Courage To Resist-A Decade of Supporting Military Resisters

A Decade of Supporting Resisters

A Decade of Supporting Resisters Since 2007, Courage to Resist has supported the troops who refused to fight, or who faced consequences for acting on conscience, in opposition to illegal wars, occupations, the policies of empire abroad and martial law at home.  Our People Power strategy weakens the pillars that perpetuate these causes of immense violence. By supporting military resistance, counter-recruitment, and draft resistance, we intend to cut off the supply of troops for war, while pledging resistance to the policies of hate, repression, and the militarization of policing domestically. We are autonomous from and independent of any political organization, party or group. Please consider a end-of-year tax-deductible donation to support our next decade. RYAN JOHNSON "Courage to Resist is an amazing organization that has really helped my wife and I in our time of need. Please consider donating so they can continue doing this great work." Ryan was recently released from the US Army after having been AWOL for a decade, after refusing to deploy to Iraq. WARD REILLY "I've had the Honor to work with Courage to Resist for many years, and on many successful campaigns. As a former member of the Active-Duty GI Resistance during the Viet Nam era, I only wish that there had been an organization such as Courage to Resist when I deserted with three of my fellow infantry-platoon members. Until this nation ends its criminal invasions, occupations, and militarism in general, which destroy EVERYONE that they touch, we will always need such outstanding organizations as Courage to Resist. Please support them in any way that you can. Few things are more important than supporting military resistance, especially today." Ward lives in Baton Rouge. During the US war in Vietnam, he was attached to 1st Bn.,16th Infantry–1st I.D. MARIA SANTELLI "There is no question in my mind that Chelsea Manning is free today directly because of the tireless work of the amazing people at Courage to Resist! Their work is critical. Our freedom and democracy depend on the witness of war resisters and whistleblowers, and Courage to Resist has shown time and time again that war resisters and whistleblowers can depend on them." Maria is the Exec. Dir. of the Center on Conscience & War. MARJORIE COHN "Let us celebrate the liberation of Chelsea Manning, who will have served seven years in prison for courageously revealing evidence of war crimes. And a shout out to Courage to Resist and so many others across the country who were instrumental in gaining Chelsea's freedom." Marjorie is a Veterans for Peace Advisory Board Member and co-author of "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent" (with Kathleen Gilberd). She is an emerita professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego. ANN WRIGHT, COL., US ARMY (RET.) "I was one of three US diplomats who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. As I resigned my career on principle against an illegal war, I fully support the right of US military personnel who, in acts of conscience, refuse to go to a war of aggression, a war crime. While I could resign my career with no consequences other than not having a job, military personnel who take their stand of conscience face certain imprisonment. Taking a stand of conscience against an illegal war while in the US military requires courage and bravery. I proudly support those who take such a stand." Ann received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997 after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She was a passenger on the Challenger 1, which along with the Mavi Marmara, was part of the Gaza flotilla. Ann currently travels the world as a peace advocate. DAVID SWANSON "Thank you to Courage to Resist for working long-term on supporting some of the bravest and most effective resistance to war we have seen. You've worked strategically and morally. As difficult as many Americans find it to speak out publicly against a war that is constantly promoted by their televisions and supported by their neighbors, that difficulty is as nothing beside the onslaught faced by military service men and women who obey the law, the law that requires them to disobey illegal orders. Courage to Resist is well-named. Resistance from within the military requires tremendous courage. Organizing in support of resisters requires courage and hard work, and it is some of the most valuable work being done today by anyone anywhere. Ending the current US policy of waging aggressive wars is the key moral issue facing the globe, and the key impediment to it is the pretense that the wars are being waged on behalf of the men and women sent to kill and die and be wounded. When some of those men and women speak up, it gives the world hope." David is an author, activist, journalist and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. EDWARD HASBROUCK "I have the utmost respect and gratitude for the work of Courage to Resist: providing unwavering and unconditional support for Chelsea Manning, in both words and deeds, long before that became 'fashionable' or widespread; conveying and amplifying the messages of resisters in their own words, not trying to speak for them; and calling attention to and providing support for other less-publicized resisters. Courage to Resist is a model for what support of resistance can and should be, and of the ways that collective and individual actions can reinforce each other in a common cause." Edward was imprisoned from 1983-1984 for organizing resistance to Selective Service registration and support for other draft registration resisters. S BRIAN WILLSON "In a society like the US where virtually every foreign intervention, everywhere, is grotesquely illegal and criminal, the most effective resistance is from the soldiers themselves, those who choose to refuse to follow the illegal orders at great personal risk to themselves. To nourish and sustain this noble disobedience requires solidarity with and awareness of other soldiers thinking the same way, and supporters outside the military, who will cover your back in a variety of ways. Courage to Resist serves this function well, and is indispensable to continued, and expanded resistance within the military to the egregious military polices of the United States." Brian is a Vietnam veteran, peace activist, and attorney-at-law. Brian served in the US Air Force from 1966 to 1970, including several months as a combat security officer in Vietnam. RAINEY REITMAN "I've worked with Courage now for six years. One of the best decisions Chelsea Manning Support Network ever made was hooking up with them. They are amazing. I can't sing their praises enough. I became a regular donor." Rainey is a writer and privacy advocate. She leads the advocacy team for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization, and works as a nonprofit consultant. GERRY CONDON "I continue to be so impressed by the leadership of Courage to Resist in building a broad movement to free Chelsea Manning. I am also thankful to the many members of Veterans For Peace who stood solidly with Private Manning, barely blinking an eye when Bradley became Chelsea. We wish her the best possible life. We will continue to support war resisters and whistleblowers." Gerry serves on the Veterans for Peace Board of Directors. He has been a leading advocate for military war resisters since the US war in Vietnam. CARLOS ARREDONDO "After Alex was killed in Iraq, my ex-wife told me that he didn't want to go back. Alex never shared that with me even though I guess I sensed it. I wouldn't have known what to tell him. If I had known about Courage to Resist, Alex might be alive today." Carlos' son Marine L/Cpl Alex Arredondo was killed in action on August 25, 2004 in An Najaf, Iraq. JACOB BRIDGE "Meeting Courage to Resist late December 2014, early January 2015, feels like that may have—there are a lot of turning points in my life—but that was a turning point during my conscientious objection process. Because up until then I didn't know that I was going to make it. But I met Courage to Resist and things turned around and my networks broadened tremendously and I got thing incredible love and support that I was missing." Jacob was recently discharged from the US Marine Corps as a Conscientious Objector. HOWARD ZINN (1922-2010) "I would urge people to support Courage to Resist in whatever way they can. I can think of nothing more important in stopping the war in Iraq than for the soldiers themselves to refuse to fight. As a veteran myself I know how difficult it is to break out of the stranglehold the military has on one's mind, and how much courage that takes. Those who make such a decision need all the support we can give them, and Courage to Resist does just that." Howard was an American historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University who wrote more than twenty books, including his best-selling and influential "A People's History of the United States." Please consider a end-of-year tax-deductible donation to support Courage to Resist's next decade.

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT! 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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Deep In The Heart Of Cold War II-Chris Pine and Kevin Costner’s “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014)-A Film Review

 Deep In The Heart Of Cold War II-Chris Pine and Kevin Costner’s “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Kiera Knightley, 2014

[At the end of my last film review the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson (with Kim Basinger as eye candy and Batman aka Bruce Wayne aide) I noted that I was heartily sick of having to repeat older writer Phil Larkin’s by now almost patented but tired expression WTF to express some level of  displeasure. WFT apparently not enough though since I am once again stuck, maybe deeply stuck with another one of these turkey sequel action films, in this case fifth rendition, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, an idea whatever its original virtue which is now played out, now tired.     

  

Frankly I had expected after joining Phil in the belly-aching crowd that was central to that piece to be off this so-called action adventure stuff. Belly-aching plus a little fringe review at the end which Phil has become something of a past master at doing. Expected to be reviewing some old time black and white film from the 1940s or 1950s like Humphrey Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon which I had noticed was on site manager Greg Green’s assignment list. Those oldies my preferred reviews young as I am and new to the site as well for reasons explained elsewhere and as a result of having done a well-recognized good job on the first couple I did before that dog of a Batman review.

Those reviews seemingly were my undoing since Phil felt that as an older writer, as somebody who had actually seen the films when he was a wide-eyed kid spending ill-spent Saturday afternoon matinee Strand Theater growing up town double feature complete with small bucket of popcorn spread out to last the distance, he should have dibs on those properties. That was the routine in the old days when his growing up buddy, and for all I know movie companion, Allan Jackson the now deposed and exiled somewhere, I think Utah, former site manager gave him whatever assignment he hankered after. Not so with the new more democratic regime geared more to the younger writers and seeking to reclaim the lost younger audiences who have drifted away from this site established by Greg and the newly-installed Editorial Board set-up by him in the wake of the Jackson purge.          

That was how things were supposed to be until Phil started his

f--king campaign against his having to do these silly action adventures, especially when it got to be worn-out nothing but greed-head sequel time. Against me in particular, a kid, a “teacher’s pet” he called me. And it worked as I had to exchange reviews with him with him now doing Bogie’s Across The Pacific which could be easily parlayed into a double-header with the super-classic The Maltese Falcon as the real prize. Phil will probably get that assignment as well. That is the genesis of my relief campaign outlined in that dreadful Batman movie review which backfired in my face because no matter how much venom I threw at the thing Greg, backed up by what is increasingly looking like his toady Ed Board, told me personally that he liked the job I did on that one. WTF.        

One day Greg took me into his office and explained like I didn’t know from nothing what this film reviewing assignment procedure was all about, what he was carrying over from his many years first at the hard copy American Film Gazette and later when it switched over to an on-line version. Greg mentioned, and this astounded me, that he had looked at the Gazette archives and noted that over the many years of its hard copy and on-line existence that over forty thousand film reviews had been published. He was not sure how many writers had been involved in that process but he guessed at least one hundred when he had been around the operation. Although the Gazette took advertisements for current movies with few exceptions it did not, he did not assign, reviewers for current films. What the assignment board looked like was usually a hodge-podge of films related to some genre that was surfacing or resurfacing or some actor who had maybe passed away, or had rebooted his or her career, or some particular quirk of the time. Writers would, to increase their range, get a mix of assignments.   

Greg stated that frankly he was bringing that same routine over to this site with the caveat that this would include not only films but books, music, culture, politics, social commentary, the whole wider purpose of the site. He noted that although this site had only produced maybe a couple of thousand film reviews, another figure which astounded me, that apparently Jackson had the same attitude although he had centered the reviews on older films and documentaries. (Something I am told that the younger writers chaffed at and which was central to their grievances which brought Jackson low.) Greg assured me that I would eventually get my fair share of good material to write about. With that I accepted this turkey of an assignment and have temporarily called a halt to my belly-aching campaign. Kenny Jacobs]       

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Guys, writers, so maybe gals too although I don’t know many who took the Cold War into the winter night genre seriously, must have been gnashing their teeth when the ex-Soviet Union went down in flames around 1991 and 1991. (I have no first- hand experience since I was born in 1992.) Guys like Britisher Le Carre with his George Smiley series and here American Tom Clancy, or at least in theory Tom Clancy since this dog of film, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit , the fifth in the film series is merely based on the character of Jack Ryan and not something Clancy actually wrote. That gives you an exact idea of how lame this whole greed-head production is, how tired even the most fervent devotee of the genre must be to wade through this mush. Yeah, those guys must be have been crying in their beer once the very real tensions of a bi-polar world complete with serious nuclear weaponry in the balance (still around in the USA and Russia but less threatening right now in those quarters) turned into the still current uni-polar world dominated by American military power with not much to stop it.    

That post-Soviet faded tension is reflected in the hardly stellar plotline of this film once the mighty USSR was reduced to mere Russia size and less of a threat to American world order (which may be taking another curve of late with the Trump America First era but the film pre-dates that situation). Jack, dear good guy clean Jack, played by Chris Pine, after 9/11 signed up like a lot of guys in America to do serious damage to Islamic fundamentalists in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Jack took his beating in the former though and crippled up left the military for what would be a career on Wall Street based on his vast education in economic. The CIA though in the person of Tom Harper, played by visibly aging Kevin Costner, gets him to do some covert actions, to check for any dramatic changes in the world financial markets. Worked as a closed mouth “mole” until needed.

Our Jack does yeoman’s work for a while on the Street until  

some nefarious Russians, no longer able to wield their former military might have decided that melting down the world financial markets will restore some prestige to Mother Russia. Thus the chase in on. Jack a crackerjack trend spotter sees what those nefarious Russians are up to and takes action including the inevitable car chase/stand-off which entails a car bomb headed toward Wall Street. Surprise, surprise that car winds up in the East River without Jack of course and with the Russian plot crushed in the embryo. A little eye candy, sympatico by Kiera Knightley as Jack’s longtime live-in girlfriend gives the inevitable boy meets girl romantic twist a run. Sorry for my language but I have to say it- WTF.   

In Honor Of The Late Radical People’s Lawyer Lynne Stewart-Support And Donate To The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal For Our Political Activists Inside The Prison Walls

In Honor Of The Late Radical People’s Lawyer Lynne Stewart-Support And Donate To The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal For Our Political Activists Inside The Prison Walls 

By Frank Jackman

I know, as I have recounted elsewhere about my personal situation during my military service, so-called, my military resister time, during the Vietnam War, that the holidays are tough times for our political prisoners, hell all prisoners, but today we write on behalf of our fellow activists behind the walls. A place where we outside the walls may find ourselves under the regime of whatever party in power. (After all Lynne Stewart and Chelsea Manning among others, for example, were in jail in Obama time.) And nobody on the outside working for social change is exempt as the case of the late radical super people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart demonstrated. So be very generous this year in aid of those on the inside who will garner strength knowing that those outside the walls today are standing in solidarity. I know in my time I did from such support in my time.    

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Workers Vanguard No. 1124	15 December 2017

The following article appeared under the Partisan Defense Committee's Class-Struggle Defense Notes masthead in the print version of this issue of Workers Vanguard. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League.

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32nd Annual Holiday Appeal

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

This year’s Holiday Appeal marks the 32nd year of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression and imperialist depredation. This program revived a tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary (1925-28). This year’s events will pay tribute to a former stipend recipient, Lynne Stewart, who succumbed to the effects of metastasized breast cancer last March. A courageous radical lawyer who defended numerous poor people and fighters for the oppressed, including the Ohio 7, Stewart had been incarcerated for her vigorous defense of a fundamentalist sheik who was convicted in an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks. We honor her by keeping up the fight for the freedom of all class-war prisoners. The PDC currently sends stipends to 12 class-war prisoners.

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch Mumia, condemning him to life in prison with no chance of parole. Last year attorneys for Mumia filed a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) seeking to overturn the denial of his three prior PCRA claims by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If successful, he would be granted a new hearing before that court to argue for reversal of his frame-up conviction. On September 7, Judge Leon Tucker ordered a private review of the complete file of the prosecution by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office of Mumia’s case, looking for evidence of the personal involvement of then D.A. Ronald Castille, whose refusal as a judge to recuse himself during Mumia’s PA Supreme Court appeal is the basis for this PCRA. After a two-year battle, Mumia was finally able to begin lifesaving treatment for hepatitis C. In May, lab tests showed that he was free of this life-threatening illness. But the drawn-out period during which he was refused treatment left him with an increased risk of liver cancer.

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its Native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. The lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have repeatedly denied Peltier’s appeals while acknowledging blatant prosecutorial misconduct. Before leaving office, Barack Obama rejected Peltier’s request for clemency. The 73-year-old Peltier is not scheduled for another parole hearing for another seven years. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions including a heart condition for which he had to undergo triple bypass surgery. He is incarcerated far from his people and family.

Seven MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa and Eddie Africa—are in their 40th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. Collectively known as the MOVE 9, two of their number, Merle Africa and Phil Africa, died in prison under suspicious circumstances. After nearly four decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings.

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Now Laaman and Manning face prison torture where they are isolated in solitary confinement for extended periods. Manning has been deprived of necessary medical attention. The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals but, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not crimes. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter is a former Black Panther supporter and leader of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. He and his former co-defendant, Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, who died in prison last year, were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation, under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. They were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and Poindexter has now spent more than 45 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter a new trial despite the fact that crucial evidence, long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal events will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredation. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

From Veterans For Peace- Join Us by Challenging Islamophobia!

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For the past two years, the Veterans For Peace Veterans Challenge Islamophobia campaign has been organizing against prejudice, racism, and hostility expressed towards Islam and the Muslim Community.  We have been getting involved in local Muslim communities, spreading the message to other veteran groups, holding educational events in mosques, and we have even been kicked out of Trump rallies. Right now our work against Islamophobia is more important than ever! Use your veteran voice to speak out. Stand against hate, sign our statement, and show your support for targeted communities. Here is how you can take action today: Sign the Veterans Challenge Islamophobia Statement Share your reasons for signing the statement on social media, tag VCI, and use the hashtag #VetsSpeakOut Stay updated by following us on Facebook and Twitter Explore our new website for multitude of useful resources including bystander intervention guides, talking points, and other educational information Donate here to ensure that VCI can continue to work against hate Let your voice be heard. Stand up for the values of tolerance, respect, and love for all people and all faiths. Our values, as a nation, cannot abide and will not long endure amidst the divisiveness of hate speech and Islamophobia. Keep an eye out for VCI t-shirts and buttons coming soon! Design ideas? Email us atchallenge@veteransforpeace.org.

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Heroic Jailed Russia Interference Whistle-Blower Reality Leigh Winner  Resisted-Learn Her Story- Help Free Her-Build The Resistance 

Resistance Hero Whistleblower Reality Winner "Why do I have this job if I'm just going to sit back and be helpless … I just thought that was the final straw" Courage to Resist podcast with Reality Winner's family: "She's being treated as a political prisoner" December 2017 podcast -- Reality Winner's family talk about what it's like trying to support their loved one during her Orwellian incarceration. Our podcast features Reality's sister Brittney Winner, mom Billie Winner-Davis, and friend Matthew Boyle. Donate to Reality's defense fund A young woman named Reality Leigh Winner has been jailed without bail since June 2017 for helping expose Russian hacking that targeted US election systems. Charged under the Espionage Act, she faces ten years in prison, for making a good faith effort to hold President Trump accountable. Reality is the first victim of Trump's "war on whistleblowers." After serving six years in the Air Force, Reality took a job as an NSA intelligence contractor in January 2017. On the day Trump fired FBI Director James Comey (May 9, 2017), Reality is charged with finding and printing a classified report entitled, "Russia/Cybersecurity: Main Intelligence Directorate Cyber Actors." The next day (May 10), Trump celebrated with Russian officials in the White House, bragging that he had fired "nut job" Comey in order to end any "Russiagate" investigation. Hours later, Reality allegedly sent the NSA report to the media (May 11). "Why do I have this job if I'm just going to sit back and be helpless … I just thought that was the final straw," Reality allegedly explained under interrogation. "I felt really hopeless seeing that information contested … Why isn't this out there? Why can't this be public?" Along with James Comey's leak of Trump meeting notes, the "Winner document" helped set the stage for the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller a week later (May 17) to investigate "Russiagate." Reality was an outspoken critic of Trump and an advocate for social justice causes, including Standing Rock, climate science, children with different abilities, animal rights, and Black Lives Matter. Those social media posts are now being used against her in Orwellian proceedings in which her lawyers are not allowed to see much of the evidence against her. By the time her trial starts–Summer 2018, at the earliest–she'll have spent a full year behind bars. Meanwhile, the actual Russiagate indicted criminals, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Flynn, haven't spent a day in jail. Reality Winner's case has precedent setting implications for whistleblowers trying to do the right thing, press freedom, election suppression, and the government's escalating war on dissent. Reality took a risk to share something that Americans had a right to know. Donate to Reality's defense fund

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT! 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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Down And Out In The City Of Angels-Danny Glover And Mel Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon 3” (1992)-A Film Review

Down And Out In The City Of Angels-Danny Glover And Mel Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon 3” (1992)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

[This time unlike in my last review in this space when I did a nice job, according to site manager Greg Green, on Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn’s 1938 Bringing Up Baby now seen as a minor classic directed by Howard Hawks  I really can mimic old-time reviewer Phil Larkin’s now seemingly patented WFT. Why? Well it seems that the biggest way that you can get the attention of Greg and the Editorial Board (which Phil has lambasted to hell as Greg’s toadies but who are all working writers and so I take umbrage at his remarks that they are nothing but his voting fodder) is by belly-aching enough about the pick of assignments. At least that worked for Phil as mild-mannered and demur (if you can use that word describing a man) Greg Green bowed down to the onslaught and “switched” reviews with me now doing the one under review, Lethal Weapon 3, and Phil taking my justly earned plum assignment on the minor Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet classic Across the Pacific. I was going to use my take on that review as a lead-in to another film by this trio the major classic film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade-led The Maltese Falcon.

So it looks like this place is starting to be run the way that I am told since I don’t know directly I am a new kid on the block the same way when the old site manager the now justly deposed and exiled out in Utah, Nevada, Siberia some place like that Allan Jackson ran the show. Basically cry big enough crocodile tears and Uncle Greg will chase your blues away whether you are capable of doing the job or not. Which off of Phil’s last review of the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson is certainly in question. That is the one where Phil went off on popcorn-fattened and sugar-high soda filled young kids, their gullible parents, me as Greg’s goddam teacher’s pet which is all wrong, theater owners filling kids with fattening popcorn and cavity-producing sodas, Marvel comic screenwriters who couldn’t figure out a reasonable plot if they found one on the street, Captain America as a brainless twit, the Hulk as nothing but a ballooned-up mutant, Thor as nothing but a beauty queen, Ironman as a highly paid flunky and I don’t know what else since I stopped reading the thing when I knew there would be conveniently no plot summary. Hell Phil even took a swipe at eye candy Black Widow.

Guess what he wrote about three lines of real review. For that the bastard gets a minor Bogie plum on the way to the big Bogie one which I am sure he will argue for as I would to do the pair as a combo. So now you know why a young guy like me trying to break into the film reviewing business to prove to my parents that all that money they spent on college and graduate school wasn’t wasted is saying WTF. I won’t say I am a team player yet but I will soldier on as the older writers like to say all the time when they are behind deadline. Kenny Jacobs]             

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Funny after all I said about lame Phil Larkin above in the turf wars for good assignments I have to agree with him that these modern action films really are predictable. Really hard, if you want to know,   

to get a handle on since, again kudos to Phil, the plotline was done by some kid in elementary school whose father just happened to be the credited screenwriter on the leaden balloon. Harder still (and why I was going to go big on that Across The Pacific/The Maltese Falcon combination) why except for pure studio/theater owner greed and to fill production space these formula films have X number of sequels in this case three when the original idea if decent could not sustain further ramming. In the end all this one has going for it is a kind of play on the old older/younger buddy films from the likes of  Robert Redford and Paul Newman in vehicles like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. What the latter-day-saint moneybags producers forget is that those two stars were backed-up by scripts definitely not written by some credited screenwriter’s child.         

Since I am right now behind the eight ball with Greg and his esteemed Editorial Board sucking wind on this pig of a film I had better follow the old Sam Lowell commandment and write a decent plotline summary if I ever expect to see the light of day again.

To keep the hoary tradition alive here is the “skinny” whatever that means. Our worldly and wary seen it all City of Angels coppers, and buddies from all appearances, older sensible cop Roger, played by Danny Glover, and younger but more rash cop Martin, played by pretty boy Mel Gibson, are in deep doo-doo after failed bomb caper. Working the demoted streets they run into the proverbial street gangs and their armament, high-grade stuff not some junkie’s Saturday night special. Stuff that as it turns out can’t be purchased at Wal-Mart’s. Stuff that could only come from police confiscations. So this is strictly an inside job. Strictly rogue cop, or better ex-cop stuff.        

Things get heavy when Roger has to take down some dope-addled black kid with nothing but semi-automatic weaponry firing back at him in single shot mode. Christ taking down a kid, a friend of his son’s, and him, this is a weak sister sub-plot him, days away from a well-deserved retirement. So Roger and Martin bear down, get everybody they know involved in shaking the palm trees, do some dirty cop work to get info that might in post-Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter time, not get a very positive reception. So after the standard rough stuff, the standard million car chases going the wrong way on death Los Angeles super-highways, the standard drawn out shoot-out between unequal forces, they the unequal side,  they take down that rogue ex-cop. Take him down good. Guess what after this caper old Roger has some wind still in his sails and will not retire for a while. Just in case there had to be a Lethal Weapon 4 segue.

By the way what is not so weak sister in this mix is the usual dance around between pretty boy Martin and Laura, the woman copper running the Internal Affairs investigation, played by fetching Rene Russo. She is female-wise Martin’s twin and before you can close your eyes they are going round and round under the sheets. She, out in the streets though, gives as good as she gets taking a few for the cause. What I am wondering is why not let good old boy Roger retire and let Martin and Laura go buddy-buddy. I hope to high heaven this is enough to get me back in good graces. I am tired of running Phil’s tired WFT.    

An Encore -Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-Elegy For Tom Waits

An Encore -Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-Elegy For Tom Waits

From the pen of the late Peter Paul Markin who fell by the wayside, fell to his notoriously monstrous “wanting habits” accumulated since childhood looking too hard, looking to hard in the wrong places down among the weeds in Mexico, looking for train smoke and dreams if you really thought about the matter, looking for his own heart of Saturday night-RIP, Brother,RIP.     

****** 



If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of today’s bourgeois-driven push, bourgeois a better term than capitalist or imperialist if you are in America since it gives a better view of the unhindered social norms, the ethos rather than the sheer grab for filthy lucre; you know grab goods, grab the dough, grab every cheap-jack convenience like it was God’s own gold, grab some shelter from the storm, the storm that these days comes down like a hard rain falling, to get ahead in this wicked old world have to step back and take stock, maybe listen to some words of wisdom, or words that help explain how you got into that mess then you have come to the right address, the address of Mister Tom Waits if you missed the headline or missed who is writing this thing. (Or better "wrote" since this piece is being edited posthumously by Zack James who found this and three companion pieces in the attic of Josh Breslin's Olde Saco family house in Olde Saco, Maine when they were looking to dispose of whatever could be disposed of in preparation for selling the place so Josh and Lana could move into smaller quarters and Josh told him the long and at the end the sad story about Josh's and Markin's meeting out in San Francisco in the summer of love 1960s times and about Markin's awful fate down in Mexico. That story drove Zack to the editing job in order that a genuine mad monk writer could some forty years after his death receive a small recognition of his ambitious talent.) 



Okay, okay on that bourgeois-driven today thing once I describe what was involved maybe it didn’t just start of late. Maybe the whole ill-starred rising went back to the time when this continent was, just like F. Scott Fitzgerald said way back in the 1920s when he made up the Jazz Age and reeled back in dismay once he saw how those coupon-clippers devoured all good sense and sober ethos, just a fresh green breast of land eyed by some hungry sailors, some hungry Dutch sailors who took what they wanted back the homeland and made a grave attempt to fatten their own chests. Just check out any Dutch master painting to see what I mean.



Going back to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys and their city on the hill but you best ask Max Weber about that since he tried to hook these world-wise and world weary boys were no longer worrying about novenas and indulgences against some netherworld to the wheel of the capitalist profit. Profit (grab the dough, grab the goods, grab stuff cheap) for "you at the expense of me" system with the new dispensation coming out like hellfire from Geneva and points east and west. The eternal story of the short end of the stick if you aren’t ready for sociological treatises and rely on guys like Tom Waits to wordsmith the lyrics to set you right about what is wrong. But you get the point.



If all that to-ing and fro-ing (nice touch, right) leaves you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city (edge city where you danced around with all the conventions of the days, danced around the get ahead world, grab the dough, grab the goods, grab stuff cheap,  with blinkers on before you got stuck in the human sink that you have still not been able to get out of) where big cloud outrageous youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, damn did you take risks, thought nothing of that fact either, landed on your ass more than a few times but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done stick around and listen up. Yeah, so if you are wondering,  have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed off your sainted wheels, and gotten yourself  into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, now faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half-forgotten, the wisp of the dream, the eternal peace dream, the figuring out how to contain that fire, that wanting habits fire in your belly dream sisters and brothers), and need some solace (need some way to stop the fret counting the coffee cups complete with spoons to measure that coffee out as the very modernist poet once said making his modern statement about the world created since the turn of the 19th century that while away your life). Need to reach back to roots, reach back to roots that the 1950s golden age of America, the vanilla red scare Cold War night that kicked the ass out of all the old to make us crave sameness, head down, run for cover, in order to forget about those old immigrant customs, made us forget those simple country blues, old country flames, Appalachia mountain breeze coming through the hills and hollows songs, lonely midnight by the fire cowboy ballads, Tex-Mex big ass brass sympatico squeezes Spanish is the loving tongue, Irish desperate struggles against John Bull  sorrows and cautionary tale Child ballads, plucked out early by a professor over on Brattle Street back when the Brahmins very publicly ruled the roost, or Cajun Saturday night stewed drunks that made the people feel good times, reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter [oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay-Zack James] and remember what it was like when men and women sang just to sing the truth of what they saw and heard.



If the norms of don’t rock the boat (not in these uncertain times like any times in human existence were certain, damn, there was always something scary coming up from the first man-eating beast to the human race-eating nuclear bombs, brother even I Iearned early that it was a dangerous world, yeah, learned very early in the Adamsville projects where you got a very real taste of danger before you got too much older than five or six), the norms of keep your head down (that’s right brother, that’s right sister keep looking down, no left or rights for your placid world), keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual (that ritual looking more and more like the firing squad that took old Juan Romero’s life when he did bad those days out in Utah country), and excuses, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, very dark-skinned like some deathless, starless night disturbing your sleep, begging, I swear, begging you to put that gun in full view on the table, speaking some unknown language, maybe A-rab or I-talian, maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang and that fresh green breast of land  and that city on a hill that drove them cross-eyed and inflamed or ask Max Weber, he footnoted the whole thing, put paid to any idea of otherworldly virtue), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half-forgotten remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume up another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.



If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else’s sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side of the fence. And I have the list of brothers and sisters who took that wrong road, like that time Jack from Carver wound up face down in some dusty back road arroyo down Sonora way when the deal went bust or when she, maybe a little kinky for all I know, decided that she would try a needle and a spoon, I swear, or she swore just for kicks and she wound up in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse working that sagging bed to perdition and worse losing that thing she had for sex once she started selling it by the hour. Hey, sweet dreams baby I tried to tell you when you play with fire watch out.



So if you need to sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, those who had gotten it taken away from them like some maiden virginity, those who just didn’t get it frankly in this fast old world taken in by some grifter’s bluster), those who never had anything but lost next to their names, those who never had a way to be lost, dopesters inhaling sweet dream snow in solitary hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor drunk stiff out of his room rent for kicks (how uncool to drink low-shelf whiskeys or rotgut wines hell the guy deserved to be rolled, should feel lucky he got away with just a flipped wallet), out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote (the sweet dreams of ten million years of ghost warriors working the layered canyon walls flickering against the campfire flames and the sight of two modern warriors shirtless, sweaty, in a trance, high as kites, dancing by themselves like whirling dervishes   ready to do justice for the white man's greed until the flames flickered out and they fell in a heap exhausted) if that earth angel connection comes through (Aunt Sally, always, some Aunt Sally coming up the stairs to ease the pain, to make one feel, no, not feel better than any AMA doctor without a prescription pad), creating visions of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night, hipsters all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving, fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card Monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japan seas), the drift-less (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses, hell, call them flop houses, afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them” too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.



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



Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record [CD or download okay-Zack] and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living.



See he ain’t looking for all haloed saints out there, some Saint Jerome spreading the word out to the desert tribes, out on the American mean streets he has pawed around the edges, maybe doesn’t believe in saints for all I know, but is out looking for busted black-hearted angels all dressed in some slinky silk thing to make a man, a high-shelf whiskey man having hustled some dough better left unexplained that night going off his moorings feeding her drinks and she a liquor sponge (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless, gin mill when she split, after she split her take with the bartender who watered her drinks, hell, the thing was sweet all she needed to do when he leaned into her was grab his sorry ass and get the damn wallet). Looking too, a child of the pin-up playboy 1950s, for girls with Monroe hips (hips swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and enflaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells by descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys for promising the world for one forbidden night), got real, and got left for dead with cigar wrapping rings. Yeah, looking for the desperate out there who went off the righteous path and wound up too young face down in some forsaken woods who said she needed to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten. 




Tom Waits once you get the habit gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Okie/Arkie Dove Linkhorns and Frankie Machines of the world who had to keep moving just for the sake of moving something in the DNA driving that whirlwind, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores (their forbears thrown out of Europe for venal crimes and lusts, pig-stealing, deer-pouching, working the commons without a license, highwaymen, ancient jack-rollers, the flotsam and jetsam of the old world, damn them, the master-less men and women, ask old Max about them too), having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, far from it, the wretched of the earth and their kin, the ones who the old blessed Paris communards were thinking of when they hanged a sign saying “Death to Thieves” from the Hotel de Ville balcony, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If you want to hear about those desperate brethren then here is your stop as well.



If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear to the scratchy earth and some occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Hey, let’s leave it at this- if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.