A View From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

“RADICAL ISLAM” IN ORLANDO?

 

OBAMA: “What exactly would using this label accomplish?”

Obama forcefully dismissed Donald Trump’s recent criticism of him for not using the words “radical Islam” to describe terrorist attacks as “a political distraction.”  “What exactly would using this label accomplish?” Obama asked. “Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.”  Obama continued: “There has not been a moment in my seven-and-a-half years as president where we have not been able to pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label ‘radical Islam.’ Not once has an adviser of mine said, ‘Man, if we really use that phrase, we’re gonna turn this thing around.'”  More

 

When Media Learned Killer's Ethnicity, Then They Knew to Call It 'Terrorism'

News coverage over the past 48 hours of the Orlando nightclub attacks has shown how corporate media use specific vocabulary to manipulate public perceptions and perpetuate harmful stereotypes and xenophobia…  Once the shooter was identified as Omar Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent, the narrative changed. After this South Asian ethnicity was revealed, news media began calling the attack an act of terror…  When those who wish to use violence against innocent people are unidentified, they are referred to as “shooters” and their attacks as “attacks” or, in the case of Orlando, as “shootings.” It’s not until the perpetrators are identified as non-white people with an otherized cultural background that the media uses the word “terror.”    More

 

Call the Orlando massacre a hate crime:

This was an attack on the LGBT community

What could have motivated such an act of violence? According to the gunman’s father, Seddique Mir Mateen, the shooter (whose name will not be identified here) recently became outraged after witnessing a public display of affection between same-sex partners. “We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music,” Mateeen told NBC News. “And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry. They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”  But the attacker’s homophobic intent has gotten buried in the response to the event—with news organizations, politicians, and public figures reticent to label the act a “hate crime.”   … It may be likely that the shooter was motivated by faith-based hate, but to suggest that his religion was the sole motivating factor is an act of dangerous erasure. It ignores that this is merely the latest attack on a gay establishment in the United States and the latest reminder that queer people are not safe from being victims of a hate crime, even in spaces that are supposed to be havens for us.   More

 

GREENWALD: Stop Exploiting LGBT Issues to Demonize Islam and Justify Anti-Muslim Policies

A 2015 Pew poll found that U.S. Muslims were more accepting of homosexuality than evangelical Christians, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses… Similarly, U.S. Muslims are more likely to support same-sex marriage (42 percent support it) than are U.S. evangelicals (28 percent), historically black Protestants (40 percent), Mormons (26 percent) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (14 percent). Indeed, U.S. Muslims are roughly just as likely to support same-sex marriage as Christians generally (44 percent)…  It’s also true that parts of Islamic doctrine contain all sorts of horrible views on LGBTs, women, and other issues. But exactly the same is true of both the Christian Bible and Jewish Talmud. When it comes to Jews and Christians, people instinctively understand how bigoted and deceitful it is to cherry-pick particularly offensive excerpts from their holy books and use them to demonize all contemporary Christians and Jews.   More

 

JUAN COLE: How to tell if Someone is lying about being a 'Salafi Jihadi'

Regulars at Pulse Nightclub are saying that Omar Mateen, the alleged shooter in the early Sunday morning massacre there, was himself a regular! The Orlando Sentinel writes, “‘Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,’ Ty Smith said.”  So there’s just one thing about his claim to be acting on behalf of ISIL (with whom he appears never to have had any contact): puritanical Muslim fundamentalists of the ISIL sort don’t behave that way. Unbalanced, disturbed young Christian Americans who want to act out power fantasies that end in murder-suicide tend to claim a KKK, neo-Nazi, Christian fundamentalist or other white-nationalist identity in a desperate bid to make their loser lives and loser behavior seem cosmically important… Omar Mateen was a disturbed person, likely brought up a nationalist rather than a fundamentalist, and didn’t have the slightest idea of what a Salafi Jihadi was.   More

 

STICKING TO THEIR GUNS: Trump, GOP Appeal to Racial Identity Politics

One would have thought that NRA members, of all people, would be a little bit suspicious of Trump considering his past squishiness.  But research into gun ownership may explain why he is so popular with this crowd despite all the cultural signals that would otherwise raise suspicions.  This Washington Post article from a couple of months back explains that NRA gun culture is largely based on racial identity. And that’s what Trump is all about… In the mind of this type of gun owner, “I am showing my white nationalist pride in a sort of generic way through gun ownership,” Filindra posits. “This is my way of expressing my ‘more-equal-than-others’ status in a society where egalitarianism is the norm. I can’t say that some people are better and some are worse in terms of racial groups. But I can show it symbolically. I can show I’m a better citizen.”  There are other studies going back decades which come to similar conclusions. For a certain minority of gun rights activists — let’s call them Trump voters — race is the motivating factor in their single-minded zeal. This second amendment fetish is a dog whistle.   More

 

RADICAL CHRISTIANITY?

 

 

Ku Klux Klan rally

 

RADICAL JUDAISM?

 

 

Members of right-wing organization Lehava protesting the wedding of a Jewish-born woman and a Muslim man in Rishon Letzion, Israel, August 17, 2014

 

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Call for Bombing ISIS After Orlando Shooting That ISIS Didn’t Direct

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reacted to the Orlando shooting with evidence that they can agree on at least one thing: bombing people. Both candidates called for an escalation of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.  “We have generals that feel we can win this thing so fast and so strong, but we have to be furious for a short period of time, and we’re not doing it!” Trump complained on Fox & Friends Monday morning.  “Are you saying hit Raqqa right now?” asked host Brian Kilmeade. “We’re going to have to start thinking about something,” Trump replied.  Along the same lines, Clinton suggested during her post-Orlando speech Monday afternoon that “We should keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign.”  Both candidates neglected to consider that no operational links between ISIS and the alleged Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, have been discovered.   More

 

This statistic about gun violence in America seems hard to believe, but is true

Each year for the last decade in America, more than 30,000 people have died due to firearms. That figure, which includes suicides and accidents as well as homicides, is comparable to the casualties seen in some of America's modern wars. It's nearly equal to the number of Americans who died in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953.  In fact, if you add up the number of firearm-related deaths in America since 1968, that figure is larger than all of the battlefield casualties in all of the wars in American history.   More

 

Can We Do Anything About Murderous Assault Weapons?

The mass murderers in San Bernardino who killed 14 and wounded 21 used AR-15 assault rifles. In Aurora, Colorado, a man with an AR-15 killed 12 and wounded 58 in a movie theater. It was an AR-15 that slaughtered 20 children and 6 faculty members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. A database compiled by Mother Jones magazine shows that assault weapons were used in seven of the eight high-profile mass shootings since July 2015… The parts or features of an assault weapon are not there to look scary (as the NRA suggests); they are there to make it possible for the shooter to do scary things. With these features, any deranged person can empty a 30-round magazine as fast as he or she can pull the trigger while maintaining control of the gun—and then quickly insert another fully-loaded magazine. Which is exactly what happened in Orlando.   More

 

BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS NOW

Orlando. Sandy Hook. Aurora. San Bernardino.
What do these horrific shootings have in common? Assault weapons.
Assault weapons were used to murder at least 49 people in Orlando, 26 people in Sandy Hook, 12 people in Aurora, and 14 people in San Bernardino.
Right now, these mass-killing weapons are available for purchase on-line, at trade shows, and at gun brokers across our nation. They have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters.
Assault weapons have no place in our cities and towns. No place on our streets.
We need to ban all assault weapons now, while moving quickly to enact common sense gun reform.

SIGN THE PETITION

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

THE PENTAGON’S REAL $TRATEGY:

Keeping the Money Flowing

These days, lamenting the apparently aimless character of Washington’s military operations in the Greater Middle East has become conventional wisdom among administration critics of every sort… After 15 years of grinding war with no obvious end in sight, U.S. military operations certainly deserve such obloquy. But the pundit outrage may be misplaced. Focusing on Washington rather than on distant war zones, it becomes clear that the military establishment does indeed have a strategy, a highly successful one, which is to protect and enhance its own prosperity. Given this focus, creating and maintaining an effective fighting force becomes a secondary consideration, reflecting a relative disinterest -- remarkable to outsiders -- in the actual business of war, as opposed to the business of raking in dollars for the Pentagon and its industrial and political partners. A key element of the strategy involves seeding the military budget with “development” projects that require little initial outlay but which, down the line, grow irreversibly into massive, immensely profitable production contracts for our weapons-making cartels.   More

 

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STOP DISASTROUS MILITARY APPROPRIATIONS

Call Your Representatives Today! 877-429-0678

The House will be voting on a variety of amendments on the Defense Appropriations Bill, HR. 5293, starting today, June 16, and possibly into Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. The Defense Appropriations Bill would approve total military spending of $576,856,382,000 for FY 2017.  At the same time, our people's needs for education, housing, health care, clean energy and transportation are going un-met.

 

Luckily, House progressives are championing key amendments to cut out the worst of this disastrous bill.  It is crucial that we support these representatives and their amendments by contacting your members of congress and letting them know where we stand. Please call your House Representative and ask him or her to vote yes on: 

 

Amendment #13 Rep. Quigley - Cut funding the Long Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO, new air-launched nuclear armed cruise missile), saving $75 million in the first year.  The LRSO would make us less safe.  The amendment would delay it and allow the next president to decide its importance and usefulness.

Amendment #40 Rep. Conyers  - Blocks funds from being used to transfer or authorize the transfer of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been widely condemned for using cluster munitions in its brutal war in Yemen.  The Amendment will prevent the sale of cluster bombs, currently manufactured by Textron, to Saudi Arabi. 

Amendment #42 Gabbard - Prohibits funds to train and equip Syrian rebels.

Amendment #44 Rep. McGovern - No funds may be obligated or spent for combat operations in Iraq or Syria unless an AUMF is enacted.

 

McGovern’s amendment is receiving bi-partisan support. It will prohibit the usage of funds for combat in Iraq and Syria until congress gives specific authorization for use of military force. This amendment will ensure that Congress reclaims its war making powers and increases the chance of democratic debate.

 

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE . . . and the U.S.

 

TELL CONGRESS: Oppose 'Combating BDS Act of 2016'

As of yesterday, 29 Senators and 90 Representatives had supported this outlandish legislation. Click here to see if your Members of Congress have cosponsored this bill.  This bill would “authorize” state and local governments to unconstitutionally penalize entities such as nonprofit organizations and corporations for supporting the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).  The Supreme Court has long held that boycotts and related activities to bring about political, social, and economic change are political speech, occupying “the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.” As the Harvard Law Review recently concluded, “Supreme Court precedents make clear that attempts to disqualify contractors for support of BDS are foreclosed by the First Amendment.”  Even though this bill might be unconstitutional, we still need to organize to oppose it. This legislation is designed to further encourage a country-wide effort by the Israel lobby to try to suppress BDS activism at the state and local level.  Check out the RightToBoycott website we recently launched with member groups Palestine Legal and Jewish Voice for Peace. Find out if anti-BDS legislation has been introduced in your state and get the legal and organizing resources you need to mobilize to challenge it.  Contact your Member of Congress today!

There are 89 co-sponsors in the House – so far including NONE from Mass;  28 co-sponsors in the Senate, including Sen. Markey, but not Sen. Warren.

 

 

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OTHER EVENTS

 

Thursday, June 23: HELEN CALDICOTT: Courting Armageddon, @ 7:00 pm, First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC

11 Garden St, Cambridge.  Massachusetts Peace Action is excited to announce that the Honorable Dr. Helen Caldicott will be speaking in our Distinguished Peacebuilders Series! Come hear her talk, Courting Armageddon. Helen Caldicott, a former pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston and instructor at Harvard Medical School, has devoted the last 42 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. Her most recent book is Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe. Benefits Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund; part 3 of the spring Distinguished Peacebuilders Series. Register for $5 for students, $10 for Massachusetts Peace Action Members, and low income. Non-members, register for $20. To attend all 3 talks this spring, $25 for members and $50 for non-members. Members who would like to attend a talk and pay their yearly contribution may register for $50.

 

 

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If you don’t want to keep receiving these emails, please reply to the address of the sender and you will be removed from the mailing list. Do not mark the mailing as “SPAM” as this will make it more difficult for those who want to receive it. Thanks.

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CONTACTING DPP and Joining Our Work:

 

To make it easier to get involved with DPP, we've decided to publish contact info for our coordinators in every issue of this update. We will also regularly publish upcoming meetings of work committees, create a brochure or flyer about DPP, and greet new people at monthly meetings with an explanation of how we work. Here's how to reach them.

 

Facilitation Team:

Sydney Miller       sydsail@gmail.com

Alison Gottlieb:    asgottlieb1@gmail.com

Rosemary Keane  rosemarykean@yahoo.com

 

 

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In The Time Of The Red Scare Cold War Night-Trumbo-A Film Review

In The Time Of The Red Scare Cold War Night-Trumbo-A Film Review 

 

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

 

Dalton Trumbo, starring Byron Cranston, Diane Lane, 2015

 

A writer writes, no, better a writer lives to write and to take away that ability to do so is like taking the very oxygen she or he breathes away. Usually writers, wannabe writers, third-rate writers, blocked writers are left to pursue their struggles with language in relative anonymity, in relative peace. But sometimes writers, writers who poke holes in society, who combine their struggle for language with political perspectives run afoul, run way afoul of the social conventions-and pay the price. That paying the price, that running afoul, running way afoul of social conventions in this case to be on the wrong side of the one-size-fits-all anti-communist crusade that burned across the land in America in the post-World War II 1940s and 1950s period, the red scare Cold War night of the title of this review in the case of one Dalton Trumbo the subject of the film under review.

In this space and elsewhere I have poured plenty of cyber-ink about my growing up to adulthood in the red scare Cold War 1950s but except for the comical atomic bomb air-raid drills at school, the demonization of “Uncle Joe” Stalin and his minions in school and church, and the unease many of felt about what was missing in society in this period I was only on the edges of consciousness about the meaning of the red scare well behind the discoveries of rock and roll, girls and, well sex. That was not the case for those in our parents’ generation who had perhaps fought as “premature” anti-fascists in Spain, had spoken out for justice in the Great Depression night or who, to express their solidarities with the downtrodden and oppressed, joined the American Communist Party, or one of their associated organizations. Guys and gals like Dalton Trumbo, the Hollywood Ten, teachers, preachers, labor organizers and the like who when the dime of American and world politics changed in seeming a flash after the was victories got caught in the machinations of every right-wing politician from Richard Nixon to Joe McCarthy who had a sullen list of “subversives” who must be purged from the body politic.               

For a time, a convenient time, those yahoo politicians and their comrades in Hollywood from John “Duke” Wayne to the spidery Hedda Hopper held a “reign of terror” on the movie and television industry under the guise of purging communists from the communications and entertainment business. Dalton Trumbo, and most famously the Hollywood Ten of which he was a leading and vocal member, paid the price. Paid the price for what in the end were their ideas, their right to free speech and expression since nobody, no court body ever found any overt act committed against the United States. Paid in no uncertain terms by being forced to testify before Congress about their political affiliations and paying the price with hard time in the bastinado for their refusals. (A year for Trumbo after the appellate process failed.)

Paid too, and this is where the Dalton Trumbo story has all the attributes of, well, a good Hollywood script, with the blacklist, no jobs for the “traitors.” Ever if these in charge had their ways. But like I said a writer writes and so Trumbo under that imperative (and the imperative of providing for his family as well) “organized” blacklisted writers into a “union.” What these blacklisted writers did was write under assumed names, passed in their materials in, got much needed pay, and somebody else took the credit, or didn’t get acknowledged. But at least they got to write, maybe not the good stuff although Trumbo did eventually get screen credit for the Oscar-winning screenplay of Roman Holiday. (This “front”’ business among blacklisted writers was also the subject of a Woody Allen film, The Front.) 

The struggle to get back his right to write is what drives the last part of the film as the ice begins to thaw in the red scare Cold War night. Of course the big event in that struggle for Trumbo was getting the screen credit for Spartacus despite the continued efforts of the night-takers to keep the fires of their reign of terror burning.               

For those too young to know, or those like me who were a little too young to appreciate what was going on throughout this benighted land in those days this is a very good up close and personal introduction to the period. This is what I took away from the film though there are times, tough times when some people stand up, stand up like Trumbo, like Dashiell Hammett, like Bogie, and others. There are times, tough times when people like Duke Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Hedda Hopper, ignite the baser instincts of the crowds. There are times, tough times when guys like Edward G. Robinson, Elia Kazin and many others folded, went along with the madness, for the sake of their crummy careers. You don’t want to be in the latter two categories. See this film for an example of why that is so.          

*****Important Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

*****Important  Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

 

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Commentary

The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

*****

Some facts about the case from the PDC (2006):

Mumia Is an Innocent Man Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty   Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for nearly 24 years, falsely convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent and mountains of evidence show this, including the confession of another man, Arnold Beverly, to the murder. All the elements of the capitalist “justice” system colluded in framing up this former Black Panther and MOVE supporter because he is an eloquent and defiant spokesman for the oppressed. The fight to free Mumia has now reached a critical juncture. Last December, the federal appeals court put Mumia’s case on a “fast track” for decision, marking the last stages of the legal proceedings. Both Mumia and prosecutors are appealing decisions made in 2001 by U.S. District Court judge William Yohn, who overturned the death sentence but upheld every aspect of Mumia’s frame-up conviction. The state is as determined as ever to execute Mumia and has appealed. He has been barred by the courts from presenting evidence that he is innocent. But the district attorney filed legal papers in the federal appeals court in April, opening its case with a venomous, lying statement to portray Mumia as a cop-killer who must be executed. In a short time, even as soon as six months, the court could decide what is next for Mumia: death, life in prison or more legal proceedings. Mumia was locked up on death row in 1982 based on lying testimony extorted by the cops without a shred of physical evidence. The judge at his trial, Albert Sabo—known as the “King of Death Row”—was overheard by a court stenographer saying, “I’m going to help ’em fry the n----r.” Rigging the jury to exclude black people, the prosecution incited jurors with the grotesque lie that Mumia’s membership in the Panthers as a teenager proved he was committed to kill a cop “all the way back then.” The 1982 conviction was secured with arguments that the jury could disregard any doubts about Mumia’s guilt because he would have “appeal after appeal.” In nearly two decades of appeals, each and every court has rejected the reams of documented evidence of the blatant frame-up of Mumia. For over four years, Pennsylvania state as well as federal courts have refused to even consider the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner. The execution of Stanley Tookie Williams by the state of California in December casts an ominous shadow. The legal lynching of Williams, which provoked an outcry nationally and internationally, signaled the determination of the U.S. capitalist rulers to fortify their machinery of death in the face of growing reticence in the population over how the death penalty is applied. Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s foremost political prisoner, is the executioners’ number one target. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made this clear when, in denying clemency for Williams, he cited the fact that Williams’ 1998 book, Life in Prison, was dedicated to—among others—Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia’s case demonstrates what the racist death penalty is all about. It is the lynch rope made legal, the ultimate weapon in the government’s arsenal of repression aimed at the working class and oppressed. A legacy of chattel slavery, the death penalty is maintained in a society where the segregation of the majority of the black population is used as a wedge to divide the laboring masses and perpetuate the rapacious rule of capital. The murderous brutality of the racist capitalist system was displayed for all to see when thousands of people, overwhelmingly black and poor, were left to die in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Mumia’s appeal takes place in the context of the government’s assertion of its “right” to disappear, torture or even assassinate its perceived opponents, and to wiretap and spy on anyone and everyone. In the name of the “war on terror,” rights won through tumultuous class and social battles are being put through the shredder by the Bush administration with the support of the Democratic Party. The purpose is to terrorize and silence any who would stand in the way of the capitalist rulers’ relentless drive for profits and their imperialist adventures, like the colonial occupation of Iraq. As Mumia’s case moves through the final stages of legal proceedings, the fight for his freedom is urgently posed. The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/U.S.—stands for pursuing every legal avenue in Mumia’s behalf while putting no faith in the “justice” of the capitalist courts. Through publicity and action, we have struggled to mobilize the broadest social forces, centered on the labor movement, to demand Mumia’s freedom and the abolition of the racist death penalty. As Mumia faced execution in August 1995, a mass outpouring of protest nationally and internationally—from civil liberties organizations and such heads of state as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela to trade unions representing millions of workers—succeeded in staying the executioner’s hand. Today we face greater odds. But if undertaken through a mobilization based on the social power of the working class, the fight for Mumia’s freedom would be a giant step forward in the defense of all of us against the increasingly depraved and vicious rulers of this country.   Anatomy of a Frame-Up In the eyes of the capitalist state, from the time Mumia was a 15-year-old spokesman for the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in 1969, he was a dead man on leave. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover pronounced: “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries.” This policy was carried out under both the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson and his Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, and the Republican Nixon administration. Under the FBI’s “counter-intelligence” program known as COINTELPRO, 38 Panthers were murdered and hundreds of others framed up and railroaded to prison. The 900 pages of FBI files the PDC was able to obtain on Mumia’s behalf, even though highly expurgated, make clear that the FBI and cops used any “dirty trick” in their mission to get him. His every move was tracked and his name put on the FBI’s Security Index, the 1960s version of a “terrorist” hit list. Even with the demise of the Panthers, the state did not call off its vendetta against Mumia. As a journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” Mumia’s impassioned defense of black rights continued to enrage them. The Philly cops particularly seethed over his sympathetic coverage of the MOVE organization, which was subjected to an onslaught of state terror. Mumia was targeted for death because of his political beliefs, because of what he wrote, because of what he said. And in the early morning hours of 9 December 1981 at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, the cops finally saw their chance. Mumia was driving a cab through the area that night. He heard gunshots. He saw people running, saw his own brother and got out of his cab to help him. Moments later, Mumia was critically wounded by a bullet through the chest. Nearby lay a wounded police officer, Daniel Faulkner. The cops found their long-awaited opportunity and seized on it to frame up Mumia as a “cop killer.” The prosecution’s case rested on three legs, all based on lies: the testimony of “eyewitnesses” coerced through favors and terror; a “confession” purportedly made by Mumia the night of the shooting that was such a blatant hoax that it didn’t surface until months later; and nonexistent ballistics “evidence.” In 2001, this frame-up was completely blown to pieces with Arnold Beverly’s confession that he was the man who shot Faulkner. In a sworn affidavit printed in the PDC pamphlet Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man!, Beverly stated:   “I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area.   “Faulkner was shot in the back and then in the face before Jamal came on the scene. Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting.” Beverly stated that the second shooter also fled the scene. This is supported by a sworn affidavit by Mumia’s brother, Billy Cook, who testified that his friend Kenneth Freeman was a passenger in Cook’s VW at 13th and Locust that night. Freeman later admitted to Cook that he was part of the plan to kill Faulkner and had participated in the shooting and then fled the scene. This is further corroborated by the testimony of a witness at the scene, William Singletary, who said he saw a passenger get out of Cook’s VW, shoot Faulkner and then flee the scene. At least half a dozen witnesses who were on the scene the night of the shooting saw, from several different vantage points, one or more black men flee. Police radio “flashes” right after the shooting reported that the shooters had fled the scene with Faulkner’s gun. Five witnesses, including two cops, describe someone at the scene wearing a green army jacket, which both Beverly and Freeman were wearing that night. Neither Mumia nor Cook wore a green army jacket: Mumia wore a red ski jacket with wide vertical blue stripes and Cook had a blue jacket with brass buttons. Beverly said that Mumia was shot by a cop at the scene. This is confirmed by no less an authority than the state Medical Examiner’s office, whose record written the same morning as the shooting quotes a homicide officer saying that Mumia was shot by “arriving police reinforcements,” not by Faulkner. Other witnesses have corroborated Beverly’s testimony that undercover and uniformed police were in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, which Beverly assumed meant that they were in on the plan to kill Faulkner. One witness, Marcus Cannon, saw two undercover cops on the street across from the shooting. William Singletary also saw “white shirts” (police supervisors) at the scene right after the shots were fired. The prosecution dismisses the idea that the cops would kill one of their own as an outlandish invention. Leaving aside that Beverly passed two lie detector tests, his account fits with the fact that at the time of Faulkner’s killing in 1981, there were at least three ongoing federal investigations into police corruption in Philadelphia, including police connections with the mob. Police working as FBI informants were victims of hits in the early 1980s. A former federal prosecutor acknowledged that the Feds had a police informant whose brother was a cop, just as Faulkner had a brother who was a cop. A sworn affidavit by Donald Hersing, a former informant in an FBI investigation into police corruption, confirms that at the time of Faulkner’s shooting the word was out that the Feds had an informant in the police force. The commanding officer of the Central Police Division, where the murder of Faulkner took place, the chief of the police Homicide Division and the ranking officer at the scene of Faulkner’s killing, Alfonzo Giordano, were all under investigation at the time on federal corruption charges. These cops were literally the chain of command in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Giordano had been the right-hand man for Philadelphia’s notoriously racist police chief and later mayor, Frank Rizzo. From 1966 to 1970, Giordano was in charge of the cop “Stakeout” squad, which led the police raid on the Black Panthers’ headquarters in 1970. He was also the supervisor of the 15-month police siege of MOVE’s Powelton Village house in 1977-78, which resulted in nine MOVE members being sent to prison on frame-up charges of killing a cop. Giordano knew exactly who Mumia was. The senior officer on the scene, he had both motive and opportunity to frame up Mumia for the killing of Faulkner. Giordano originated the claim that Mumia’s gun—the putative murder weapon—was lying beside him on the street. But according to police radio records, the cops were still looking for the gun some 14 minutes after hordes of police had arrived on the scene. Giordano arranged the identification of Mumia by cab driver Robert Chobert, who became a witness for the prosecution. Giordano was the central witness for the prosecution at Mumia’s pretrial hearing. But he was never called as a witness at Mumia’s trial. Shortly before the trial, he was assigned to a desk job. One working day after Mumia was convicted, Giordano resigned from the force. In 1986, Giordano copped a plea on federal charges based on his receiving tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs from 1979 to 1980. He didn’t spend a day in jail.   Prosecution’s Web of Lies The prosecution’s story is that two people were on the corner of 13th and Locust where Faulkner was shot: Mumia’s brother Billy Cook and Faulkner. They claim that Mumia ran across the street when he saw his brother being beaten by Faulkner. According to police and prosecutors, Mumia shot the cop in the back, the cop shot back at Mumia and then Mumia stood over the fallen cop and shot him “execution style” several times in the head. Even a close examination of the cops’ and prosecution’s own evidence gives the lie to this scenario. A look at the “three legs” of the prosecution’s case provides not only stark confirmation of Mumia’s innocence but clear corroboration of Beverly’s testimony. The Prosecution’s Witnesses: Even with police and prosecution threats and favors at the time of the 1982 trial, no witness testified to seeing Mumia actually shoot Faulkner. Only one, Cynthia White, the prosecution’s star witness, testified that she thought she saw a gun in Mumia’s hand when he crossed the street. A prostitute working in the area, White claimed to have witnessed the events from the southeast corner of 13th and Locust. Yet the other two prosecution witnesses, as well as two defense witnesses who knew White, all denied she was at the scene during the shooting! Other prostitutes testified in subsequent court hearings that White alternately got police favors or was threatened by police in order to extract her testimony. As for Robert Chobert, at first he told police that the shooter “ran away.” After further interrogation, he changed his story, claiming that Mumia stood over Faulkner while the shots were fired and that no one ran away. A cab driver using a suspended license while on probation for felony arson, Chobert was given favors by the prosecution in exchange for his testimony. He later admitted that he never saw the shooting. The third state witness was Michael Scanlan. He initially identified Mumia as the VW driver but then claimed that the shooter ran across Locust Street, which Beverly admits that he did. He also admitted that he did not know if Mumia was the man he saw. Ballistics and Forensics: The prosecution claimed that ballistics evidence was “consistent” with Mumia’s gun being the murder weapon even while admitting that the “consistency” applied to millions of handguns. There is no evidence that Mumia’s gun was even fired that night. There was every opportunity to test Mumia’s hands, or the gun, for evidence that it had been recently fired. But according to police no such tests, which are standard operating procedure, were ever done! The Stakeout officer who claimed he picked up Mumia’s gun did not turn it over for more than two hours, providing more than ample time to have it tampered with. The Medical Examiner’s report states that Faulkner was shot with a .44 calibre bullet, yet Mumia’s gun was a .38 calibre. Although the crime lab claimed that the main bullet fragment removed from Faulkner’s head was too damaged to test, the defense team’s ballistics expert denied this. A second bullet fragment removed from the head wound simply disappeared without a trace. Evidence at the scene—bullet fragments, blood stains, the absence of divots in the sidewalk—refutes the prosecution claim that Faulkner was shot repeatedly while lying on the ground. The bullet patterns are far more consistent with multiple shooters, as Beverly testifies. A copper bullet jacket found at the scene was inconsistent with either Faulkner’s or Mumia’s guns, suggesting that a different gun was fired. Similarly, type O blood was found at the scene, but Faulkner, Mumia and Cook were all type A, suggesting that another person was present and injured. The angle of Mumia’s own wounds is impossible if he was shot while standing over Faulkner as the prosecution claimed. However, Mumia’s wounds are consistent with Beverly’s testimony that Mumia was shot by a cop at the scene. The “Confession”: The frame-up’s final leg was the claim that Mumia, lying in a pool of blood at the hospital where he was taken for treatment, shouted out that he had shot the cop. Yet the police officer assigned to guard Mumia there reported that same day that Mumia “made no comments.” In reality, he was so badly wounded, with a bullet hole through one lung, and had been so badly beaten by police on the street and at the hospital, that he could not have “shouted” anything. The “confession” was manufactured by the prosecution at a roundtable meeting with cops two months after the shooting. Priscilla Durham, a security guard, was the only hospital employee who backed up the cops’ “confession” lie. In 2003 Durham’s stepbrother Kenneth Pate swore that Durham said she was pressured by the cops to say Mumia confessed. Pate also said Durham heard Mumia say, “Get off me, get off me, they’re trying to kill me.” Mumia Abu-Jamal has always categorically maintained his innocence. As he declared in a 2001 affidavit: “I did not shoot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. I had nothing to do with the killing of Officer Faulkner. I am innocent…. I never confessed to anything because I had nothing to confess to.” Mobilize Now to Free Mumia! The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is an object lesson in the class nature of the capitalist state. Its justice system is class- and race-biased to the core. The cops and courts who framed up this innocent man, the living tomb of the prison system in which he is jailed, the executioner who stands ready to kill—all are instruments of organized violence used to preserve the rule of the capitalist class through the forcible suppression of the working class and oppressed. Smashing this racist frame-up machine will require a socialist revolution that overturns the capitalist system. Demands for a “new trial” which have been raised by liberals, self-proclaimed socialist organizations, black nationalists and others have fed illusions that there can be justice in the capitalist courts. Those illusions demobilized a movement of millions around the world in Mumia’s defense. The time is now to rekindle mass protest—nationally and internationally—on behalf of Mumia. Mumia’s freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged “justice” system or on capitalist politicians, whether Democrat, Republican or Green. The power that can turn the tide is the power of millions—working people, anti-racist youth, death penalty abolitionists—united in struggle to demand the freedom of this innocent man. Crucial to this perspective is the mobilization of the labor movement, whose social power derives from its ability to shut down production. As we have stated since we first took up Mumia’s defense in the mid 1980s, what’s necessary are labor-centered united-front actions, generating effective protest across a spectrum of political beliefs while assuring all the right to have their own say. The time is now to make Mumia’s case a rallying cry against the racist death penalty, against black oppression, against government repression. Raise your voice and organize now in your union, on your campus, in your community to demand: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racist death penalty! —Partisan Defense Committee, 27 May 2006

An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary (April 2008)



The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.

Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.

Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.

Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.

I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.

Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.

*****When The Bourgeoisie Was In Full Flower- With The French Painter Caillebotte In Mind

*****When The Bourgeoisie Was In Full Flower- With The French Painter Caillebotte In Mind 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Yeah, the Baron, Baron Haussmann if you need a name to go with the damage, the social damage done, had done a good job, a damn good job of breaking up beloved Paris with his squeaky clean street lines and wide boulevards. Yeah, changed the face of Paris, the Paris of squalid throw your leavings out the window and heaven help who is below, and heaven help what awful thing was thrown down to the trash-filled streets. The Paris of funny crooked cul de sac streets, which reflected the add-ons over centuries to make a great city from the piss-pot small town back in the Middle Ages when the university was the center of attraction and the good bourgeois in embryo were trying to hold off the barbarians, the wayward no account peasant drifters who snuck off the land, or tried to in order to sulk and menace in the shadows down by the Seine, the river of life and of intrigue.

The Paris of the small craftsman working his trade in some lonely workshop, maybe an indentured apprentice by his side if the craft was skilled enough to warrant such service, his “home” and hearth in the back rooms where the dutiful wife and undutiful screaming children scratched out their pitiful existence. Said craftsman working furiously always brow-beaten worrying about being edged out by Monsieur So and So with plenty of capital and fifty men in his employ underselling him by virtue of economy of scale (or just plain greed at having anybody even a single slave craftsman in his “invisible hand” market place). The Paris too of the jack-roller, the pick-pocket, the wharf rats, the tavern-dwellers, the drifters, the grifters, and the midnight sifters along the shallow shadows of that same beloved Seine     

He, Jean Villon, was called Jean-bon out of respect for his courage under fire in the hell-hole barricade days of 1848  when he and his neighbors, all working-men, held out to the last when the vicious petty-bourgeois who would have benefited most from victory deserted the barricades and he and his took to their fallen losses and jail cells with equanimity (he and his comrades ever after called ‘48ers and no further explanation was necessary, none what-so-ever in any street or boulevard in the town). And called Jean-bon as well for his general good humor when he was not talking politics or scheming the next plot that would bring on the newer world that he and his brethren were seeking. This morning he had had to laugh about the changes in the Rue Madeleine, the urine-laned street where he grew up, about the smell to high heaven of tanning chemicals, rough blacksmith coals, clothe dyes, slaughtered cattles and poultries. Laughed too that in those days, the days before the Baron got the itch (Baron dreams prodded on by ’89 dreams of san-culottes crowds demanding his head on a platter, or maybe just his head any way they could get it preferably via the people’s justice of the guillotine and more recent close calls in ‘48) none of the government’s men dared to enter those quarters even to look for the treasonous or seditious whoever was in power was always nervously pacing the floor about (it did not matter-king-premier-emperor-they all nervously paced their respective floors).

Yeah, back then nothing but crooked little streets leading to harmless little cafes, where he, workingman Villon held “court” with the riff-raff so-called of the old society. Calmly and cautiously quartered where no king’s men would bother to penetrate for they might not come back. Villon descended in some cousin-age degree never quite figured out back to the 15^th century from the outlaw poet mad monk bastard saint Francois Villon who wrote longing "exile in his own country" verse with one hand and stole whatever was not nailed down with the other a fact which Jean never tired of pointing out when back in the day, back in ‘48 on the barricades when it counted comrades would wonder whether his revolutionary energies were flagging and he would drag out his pedigree to small-mouthed scoffs and tittles.

Yeah, the Baron was a slick one tearing down the old quarters to let the rising petty-bourgeois have their elegant apartments tucked away from the steamy stinking markets, the riff-raff cafes, the shadow men of the Seine. Let the bourgeoisie laugh in their clubs about how the riff-raff, meaning their working-men, those who slaved for them, those they had fired for being what some wag called “master-less men” for their habit of robbing said masters whenever the shadows fell, and robbing the once innocent peasant girls who followed in their train and cast their fate with the lot of their virtue, would get a belly-full of lead from the phalanx encircling infantry the next time they tried to pull up brick number one in order to build a barricade.

Although for a while when Thiers, that wizened troll who never uttered anything but treacherous remarks and never stopped for one minute to give the orders to  send whatever troops against the barricades which remained loyal to keep him in power. Rammed those troops against the brave Paris communards of blessed memory back in 1871 when the frightened bourgeoisie realized that the barricades could still be constructed when the working-men rose up in righteous anger at the betrayals put upon them. (Those communards like their earlier brethren of ’48 called communards and no further explanation was necessary, none what-so-ever in any street or boulevard in the town.)

But those days were long gone now. The Baron had won, had won his victory over the riff-raff and Jean-bon Villon knew it would be a long time before the blood of the communards dried. Dried and avenged.  

 

Now the picture before Villon as he walked along Rue Madeline a place foreign to his eyes this rainy Sunday morning is that of prosperous petty bourgeois walking under the shadows of their handsome umbrellas along the well-trodden brick-laid slippery street taking in the sullen airs of the day. Each pair, male and female from a rough look at the scene, in their own world heading perhaps to some café breakfast (under awnings this morning) maybe going to the gardens up the road. Villon, the old revolutionary, looking down and noticing that every spattered brick had been inlaid (although that never stopped them from tearing them up in the old days), noticed that  as one wag put it that now the streets were big enough for all of Paris without regard to class to walk and fete wherever they cared to. Here is the waggish joke though, except for some ragman with his cur of a dog his sort were nary to be seen on these wet streets and intersections. Yeah, the Baron did his work well.      

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Patrice Lumumba Ford

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Patrice Lumumba Ford

 

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

FORD, PATRICE LUMUMBA

*Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archive's copy of the 1947 article ,"The Treason Of The Intellectuals", Cannon's stinging indictment of some of the turncoat intellectuals of the 1930s at a time when the American government (and others) ratcheted up the heat in the "red scare" post-World War II Cold War period.

Commentary

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.

The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.


It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

Maine Activists to Commit Civil Disobedience at BIW Destroyer ‘Christening’ June 18 in Bath

Maine Activists to Commit Civil Disobedience at BIW Destroyer ‘Christening’ June 18 in Bath

Maine Activists to Commit Civil Disobedience

at BIW Destroyer ‘Christening’

June 18 in Bath

 

 

 

For Immediate Release

 

Contact:  Bruce Gagnon 443-9502  globalnet@mindspring.com

 

 

Maine peace activists have announced their intention to commit acts of non-violent Civil Disobedience at the planned June 18 ‘Christening’ of the $4 billion Zumwalt ‘stealth’ destroyer at Bath Iron Works (BIW).

 

The activists maintain that the Zumwalt is a provocative escalation of the already out-of-control arms race aimed at China and Russia.

 

“It is time for us to stand up and call for the reversal of this endless and illegal war cycle that our country is engaged in,” the peace activists maintained in a statement released to the media.

 

“It is the children that these weapons are ultimately aimed at as we see the growing refugee crisis from countries where the US has been waging war. 

 

“We stand in solidarity with people around the world who are protesting at bases where the US will port these warships.  Not only would these destroyers kill innocent people but their sonar also severely impacts ocean life and the toxic materials released by these ships pollute the seas and the local environments where they are ported.

 

“Christ would not approve of his name being used to ‘bless’ such violence and the massive waste of the public treasury, especially when so many are hungry, homeless and without jobs and medical care.” 

A University of Massassachusetts-Amherst Economics Department study reveals that military spending is actually the worst way to create jobs.  At the very time we face the coming ravages of climate change our tax dollars should be spent on building commuter rail systems, offshore wind turbines, tidal power systems, and solar power – all of which would create more jobs at BIW.

 

“We intend to stand at BIW on June 18 for those who can no longer stand or speak out, like Fr. Daniel Berrigan who left this world in May. Our elected officials don’t seem to hear the many calls for the conversion of the war machine to peaceful and sustainable purposes.  We feel we must risk arrest to wake up all those whose hearts are closed to the real message of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.” 

A legal demonstration will also be held on June 18 at BIW from 9:00 am to noon along Washington Street in Bath.  Speakers and music will be featured.

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Marshall Eddie Conway

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Marshall Eddie Conway

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!