger sister, Betty Ann, a sophomore a year behind him. At first he was going to pass because now that he thought about it, although it was clear that she was pretty in a second look way, and maybe a third look way too, she was known as one of those bookish-types that, well, you know were too bookish to think about sixteen year old boys and sex, or maybe boys of any age. And, well Timmy, Timmy Riley, was the star fullback on the Clintondale Red Raiders football team, and who the hell knew how Timmy felt about his bookish sister and sexed-up sixteen year old boys.
But Johnny felt lucky, or maybe just desperate, and started to speak. But before he could get word one out Betty Ann said, “It’s a nice day for walking the meadows with nobody around. I come here when I want to think about stuff, about my future and what I want to do in the world. How about you?” Bingo, thought Johnny. I am going to talk to Betty Ann, and I’ll take my chances with Timmy- the hell with him (unless he reads this then it’s strictly only in his head, okay Timmy). And they talked and talked until almost dark. Talk-weary but still no wanting to move more than three yards from each other Johnny pulled out his transistor radio and they listened to WMEX, the be-bop, non-stop rock ‘n’ roll station that was mandatory listening for those under eighteen, for those who counted.
And while listening to Roy Orbison trill out Dream Baby; Brenda Lee heart-breakingly warble All Alone Am I: Patty Cline ditto heartbreak She’s Got You; Don and Juan telegraphing Johnny’s pitch line What’s Your Name; The Angels silky be-bop ‘Til; and Frank Ifield croon I Remember You Johnny and Betty Ann began what became one of the great Clintonville High romances of 1962. Sex, well you figure it out, clued in or clueless.
Friday, May 24, 2013
**His Father’s Uniform- With The Songs That Got Us Through World War II In Mind
From The Pen Of Peter Markin
From The Pen Of Peter Markin
Rick Roberts was curious. Not curious about everything in the world just that 1963 minute, although more than one teacher had noted on his early childhood reports cards that little characteristic, but curious about his father’s military uniform, his faded, drab, slightly moth-eaten army dress uniform, World War II version, of course. That curiousness came not from, like the Rick usual, some daydream curiosity, some impossible or improbable configuration, but the result, the this minute result, of having come across the suit in an attic closet as he was preparing to store his own not used, not much used, or merely out-of-fashion, excess clothing against time. And that time was, or rather is, the time of his imminent departure for State University and his first extended time away from home.
Funny Rick knew that his father had been in World War II, had gotten some medals for his service as was apparent from the fruit salad on the uniform, and had spent a little time, he was not exactly sure on the time but his mother had told him 1950 when he asked, in the Veterans Hospital for an undisclosed ailment. But he had not heard anything beyond those bare facts from his father. Never. And his mother had insistently shh-ed him away whenever he tried to bring it up.
Rick had been sick unto death back in the 1950s when the kitchen radio, tuned into WNAC exclusively to old-time World War II Roberts’ parent music. To the exclusion of any serious rock music like Elvis, Chuck, Little Richard and Jerry Lee, but that was parents just being parents and kicking up old torches. Especially when Frank Sinatra sang I’ll Be Seeing You, or his mother would laugh whimsically when The Andrew Sisters performed Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy or The Mills Brothers would croon Till Then. But they, Rick’s parents, never were overheard discussing that war, nor was it discussed when his father’s cronies, and fellow veterans, came over to play their weekly card games until dawn down in the family room complete with beer and chips. What happened back then, what went wrong?
After having spied the uniform Rick decided it was time to ask those questions, those curiosity questions. Later it would be too late, he would be too busy raising a family of his own, or he would be doing his own military service, although he hoped not on that last count. It just didn’t figure into his plans, and that was that. So with a deep breathe one evening, one Friday evening after dinner, when his father would not be distracted by thoughts of next day work, or Saturday night card games, his asked the big question. And his father’s answer- “I did what a lot of guys did, not more, not less. I did it the best way I could. I saw some things, some tough things, and did some tough things too. I survived and that’s all that there is to say.” And Rick’s father said it in such a way that there was no torture too severe, no hole too deep, and no hell too hot to get more than that out of him.
Later that evening, still shell-shocked at his father’s response, as he prepared to go out with his boys for one last North Adamsville fling before heading to State, he stopped for some moments in the front hall foyer and could hear his mother softy sobbing while the pair listened to a record on the living room phonograph with Martha Tilton warble I’ll Walk Alone, The Ink Spots heavenly harmonize on I’ll Get By, Doris Day song-birding Sentimental Journey, Vaughn Monroe sentimentally stir When The Lights Go on Again, and Harry James orchestrate through It’s Been A Long, Long Time. Then Rick understood, understood as well as an eighteen- year old boy could understand such things, that it was those songs that had gotten them through the war, and its aftermath. And that was all he had to know.
Boston Private Bradley Manning
Stand-Out Part Of An International Day Of Solidarity-Saturday June 1st Park
Street Station – 1 PM
Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us At Park Street Station In Boston On June 1st At 1 PM For A Stand-Out In Solidarity Before Bradley’s June 3rd Trial
Stand in solidarity with the heroic Wikileaks whistleblower Private Bradley Manning in his fight against the Obama Administration's attempts to keep in prison for life.
Plan to go to Fort Meade outside of Washington, D.C. on June 1st for an international day of solidarity with Bradley before his scheduled June 3rd trial. Check with the Bradley Manning Support Network http://www.bradleymanning.org/for information about going to Fort Meade from your area.
If you can’t make it to Fort Meade come to Park Street Station on June 1st in support of this brave whistle-blower.
*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- as the trial date approaches funds are urgently needed! The government has unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Bradley. And the Obama government is fully using them. We have a fine defense civilian lawyer, David Coombs, many supporters throughout America and the world working hard for Bradley’s freedom, and the truth on our side. Still the hard reality of the American legal system, civilian or military, is that an adequate defense cost serious money. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/
*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network (for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )to the Secretary of the Army to free Bradley Manning-1000 plus days is enough! The Secretary of the Army stands in the direct chain of command up to the President and can release Private Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him at his discretion. For basically any reason that he wishes to-let us say 1000 plus days is enough. Join the over 25,000 supporters in the United States and throughout the world clamoring for Bradley’s well-deserved freedom.
Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us At Park Street Station In Boston On June 1st At 1 PM For A Stand-Out In Solidarity Before Bradley’s June 3rd Trial
Stand in solidarity with the heroic Wikileaks whistleblower Private Bradley Manning in his fight against the Obama Administration's attempts to keep in prison for life.
Plan to go to Fort Meade outside of Washington, D.C. on June 1st for an international day of solidarity with Bradley before his scheduled June 3rd trial. Check with the Bradley Manning Support Network http://www.bradleymanning.org/for information about going to Fort Meade from your area.
If you can’t make it to Fort Meade come to Park Street Station on June 1st in support of this brave whistle-blower.
*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- as the trial date approaches funds are urgently needed! The government has unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Bradley. And the Obama government is fully using them. We have a fine defense civilian lawyer, David Coombs, many supporters throughout America and the world working hard for Bradley’s freedom, and the truth on our side. Still the hard reality of the American legal system, civilian or military, is that an adequate defense cost serious money. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/
*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network (for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )to the Secretary of the Army to free Bradley Manning-1000 plus days is enough! The Secretary of the Army stands in the direct chain of command up to the President and can release Private Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him at his discretion. For basically any reason that he wishes to-let us say 1000 plus days is enough. Join the over 25,000 supporters in the United States and throughout the world clamoring for Bradley’s well-deserved freedom.
From the Archives of Marxism-“Warsaw Ghetto Anti-Nazi Uprising of Labor”
From the Archives of Marxism-“Warsaw Ghetto Anti-Nazi Uprising of Labor”
By Art Preis
Militant, 6 May 1944
Last month marked the 70th anniversary of the heroic uprising
against the Nazis by Jews interned in the Warsaw Ghetto. Memorial events
grotesquely claimed the memory of these martyrs for Zionist Israel, a state
whose oppression of the Palestinian people calls to mind the Nazis’ drive for
lebensraum (“living space”). During the Nazi occupation, Zionist leaders
in the West provided little assistance to the East European Jews. As Polish Jews
bitterly observed in a January 1943 appeal to American Jewish leaders: “The
survivors of the Jews in Poland live with the awareness that in the worst days
of our history you have given us no aid.”
Who came to the assistance of the isolated and courageous Jews
fighting extermination? The Polish nationalist Home Army not only refused to
offer any practical or military assistance but also pocketed most of the small
quantity of arms airlifted from Britain for the ghetto insurgents. The British
Royal Air Force refused to bomb the gas chambers of Auschwitz even as they
carried out sorties a few miles away. But 600,000 Soviet soldiers died
liberating Poland from the Nazi scourge. We honor their memory. (For more, see
“Hail Warsaw Ghetto Fighters!” WV No. 452, 6 May 1988.)
As our comrades of the Spartakusowska Grupa Polski said, “We stand
in the tradition of the brave Trotskyists in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw”
(WV No. 892, 11 May 2007). Trotskyists, including those of Czerwony
Sztandar [Red Flag] who went to their deaths in the Warsaw Ghetto, sided
militarily with the Soviet Union despite the misrule of the Stalinist
bureaucracy and opposed all the imperialist combatants, not least the
“democratic” Allied powers. For the imperialists, World War II was a struggle
over the redivision of colonies and spheres of exploitation. The Trotskyists saw
in the German working class, trampled under the fascist jackboot, the instrument
to overthrow the Nazi regime and to expropriate the bourgeoisie that had brought
Hitler to power.
Zionist leaders remained silent about Nazi atrocities. The American
government kept their knowledge secret as well. But our forebears, the American
Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), broke the government and
Zionist news blackout. They reported in their newspaper, the Militant, on
19 September 1942 that the State Department had “suppressed information that it
received from its consular agents in Switzerland. This information has to do
with the treatment of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Evidence of the greatest
atrocities has occurred there in connection with the renewed campaign to
exterminate all Jews.” The SWP also fought to lift U.S. immigration restrictions
on Jewish refugees, even as American Zionist leaders did not.
The article reprinted below, which was based on the limited
information available at the time, originally appeared in the Militant on
6 May 1944.
* * *
The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto, which began on April 19, 1943 and
raged for 42 days, will go down in history as the first great revolutionary act
of working-class mass resistance to the Nazi enslavers and hangmen of Occupied
Europe.
Amid the dark alleyways and crumbling walls of their rat-infested,
disease-ridden Ghetto prison, 40,000 men, women and children, the proletarian
remnants of the Jewish population of Warsaw, Poland, went to their death
battling arms in hand against the massed, trained legions of Hitler.
With weapons sufficient for only 3,000 fighters, the starved and
ragged Jewish workers, who were organized and led by the labor and socialist
underground movement, for six weeks held out with revolvers, rifles, a few
machine guns, home-made bombs, knives, clubs and stones against thousands of
trained soldiers using heavy artillery, tanks, flame throwers and aerial
bombs.
The battle ended only after the Nazis dynamited and put to the
torch every hovel and tenement in the entire area, and when every Jewish fighter
lay dead under the ashes and rubble that marked the site where 400,000 Jews once
lived.
Three Facts
Only within recent weeks have some of the details of the Battle of
the Warsaw Ghetto been revealed outside of the labor and socialist press. But
from the still-scanty information now available, three salient facts stand out.
The Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto were overwhelmingly workers, armed,
organized and led by the labor and socialist underground. They were inspired not
merely by Jewish and Polish nationalist sentiment, but by class solidarity and
socialist convictions, hoping that their struggle, conducted under the red flag,
would help to arouse the workers everywhere in Poland and Europe to
revolutionary class struggle. And theirs was not a “spontaneous revolt, out of
desperation,” as bourgeois press commentators would have it appear, but a
well-prepared, skillfully planned, organized mass action.
The Gestapo on July 22, 1942, demanded that the Judenrat (Jewish
Council) deliver 6,000 to 10,000 persons a day for deportation to the “East,” as
it turned out, for mass execution in specially designed gas chambers or by
machine-gunning. Deceptively, the Nazis broadcast the rumor that the deportees
were going to labor camps and even “the machinery of the Jewish auxiliary police
was utilized by the Germans to spread rumors about the favorable labor
conditions which awaited the deported.” (The Battle of Warsaw by S.
Mendelsohn.) The Ghetto was a self-contained, isolated world with its own
government, police, firemen and public health agencies.
The extermination campaign was initiated because “the German
authorities, according to the report of the Polish government representatives,
reckoned with the possibility of armed resistance at the time when there were
still half a million Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They were afraid of it...”
Extermination Campaign
Within the Ghetto, a conflict arose. The Jewish leadership from the
bourgeois class counseled against resistance, spreading the hope that the
deportations were what the Nazis claimed. But the Jewish underground labor
organizations, according to an official report to the Polish
government-in-exile, “through handbills warned against the trap and called at
least for passive resistance.”
The extermination campaign raged unabated. By January 1943, only
about 40,000 to 45,000 of the original 400,000 Jews remained alive in the
Ghetto. During this entire period, the Allied powers and their press scarcely
commented on the unprecedented mass slaughter of the Jewish people.
Then came accounts of the first resistance. In the Polish newspaper
Przez Walke do Zwyciesta, Jan. 20, 1943, it was reported, “We extend our
admiration to the Fighter Unit (of the Jewish Labor underground) which during
the latest liquidation met the Gestapo with gun in hand. Shooting broke out and
developed into a real battle on Zamenhofa Street from where the Gestapo agents
and German police had to flee and to which they returned only with
reinforcements. Jews defended themselves with hand grenades and revolvers.
Twenty Gestapo agents and police are dead and many more wounded.”
For three months the Nazis drew back from completing their
liquidation drive. The Jewish workers of Warsaw used the respite to organize
further for armed resistance.
Nazi Attack
When, in the middle of April, 1943, the Gestapo and Nazi military
police attempted to renew the “deportation” drive, their orders for an
assemblage of the Ghetto inhabitants were defied. Their police detachments tried
to enter the Ghetto. “As a reply from the seemingly empty houses came flying
bullets and hand grenades. Roofs and attics began to spit fire and to rain death
on the German police. Fear descended on Hitler’s henchmen. They fled in
confusion.” (Polska, April 29, 1943.)
From the account of an official representative of the Polish
Government-in-Exile, we learn that the Nazis began the attack with “numerous,
heavily armed S.S. detachments on cars mounted with machine guns and on
tanks.”
“The actions of the defenders were perfectly coordinated,” says the
report, “and the battles were fought on practically the entire territory of the
Ghetto. Jewish resistance was brilliantly planned, so that in spite of the vast
superiority in men and materiel on the German side, good results were achieved.
In the first days of combat the Germans took severe punishment; hundreds of them
were killed and more wounded. Several times they had to retreat behind the
Ghetto walls. During the first week the battle had all the characteristics of
regular military operations. The din of a tremendous cannonade was constantly
heard from the Ghetto.” This phase of the battle lasted a week.
Authentic Accounts
Then the Nazis concentrated forces at individual points of
resistance reducing them slowly one by one with dynamite, flame throwers and
incendiary bombs. The Jewish workers fell back on guerrilla tactics, fighting
from cellars, roofs, sewers, sortying out at night to assault the Nazi troops
under cover of darkness. “The burning in the Ghetto kept spreading. The fires
were becoming intolerable. After six days of further combat, after the Germans
had already been using planes, artillery and tanks, they managed to break into
the northern part of the Ghetto... By April 28th, the Germans had thrown into
the battle 6,000 heavily armed troops. Estimates place the number of Germans
dead at between 1,000 and 1,200. The Jews lost about 3,000 to 5,000...”
According to the most authentic accounts, Nazi occupation of the
Warsaw Ghetto was not completed until 42 days after the fight began, and even
months later they were meeting unexpected resistance from tiny hidden groups dug
into the ruins and cellars.
Above all, it is necessary to emphasize the working class character
of the resistance. The Stalinist swine and the bourgeois nationalist and
religious leaders are engaged in a systematic campaign of falsification intended
to obscure or deny the class struggle content of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. While
a few middle-class elements did participate, they fought under the inspiration,
guidance, organization and leadership of the workers.
“Workers and the working intelligentsia are the heart and soul
among the masses of fighting Jews who arose gun in hand against Nazi
atrocities,” states an appeal of the Polish Labor Movement issued on the second
day of the revolt. “Almost all underground publications, as well as the reports
of the government representative, speak of the Jewish Fighter Organization which
began and led the struggle... both the appeal of the Polish Labor Movement and
some newspapers indicate that the organization consisted chiefly of workers,
most of them young.” (S. Mendelsohn, The Battle of the Warsaw
Ghetto.)
Underground Manifesto
An underground manifesto from Poland, issued by the Fighter Units,
proclaims, “Our activity will still make it possible for a certain number of
people to be spared... We live in full realization that it is our duty to
proudly continue our glorious heritage of Socialist struggle.” (PM, April
18.)
That struggle is continuing, inspired by the example of the Jewish
workers of Warsaw. In Lodz, the biggest Polish industrial center, 130,000 Jewish
workers went on a general strike, halting temporarily the Nazi extermination
drive there. Armed rebellions have flared up through all the labor camps. A full
scale armed resistance was carried on for a month by the Jews of Bialystok,
where 30,000 died in struggle and where the “German losses were high despite the
heavy armaments, tanks and fire-throwers thrown into the battle.” (PM,
April 18.)
Since the Warsaw battle, the British government has closed the last
door of refuge for the Jews, in Palestine, while the American State Department
and Roosevelt shed crocodile tears in public but deny haven to the Jews in any
United States territory. Roosevelt could only mumble evasive statements about
“military necessity” and “post-war” plans when asked to intercede with the
British government to open Palestine once more for Jewish refugees. And on
British soil, Jewish soldiers who resisted the anti-Semitic attacks imposed on
them in the armed forces of the reactionary Polish exiled regime are
court-martialed and given prison sentences.
Now it should be clear to the Jewish people everywhere, and to all
the workers, that the capitalist “democracies” will not save the Jews from
fascist barbarism. As the Jewish workers of Warsaw have demonstrated, only the
workers themselves in revolutionary struggle will fight fascism to the
death.
All honor to the brave Jewish worker dead, who have shown the
workers everywhere the revolutionary road to freedom and socialist emancipation
from capitalist reaction and fascism. When tens of millions shall rise in the
manner of the heroic 40,000 worker-fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, the forces of
Nazism and capitalism will be swept away like chaff before the irresistible
might of their onslaught.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)