***Out In The Film Noir Night-With Robert Mitchum’s“Angel Face” In Mind -Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

...hey, don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers about that Jeffers murder/ suicide, the one that happened a while back, the one where the wife, the one with the dough, big dough, backed up their Jaguar in the driveway of their country estate at about eighty miles an hour and had them tumble down the hilly embankment and done. They, the newspapers, or their reporters, or somebody got a lot of it all balled up, all balled up big time. I know, I sure in hell know, the real scoop, except for the end which they, the newspapers got right. Dead right. See Frank Jeffers had been in my place, my little diner, Sammy’s, located just on the outskirts of Santa Barbara that morning when it happened.

Frank wanted to see what his old Bakersfield corner boy neighborhood and army buddy, me, Sam James, had to say about his predicament, about whether he should pull up stakes and leave her, leave Diane, leave Diane Tremont Jeffers and the dough and cars, or just go back and face some kind of life with her. Even as a kid, even back in front of Johnny’s Variety where we held up the wall on steamy summer nights (and cooler winter nights too), committed a few larcenies and other misdemeanors, strictly small time stuff he would seek my advice on his personal problems. Hell, who am I kidding, girl problems, everything else was easy to work out. Frank Jeffers was skirt-addled even then. Same thing in the Army, he would be cool, very cool under fire, under gun fire, but was like some raggedly schoolboy once we were on liberty, once he had to face girl fire.

I said to Frank from what I knew, from what I read, and from being at the trial every day until they were freed, that she was poison, poison worse than his old flame from the neighborhood, Mary, who almost got him killed when some bozo she was freshly interested in, interested in after Frank did, or didn’t, do something, decided that he wanted her for his exclusive company and was ready to put Frank six feet under to enforce it. And Mary, well, Mary just laughed that blonde bimbo laugh of hers all thrilled and maybe turned on too that he-men were fighting over her. Christ, although that was child’s play compared to his later troubles. Naturally Frank being Frank, didn’t want to listen to my advice, as he could never stop chasing some skirt until he tumbled over, sorry Frank, but that was the deal. Let me tell you what he told me and then maybe you can see how he had to go back, go back and face the music, face the fate his whole benighted life had prepared for him.

He had been running, well half- running a garage, Jimmy’s Esso (his partner and a guy he, we, also knew from the service although not a Bakersfield corner boy), just a few miles from Santa Barbara on the other side of town from here, near Route 101, when the call came in that one of the Tremont cars had blown a gasket or something and needed to be either fixed on the spot, or towed to Jimmy’s and worked on. So Frank, since he was the ace mechanic and the tow-truck driver as well (Jimmy, was strictly a gas jockey, but a gas jockey who had the start-up dough and was the brains of the operation, always figuring ways to expand the business, bring in new customers, while Frank worried, worried about some dame what else), trudged up the hills to the Tremont Estate. A great big place, kind of secluded up a winding road, and like I said up in the hills, those fatal hills. He got there, maybe spent an hour fixing this big old Bentley, a beauty, the English sure knew how to make high-end cars when wanted to, and was ready to leave when she, Diane she, came out of the house and started asking questions about cars, and stuff like that. Then she showed him her Jaguar and asked him if he could check something. Now this was no ordinary Jag, but a specially built job, build just for her. He was hooked, hooked not just on the car but her, something about her manner, her angel face manner, was intriguing , something a little different.

Maybe like with all women it was her scent, that jasmine stuff she wore, and maybe she was kind of young and fresh and naïve, see she was only twenty and that won him over. Maybe after corner boy girls, and whore house floozies he was ready to take a step up. The car too, for sure, since he mainly handled nothing more exotic than some souped-up hot rod. But mainly her, mainly that angel face. So he took the ticket and took the ride. See too He had had a tough stretch of luck with women since he got back from the service, a bunch of round heels and two, maybe three-timers, especially the last one, a blonde as usual, who took him for a ride, and then blew town with his dough, his car, and some guy named Marty. So maybe it was that Diane was a brunette and he was looking to change his luck. Maybe he should have stuck to blondes, harmless blondes who just took your dough and at least left you breathing.

This Tremont set-up by the way was all the step-mother’s dough, Dora, Dora Moore’s, not hers, not hers directly. See her own mother had died young, and her father, a novelist, a big time British novelist, David Tremont, you might have read on of his books, Captain Smiley’s Revenge, or something like that, had married into the Moore fortune, stocks and bonds stuff. Diane was close, too close to the father if you know what I mean (she told Frank one night some intimate stuff about her and the father but he thought it was just so much trying to make him jealous, or some weird fantasy like a lot of women have, or something, kid’s stuff) and hated the step-mother with a passion, a deadly passion as it turned out.

She kept needling Frank endlessly about how bad the step-mother was, and went on and on about it. About some wicked witch of the west idea until Frank started wising up that his sweet Diane, left to her own devices, was not above murdering old Dora. Frank, maybe a fool in love choices was no fool when it came to where he might fit in the set-up and so he decided a twenty- year old brunette was nice but not nice enough to take the big step-off for. And so he bowed out, or tried to, but before he could do so Diane carried out her little scheme, her little scheme of fooling around with Dora’s old Bentley steering wheel. What Diane didn’t know, couldn’t have figured on, was that the day Dora was to drive that beast, drive it accelerator pedal to the floor down that fateful embankment that her father would be in the car too.

Diane, Frank did say, was full of remorse after that happened, after the father took the big tumble and she even tried to take the rap alone for the murders. But see Frank, ace auto mechanic Frank, no dough Frank, plenty of dough Diane (left by that step-mother in her will since she didn’t trust old David to not run out and spend it foolishly), was custom-built to fit the frame for doing the deed, or helping. So Diane’s very expensive lawyer built the case to the cops, and later to the jury, that Frank was up to his neck in the thing. And the outward facts seemed to fit. The only way out of those murders, the big fall-off, as you know from the big newspaper splash at the time was that they got married, married enough, to make the whole set-up just some crime of passion, if anything. So, yah, they got off, runaway jury got off the big step-off, murder one.

Frank though had had enough; he didn’t want to be looking for angel faces behind his back for the rest of his life. He wanted to get to Mexico, get somewhere far from her. He went back to the Tremont place one night to pack his bags and give his leaving speech. Then she sprang the car, dough, and maybe sponsoring a racing team which he would lead on him (Frank was a very promising auto racer before we headed to those Pacific island s and atolls to wipe up the Japs). He said then, maybe jasmine scent said too always a factor when she was within ten feet of him, that he would think it over. That next morning is when he told me the skinny, and you already know my opinion. What you didn’t know, and it never came out, was that Frank bought my argument, or maybe he just added mine to his already made up mind, and was going back to tell Diane nix and that he was heading south, heading south alone. According to Johnny, one of the house servants who overheard it all, and who told me the real story later when I went to check out what the hell happened, they had a row over him going. A big row, no holds barred. Then she offered him a ride to the bus station. The rest you do know. RIP Frank, RIP old buddy.

***"Man and Superman"-The Immoralist, Andre Gide

 

BOOK REVIEW

The Immoralist, Andre Gide, Penguin Classics, New York, 2001

Andre Gide was always justly famous for writing tight little novels that presented unusual moral dilemmas that did not, as in real life, necessarily get resolved or resolved in a way that one would think. Reflecting at bottom a certain historically pessimistic understanding of the world, and the capacity of its denizens to finally act as a conscious collective mass. That stance also reflected a very real reaction, not all of it mere show, mere café chatter about the solitary nature of modern humankind’s ability to cope with a system that it build and for which some of its member felt an urge to flee. To seek one’s own good in the world and not be troubled by larger perspectives if they entered into the equation at all.

That is the case here with one of his early and perhaps most famous offerings, The Immoralist, a very good title to describe the dilemma to be related. The story line centers on the bedraggled life of a consummate French bourgeois scholar who went through a personal crisis after the death of his father and his unsought `shot gun' marriage in the early part of the 20th century. Already, at that early date, that the explosions to come , wars and revolutions, would not find everybody up to the task of bringing out of the small confines of their singular existence.  The newlyweds travelled to various exotic outposts of French imperialism, including the hot and dry Northern African coast.

Along the way while staying that exotic North African locale our protagonist became sick with a life-threatening illness but by an act of will, and the extraordinary care of his new wife, overcame that crisis. That event and his reaction to the closeness of death, or maybe just another in a line of hubristic acts drives the rest of the action. As a result of her loving efforts his wife in turn got sick (moreover during her pregnancy). He is decidedly inattentive to her illness, to the extent of it, to the lie-threatening nature of it. The scholar, in the final analysis, permits her to die by his self-centered actions.  

After his own illness, and as a result of overcoming that close experience the scholar began, little by little, to believe, to sense  that he is `superman' a la Nietzsche, that he is a chosen one,  and therefore consciously or unconsciously becomes the agent of his wife's descend into greater illness and eventually death. Quite a dilemma, to be sure, but he shed no tears over it. The real question here is whether, in a hard and unforgiving world where each person is his or her own agent, that it was his duty to thoughtfully care for his wife or whether his need to take actions to `understand' himself was paramount.

Some other moral questions concerning his role as landlord in his inherited rural estate pop up along the way, as well. Also, just a hint of homosexual tension in his dealings with the young Arab boys in the neighborhood hovers in the background. This is a subject that then was almost always covered in discreet language so it is hard to tell the full extent of the attraction, the physical consummation part. And whether he did anything about it. This is a question that concerned Gide personally, as well so he may have been working through some of his own concerns in novel form.

 

This theme of one’s responsibility in the world (and the sub-theme of homosexuality) and the book itself at the start of the 20th century may have been somewhat scandalous but reading it after some of the harrowing events done by humankind in the last century has cut deeply into the impact that it was intended to have. Still it is a great book and a quick read. Any lessons to be drawn about the dark side of human nature, as it has evolved thus far, take a lot longer to fathom.

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Van Morrison’s Into The Mystic…

… and for the tenth time he (or she, provide your own pronoun) worried himself sick, worried that she would not be there when he got back, not out of spite, not out of hubris (what did she know of hubris, and of gods, or Greeks for that matter) but just that she was like the wind, had come in like the wind. Had come in all flowing reddish hair (reddish brown she called it), peasant dress, cowboy boots (or whatever you called the ones with the pointed toes) and took a fancy (quaint, her term) to him. And he, delighted, delighted in that misty foghorn Frisco night back when all things were possible, when everybody, everyone, swore they were going to create that newer world they had been jabbering about for so long, had delighted in her breeze, her coming in like the wind. But now, now the bloom had wilted some, and he had the frets, and should he call her before the ship came into port or just go to her place. Yeah, he fretted…

A YouTube clip to give some flavor to this subject.

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

"Into The Mystic"

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home
And when the fog horn blows I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will flow into the mystic

When that fog horn blows you know I will be coming home
And when that fog horn whistle blows I got to hear it
I don't have to fear it

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And together we will flow into the mystic
Come on girl...

Too late to stop now...

 

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night- The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Four

A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night

If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of the bourgeois-driven push (okay, okay maybe going back further to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflowerboys) to get ahead in this wicked old world leaving you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city where youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, landed on your ass more than a few time but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done. Yeah so if you are wondering then what, have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed you off your sainted wheels, and got you into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, not faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half, sisters and brothers), and need some solace, need to reach back to roots, reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter (oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay).

If the norms of don’t rock the boat, the norms of keep your head down, keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual, and excuse, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, speaking some unknown language maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflowergang), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.

If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side, sort things out about boozers (and about titantic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, gotten it taken away like some maiden virginity, those who never had anything but lost, not those who never had a way to be lost), dopesters inhaling, in solidarity hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor stiff out of his room rent for kicks, out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote if that earth angel connection comes through, creating vision of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get“connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night), hipsters (all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving), fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japans ), the driftless (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them”too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.

If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore –mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup trestle, some Hoboken broken down pier, the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world, then Tom Waits is your stop.

Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record (CD okay) and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living, looking for busted black-hearted angels (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless gin mill), for girls with Monroe hips (swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and flaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells (descendants of those aforementioned Mayflowerboys, get real, and left for dead with cigar wrapping rings, for the desperate out in forsaken woods who need to hold to something, and for all the misbegotten.

Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Dove Linkhorns of the world, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores, having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, the wretched of the earth and their kin, far from it, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.

Veterans For Peace: Veterans Day Parade and Rally When: Monday, November 11, 2013, 12:30 pm Where: Charles St. and Beacon St. • Boston Attention Peace Activists Please Join Veterans For Peace and our “Outhouse House Band” The Leftist Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans Day for PeaceNovember 11, 2013 Parade & Faneuil Hall Rally Veterans for Peace will once again proudly walk behind the street sweepers in the Veterans Day Parade in Boston. Please join us as we show our opposition to the on-going war in Afghanistan and our undeclared Drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia More information to follow We will gather at 12:30 on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow Our Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace Parade will follow the first parade which steps off at 1:00 pm on the corner of Boylston and Tremont Street and continue along the Boston Common. Our parade then will weave it’s way to Faneuil Hall for the Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace event. United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.

An appeal to donate from Jill Stein and Matt Gonzales to support the candidacies of Kshama Sawant and Ty Moore Jill Stein was the 2012 Green Party nominee for President of the United States. Matt Gonzales knows how to challenge the Democratic Party's establishment. In 2003 he ran for mayor in San Francisco and in 2008 he became Ralph Nader's running mate for vice president of the U.S. A CALL TO ACTION IN SUPPORT OF TWO INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES As the American public is confronted with the latest example of two-party dysfunction, exemplified by the current government shutdown, two candidates running in local municipal races, in two different cities, pose an opportunity for the Left to govern and show the American people what we can accomplish when given a chance. Both candidates self-identify as socialists and both are running unabashed left/progressive campaigns. They are serious candidates and we ask that all Independents, Greens, Libertarians, and others interested in forging a wider discourse in American politics consider financially supporting them. We believe that their success will ultimately bode well for the emergence of a multi-party state this country desperately needs. The two candidates, Kshama Sawant in Seattle and Ty Moore in Minneapolis, are already supported by unique coalitions that include Green Party, Socialists, Independents and break-away unions that are frustrated with current political leadership. Ty is backed by the SEIU Minnesota State Council, representing over 30,000 workers. Kshama has been endorsed by six unions. Kshama is also strongly supported by Seattle's second largest newspaper, The Stranger. Both campaigns are building social movements. Kshama is at the forefront of the "Fight for 15 and a Union" in Seattle, building support for fast food strikes and raising the minimum wage. Ty helped found and lead Occupy Homes in Minneapolis, a group that fights the foreclosures carried out by the big banks. Click here and here to see inspiring videos of Ty helping to lead successful protests against evictions. These two campaigns can win, but only with your help. So far Kshama has raised $70,000 and Ty $35,000 in grassroots contributions. Neither campaign takes corporate money. But to answer the lies and distortions of their heavily funded opponents they urgently need money to send out mailers. The Kshama campaign believes they need to raise another $50,000 to send 150,000 mailers, while Ty's campaign estimates they need another $20,000 to send multiple mailers to every voter in his ward. The maximum donation to Kshama is $700 and the maximum donation to Ty is $300. Please consider giving all you can. Donate to Kshama here and for Ty here. Politics in this country is not going to change by complaining about it if that isn't also coupled with action. Supporting these candidates even with a small contribution increases the chance that they win and have an opportunity to articulate progressive ideas in opposition to what the other parties believe are intractable problems. The election of independent working class city council candidates in Seattle and Minneapolis would be an enormous step forward, providing an important platform to popularize the idea of more independent anti-corporate candidates running in a time of tremendous upheaval. Please donate to Kshama and Ty's campaigns today. Join us, Matt Gonzalez former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Jill Stein 2012 Green Party nominee for President of the United States P.S. You may also contribute by sending a check to "Vote Sawant" at P.O. Box 85862, Seattle, WA 98145, or to "Ty Moore for City Council" at 3401 Pillsbury Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55408. If you have given over $100 to a campaign, the law requires you include your occupation, employer (if self-employed list the name under which you do business), employer's city & state.

FREE CHELSEA MANNING URGENT ACTION: Write to Major General Jeffrey S. Buchanan who has the power to reduce (even to zero) the 35-year sentence for Chelsea Manning. See guidelines on what and how to write here. DEADLINE 1 November On 22 August 2013, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, whistleblower for the global public, was sentenced to 35 years for exposing governments' crimes to Wikileaks. For three years, an international movement has campaigned, first, to stop her torture in detention, and then to demand her release. This movement helped defeat the life sentence charge of "aiding the enemy", but Chelsea was convicted of unprecedented charges of "espionage". We must continue to press President Obama to pardon Chelsea and free her now! "I want to thank everybody who has supported me over the last three years…I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name." Chelsea, 22 Aug 2013 In San Francisco, the Gay Pride Board was defeated after withdrawing Chelsea’s nomination as Grand Marshall. Thanks to Chelsea Manning, now we know about: · The “collateral murder” video showing a US helicopter gunship crew deliberately killing Iraqi civilians· The officially sanctioned cover-up of rape and other torture in Iraq and Afghanistan by the occupation · The extent of killer drone strikes · The US attacks on popular government & movements in Haiti and Venezuela· Israel consulting with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority before invading Gaza · Corruption by Tunisian dictator Ben Ali, which spurred the 2011 revolution Assange Snowden DEFEND ALL WHISTLEBLOWERS – ASYLUM FOR ASSANGE The work of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange has been crucial in spreading Chelsea Manning’s evidence of governments’ crimes and brutality, and for organising against US persecution of Edward Snowden, another whistleblower of US and UK governments' outrageous surveillance methods. "The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of the concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend our country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time that I realized that in our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability. In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantánamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror. As the late Howard Zinn once said, there is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret that my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and my sense of duty to others.” From Chelsea Manning's statement, 22 August 2013, the day she was sentenced WHAT WE CAN DO · Write to Chelsea who "looks forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back". Bradley E Manning 89289 1300 N Warehouse Rd Fort Leavenworth KS 66027-2304 · Write to General Buchanan before 1st November. He has the power to reduce/eliminate her sentence · Organise actions to press Obama to pardon. Sign the Petition. · Sign the petition to press the military to provide hormone therapy · Translate and circulate this leaflet; write to the local press asking others to sign. More info: Private Manning Support Network Payday men’s network payday@paydaynet.org UK: 020 7267 8698 US:215 848 1120 Queer Strike queerstrike@queerstrike.net UK: 020 7482 2496US: 415-626 4114

(please forward widely)

UNAC Statement on the

Arrest of Rasmea Odeh

The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) condemns the politically-motivated attack on Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian community leader arrested in her Chicago home on October 22, by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.

Odeh is charged with immigration fraud. Allegedly, in her application for citizenship, she didn’t mention that she was arrested in Palestine 45 years ago by an Israeli military court that detains Palestinians without charge, and that does not recognize the rights of Palestinians to due process. Rasmea Odeh withstood vicious torture by Israeli authorities while imprisoned in Palestine in the 70s. She is one of the millions of Palestinians who have not given up organizing for their rights of liberation, equality, and return. It is shameful that the US government is now attempting to imprison her once again.

The charges against her carry ten years in prison; in addition, she faces being stripped of her citizenship, and as a result, it’s likely she will be deported when she finishes that sentence.

(For more about Rasmea, read Maureen Murphy’s article on Electronic Intifada: http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinian-arrested-chicago-because-her-community-activism-groups-say )

Odeh’s arrest this week appears to be related to the case of the 23 anti-war activists, including members of UNAC, who were subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2010. The 23 were targeted as organizers of the 2008 anti-war march on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Undercover law enforcement agents spied on the anti-war organizers and their movement allies for two years, sabotaged a 2009 solidarity trip to Palestine, and then the FBI raided their homes and offices, claiming that they had provided material support to foreign terrorist organizations in Palestine and Colombia.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas is leading the investigation against the 23, and he was at the courtroom in Chicago, consulting with the assistant U.S. attorney who brought the indictment against Rasmea. Jonas was also the prosecutor in the case of the Holy Land Five, the heads of the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. before 9/11. He was successful in getting prison sentences for as long as 65 years for the five men, who provided charity to children in Gaza.

The case against Rasmea is not about immigration, but an attempt to silence her, to cut short her important community organizing, and to attack the struggle for a free Palestine.

UNAC stands with Rasmea Odeh and against those who would silence and imprison her. This attack is another example of the continuing repression of Palestinians and people who stand in solidarity with them. Homeland Security, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Attorney’s office are carrying out enforcement of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. We ask all those who have stood against the government attack on organizing, to stand with us today to support Rasmea Odeh.

Drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh!

Actions to take in support of Rasmea:

1) Call Barbara McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit, at 313.226.9501 or 313.226.9100, or email barbara.mcquade@usdoj.gov to demand that she Drop the Charges Now!

Example script and talking points to use:

Hello, my name is ________ and I am calling from _________.

I am calling to demand that U.S. Attorney McQuade drop the immigration charges against Rasmea Odeh. She is a beloved leader in the community and has worked tirelessly to serve and help empower Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim families throughout the Chicagoland area.

Rasmea is a community icon and was recently awarded an "Outstanding Community Leader" award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance for her over 40 years of dedication and service to people across the Arab World and the U.S.

These charges are a political attack on her as an individual and on the collective Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities across the U.S.

I stand in unequivocal support of Rasmea and demand that these charges be dropped immediately!

2) Join us to pack the courtroom in mid-November for the first court appearance in Detroit. Stay tuned for the date, time and exact location.

3) Like the “Drop the Charges Against Rasmea Now” Facebook page -

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Drop-The-Charges-Against-Rasmea-Now/678264732186412

4) Send statements of support and solidarity to stopfbi@gmail.com

5) Send us your pictures holding up a sign with the following message:

“I am _________ and I support Rasmea” cppr@aaan.org

You can fill in the blank with any self-identifier: your name, your occupation, or any other description. Some examples are: "I am a stay-at-home dad and I support Rasmea!" "I am a youth organizer and I support Rasmea!" "I am a supporter of Palestinian human rights and I support Rasmea!"

Hold the sign up and snap a selfie, then send it to cppr@aaan.org. Put it up as your Facebook/Twitter profile pic, Google Account image, or anything else! Just remember we may use your image in future publications and informational pamphlets that get published online or distributed as hard copies.

6) Stay tuned to www.stopfbi.net for updates on the case.

Join UNAC Today, UNAC is the largest and most active antiwar coalition in the country. During this time of increasing military intervention throughout the world, it is more important than ever that the people of the United States show their solidarity with the victims of US foreign policy and war. If you are not on UNAC’s email list and would like to be, please send an email to UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. If your peace or social justice group is not affiliated with UNAC please fill out the form and join us. The form for your group to join UNAC is located here: https://unacpeace.org/Join_UNAC.html. To contribute to UNAC, please click here: https://unacpeace.org/Donate.html Join UNAC’s Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/unac1/ Like UNAC’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/EndTheWars

click here to donate to UNAC

Click here for the Facebook UNAC group.

---