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Friday, September 12, 2014
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Saturday: No U.S. War on Iraq and Syria!
Saturday, September 13, 1:00 pm
Park Street Station - Downtown
Boston
President Obama plans to launch a new war on Iraq and Syria, using US air
strikes, arms, money, and training, and over 1,500 U.S. ground troops. The U.S.
war on Iraq in 2003-2011 caused this crisis.We can't let this happen again. Join together to protest another US war in Iraq and Syria. It’s time once again to stand up for peace and justice and against this insanity.
UJP urges everyone to organize protests, write letters and op-eds, sign petitions, lobby Congress and take other actions.
Sponsored by United for Justice with Peace, Massachusetts Peace Action and the Committtee for Peace & Human Rights (list in formation). Contact info@justicewithpeace.org to endorse.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1500590576853570/
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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.
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Helen Caldicott: Facing our Nuclear Responsibilities
In honor of the International Day
of Peace
Facing Our Nuclear Responsibilities
Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014, 2:00-4:00pm
NEWTON CITY
HALL – War Memorial Auditorium
1000 Commonwealth Ave, Newton
Dr. Helen Caldicott
Renowned Activist, Nobel Peace Prize
Nominee
A Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
and Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND)
Author “The New Nuclear Danger”, “Nuclear Power is Not the Answer”
A Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
and Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND)
Author “The New Nuclear Danger”, “Nuclear Power is Not the Answer”
Guntram
Mueller, Board Chairman, Mass. Peace Action. Our nuclear arsenals and
their costs; Status of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and other
international efforts
Diane
Turco, co-founder of Cape Downwinders, Pilgrim Coalition Steering
Committee. Nuclear power: waste fuel issue, the environment, status of the
Pilgrim Plant
Moderator: Beverly
Droz, Past National President, WAND
Questions & Answers session from
the Audience
Newton is a Mayors for Peace City
Sponsored by Newton Dialogues
on Peace & War
Co-sponsors: 20/20 Action, Arlington UJP, Cambridge UJP,
Cape Codders for Peace & Justice, Cape Downwinders, Coalition for a Strong
United Nations, Green Decade/Newton, Massachusetts Peace Action, Merrimack
Valley People for Peace, North Shore Coalition for Peace & Justice, On
Behalf of Planet Earth, Pilgrim Coalition, United for Justice with Peace,
Veterans for Peace/Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Women's Action for New Directions,
Women's International League for Peace & Freedom – Boston. Co-Sponsors will set up literature tables and
actions at this event
Contact: Nancy Wrenn,
617-969-2758, ncwrenn@aol.com
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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.
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| 617-383-4857 | www.justicewithp | |
UFPJ Urgent UPDATE: Bombing Iraq and Syria – A Delusion, Not A Solution
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President Obama may prefer the
term “counter-terrorism,” but it is clear from last night’s speech that he is
taking the United States into another war.
His long-term plan for bombing
Iraq and Syria, for placing U.S. troops on the ground as “trainers,” and for
assistance to allied fighters, is opening another tragic chapter in the failed
“war on terrorism,” initiated by President Bush and rejected by the voters in
2008.
We deplore the brutality and
violence of ISIS, but we do not believe that U.S. air strikes will solve the
problem, even if there are short-term military gains. Despite the President’s
many references to “a coalition,” in reality the United States will be
intervening unilaterally in two civil wars, each of which has multiple factions
and complex roots.
Time to learn from experience:
The U.S. invasion of Iraq tore
the lid off of a Pandora’s box that has wreaked havoc with the lives of millions
of people over the past dozen years. It is that invasion, which gave rise to
ISIS and “terrorism,” in places where it had not existed.
U.S. air-strikes –whether in
Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan or Afghanistan- have never had the precision that is
claimed. Thousands of civilians have been killed, with the result that America’s
enemies multiplied.
The “new strategy” the President
just unveiled isn’t new. It was tried by President George W. Bush in
Afghanistan, where it failed, creating a Washington demand for tens of thousands
of U.S. combat troops. These troops have added to the instability of the
country, while failing to defeat the Taliban.
We believe there are better choices:
*Make diplomacy and humanitarian
assistance the priority
*Seek improved relations with
Iran to end the fighting in the region
*Work through United Nations to
halt the flow of financing and weapons to ISIS
*Re-start UN-directed
negotiations to end the civil war in Syria
*Mobilize to solve the real
problems in the region- poverty, hunger, drought, joblessness
Our Voices are Needed Now…The
White House and Members of Congress are Paying Close Attention to Public
Opinion.
Call the White House
Comments: 202.456.1111; Switchboard: 202-456-1414
Call your Senators and
Congressional Representatives
Let them know, you strongly
oppose perpetual war in the Middle East. Emphasize that U.S. bombing of two
countries will bring more suffering and violence, and that there is no realistic
alternative to diplomacy and humanitarian aid.
Ask your member of Congress to speak out now in
opposition to US military intervention in Iraq and Syria.
Please make a donation to UFPJ so
that we can continue to keep our member groups and dedicated
activists linked together for effective action and impact.
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Help us continue to do this critical
work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.
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Fight The Obama War Machine Rally At Park Street, Boston Saturday September 13- I PM- The Anti-War Struggle Begins-Again
NEW
WARS / OLD WARS – Are You Feeling Safer Now?
Amid the obsessive
mainstream media chatter about whether Obama’s war is legal without
Congressional approval – probably not, though most members of Congress are not
anxious for a vote anytime soon – there is almost no mention that bombing Syria
without the agreement of its sovereign government is clearly a
violation of international law. This applies to unilateral actions by the US or
NATO, or any “collation of the willing” Obama can cobble together in the Middle
East. The likely US “allies” in this enterprise are themselves dictatorships
via fake elections (Egypt, Jordan) or absolute Gulf Monarchies (Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, UAE, etc.). Only the UN Security Council is legally empowered to apply
military force across borders, except in the case of immediate defense against
foreign attack.
Saturday,
September 13
No U.S.
War on Iraq and Syria!
1pm,
Park St. MBTA Station
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President Obama
plans to launch a new war on Iraq and Syria, using US air strikes, arms, money,
and training, and over 1,500 U.S. ground troops. The U.S. war on Iraq in
2003-2011 caused this crisis.
We can't let this
happen again. Join together to protest another US war in Iraq and Syria. It’s
time once again to stand up for peace and justice and against this
insanity.
Sponsored by United
for Justice with Peace, Massachusetts Peace Action and the Committtee for Peace
& Human Rights (list in formation). Facebook:
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PHYLLIS BENNIS: Six
Steps Short of War to Beat ISIS
The bottom line
is there is no immediate action that will make ISIS disappear, even if U.S.
airstrikes manage to get the right target somewhere and take out an APC or a
truckload of guys with RPGs or whatever… As horrifying as the beheading of the
two U.S. journalists was, revenge is never a good basis for foreign policy. We
should keep in mind that Matthew Olson, the outgoing head of the National
Counterterrorism Center, said last week that “there is no credible information that
[ISIS] is planning to attack the United States,” and there is “no indication at
this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States—full
stop.” … We have to recognize that military attacks are not only wrong in a
host of ways (illegal in international law, immoral because of civilian
casualties, a distraction from vitally needed diplomacy) but also that those
strikes are making real solutions impossible… weakening ISIS requires eroding
the support it relies on from tribal leaders, military figures, and ordinary
Iraqi Sunnis. More
MANIPLUATING PUBLIC
OPINION. . . Again
After Media Assault
Americans Believe ISIS Threat To US
After a
continual barrage of media hype surrounding a group of Islamist fighters in Iraq
and Syria the American people are scared that the homeland is in jeopardy.
According to a CNN/ORC Poll, 45% of Americans see that ISIS is a “very serious threat to the
US.” That number parallels what Americans thought of Al Qaeda in 2003. 90%
of Americans, according to the poll, believe ISIS is some level of threat to the
US. Despite ISIS being a regional group trying to establish an caliphate in the
Middle East and zero evidence to back up the claim, 70% of Americans also think
ISIS has agents in the US ready to strike. While media distortions are a large
part of why the public has become hysterical on ISIS, part of the response is
also due to a game ISIS itself has been playing… The US intervening may be
exactly what ISIS wants at this point. That like the killings in Iraq by Al
Qaeda that led to US blunders in Fallujah, ISIS is setting the US up for a
similar overreaction. More
Of course, the
“threat” to the US is a lie. . .
Some News
Organizations Finally Realize Obama’s War Message is Misleading
President
Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State counts on pretty much
everything going right in a region of the world where pretty much anything the
U.S. does always goes wrong. Our newspapers of record today finally remembered
it’s their job to point stuff like that out. The New York Times… [points out] the essential but often
overlooked fact that “American intelligence agencies have concluded that [the
Islamic State] poses no immediate threat to the United States.” “Daniel
Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser
during Mr. Obama’s first term, said the public discussion about the ISIS threat
has been a “farce,” with “members of the cabinet and top military officers all
over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified.”
“It’s hard to imagine a better indication of the ability of elected officials
and TV talking heads to spin the public into a panic… More
Since 9/11, Fewer
Americans Say Terrorism Top Problem
Thirteen years
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.,
terrorism is far less top-of-mind for Americans than it was immediately after
those attacks. Mentions of terrorism did increase slightly this month as
terrorist groups such as ISIS took actions that directly affect the U.S.,
prompting calls for U.S. action from many politicians and some journalists.
While terrorism may be less top-of-mind to Americans -- and less likely to
register as the most important problem facing the nation -- many still see it as
important when asked about it specifically. In January polling, 72% of Americans
said they felt terrorism was an important issue for Congress and the
president to deal with this year. In February, 77% said international terrorism was a critical threat to the U.S. The
economy or dissatisfaction with government may trump terrorism as the most
important problem at the moment, but many Americans still see terrorism as a
threat that must be dealt with, even 13 years after 9/11. More
FISK: The Latest Evil
Force, Since the Last Evil Force
Resurrection,
reinvention and linguistics. Barack Obama did the lot. And now he’s taking
America to war in Syria as well as Iraq. Oh yes, and he’s going to defeat Isis,
its “barbarism”, “genocide”, its “warped ideology” – until the bad guys are
“vanquished from the earth”. What happened to George W Bush? … One can
see, of course, how difficult these lessons in Middle East history must be for
the average American. All these forces of evil being vanquished over and over
again, and then – bingo – there’s another force of evil to vanquish. So Obama
produces words that are easy to swallow. “genocide”, “barbarism”, “cancer”.
More
BASEVICH:
Obama’s Plans Ignore the Lessons of the ME Wars
For
the 20 years between 1991 and 2011 — the interval between Operation Desert Storm
and the final withdrawal of U.S. forces after a lengthy occupation of Iraq —
Washington policymakers, Republican and Democratic, relied on various forms of
coercion to align Iraq with American expectations of how a country ought to run.
The effort failed abysmally… Destroying what Obama calls the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant won’t create an effective and legitimate Iraqi state. It
won’t restore the possibility of a democratic Egypt. It won’t dissuade Saudi
Arabia from funding jihadists. It won’t pull Libya back from the brink of
anarchy. It won’t end the Syrian civil war. It won’t bring peace and harmony to
Somalia and Yemen. It won’t persuade the Taliban to lay down their arms in
Afghanistan. It won’t end the perpetual crisis of Pakistan. It certainly won’t
resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All the military power in the world
won’t solve those problems. More
WARNING
TO WAR SUPPORTERS
If you want to bomb a country every time an evil group murders people in a gruesome manner, you’ll have to bomb a lot of countries including our own. ISIS draws its strength in Iraq from resentment of the Iraqi government, which bombs its own cities using U.S. weapons, and which beheads people, albeit in grainier footage with lower production values. Allies in the region, including allies that support ISIS, including allies armed by the United States(some of which arms end up in the hands of ISIS), themselves behead people regularly. But is that worse than other types of killing? When President Barack Obama blew up a 16 year old American boy whom nobody had ever accused of so much as jaywalking, and blew up six other kids who were too close to him at the time, do you imagine his head remained on his body? …The fact that it’s Obama doesn’t make it OK. A majority of you supported attacking Afghanistan and within a couple of years a majority of you said Afghanistan should not have been attacked. Why not? Not because there weren’t evil people in Afghanistan, but because bombing the country made everything worse, not better. More
If you want to bomb a country every time an evil group murders people in a gruesome manner, you’ll have to bomb a lot of countries including our own. ISIS draws its strength in Iraq from resentment of the Iraqi government, which bombs its own cities using U.S. weapons, and which beheads people, albeit in grainier footage with lower production values. Allies in the region, including allies that support ISIS, including allies armed by the United States(some of which arms end up in the hands of ISIS), themselves behead people regularly. But is that worse than other types of killing? When President Barack Obama blew up a 16 year old American boy whom nobody had ever accused of so much as jaywalking, and blew up six other kids who were too close to him at the time, do you imagine his head remained on his body? …The fact that it’s Obama doesn’t make it OK. A majority of you supported attacking Afghanistan and within a couple of years a majority of you said Afghanistan should not have been attacked. Why not? Not because there weren’t evil people in Afghanistan, but because bombing the country made everything worse, not better. More
Since 9-11 America's
Insane Foreign Policy Has Killed a Million and Created ISIS
A
month after September 11, Donald Rumsfeld stood at a podium in front of a $2
billion B-2 bomber at Whiteman AFB in Missouri and addressed
the aircrews of the 509th Bomber Wing [4], before they took off across the
world to wreak misdirected vengeance on the people of Afghanistan. Rumsfeld told
them, "We have two choices. Either we change the way we live, or we must change
the way they live. We choose the latter. And you are the ones who will help
achieve that goal." Since then, the United States has launched more than 94,000 air strikes [5], mostly on Afghanistan and
Iraq, but also on Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Rumsfeld's plan has
undoubtedly achieved his goal of changing the way people live in those
countries, killing a million of them [6] and reducing tens of millions
more to lives of disability, disfigurement, dislocation, grief and poverty.
More
OUR
SAUDI “ALLIES” AT WORK: The Missing Twenty-Eight Pages of the 9/11
Report
“There’s
nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman
from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the
Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a
Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,”
and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi
individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. “Those twenty-eight
pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,” Lynch
maintains. Another congressman who has read the document said that the evidence
of Saudi government support for the 9/11 hijacking is “very disturbing,” and
that “the real question is whether it was sanctioned at the royal-family level
or beneath that, and whether these leads were followed through.” Now, in a rare
example of bipartisanship, Jones and Lynch have co-sponsored a resolution
requesting that the Obama Administration declassify
the pages.
More
PATRICK COCKBURN:
Isis 'cannot be beaten' as long as there is civil war in Syria
There is a
bizarre section in Mr Obama’s speech in which he says “we must strengthen the
[Syrian] opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like Isil [Isis]”.
The only way that this could be done would be to raise a mercenary army and
pretend it is the Free Syrian Army reborn or, something that Saudi Arabia and
Qatar have done in the past, pretend that jihadi groups whose ideology is the
same as that of Isis nevertheless belong to the moderate camp. The missing
element in the Obama plan is the creation of the framework for new peace
negotiations between Mr Assad’s government and the moderate opposition such as
it is. The Geneva 11 talks got nowhere because Washington insisted that the only
topic of negotiations should be the departure of Mr Assad. Since he controlled
most of Syria this was not going to happen, so in practice US and British policy
was a recipe for an endless war… In Iraq the political and military reach of
Isis is limited by the fact that the Sunni Arabs are only a fifth of the
population, but in Syria they are three-fifths. Their natural constituency is
much greater than in Iraq. More
U.S. Pins Hope on
Syrian Rebels With Dubious Alliances
After more than
three years of civil war, there are hundreds of militias fighting President
Bashar al-Assad — and one another. Among them, even the more secular forces have
turned to Islamists for support and weapons over the years, and the remaining
moderate rebels often fight alongside extremists like the Nusra Front, Al
Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “You are not going to find this neat, clean, secular
rebel group that respects human rights and that is waiting and ready because
they don’t exist,” said Aron Lund, a Syria analyst who edits the Syria in Crisis
blog for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace... Analysts who
track the rebel movement say that the concept of the Free Syrian Army as a
unified force with an effective command structure is a myth… Even as they line
up to support Mr. Obama’s strategy against ISIS, some European allies remain
skeptical about the efficacy of arming the Syrian rebels. Germany, for instance,
has been arming and training Kurdish pesh merga forces in Iraq, but has resisted
doing the same for any groups in Syria — partly out of fear that the weapons
could end up in the hands of ISIS or other radical groups.
More
Sotloff Family
Spokesman: Syria’s ‘So-Called Moderate Rebels’ Sold Sotloff To
ISIS
A spokesman for
the family of murdered journalist Steven Sotloff claimed Monday night that
Sotloff was sold to the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) by Syria’s “so-called moderate rebels.” …“We believe that these so-called
moderate rebels that people want our administration to support, one of them sold
him probably for something between $25,000 and $50,000 to ISIS and that was the
reason he was captured,” Barfi said. More
Report: Islamic State
got anti-tank weapons from “moderate” Syrian rebels
Anti-tank
weapons that were likely once owned by moderate Syrian rebels have landed in the
hands of Islamic State militants, according to a newly released field
investigation conducted in both northern Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State has
also captured “significant quantities” of U.S.-manufactured small arms and has
employed them on the battlefield, researchers found… The most powerful weapons
documented were the two 90mm Yugoslav anti-tank rocket launchers, known as
“Osas,” which resembled rockets that were transferred to moderate Syrian rebels,
reportedly by Saudi Arabia last year. It is purportedly shown in this video in
the hands of a Free Syrian Army rebel last year: The 25-pound rocket launchers
have appeared in numerous battlefield videos shot in Syria and Iraq and were
believed to be in Islamic State hands. But the new research marks the first time
they have been physically documented. More
In Congress, Islamic
State takes pressure off Iran
Remember Iran?
The dominant foreign policy issue of the past year has fallen by the wayside as
Congress focuses on the rise of the Islamic State (IS). Republicans who just months ago vowed to
use every tool at their disposal to force a vote on new sanctions in the Senate have shelved those
plans, and even the GOP-controlled House isn't scheduled to hold a single
hearing before the midterm elections. The shift in focus has given President
Barack Obama's negotiating team welcome breathing room as it pursues a nuclear
deal in Vienna, even as congressional skeptics fret that Iran will take
advantage of the lull in attention. "The negotiators need the room to work," said Sen. Tim
Kaine, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations panel on the Near East.
"And I think maybe a little bit less pushing and pulling from this angle may
help that work be done."
Israel concerned ISIS
threat may distract Obama from Iran
A senior
political source told Ynet on Thursday night there was concern over the
possibility that the US will moderate its pressure on Iran in the talks. A
senior minister familiar with the issue said that "we are actually concerned
about that possibility." Sources in Israel said that the US has attempted to
alleviate Jerusalem's concerns in recent months, promising that their policy
towards Iran will not change. But Jerusalem is not convinced, especially given
that only this week Obama cited the Islamic State as the biggest threat to the
Middle East – and not Iran. More
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938
1. The All American and Pacific Preconference, having heard the report of the Canadian delegates, welcomes the successful fusion of the majority comrades with the active nucleus of the minority on the basis of the program of action agreed upon during the Chicago Convention.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):
Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**************
Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
Resolution On The Work Of The Canadian Section
1. The All American and Pacific Preconference, having heard the report of the Canadian delegates, welcomes the successful fusion of the majority comrades with the active nucleus of the minority on the basis of the program of action agreed upon during the Chicago Convention.
2. The Preconference endorses the action taken by the Canadian comrades in forming an open Socialist Policy Group in the CCF [Cooperative Commonwealth Federation] 146 on the basis of a declaration on the war question.
3. The Preconference, after discussion with the Canadian delegates, suggests the following plan of action for the immediate future:
(a) The Canadian comrades should continue to concentrate their main efforts on work within the CCF, with a view to climaxing their activities by a complete programmatic and political fight at or around the national fall convention of the CCF, with a perspective of completing the experience within this declining reformist organization and reestablishing the Canadian section of the Fourth International.
The declining membership and activity of the CCF has increased the specific weight of the petty bourgeois elements and the corresponding entrenchment of a right wing bureaucracy. While our general line is oriented toward an early establishment of an independent Canadian section of the Fourth International, this does not preclude the possibility of continued concerted work in the CCF, in provinces where the objective conditions are more favorable than in Ontario.
(b) The comrades should endeavor to further strengthen our own fraction within the CCF and the group by systematic education and concerted and disciplined action in every field of their activity. The Socialist Policy Group will undoubtedly attract some confused centrist elements who, in a later stage, especially at the moment of split, may oppose our program. Consequently it is of great importance to combine educative work upon our new recruits with revolutionary vigilance against centrism.
(c) The comrades should make immediate attempts to extend the Socialist Policy Group into a national tendency within the CCF, by establishing the cooperation of our comrades in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and elsewhere.
(d) The comrades should elaborate the political documents of the SPG so as to create a thorough line of demarcation between the reformists, the centrists, and themselves on every important national and international problem.
(e) The conference expresses the firm belief that this activity should be expressed through a regular mimeographed or printed organ (appearing weekly or fortnightly) rather than through casual bulletins. A name should be chosen for the organ which can also be used later for the organ of an independent organization, so as to continue the tradition of our revolutionary fight within the CCF. The Vancouver comrades should be invited to collaborate in the creation of such an organ.
(f) In view of a possible premature organizational attack by the CCF bureaucracy, our comrades should be ready to answer every organizational maneuver by energetic politicizing of the issues in order that a full principled record of our position may be established. The experience of our French, Belgian, and American comrades can be studied in this connection.
4. It is most likely that the reestablishment of our comrades in an independent organization will not occur with sufficient forces to make possible the immediate creation of a party, but rather only a broadened propaganda group. Preparatory steps for the new activity of this group should be taken even now.
(a) By systematizing and extending our trade union work, to be carried out with firm democratic centralism and comradely collaboration between the executive and the trade union activists.
(b) In view of the existing ferment within the Stalinist ranks, efforts should be made to establish contacts within their organization for the purposes of information and, if possible, organizational fraction work. The new organ of the SPG should carry on a steady and vigorous campaign against Stalinism both as it appears within the CCF and without. The possibilities of public meetings against the Stalinists should also be considered, in exploiting the “democracy” of the CCF constitution to its absolute limits.
(c) Concerning the Field group,’47 the Preconference considers that any political negotiations with this group should take place only on the basis of an uncompromising stand on the principles and platform of the Fourth International. While our political discussions with the CCF members need be conducted in a spirit of patient education, the purpose of any action concerning the fossilized sectarian Field group should be that of splitting away progressive elements and rendering the group powerless. The progress of our work within the CCF, and the subsequent reestablishment of an independent group, together with the formal foundation of the Fourth International at the coming European conference, will establish our comrades on firm ground for gaining any progressive elements in the Field group through an energetic political attack against their sterility and international isolation. While the necessity of occasional united front action is not precluded, it should not be extended to a degree where the leadership of this stagnating group gains fictitious prestige.
5. Concerning the possible development of the Labor Relations Association, the Preconference suggests that further information be prepared and that discussions be held in Canada as well as in New York so that a definite position may be taken. The same procedure should be followed in estimating the possibilities of applying to Canadian conditions a program of action arising out of the international thesis (Death Agony of Capitalism) adopted by the American section at its last (April) National Committee plenum.
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As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Jewish Poets
KURT TUCHOLSKY (1890-
HELMET OFF
There the large Pickelhaube lies
In a black, dark hole in the earth.
It rests quietly…But look, I believe
That it is still moving.
A District President displays his large teeth
“Must I recite mocking poetry at the grave?
De mortuis nil nisi bene! “
As it happened.
Do not forget them: the chevaliers,
The officers who sat on their wealth at home
The young one is playing the zither of complaint –
All of them beasts.
Helmet off!
Full of piety? Yes, full of cakes.
He lies on well-
We must first of all curse the old
And then look for good new ones to curse
Until he has decomposed.
Translated by Peter Appelbaum
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