It wasn’t all be-bop night, rock ‘n’ roll sock hop, midnight drifter, midnight sifter, low-rider, hard-boiled corner boy 1950s life in old down and out working class dregs North Adamsville. Not at all. But a lot of it was, a lot that bespoke of the early phases of American deindustrialization, although we would not have called that then, if we had been aware of it even, with the demise of the local mainstay ship building ad its associated industries, great world war warship shipbuilding and then later gigantic oil tankers and then, then nothing, maybe a sailboat, or a row boat for all I know, I just don’t know more, or why.
All I know, or at least all that I know from what I heard my father, and other fathers say, was that that industry was the life’s blood of getting ahead, ahead in the 1950s life in that beat down, beat up, beat thirteen ways to Sunday town (ya, I know it is only six but it sure did seem like thirteen on some hard father unemployed days). And so low-rider, hard-boiled corner boy, the easy life of pinball wizardry, dime store lurid magazines, slow-drinking Cokes (or Pepsis, but make mine local Robb’s Root Beer), draped around mascara-eyed, heavy form-filled girls, and the occasional armed robbery to break up the day, and bring in some much needed dough held a higher place that it might have, and almost certainly would in some new town West.
But what was a guy to do if to get out of the house, get away from ma’s nagging (and it was almost always ma, every ma house in those days), siblings heckling, and just breathe in some fresh air, some fresh be-bop rock corner boy air, if at all possible.
See, this is way before mall rat-dom came into fashion since the nearest mall was way too far away to drag yourself to, and it also meant traveling through other corner boy, other maybe not friendly corner boy lands. So if you didn’t want to tie yourself down to some heavy felony on some soft misty, foggy better, night by hanging around tough corner boy, Red Hickey-ruled Harry’s Variety, or your tastes did not run to trying to cadge some pinball games from those same toughs, or you were too young, too innocent, too poor, too car-less or too ragamuffiny for those form-filled, Capri-panted girls with their haunting black mascara eyes then you had to hang somewhere else, and Doc’s, ya, Doc’s Drugstore is where you hung out in the more innocent section of that be-bop 1950s night.
Wait a minute I just realized that I had better explain, and do it fast before you get the wrong idea, that I am not talking about some CVS, Rite-Aid, or Osco chain-linked, no soliciting, no trespassing, no loitering, police take notice, run in and run out with your fistful of drugs, legal drugs, places. Or run in for some notions or sundries, whatever they are. No way, no way in hell would you want to hang out where old-timers like your mothers and fathers and grandparents went to help them get well.
No this was Doc’s, Doc-owned (ya, Doc, Doc Adams, I think, or I think somebody told me once that he was part of some branch of that Adams crowd, the presidential Adams crowd that used to be big wheels in the town), Doc-operated, and Doc-ruled. And Doc let, unless it got too crazy, kids, ordinary kids, not hard-boiled white tee-shirted corner boys but plaid-shirted, chino pant-wearing (no I am not going to go on and on about the cuffs, no cuffs controversy, okay, so keep reading), maybe loafers (no, inserted pennies, please, and no, no, no, Thom McAn’s), a windbreaker against some ocean-blown windy night on such nights, put their mark on the side walls, the side brick walls of his establishment. And let the denizens of the Doc night (not too late night either) put as will every self-respecting corner boy, tee-shirted or plaid, make his mark by standing, one loafer-shod foot on the ground, and the other knee-bent against the brick wall holding Doc’s place together. True-corner boydom. Classic pose, classic memory pose.
And see, Doc, kindly, maybe slightly mad Doc, and now that I think about it slightly girl-crazy himself maybe, let girls, girls even hang against the wall. Old Harry’s Variety Red Hickey would have shot one of his girls in the foot if they ever tried that stunt. Girls were to be draped, preferably draped around Red not around Harry’s wall, brick or not. Now, after what I just described you know that you’re into a new age night because no way Harry, and definitely not Red (Daniel, don’t ever call him that though) Hickey, king hell king of the low-rider night that I told you about before, just a couple minutes ago would let some blond, real or imagined, Capri-panted, cashmere swearing wearing (tight, very tight cashmere sweater-wearing, if you didn’t know), boffed, bimbo (ouch, but that is what we called them, so be it) stand around his corner even. Dames (better, right) were for hot-rod Chevy, hard-driving, low-riding sitting on the seat next to, and other stuff. But plaid-shirted guys (loafer-shod) liked, do you hear me Red and Harry, liked having girls hanging with them to while away the be-bop hard night corner boy lands.
And before you even ask, Doc’s had not pinball machine and no pinball wizards (as far as I remember, although a couple of guys and a girl were crackerjack bowlers). But see, Doc’s had the things that mattered, mattered for plaid-shirted guys with a little dough (their allowances, no snickering please for any hard-boiled readers, or poor ones) in their pockets, and lust chaste lust maybe, in their hearts. Doc’s had a soda fountain, one,
and, two, a juke box. Where the heck do you think we heard a zillion times all those songs from back then that I keep telling you about? Come on now, smarten up.
And, of course if you have corner boys, even nice corner boys, you have to have a king hell king corner boy. Red, Red Hickey understood that instinctively, and acted on it, whip chain in hand. Other boys in other corners acted on it in that same spirit, although not that crudely. And corner boy king, Doc’s Drugstore corner boy king, Brian Pennington, plaid-shirted king of the soft-core corner boy night acted on that same Red premise. How Brian (“Bri” to most of us) came to be king corner boy is a good story, a good story about how a nowhere guy (a my characterization nowhere guy) used a little influence to get ahead in this wicked old world. Red did it by knocking heads around and was the last man standing, accepting his “crown” from his defeated cronies. Brian took a very different route.
Now I don’t know every detail of his conquest because I only touched the edges of his realm, and of his crowd, as I was moving out of the neighborhood thralldom on to other things, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, scribe things. Apparently Doc had a granddaughter, a nice but just then wild granddaughter whom Doc was very fond of as grandfathers will be. And of course he was concerned about the wildness, especially as she was coming of age, and nothing but catnip (and bait) for Red and his corner boys if Doc didn’t step in and bring Brian into the mix. Now, no question, Brian was a sharp dresser of the faux-collegiate type that was just starting to come into its own in that 1960s first minute. This time of the plaid shirts was a wave that spread, and spread quickly, among those kids from working class families that were still pushing forward on the American dream, and maybe encouraging their kids to take college courses at North Adamsville High, and maybe wind up in that burgeoning college scene that everybody kept talking about as the way out.
Brian was no scholar, christ he was no scholar, although he wasn’t a dunce either. At least he had enough sense to see which way things were going, for public consumption anyway and put on this serious schoolboy look. That sold Doc, who had been having conversations with Brian when he came into the drugstore with books in one arm, and a girl on the other. I’ll give you the real low-down sometime about how book-worthy, book-worshipping Brian really was. Let me just relate to you this tidbit for now. One day, one school vacation day, Brian purposefully knocked the books out of my hands that I had borrowed when I was coming out of the Thomas Crane Public Library branch over on Atlantic Avenue (before it moved to Norfolk Downs) and yelled at me, “bookworm.” Like I didn’t know that already. But enough about that because this is about Brian's rise, not mine. Somehow Brian and Lucy, Doc’s granddaughter came together, and without going into all the details that like I said I don’t really know anyway, they hit it off. And see, this is where Brian’s luck really held out, from that point on not only did Brian get to hang his loafer-ed shoe on Doc’s brick wall but he was officially, no questions asked, the king of that corner boy night. That’s how I heard the story and that seems about right because nobody ever challenged him on it, not that I heard.
Now like I mentioned before, Doc’s was a magnet for his juke box-filled soda fountain and that drew a big crowd at times, especially after school when any red-blooded kid, boy or girl, needed to unwind from the pressure-cooker of high school, especially we freshmen who not only had to put up with the carping teachers, but any upper classman who decided, he or she, to prank a frosh. That’s my big connection with Doc’s, that after school minute freshman year, but, and here I am getting my recollections second-hand, Doc’s was also a coming-of-age place for more than music, soft ice cream, and milk shakes. This is also the place where a whole generation of neighborhood boys, and through them, the girls as well had their first taste of alcohol.
How you say? Well, Brian, remember Brian, now no longer with Lucy (she went off to a private finishing school and drifted from the scene) but was still Doc’s boy, Doc’s savior boy, and somehow conned old Doc into giving him his first bottle of booze. Not straight up, after all Brian was underage but Bri said it was, wink, wink, for his grandmother. Now let me explain, in those days in the old neighborhood, and maybe all over, a druggist could, as medicine, sell small bottles of hard liquor out of his shop legally. The standard for getting the prescription wasn’t too high apparently, and it was a neighborhood drugstore and so you could (and this I know from personal experience) tell Doc it was for dear old grandma, and there you have it. Known grandma tee-totalers and their grand kids would be out of the loop on this one but every self-respecting grandma had a “script” with Doc. Now Doc knew, had to know, about this con, no question, because he always had a chuckle on him when this came up. And he had his own Doc standards- no one under sixteen (and he was sharp on that) and no girls. So many a night the corner boys around Doc’s were probably more liquored up that Red and his boys ever were. Nice, right?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
And Yet Again, When Doo-Wop Be-Bopped The 1950s Night- “The Coed Records Story”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Crests performing Sixteen Candles.
CD Review
The Coed Records Story, various artists, Ace Records, 2000
Sometimes looking back at the genesis of the 1950s rock explosion that produced some of the classic music that defined my generation, the generation of “68, it was individual performers like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drove the music, other times it was the lyrics, the Tin Pan Alley-etched lyrics, and, as here, sometimes it was the sound, the sound associated with a particular label. One thinks of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records with the early rockabilly and blues explosion. Or Verve, Or Decca, or later the Motown sound. One place where the doo-wop, or doo-wop oriented sub-genre got a full workout was with Coed Records who story is told here in informative booklet form, and more importantly, by something like a greatest hits CD of the best work from that label’s heyday.
Now, like every musical genre, some of this material is strictly of the moment, that doo-wop moment, and some of it was performed by one-hit Johnnies and Janies, but a few, and that is all that one can expect, are classics. Here those classics include 16 Candles and Step By Step (songs you prayed, prayed out loud that they would play, and play at the end of the school dance night), The Crests; You Belong To Me (ditto), The Duprees; and, The Last Dance (ditto again) , The Harptones.
CD Review
The Coed Records Story, various artists, Ace Records, 2000
Sometimes looking back at the genesis of the 1950s rock explosion that produced some of the classic music that defined my generation, the generation of “68, it was individual performers like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drove the music, other times it was the lyrics, the Tin Pan Alley-etched lyrics, and, as here, sometimes it was the sound, the sound associated with a particular label. One thinks of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records with the early rockabilly and blues explosion. Or Verve, Or Decca, or later the Motown sound. One place where the doo-wop, or doo-wop oriented sub-genre got a full workout was with Coed Records who story is told here in informative booklet form, and more importantly, by something like a greatest hits CD of the best work from that label’s heyday.
Now, like every musical genre, some of this material is strictly of the moment, that doo-wop moment, and some of it was performed by one-hit Johnnies and Janies, but a few, and that is all that one can expect, are classics. Here those classics include 16 Candles and Step By Step (songs you prayed, prayed out loud that they would play, and play at the end of the school dance night), The Crests; You Belong To Me (ditto), The Duprees; and, The Last Dance (ditto again) , The Harptones.
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs-"New Ball Game" (Nixon's Escalation Into Cambodia, 1970)
Click on the headline to link to the GI Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Individual action vs., collective action? Most of the time, while I respect individual heroic efforts (or just great individual achievement), collective action turns the tides of history, and for lots of people not just a few. As far as my own military service time, which included heavy, heavy for the military, anti-war work one of my great regrets is that I did not spend more time arguing against those politicized and radicalized soldiers that I ran into by the handfuls on the issue of staying in and fighting the brass. No re-ups, christ no, but just finishing their tours of duty. More importantly, to stay in and raise anti-war hell (oops!), I mean “serve” in Vietnam if the fates played out that way. A few more radicals over there and who knows what could have been done especially in the very late 1960s and very early 1970s when the American Army even by important elements of its own brass was declared “unreliable.” That “unreliable” mass needed us to help figure things out. And to act on that figuring out.
Alas I was not Bolshevik then, although I was working my way, blindly, fitfully, and haphazardly to that understanding of the struggle. Moreover, I had not access to those who were arguing for a Bolshevik position on anti-war GI work, although I did have a few vicarious links to the U.S. Socialist Workers Party that organization was not strongly committed to keeping anti-war soldiers in to fight the brass but rather was more interested in having such GIs stand at the head of their eternal, infernal, paternal “mass marches.” My thinking, and those around me civilian and military, in any case, was dictated more by the “hell no, we won’t go” strategy of the anti-draft movement extended intact to the military theater than any well thought out notion of “turning the guns the other way.”
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Individual action vs., collective action? Most of the time, while I respect individual heroic efforts (or just great individual achievement), collective action turns the tides of history, and for lots of people not just a few. As far as my own military service time, which included heavy, heavy for the military, anti-war work one of my great regrets is that I did not spend more time arguing against those politicized and radicalized soldiers that I ran into by the handfuls on the issue of staying in and fighting the brass. No re-ups, christ no, but just finishing their tours of duty. More importantly, to stay in and raise anti-war hell (oops!), I mean “serve” in Vietnam if the fates played out that way. A few more radicals over there and who knows what could have been done especially in the very late 1960s and very early 1970s when the American Army even by important elements of its own brass was declared “unreliable.” That “unreliable” mass needed us to help figure things out. And to act on that figuring out.
Alas I was not Bolshevik then, although I was working my way, blindly, fitfully, and haphazardly to that understanding of the struggle. Moreover, I had not access to those who were arguing for a Bolshevik position on anti-war GI work, although I did have a few vicarious links to the U.S. Socialist Workers Party that organization was not strongly committed to keeping anti-war soldiers in to fight the brass but rather was more interested in having such GIs stand at the head of their eternal, infernal, paternal “mass marches.” My thinking, and those around me civilian and military, in any case, was dictated more by the “hell no, we won’t go” strategy of the anti-draft movement extended intact to the military theater than any well thought out notion of “turning the guns the other way.”
Killing Rachel Corrie Twice - by Stephen Lendman
Killing Rachel Corrie Twice
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 17 May 2011
Gaza siege
Killing Rachel Corrie Twice - by Stephen Lendman
On May 16, at 6:54AM Gaza time (3:54AM GMT), in international waters, an Israeli naval vessel attacked the Malaysian owned Spirit of Rachel Corrie ship (officially the MV Finch), carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. More details below.
Lawless Monday followed Nakba Day's bloody Sunday, Israeli security forces assaulting unprecedented numbers of nonviolent demonstrators in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and along the Lebanese/Syrian borders.
Egypt was complicit, blocking activists from reaching Rafah. So was Jordan, forcefully preventing Palestinian supporters from approaching the King Hussein Jordan River Crossing Point.
Nonetheless, the day was potentially historic. Activists hope it will inspire greater global support for Palestinian liberation and justice, what only hindsight will show.
Up to two dozen were killed, scores injured, and many arrested, soldiers and police firing high-velocity tear gas canisters at point blank range, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tank shell warning shots, a shocking display of violence given scant coverage in America's media.
Now this, Israelis attacking Rachel Corrie's spirit after an Israeli bulldozer operator killed her in Gaza on March 16, 2003. Trying to stop a Rafah refugee camp home's demolition, witnesses said she climbed atop the giant Caterpillar tractor, spoke to the driver, climbed down, knelt 10 - 20 meters in front in clear view, blocking its path with her body. With activists screaming for it to stop, the soldier-operator crushed her to death deliberately, running her over twice to be sure.
On May 14, 2010, the MV Rachael Corrie sailed from Europe to Gaza. Other vessels, nine in all, tried to break the siege to deliver vitally needed aid, including over 10,000 tons of food, medicines, educational and construction materials.
They never made it. Israeli commandos intercepted them, killing at least nine unarmed activists on board the Mavi Marmara mother ship, injuring dozens, and arresting survivors. After stealing their property and harassing them for several days in confinement to deter future missions, they were released and sent home.
Israel miscalculated. They're coming. Besides US and other initiatives, the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) plans new missions to deliver essentially needed aid.
It's an "umbrella body of 34 European human rights and humanitarian organizations," supporting the right of Palestinians "to live in peace and dignity," to be free from occupation, and to have "their own independent and sovereign state." It also "encourages all peoples of conscience and human rights advocates to intensify their efforts to highlight this life-threatening issue and end the catastrophe."
Its web site provides current information of its mission, including planned events and actions, accessed through the following link:
http://www.savegaza.eu/eng/
Saying they won't be intimidated, they're "putting Israel on notice," adding:
"We are Coming
We are Unarmed
We are Civilian
You have no right to threaten us
We Expect to Reach Gaza without any Interference."
In fact, Israel will confront them belligerently, including a planned FREEDOM FLOTILLA - STAY HUMAN voyage honoring slain journalist/activist Vittorio Arrigoni, a heroic freedom fighter like Rachel. Martyred for a just cause, their spirit inspires others to go on. Indeed, their right over wrong commitment won't ever be deterred, a lesson Israel insists on learning the hard way.
"There is nothing Israel - or our own governments - can do to frighten us into abandoning the 1.6 million 'prisoners' of Gaza," said ECESG spokesperson Rami Abdo. "We stand on the right side of history. If they continue their campaign of tyranny, however, we will only become more determined."
In fact, organizers of last May's "Freedom Flotilla" plan a mid-June "Freedom Flotilla Two. (FF 2)." Activists from 22 European, North American and Asian Free Gaza Movement-connected humanitarian organizations will attempt to break Israel's siege and deliver vitally needed aid.
Around 15 ships and over 1,000 activists are involved, sailing from various ports. Israel said preparations are underway to stop them, perhaps as violently as against last May's mission.
On April 9 and 10, its Steering Committee met in Athens, continuing mission preparations. Aware of Israel's plans, they're:
"calling on all our governments, the international community and the United Nations not to succumb to Israel's intimidation. Governments need to fulfill their 'responsibility to protect' their own citizens."
An ECESG initiative, FF 2 partners include participants from over 50 countries, including European Jews for a Just Peace.
Spirit of Rachel Corrie Attacked
Sponsored by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF), headed by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, a May 16 press release explained what happened, accessed from the following link:
http://www.perdana4peace.net/?p=2654
Mohamed said:
"The Palestinian struggle is nothing more than a struggle for justice, to which they, as much as everyone else, have a right."
He knows and supports it. Israel, Washington, and most other Western nations spurn it, denying Palestinians their international law guaranteed rights, including to life.
On May 16, Global Research editor Michel Chossudovsky featured the incident on Global Research.ca, a link accessing his account below:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24783
He said an Israeli and Egyptian ship intercepted MV Finch in international waters, an act of piracy, adding that new details will be posted when learned.
On May 11, the ship departed Port of Piraeus, Greece, carrying vitally needed plastic sewage pipes to restore the system Israel destroyed in its 2007 - 08 Cast Lead attack. Under siege, restoration can't happen without help.
As a result, up to 95% of Gaza's aquifer water is unsafe to drink because Israeli forces destroyed 20 km of water pipes, 7.5 km of sewage pipes, and 5,700 mobile water tanks. In 2009, Amnesty International (AI) addressed the problem in its report titled, "Troubled Waters - Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water."
Moreover, Military Orders applying only to Palestinians give Israel control over water, including:
-- No. 92 controlling all West Bank and Gaza water;
-- No. 158 stipulating that Palestinians can't construct water installations without (nearly impossible to get) permits; moreover, those built without them will be confiscated; and
-- No. 291 annulling all land and water-related arrangements prior to the occupation.
Destroyed and under siege, Gaza's Coastal Aquifer is polluted by raw sewage from waste collection pond cesspits and seawater, itself contaminated by about 80 million liters of untreated or partially treated daily discharges into the Mediterranean Sea.
As a result, waterborne diseases are common, UNWRA reporting in February 2009 that:
"Water diarrhea as well as acute bloody diarrhea remain the major causes of morbidity among reportable infectious diseases in (Gaza's) refugee population...."
In September 2009, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP):
"The pollution of groundwater is contributing to two main types of water contamination in the Gaza Strip. First and most importantly, it is causing the nitrate levels in the groundwater to increase. In most parts of (Gaza), especially around areas of intensive sewage infiltration, the nitrate level in groundwater is far above (accepted) guidelines....Second, because the water abstracted now is high in salt, the sewage is also very saline. (It's well known that higher drinking water nitrate levels) can induce methemoglobinaemia (a blood disorder) in young children."
Moreover, Gaza's shoreline is polluted, posing serious health hazards because raw sewage is dumped daily into the Mediterranean Sea through 16 discharge sites along the coast.
Gaza TV News.com quoted PGPF member Shamsul Azhar saying:
After Israeli forces fired warning shots, it forced MV Finch "to anchor in Egyptian waters, 30 nautical miles from Gaza."
Malaysian journalist on board, Alang Mendahara, said:
"The Israeli naval vessel fired a warning shot at us upon approaching and asked us to leave the waters, but the ship's captain refused and the Israelis fired again, circling the MV Finch before firing twice more."
Bendahara said ship participants included seven Malaysians, two Irish, two Indians and a Canadian. No one was hurt. Events like this are fluid. A follow-up article will explain more if relevant information permits.
For now, Israeli remains a global menace and no fit state to live in, including for Jews.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 17 May 2011
Gaza siege
Killing Rachel Corrie Twice - by Stephen Lendman
On May 16, at 6:54AM Gaza time (3:54AM GMT), in international waters, an Israeli naval vessel attacked the Malaysian owned Spirit of Rachel Corrie ship (officially the MV Finch), carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. More details below.
Lawless Monday followed Nakba Day's bloody Sunday, Israeli security forces assaulting unprecedented numbers of nonviolent demonstrators in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and along the Lebanese/Syrian borders.
Egypt was complicit, blocking activists from reaching Rafah. So was Jordan, forcefully preventing Palestinian supporters from approaching the King Hussein Jordan River Crossing Point.
Nonetheless, the day was potentially historic. Activists hope it will inspire greater global support for Palestinian liberation and justice, what only hindsight will show.
Up to two dozen were killed, scores injured, and many arrested, soldiers and police firing high-velocity tear gas canisters at point blank range, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tank shell warning shots, a shocking display of violence given scant coverage in America's media.
Now this, Israelis attacking Rachel Corrie's spirit after an Israeli bulldozer operator killed her in Gaza on March 16, 2003. Trying to stop a Rafah refugee camp home's demolition, witnesses said she climbed atop the giant Caterpillar tractor, spoke to the driver, climbed down, knelt 10 - 20 meters in front in clear view, blocking its path with her body. With activists screaming for it to stop, the soldier-operator crushed her to death deliberately, running her over twice to be sure.
On May 14, 2010, the MV Rachael Corrie sailed from Europe to Gaza. Other vessels, nine in all, tried to break the siege to deliver vitally needed aid, including over 10,000 tons of food, medicines, educational and construction materials.
They never made it. Israeli commandos intercepted them, killing at least nine unarmed activists on board the Mavi Marmara mother ship, injuring dozens, and arresting survivors. After stealing their property and harassing them for several days in confinement to deter future missions, they were released and sent home.
Israel miscalculated. They're coming. Besides US and other initiatives, the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) plans new missions to deliver essentially needed aid.
It's an "umbrella body of 34 European human rights and humanitarian organizations," supporting the right of Palestinians "to live in peace and dignity," to be free from occupation, and to have "their own independent and sovereign state." It also "encourages all peoples of conscience and human rights advocates to intensify their efforts to highlight this life-threatening issue and end the catastrophe."
Its web site provides current information of its mission, including planned events and actions, accessed through the following link:
http://www.savegaza.eu/eng/
Saying they won't be intimidated, they're "putting Israel on notice," adding:
"We are Coming
We are Unarmed
We are Civilian
You have no right to threaten us
We Expect to Reach Gaza without any Interference."
In fact, Israel will confront them belligerently, including a planned FREEDOM FLOTILLA - STAY HUMAN voyage honoring slain journalist/activist Vittorio Arrigoni, a heroic freedom fighter like Rachel. Martyred for a just cause, their spirit inspires others to go on. Indeed, their right over wrong commitment won't ever be deterred, a lesson Israel insists on learning the hard way.
"There is nothing Israel - or our own governments - can do to frighten us into abandoning the 1.6 million 'prisoners' of Gaza," said ECESG spokesperson Rami Abdo. "We stand on the right side of history. If they continue their campaign of tyranny, however, we will only become more determined."
In fact, organizers of last May's "Freedom Flotilla" plan a mid-June "Freedom Flotilla Two. (FF 2)." Activists from 22 European, North American and Asian Free Gaza Movement-connected humanitarian organizations will attempt to break Israel's siege and deliver vitally needed aid.
Around 15 ships and over 1,000 activists are involved, sailing from various ports. Israel said preparations are underway to stop them, perhaps as violently as against last May's mission.
On April 9 and 10, its Steering Committee met in Athens, continuing mission preparations. Aware of Israel's plans, they're:
"calling on all our governments, the international community and the United Nations not to succumb to Israel's intimidation. Governments need to fulfill their 'responsibility to protect' their own citizens."
An ECESG initiative, FF 2 partners include participants from over 50 countries, including European Jews for a Just Peace.
Spirit of Rachel Corrie Attacked
Sponsored by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF), headed by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, a May 16 press release explained what happened, accessed from the following link:
http://www.perdana4peace.net/?p=2654
Mohamed said:
"The Palestinian struggle is nothing more than a struggle for justice, to which they, as much as everyone else, have a right."
He knows and supports it. Israel, Washington, and most other Western nations spurn it, denying Palestinians their international law guaranteed rights, including to life.
On May 16, Global Research editor Michel Chossudovsky featured the incident on Global Research.ca, a link accessing his account below:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24783
He said an Israeli and Egyptian ship intercepted MV Finch in international waters, an act of piracy, adding that new details will be posted when learned.
On May 11, the ship departed Port of Piraeus, Greece, carrying vitally needed plastic sewage pipes to restore the system Israel destroyed in its 2007 - 08 Cast Lead attack. Under siege, restoration can't happen without help.
As a result, up to 95% of Gaza's aquifer water is unsafe to drink because Israeli forces destroyed 20 km of water pipes, 7.5 km of sewage pipes, and 5,700 mobile water tanks. In 2009, Amnesty International (AI) addressed the problem in its report titled, "Troubled Waters - Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water."
Moreover, Military Orders applying only to Palestinians give Israel control over water, including:
-- No. 92 controlling all West Bank and Gaza water;
-- No. 158 stipulating that Palestinians can't construct water installations without (nearly impossible to get) permits; moreover, those built without them will be confiscated; and
-- No. 291 annulling all land and water-related arrangements prior to the occupation.
Destroyed and under siege, Gaza's Coastal Aquifer is polluted by raw sewage from waste collection pond cesspits and seawater, itself contaminated by about 80 million liters of untreated or partially treated daily discharges into the Mediterranean Sea.
As a result, waterborne diseases are common, UNWRA reporting in February 2009 that:
"Water diarrhea as well as acute bloody diarrhea remain the major causes of morbidity among reportable infectious diseases in (Gaza's) refugee population...."
In September 2009, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP):
"The pollution of groundwater is contributing to two main types of water contamination in the Gaza Strip. First and most importantly, it is causing the nitrate levels in the groundwater to increase. In most parts of (Gaza), especially around areas of intensive sewage infiltration, the nitrate level in groundwater is far above (accepted) guidelines....Second, because the water abstracted now is high in salt, the sewage is also very saline. (It's well known that higher drinking water nitrate levels) can induce methemoglobinaemia (a blood disorder) in young children."
Moreover, Gaza's shoreline is polluted, posing serious health hazards because raw sewage is dumped daily into the Mediterranean Sea through 16 discharge sites along the coast.
Gaza TV News.com quoted PGPF member Shamsul Azhar saying:
After Israeli forces fired warning shots, it forced MV Finch "to anchor in Egyptian waters, 30 nautical miles from Gaza."
Malaysian journalist on board, Alang Mendahara, said:
"The Israeli naval vessel fired a warning shot at us upon approaching and asked us to leave the waters, but the ship's captain refused and the Israelis fired again, circling the MV Finch before firing twice more."
Bendahara said ship participants included seven Malaysians, two Irish, two Indians and a Canadian. No one was hurt. Events like this are fluid. A follow-up article will explain more if relevant information permits.
For now, Israeli remains a global menace and no fit state to live in, including for Jews.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs-"For An Anti-War Worker-Student General Strike (1970)
Click on the headline to link to the GI Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
No question that by 1969 everyone involved in the anti-war movement in America, including this writer, should have known that the twin strategies of getting a “peace” president elected (variously Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, hell, even Lyndon Johnson compared to one Richard Milhous Nixon) and the ever-growing but ever futile strategy of same old, same old “mass marches” were played out, were bankrupt whatever value they had held in previous years. This writer, at least, got the message loud and clear that 1969 was a watershed year for a new strategy. Although I had always been (and remain now pretty much true to that concept) a “to the streets”-oriented politico at some point what you are doing in those streets and who you are bringing into them becomes problematic.
Endless student-(and other assorted, mainly, young people although not yet many working class kids) driven marches were not working. Adding in dissident Democrats and others of “good will” was not going to shift the balance. That SWP-CP-left liberal- driven "popular front" strategy was strictly counter-posed to what was needed by 1969. And that is where this issue of the GI Voice is valuable. The notion of posing a workers-student anti-war general strike that would shift the axis from reliance on those so-called “good will” people to the people who could shut things down, the workers, was strictly speaking the beginning of wisdom. A late recognition of the power of the working class as decisive in the struggle, to be sure, late even by this son of the working class, but also as a bridge to get to their sons and brothers, and it was mainly their sons and brothers (and my brothers and me) who were fighting the war in Vietnam by 1969.
Students, workers, and then, at some point, worker-soldiers added to the mix. Ya, that’s the ticket. It pains me even today to realize that if we had acted on that class axis maybe we could have “won.” And aided the heroic fighters of the DNV and South Vietnamese National Liberation Front is a serious way, as well. If you want to castigate the U.S. Socialist Workers Party for their role in the 1960s defeat of our side by the American imperial state the struggle against the Vietnam War this is the heart of the matter. The military defeat that the Vietnamese ultimately inflicted on the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies owed relatively little to our efforts whatever public relations kudos the Vietnamese may have issued post hoc. But the cost was high, too high, and we could have helped cut it. The CP Stalinists I will not even mention. They were just doing what they had done since the late 1930s but the SWP, as I found out later, “knew” better. You should burn with rage over that knowledge even today.
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
No question that by 1969 everyone involved in the anti-war movement in America, including this writer, should have known that the twin strategies of getting a “peace” president elected (variously Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, hell, even Lyndon Johnson compared to one Richard Milhous Nixon) and the ever-growing but ever futile strategy of same old, same old “mass marches” were played out, were bankrupt whatever value they had held in previous years. This writer, at least, got the message loud and clear that 1969 was a watershed year for a new strategy. Although I had always been (and remain now pretty much true to that concept) a “to the streets”-oriented politico at some point what you are doing in those streets and who you are bringing into them becomes problematic.
Endless student-(and other assorted, mainly, young people although not yet many working class kids) driven marches were not working. Adding in dissident Democrats and others of “good will” was not going to shift the balance. That SWP-CP-left liberal- driven "popular front" strategy was strictly counter-posed to what was needed by 1969. And that is where this issue of the GI Voice is valuable. The notion of posing a workers-student anti-war general strike that would shift the axis from reliance on those so-called “good will” people to the people who could shut things down, the workers, was strictly speaking the beginning of wisdom. A late recognition of the power of the working class as decisive in the struggle, to be sure, late even by this son of the working class, but also as a bridge to get to their sons and brothers, and it was mainly their sons and brothers (and my brothers and me) who were fighting the war in Vietnam by 1969.
Students, workers, and then, at some point, worker-soldiers added to the mix. Ya, that’s the ticket. It pains me even today to realize that if we had acted on that class axis maybe we could have “won.” And aided the heroic fighters of the DNV and South Vietnamese National Liberation Front is a serious way, as well. If you want to castigate the U.S. Socialist Workers Party for their role in the 1960s defeat of our side by the American imperial state the struggle against the Vietnam War this is the heart of the matter. The military defeat that the Vietnamese ultimately inflicted on the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies owed relatively little to our efforts whatever public relations kudos the Vietnamese may have issued post hoc. But the cost was high, too high, and we could have helped cut it. The CP Stalinists I will not even mention. They were just doing what they had done since the late 1930s but the SWP, as I found out later, “knew” better. You should burn with rage over that knowledge even today.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Once Again, When Bop-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night- “The Best Of Doo Wop Uptempo”- A CD Review
Once Again, When Bop-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night- “The Best Of Doo Wop Uptempo”- A CD Review
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
CD Review
The Best Of Doo Wop Uptempo, various artists, Rhino Records, 1989
Recently I got caught up, and caught up bad, in the girl group doo wop (or that is what I prefer to call it anyway) night and mentioned that I had a hard time, a really hard time, relating to girl groups. No, not that they could not doo wop with the guys, Christ, half, more than half the time, they were better than the guys. Think of those great Shirelles numbers that came exploding off the charts. No, my problem, my mostly girl-less teenage alienation, teen angst, teen guy couldn’t figure out girls problem, was the lyrics of most of the songs. Songs filled with lines about longing for long gone Eddie, songs about parents forcing young love out the door when it involved the leader of the pack, or wistfulness about whether true love would survive the night, or tomorrow night. Or even such lowly concerns as the fact that one’s boyfriend was back, or that one had reclaimed an old boy friend and made some other teenage girl miserable, miserable waiting at the midnight phone, still waiting maybe. You know, girlish concerns, girlish giggle concerns not fit for serious teenage boy angst ears.
Not so though with the doo wop guys, slow, or as here up-tempo. Here the reverse is true, well, somewhat true. Although many times girl-less I could relate to such lyrical problems as two-timing mamas, fickle girls trying to decide between Johnny and Jimmy, girls, conspiring, yes, conspiring, and I will provide notarized proof upon request, to break up Susie and Bobby so Laura can have a shot at the lad. Such were the treacheries of the teen life, the 1950s teen life American-style (although I suspect, without notarized proof here, that this stuff rings a bell for today’s teen whatever nation, via Facebook convenience, they hail from.
That said all that is left is to figure out the stick-outs, and there are many here, some verily classics of the genre of the up-tempo doo wop night: Get A Job (first, ma says it at about twelve or thirteen, then girlfriend says it at about sixteen or seventeen so you have some dough to spend on her, then wife says it at about twenty-five or six, okay we get it, yes, get a job): The Silhouettes; Gee (great harmonics, although the lyrics are, ah, a little light), The Crows; Blue Moon (an old time Tin Pan Alley tune that cries out for this treatment, and a big old full moon to croon under), The Marcels; Little Star (wistful, guy version), The Elegants; Step By Step (sensible approach to a relationship, if you can do it, most teens just forget it), The Crests; and, Come Go With Me (yes, please do), The Del-Vikings.
Note: I have to make a special pitch for Why Do Fools Fall In Love? by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the max daddy of the bop-doo wop night and the voice that basically made it all possible for all those groups, all those big city corner boy (and girl) groups, to partake of the rock scene and some fame. When my best elementary school friend, Billie, William James Bradley, king of the neighborhood rock night and a pretty good budding rock singer, first heard this song I thought he was going to go crazy. He had us doo-wopping that thing all one summer when we were hanging out in back of the school. And guess what? That song (and a couple of others) had the girls, a couple at first, then a few more, then a bevy (nice word, right?) all coming around and getting all moony and swoony. And kept this reviewer from being girl-less, for a while anyway. Thanks, Frankie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
CD Review
The Best Of Doo Wop Uptempo, various artists, Rhino Records, 1989
Recently I got caught up, and caught up bad, in the girl group doo wop (or that is what I prefer to call it anyway) night and mentioned that I had a hard time, a really hard time, relating to girl groups. No, not that they could not doo wop with the guys, Christ, half, more than half the time, they were better than the guys. Think of those great Shirelles numbers that came exploding off the charts. No, my problem, my mostly girl-less teenage alienation, teen angst, teen guy couldn’t figure out girls problem, was the lyrics of most of the songs. Songs filled with lines about longing for long gone Eddie, songs about parents forcing young love out the door when it involved the leader of the pack, or wistfulness about whether true love would survive the night, or tomorrow night. Or even such lowly concerns as the fact that one’s boyfriend was back, or that one had reclaimed an old boy friend and made some other teenage girl miserable, miserable waiting at the midnight phone, still waiting maybe. You know, girlish concerns, girlish giggle concerns not fit for serious teenage boy angst ears.
Not so though with the doo wop guys, slow, or as here up-tempo. Here the reverse is true, well, somewhat true. Although many times girl-less I could relate to such lyrical problems as two-timing mamas, fickle girls trying to decide between Johnny and Jimmy, girls, conspiring, yes, conspiring, and I will provide notarized proof upon request, to break up Susie and Bobby so Laura can have a shot at the lad. Such were the treacheries of the teen life, the 1950s teen life American-style (although I suspect, without notarized proof here, that this stuff rings a bell for today’s teen whatever nation, via Facebook convenience, they hail from.
That said all that is left is to figure out the stick-outs, and there are many here, some verily classics of the genre of the up-tempo doo wop night: Get A Job (first, ma says it at about twelve or thirteen, then girlfriend says it at about sixteen or seventeen so you have some dough to spend on her, then wife says it at about twenty-five or six, okay we get it, yes, get a job): The Silhouettes; Gee (great harmonics, although the lyrics are, ah, a little light), The Crows; Blue Moon (an old time Tin Pan Alley tune that cries out for this treatment, and a big old full moon to croon under), The Marcels; Little Star (wistful, guy version), The Elegants; Step By Step (sensible approach to a relationship, if you can do it, most teens just forget it), The Crests; and, Come Go With Me (yes, please do), The Del-Vikings.
Note: I have to make a special pitch for Why Do Fools Fall In Love? by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the max daddy of the bop-doo wop night and the voice that basically made it all possible for all those groups, all those big city corner boy (and girl) groups, to partake of the rock scene and some fame. When my best elementary school friend, Billie, William James Bradley, king of the neighborhood rock night and a pretty good budding rock singer, first heard this song I thought he was going to go crazy. He had us doo-wopping that thing all one summer when we were hanging out in back of the school. And guess what? That song (and a couple of others) had the girls, a couple at first, then a few more, then a bevy (nice word, right?) all coming around and getting all moony and swoony. And kept this reviewer from being girl-less, for a while anyway. Thanks, Frankie.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs-"GIs And Black Power"
Click on the headline to link to the GI Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
This issue addresses head-on the question of racism in the military, a major stumbling block to class unity during the Vietnam War era, and a question still at issue today in the military even though a black man, Barack Obama, as President of the United States leads the American imperial state in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other more episodic military adventures. The other issue, around the May Day events in France, would actually have to be re-written today in light of our current better understand that, soldier or civilian, we as revolutionaries do not want to take political responsibility for running the bourgeois state and therefore will not run for the executive offices of that state (although we would run for certain legislature positions as, in Lenin’s phrase, “tribunes of the people” and are not precluded from supporting working-class candidates from other leftist organizations, depending on their programs).
Note: Those of us who have been involved in the communist movement for years have gotten used to reading political literature that contains a fairly high level of polemical and analytical material that is somewhat abstract, or at least would be abstract to novice radical (or wannabe radical) politicos or military personnel. A GI-oriented paper, without ducking the hard issues of imperialism, class struggle, and the various oppressions present under the current capitalist system and without “dumbing down” (the average military person has had enough, more than enough, of that from the cradle to boot camp) should be written in language that most GIs can understand, and maybe get a chuckle out of. This issue did a fairly good job of that, including the chuckle part (the model letters to the editor).
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
This issue addresses head-on the question of racism in the military, a major stumbling block to class unity during the Vietnam War era, and a question still at issue today in the military even though a black man, Barack Obama, as President of the United States leads the American imperial state in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other more episodic military adventures. The other issue, around the May Day events in France, would actually have to be re-written today in light of our current better understand that, soldier or civilian, we as revolutionaries do not want to take political responsibility for running the bourgeois state and therefore will not run for the executive offices of that state (although we would run for certain legislature positions as, in Lenin’s phrase, “tribunes of the people” and are not precluded from supporting working-class candidates from other leftist organizations, depending on their programs).
Note: Those of us who have been involved in the communist movement for years have gotten used to reading political literature that contains a fairly high level of polemical and analytical material that is somewhat abstract, or at least would be abstract to novice radical (or wannabe radical) politicos or military personnel. A GI-oriented paper, without ducking the hard issues of imperialism, class struggle, and the various oppressions present under the current capitalist system and without “dumbing down” (the average military person has had enough, more than enough, of that from the cradle to boot camp) should be written in language that most GIs can understand, and maybe get a chuckle out of. This issue did a fairly good job of that, including the chuckle part (the model letters to the editor).
Saturday, May 14, 2011
***When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion Of The 1960s- Another Look – "The Battle Of The Sexes-Round 235"-For Cindy P., Class Of 1968
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Patsy Cline performing She's Got You.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The 1960s: Jukebox Memories, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1991
Several years ago, in response to a question on questionnaire sent by members of my 1964 high school class reunion committee, a question posed simply as this-did one prefer the Beatles or the Rolling Stones during one's high school days? I answered in favor of the latter. Needless to say in recounting that experience in this space I provided more than that simply either/or answer. I went on and on about how the Stones' blues-driven early rock numbers “spoke” much more to my boy teenager alienation and angst, girl angst if you must know, than the more “happy music” the Beatles originally produced. I also noted that, as a general proposition, the earlier male rockers of the period from Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry “spoke” more to me, for those same reasons, than the girl (the term of the times) vocalists with their generally wistful, whimsical lyrics about the age old boy-meets-girl relationships, and their pratfalls.
That simple, or I thought simple, observation from ancient youth brought a storm of protest from an unexpected (well, now that I think about it, not so unexpected) source, my long time dear companion, my "significant other". She lambasted my male-based choices unceremoniously and challenged me to really listen to the great female vocalists from those days. And I did, although somewhat haphazardly. And thereafter I, in this space, posed the Beatles/Stones question for the distaff side. Brenda Lee or Patsy Cline? At the time I did that somewhat artificially because I was actually pretty unfamiliar with their works. And, as it turned out, ditto for most of the young female vocalists of that period. So more recently I have been on something of a learning, or rather re-learning binge (re-learning because of, course, fixated on my transistor radio up in my room to keep out parental and sibling noise I had heard most of the girl vocalists back then, their songs just didn’t register). To answer the question I posed though, no question Patsy Cline was the “max mama” of the late 1950s song night before her untimely death.
All of the above is just a roundabout, very roundabout way, of getting to the core of this review. One of the great features of this Time-Life Rock ‘N’ Roll Era series is the cover art work. And that remains true on this 1960s: Jukebox Memories CD compilation. The cover portrays a very Brenda Lee/Wanda Jackson/Leslie Gore wannabe young female vocalist surrounded by a standard rock trio backing up her vocals. And that sent me flashing back to those tunes, those girl tunes. And I will just repeat here what I mentioned as a result of listening to about ten girl doo wop group or just straight girl solo vocalist CDs. As you will not doubt see I have “got religion” :
“As I also noted in that earlier review [referring to a review of girl doo wop compilations] one problem with the girl groups, and now with these generic girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.” After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy's heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken lad off in the Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe, three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so, "beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry.
So you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls’ minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the only virtue of age. Ya, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night voice out and sing along to the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great.
And from girls even.”
As for the stick outs in this compilation: Dum Dum by Brenda Lee; Runaround by The Fleetwoods; I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight by Barry & Tamerlanes; Dear One by Larry Finnegan; You Don't Have To Be A Baby To Cry by Caravelles; My One And Only Jimmy Boy by The Girlfriends; That's The Way Boys Are by Lesley Gore; Happy Birthday by Kathy Young & Innocents; and, My Own True Love by The Duprees.
*****
P.S. Oh, you thought I was finished. Well with the review, yes, but there is still that little nagging question of that companion, that “significant other,” lambasting me about my male youth choices. Well sometimes one cannot win. The gist of her indignant argument, as you now know, centered on my alleged testosterone-driven choices of male Rock 'n' Roll bands to the exclusion of kinder, gentler music-in short, choices that women might prefer. As mentioned above I took her point to heart. But explain this. In the summer of 2005 I attended a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park. Now who do you think was standing beside me shaking, as the kids say, her "booty" for all she was worth? So much for that testosterone theory. Moreover, who imprisoned me in Fenway Park practically at gunpoint, until I bought her a sassy little Stones T-shirt as a memento of the occasion? Enough said. I rest my case.
Here Are Some Lyrics For Brenda and Patsy So You Can Make An Informed Decision On These Burning Questions Of The Day.
Brenda Lee - I'm Sorry lyrics
Lyrics to I'm Sorry :
I'm sorry, so sorry
That I was such a fool
I didn't know
Love could be so cruel
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Spoken:
(I'm sorry) I'm sorry
(So sorry) So sorry
Please accept my apology
But love is blind
And I was to blind to see
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
I'm sorry, so sorry
Please accept my apology
But love was blind
And I was too blind to see
(Sorry)
She's Got You Lyrics
Artist: Patsy Cline
I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed with love just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you
I've got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's-got-you
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The 1960s: Jukebox Memories, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1991
Several years ago, in response to a question on questionnaire sent by members of my 1964 high school class reunion committee, a question posed simply as this-did one prefer the Beatles or the Rolling Stones during one's high school days? I answered in favor of the latter. Needless to say in recounting that experience in this space I provided more than that simply either/or answer. I went on and on about how the Stones' blues-driven early rock numbers “spoke” much more to my boy teenager alienation and angst, girl angst if you must know, than the more “happy music” the Beatles originally produced. I also noted that, as a general proposition, the earlier male rockers of the period from Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry “spoke” more to me, for those same reasons, than the girl (the term of the times) vocalists with their generally wistful, whimsical lyrics about the age old boy-meets-girl relationships, and their pratfalls.
That simple, or I thought simple, observation from ancient youth brought a storm of protest from an unexpected (well, now that I think about it, not so unexpected) source, my long time dear companion, my "significant other". She lambasted my male-based choices unceremoniously and challenged me to really listen to the great female vocalists from those days. And I did, although somewhat haphazardly. And thereafter I, in this space, posed the Beatles/Stones question for the distaff side. Brenda Lee or Patsy Cline? At the time I did that somewhat artificially because I was actually pretty unfamiliar with their works. And, as it turned out, ditto for most of the young female vocalists of that period. So more recently I have been on something of a learning, or rather re-learning binge (re-learning because of, course, fixated on my transistor radio up in my room to keep out parental and sibling noise I had heard most of the girl vocalists back then, their songs just didn’t register). To answer the question I posed though, no question Patsy Cline was the “max mama” of the late 1950s song night before her untimely death.
All of the above is just a roundabout, very roundabout way, of getting to the core of this review. One of the great features of this Time-Life Rock ‘N’ Roll Era series is the cover art work. And that remains true on this 1960s: Jukebox Memories CD compilation. The cover portrays a very Brenda Lee/Wanda Jackson/Leslie Gore wannabe young female vocalist surrounded by a standard rock trio backing up her vocals. And that sent me flashing back to those tunes, those girl tunes. And I will just repeat here what I mentioned as a result of listening to about ten girl doo wop group or just straight girl solo vocalist CDs. As you will not doubt see I have “got religion” :
“As I also noted in that earlier review [referring to a review of girl doo wop compilations] one problem with the girl groups, and now with these generic girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.” After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy's heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken lad off in the Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe, three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so, "beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry.
So you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls’ minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the only virtue of age. Ya, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night voice out and sing along to the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great.
And from girls even.”
As for the stick outs in this compilation: Dum Dum by Brenda Lee; Runaround by The Fleetwoods; I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight by Barry & Tamerlanes; Dear One by Larry Finnegan; You Don't Have To Be A Baby To Cry by Caravelles; My One And Only Jimmy Boy by The Girlfriends; That's The Way Boys Are by Lesley Gore; Happy Birthday by Kathy Young & Innocents; and, My Own True Love by The Duprees.
*****
P.S. Oh, you thought I was finished. Well with the review, yes, but there is still that little nagging question of that companion, that “significant other,” lambasting me about my male youth choices. Well sometimes one cannot win. The gist of her indignant argument, as you now know, centered on my alleged testosterone-driven choices of male Rock 'n' Roll bands to the exclusion of kinder, gentler music-in short, choices that women might prefer. As mentioned above I took her point to heart. But explain this. In the summer of 2005 I attended a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park. Now who do you think was standing beside me shaking, as the kids say, her "booty" for all she was worth? So much for that testosterone theory. Moreover, who imprisoned me in Fenway Park practically at gunpoint, until I bought her a sassy little Stones T-shirt as a memento of the occasion? Enough said. I rest my case.
Here Are Some Lyrics For Brenda and Patsy So You Can Make An Informed Decision On These Burning Questions Of The Day.
Brenda Lee - I'm Sorry lyrics
Lyrics to I'm Sorry :
I'm sorry, so sorry
That I was such a fool
I didn't know
Love could be so cruel
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Spoken:
(I'm sorry) I'm sorry
(So sorry) So sorry
Please accept my apology
But love is blind
And I was to blind to see
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
I'm sorry, so sorry
Please accept my apology
But love was blind
And I was too blind to see
(Sorry)
She's Got You Lyrics
Artist: Patsy Cline
I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed with love just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you
I've got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's-got-you
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs-"For A GI-Workers Alliance"
Click on the headline to link to the GI Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me. *******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*********
Markin comment on this issue:
Doing anti-war GI work is tough work, tough work as epitomized by this main points outlined in this issue concerning certain pitfalls involved in the work, and by focusing in on the slogan around the question of a GI-Workers Alliance then, and today by creating propaganda, and in certain circumstances agitating for, soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. Such formations require the seriousness, steadiness and stability of trade union work combined with the far-flung apparatus of a political legal defense committee.
As the main focus of the polemic addresses in detail this no easy task. First, to avoid the obvious political shenanigans and one-trick pony grand stand plays by groups like Youth Against War and Fascism more appropriate to a college campus (if there even, especially when the deal goes down and the heat is on like it was on many American campuses in the 1960s. Scenes, I am sure, that are hard for today’s youth to imagine. The closest situations today, for example, would be the anti-globalization demonstrations in place like Seattle, Pittsburgh and Italy over the past several years). And secondly, to avoid getting totally mired, consciously mired in legal defense work that takes on the character of social work "hand-holding" as performed in those days by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. In that regard the very clear point made that “permitting” anti-war GIs to lead the various “peace crawls” and other mass formations while symbolically important toward the later part of the 1960s was no substitute for more dramatic, well-thought out direct actions linked to the organized labor movement.
In thinking about the old anti-war GI organizing days that has been prompted by online discovery of this material I began to realize that in important ways organizing GIs is very similar to organizing oppositional caucuses in trade unions. And that point makes sense when you face the hard reality that the vast bulk of the “grunts” then, and now, perhaps more so now, are working class and minority kids. Thus, like with the young workers you are trying to attract to an oppositional caucus in the trade unions, you have to “win your spurs” with the grunts by avoiding adventurism of the kind noted above, by knowing chapter and verse military rights (and constitutional rights, no always the same thing), by keeping on the right side of legal orders, and by being ready to link to outline organizations when the heat, the inevitable military brass heat, comes down. In short, win the same kind of authority as in the trade unions. Obviously there are dramatic differences, the difference between being merely fired and winding up behind some barb-wired stockade for taking bold direct actions being the most obvious, between a civilian trade union and a soldiers and sailors union but our long-term approach would, in effect, be similar. And that, my friends, is a point worth noting, seriously noting, for the future.
Note: In communist politics, and not just in communist politics, there has always been a distinction drawn, depending on circumstances, between general propaganda tasks and out-front, in-your-face agitation. I always like to draw the contrast between our current, mainly propagandistic, tasks regarding organizing anti-war soldiers and our episodic ability to agitate for such programmatic points with the following example drawn from fairly recent experience. We have been putting forth periodic GI anti-war organizing propaganda since before the start of the Iraq War in 2003. And, as this series of articles indicates, that is always appropriate. However in late 2005 and early 2006 there was an eruption of discontent by active-duty solders in America and Iraq, especially over repeated tours of duty in what seemed like an endless war (and if recent events are any indication may still be closer to that characterization than the Obama administration would have us believe) and heavy causality counts for a patently aimless war. We, on a very small level, had some success linking up with some anti-war GIs and agitating around our points, especially the union issue. However, like many things in politics, timing is crucial, and that anti-war military wave receded by early 2007 and since that time we have held to a mainly propaganda campaign around those issues.
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*********
Markin comment on this issue:
Doing anti-war GI work is tough work, tough work as epitomized by this main points outlined in this issue concerning certain pitfalls involved in the work, and by focusing in on the slogan around the question of a GI-Workers Alliance then, and today by creating propaganda, and in certain circumstances agitating for, soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. Such formations require the seriousness, steadiness and stability of trade union work combined with the far-flung apparatus of a political legal defense committee.
As the main focus of the polemic addresses in detail this no easy task. First, to avoid the obvious political shenanigans and one-trick pony grand stand plays by groups like Youth Against War and Fascism more appropriate to a college campus (if there even, especially when the deal goes down and the heat is on like it was on many American campuses in the 1960s. Scenes, I am sure, that are hard for today’s youth to imagine. The closest situations today, for example, would be the anti-globalization demonstrations in place like Seattle, Pittsburgh and Italy over the past several years). And secondly, to avoid getting totally mired, consciously mired in legal defense work that takes on the character of social work "hand-holding" as performed in those days by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. In that regard the very clear point made that “permitting” anti-war GIs to lead the various “peace crawls” and other mass formations while symbolically important toward the later part of the 1960s was no substitute for more dramatic, well-thought out direct actions linked to the organized labor movement.
In thinking about the old anti-war GI organizing days that has been prompted by online discovery of this material I began to realize that in important ways organizing GIs is very similar to organizing oppositional caucuses in trade unions. And that point makes sense when you face the hard reality that the vast bulk of the “grunts” then, and now, perhaps more so now, are working class and minority kids. Thus, like with the young workers you are trying to attract to an oppositional caucus in the trade unions, you have to “win your spurs” with the grunts by avoiding adventurism of the kind noted above, by knowing chapter and verse military rights (and constitutional rights, no always the same thing), by keeping on the right side of legal orders, and by being ready to link to outline organizations when the heat, the inevitable military brass heat, comes down. In short, win the same kind of authority as in the trade unions. Obviously there are dramatic differences, the difference between being merely fired and winding up behind some barb-wired stockade for taking bold direct actions being the most obvious, between a civilian trade union and a soldiers and sailors union but our long-term approach would, in effect, be similar. And that, my friends, is a point worth noting, seriously noting, for the future.
Note: In communist politics, and not just in communist politics, there has always been a distinction drawn, depending on circumstances, between general propaganda tasks and out-front, in-your-face agitation. I always like to draw the contrast between our current, mainly propagandistic, tasks regarding organizing anti-war soldiers and our episodic ability to agitate for such programmatic points with the following example drawn from fairly recent experience. We have been putting forth periodic GI anti-war organizing propaganda since before the start of the Iraq War in 2003. And, as this series of articles indicates, that is always appropriate. However in late 2005 and early 2006 there was an eruption of discontent by active-duty solders in America and Iraq, especially over repeated tours of duty in what seemed like an endless war (and if recent events are any indication may still be closer to that characterization than the Obama administration would have us believe) and heavy causality counts for a patently aimless war. We, on a very small level, had some success linking up with some anti-war GIs and agitating around our points, especially the union issue. However, like many things in politics, timing is crucial, and that anti-war military wave receded by early 2007 and since that time we have held to a mainly propaganda campaign around those issues.
Friday, May 13, 2011
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Website-Rally at Leavenworth June 4, 2011 for Bradley Manning! All Out To Defend Private Bradley Manning!
Click on the headline to link to an American Left History blog entry, dated Sunday, March 20, 2011, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner.
Rally at Leavenworth for Bradley Manning!
Rally to protest the indefinite detention and unconstitutional torture of Bradley Manning.
Saturday, June 4
11:30am – 2:30pm
Leavenworth, Kansas
Contact: jim at indomitus dot net
More info forthcoming!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204793382876169
Rally at Leavenworth for Bradley Manning!
Rally to protest the indefinite detention and unconstitutional torture of Bradley Manning.
Saturday, June 4
11:30am – 2:30pm
Leavenworth, Kansas
Contact: jim at indomitus dot net
More info forthcoming!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204793382876169
The Latest From The Private Bradley Defense Committee- Suit Filed In Federal Court
Click on the headline to link to a Boston. com website entry concerning the filing of a case in federal district court in Boston on behalf of Private Bradley Manning.
Markin comment:As always we use every method to get our people free, including the courts, but the slogan remains the same- Free Bradley Manning Now!
Markin comment:As always we use every method to get our people free, including the courts, but the slogan remains the same- Free Bradley Manning Now!
Troy Anthony Davis: Unjustly Sentenced to Death - by Stephen Lendman
Monday, May 09, 2011
Troy Anthony Davis: Unjustly Sentenced to Death
Troy Anthony Davis: Unjustly Sentenced to Death - by Stephen Lendman
Capital punishment is barbaric, unjust, and unacceptable for any reason in modern societies. No wonder Amnesty International (AI) calls it "the ultimate denial of human rights. It is premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice."
In fact, there's nothing just about state-sponsored murder, especially against falsely accused victims. In America, they're mostly poor Black or Latinos denied due process and judicial fairness by a corrupted prosecutorial system rigged to convict even known innocent defendants like Troy Anthony Davis.
Today, America is the only Western country still enforcing capital punishment. Moreover, since 1990, 30 nations abolished it, and among 74 still executing, four are the main abusers - America, China, Vietnam and Iran. It's long past time for total abolition of what's no longer tolerable, affecting about 3,400 US death row prisoners, including Davis.
Detailed information about him can be found at:
http://troyanthonydavis.org/
Timeline of His Case
At about 1:00AM on August 19, 1989, off-duty Savanah, GA policeman Mark MacPhail had a second job working security for Burger King when a parking lot disturbance began. Investigating, he was shot and killed, leaving a wife, 18-month old daughter and seven-week old son.
On August 23, 1989, Davis was arrested.
On November 15, 1989, a grand jury indicted him for murder despite no clear evidence linking him to the crime, including no murder weapon.
On August 28, 1991, he was convicted.
On August 30, 1991, he was sentenced to death.
On February 25, 1993, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously affirmed his conviction and sentence.
On December 14, 2001, his attorney filed a habeas corpus writ in federal court.
On May 13, 2004, a Savannah federal court denied habeas relief, saying 'there is no danger of a miscarriage of justice in declining to hear the claim."
On September 26, 2006, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed the lower court's decision.
On June 26, 2007, Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu petitioned the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Davis' sentence, citing "mounting evidence that (he) may in fact be innocent."
On June 29, 2007, a Savannah judge set a new execution date from noon July 17 - noon July 24.
On or about July 15, 2007, Pope Benedict, through his envoy, noted evidentiary problems in asking Governor Sonny Perdue to commute his sentence.
On July 16, 2007, the state parole board issued a stay.
On March 17, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court, voting 4 to 3, upheld his death sentence in rejecting his request for a hearing.
On September 12, 2008, the state parole board denied clemency.
On September 19, 2008, former President Carter told Georgia's parole board that refusing clemency "risks taking the life of an innocent man and would be a grave miscarriage of justice."
On September 23, 2008, within two hours of his scheduled execution, the US Supreme Court granted him a stay.
On October 14, 2008, the High Court declined to hear his case.
On August 17, 2009, it ordered a federal judge to hear evidence in his case.
On June 23, 2010, a hearing in his behalf was held in Savannah federal court.
On August 24, 2010, the court rejected clear exculpating evidence, Judge William T. Moore saying it would be unconstitutional to execute an innocent man, but Davis "is not innocent."
On January 21, 2011, a US Supreme Court appeal was filed.
On March 28, 2011, the Court, without explanation, denied the appeal, clearing the way for his execution, despite Justices Breyer and Ginsburg citing "a substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death."
In so doing, the Court abstained on three fundamental issues:
-- whether the Constitution prohibits executing an innocent man;
-- what standard of proof must federal judges apply in deciding guilt or innocence. Federal judge Moore followed very strict guidelines others would consider unfair; and
-- America's bedrock legal principle that guilt must be proved "beyond all reasonable doubt," even though no constitutional provision affirms it.
Amnesty International (AI) on Davis
In a "Finality over Fairness" commentary, AI said he exhausted all appeals and now faces execution, "even though the case against him has fallen apart."
On May 3, AI urged one million "Tweets for Troy," saying:
Georgia hasn't "yet sought a death warrant for (him), but that is only because they have not yet figured out exactly how to take his life." Soon, however, he "may be first in line to face execution under a presumably new protocol," perhaps using pentobarbital to kill him.
As a result, AI wants to "generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis. Please spread the word and direct people to the petition."
Access it through the following link:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=12970
Earlier on April 18, AI said setting his execution date is "inevitable," but "execution is NOT," adding that:
He's "run out of appeals, (but) not....out of hope, and neither have we."
In fact, no physical evidence links him to the crime. Moreover, his conviction relies solely on witness testimonies, "most of whom have recanted, and many of whom allege police pressured them into testifying falsely at the trial."
Nonetheless, courts convicted him anyway, rejected exculpating evidence, proving a corrupted system, including the US Supreme Court, rigged to murder innocent victims like Davis and many others like him.
According to Laura Moye, AI's International USA Death Penalty Abolition Campaign director:
"Troy Davis' case is emblematic of a broken and unjust death penalty system. His story speaks volumes about a criminal justice system that is riddled with bias and error and is fixated on procedure more than....fairness."
"The case against Davis has unraveled, yet he still faces execution." He's up against "a system that would rather hold onto a decision a jury made twenty years ago than admit that some fundamentally wrong things have happened."
Moreover, Davis is Black. Officer McPhail was white and a cop. Georgia's law enforcement establishment wants revenge. As a result, anyone poor and Black or Latino is vulnerable anywhere in America. It's the cross they bear for their race, ethnicity, and economic status in a nation long known for racism, as virulent now as ever.
Affidavits Recanting Earlier False Testimonies or Statements on Davis
AI published 10 of them, including examples covered below:
Kevin McQueen
"The truth is that Troy never confessed to me or talked to me about the shooting of the police officer. I made up the confession from information I had heard on TV and from other inmates....I need to set the record straight."
Monty Holmes
"I told them I didn't know anything about who shot the officer, but they kept questioning me....I was scared (so) I told them what they wanted to hear....I signed a statement saying that Troy told me that he shot the cop."
Jeffrey Sapp
"I got tired of them harassing me, and they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear. I told them that Troy told me he did it, but it wasn't true. Troy never said that or anything like it."
Darrell DD Collins
"After a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear....It is time that I told the truth. I am not proud for lying at Troy's trial, but the police had me so messed up that I felt that's all I could do or else I would go to jail."
Michael Cooper
"I have had a chance to review a statement which I supposedly gave to police officers on June 25, 1991. I remember that they asked a lot of questions and typed up a statement which they told me to sign. I did not read the statement before I signed. In fact, I have not seen it before today....What is written in that statement is a lie."
A Final Comment
A previous article discussed political prisoners in America, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/political-prisoners-in-america.html
Others addressed victims like Davis, convicted for being Black, Latino, poor, defenseless, and vulnerable against a system corrupted to convict. Kevin Cooper is one of many, an earlier article on him accessed through the link below:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/kevin-cooper-victimized-by-american.html
On death row in California, he, too, faces execution despite clear evidence proving his innocence. After the US Supreme Court denied his appeal, he may die, even though 11 of 27 US Circuit Court of Appeals justices dissented on a majority May 2009 ruling against him saying:
"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man."
Like Davis, his innocence is indisputable, yet both men may die because of prosecutorial and judicial unfairness, trampling on the rights of society's most vulnerable.
It mocks the notion of innocent unless proved guilty "beyond all reasonable doubt," a legal principle denied poor people of color in America disgracefully.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:06 AM
Troy Anthony Davis: Unjustly Sentenced to Death
Troy Anthony Davis: Unjustly Sentenced to Death - by Stephen Lendman
Capital punishment is barbaric, unjust, and unacceptable for any reason in modern societies. No wonder Amnesty International (AI) calls it "the ultimate denial of human rights. It is premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice."
In fact, there's nothing just about state-sponsored murder, especially against falsely accused victims. In America, they're mostly poor Black or Latinos denied due process and judicial fairness by a corrupted prosecutorial system rigged to convict even known innocent defendants like Troy Anthony Davis.
Today, America is the only Western country still enforcing capital punishment. Moreover, since 1990, 30 nations abolished it, and among 74 still executing, four are the main abusers - America, China, Vietnam and Iran. It's long past time for total abolition of what's no longer tolerable, affecting about 3,400 US death row prisoners, including Davis.
Detailed information about him can be found at:
http://troyanthonydavis.org/
Timeline of His Case
At about 1:00AM on August 19, 1989, off-duty Savanah, GA policeman Mark MacPhail had a second job working security for Burger King when a parking lot disturbance began. Investigating, he was shot and killed, leaving a wife, 18-month old daughter and seven-week old son.
On August 23, 1989, Davis was arrested.
On November 15, 1989, a grand jury indicted him for murder despite no clear evidence linking him to the crime, including no murder weapon.
On August 28, 1991, he was convicted.
On August 30, 1991, he was sentenced to death.
On February 25, 1993, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously affirmed his conviction and sentence.
On December 14, 2001, his attorney filed a habeas corpus writ in federal court.
On May 13, 2004, a Savannah federal court denied habeas relief, saying 'there is no danger of a miscarriage of justice in declining to hear the claim."
On September 26, 2006, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed the lower court's decision.
On June 26, 2007, Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu petitioned the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Davis' sentence, citing "mounting evidence that (he) may in fact be innocent."
On June 29, 2007, a Savannah judge set a new execution date from noon July 17 - noon July 24.
On or about July 15, 2007, Pope Benedict, through his envoy, noted evidentiary problems in asking Governor Sonny Perdue to commute his sentence.
On July 16, 2007, the state parole board issued a stay.
On March 17, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court, voting 4 to 3, upheld his death sentence in rejecting his request for a hearing.
On September 12, 2008, the state parole board denied clemency.
On September 19, 2008, former President Carter told Georgia's parole board that refusing clemency "risks taking the life of an innocent man and would be a grave miscarriage of justice."
On September 23, 2008, within two hours of his scheduled execution, the US Supreme Court granted him a stay.
On October 14, 2008, the High Court declined to hear his case.
On August 17, 2009, it ordered a federal judge to hear evidence in his case.
On June 23, 2010, a hearing in his behalf was held in Savannah federal court.
On August 24, 2010, the court rejected clear exculpating evidence, Judge William T. Moore saying it would be unconstitutional to execute an innocent man, but Davis "is not innocent."
On January 21, 2011, a US Supreme Court appeal was filed.
On March 28, 2011, the Court, without explanation, denied the appeal, clearing the way for his execution, despite Justices Breyer and Ginsburg citing "a substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death."
In so doing, the Court abstained on three fundamental issues:
-- whether the Constitution prohibits executing an innocent man;
-- what standard of proof must federal judges apply in deciding guilt or innocence. Federal judge Moore followed very strict guidelines others would consider unfair; and
-- America's bedrock legal principle that guilt must be proved "beyond all reasonable doubt," even though no constitutional provision affirms it.
Amnesty International (AI) on Davis
In a "Finality over Fairness" commentary, AI said he exhausted all appeals and now faces execution, "even though the case against him has fallen apart."
On May 3, AI urged one million "Tweets for Troy," saying:
Georgia hasn't "yet sought a death warrant for (him), but that is only because they have not yet figured out exactly how to take his life." Soon, however, he "may be first in line to face execution under a presumably new protocol," perhaps using pentobarbital to kill him.
As a result, AI wants to "generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis. Please spread the word and direct people to the petition."
Access it through the following link:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=12970
Earlier on April 18, AI said setting his execution date is "inevitable," but "execution is NOT," adding that:
He's "run out of appeals, (but) not....out of hope, and neither have we."
In fact, no physical evidence links him to the crime. Moreover, his conviction relies solely on witness testimonies, "most of whom have recanted, and many of whom allege police pressured them into testifying falsely at the trial."
Nonetheless, courts convicted him anyway, rejected exculpating evidence, proving a corrupted system, including the US Supreme Court, rigged to murder innocent victims like Davis and many others like him.
According to Laura Moye, AI's International USA Death Penalty Abolition Campaign director:
"Troy Davis' case is emblematic of a broken and unjust death penalty system. His story speaks volumes about a criminal justice system that is riddled with bias and error and is fixated on procedure more than....fairness."
"The case against Davis has unraveled, yet he still faces execution." He's up against "a system that would rather hold onto a decision a jury made twenty years ago than admit that some fundamentally wrong things have happened."
Moreover, Davis is Black. Officer McPhail was white and a cop. Georgia's law enforcement establishment wants revenge. As a result, anyone poor and Black or Latino is vulnerable anywhere in America. It's the cross they bear for their race, ethnicity, and economic status in a nation long known for racism, as virulent now as ever.
Affidavits Recanting Earlier False Testimonies or Statements on Davis
AI published 10 of them, including examples covered below:
Kevin McQueen
"The truth is that Troy never confessed to me or talked to me about the shooting of the police officer. I made up the confession from information I had heard on TV and from other inmates....I need to set the record straight."
Monty Holmes
"I told them I didn't know anything about who shot the officer, but they kept questioning me....I was scared (so) I told them what they wanted to hear....I signed a statement saying that Troy told me that he shot the cop."
Jeffrey Sapp
"I got tired of them harassing me, and they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear. I told them that Troy told me he did it, but it wasn't true. Troy never said that or anything like it."
Darrell DD Collins
"After a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear....It is time that I told the truth. I am not proud for lying at Troy's trial, but the police had me so messed up that I felt that's all I could do or else I would go to jail."
Michael Cooper
"I have had a chance to review a statement which I supposedly gave to police officers on June 25, 1991. I remember that they asked a lot of questions and typed up a statement which they told me to sign. I did not read the statement before I signed. In fact, I have not seen it before today....What is written in that statement is a lie."
A Final Comment
A previous article discussed political prisoners in America, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/political-prisoners-in-america.html
Others addressed victims like Davis, convicted for being Black, Latino, poor, defenseless, and vulnerable against a system corrupted to convict. Kevin Cooper is one of many, an earlier article on him accessed through the link below:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/kevin-cooper-victimized-by-american.html
On death row in California, he, too, faces execution despite clear evidence proving his innocence. After the US Supreme Court denied his appeal, he may die, even though 11 of 27 US Circuit Court of Appeals justices dissented on a majority May 2009 ruling against him saying:
"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man."
Like Davis, his innocence is indisputable, yet both men may die because of prosecutorial and judicial unfairness, trampling on the rights of society's most vulnerable.
It mocks the notion of innocent unless proved guilty "beyond all reasonable doubt," a legal principle denied poor people of color in America disgracefully.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:06 AM
Let's Have A Party-In The Golden Age Of Classic Rock- The Year 1957 – A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Tune Weavers performing their classic last dance of the night song, Happy Happy Birthday Baby.
CD Review
1957, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1995
Although I am not completely familiar with the range of their efforts, and of their purpose, I have already extensively reviewed many CD compilations from Time-Life Music’s Rock ‘N’ Rock Era series. A highlight of that series has been the cover artwork that has evoked, and evoked strongly, the themes that dominated our lives, our hubristic teenage lives, in the classic age of rock as we watched it unfold. Things like last dance school dances, lovers’ lanes, dancing the night away to the latest rock music, drive-in movies, drive-in restaurants, summer beach life and on and on. This later series also driven by year dates, at least as observed through the cover art, seems to be less concerned with strong old time evocations by flashy artwork. Nevertheless sometimes just a simple photograph as appears on the 1957 cover evokes those memories in a more subtle way.
And what does that photograph picture. Well, Johnny (we’ll just call him that for our purposes here, okay) suited up in sports coat, white shirt, and tie (pants not observed although they had to be black chinos, cuffed or uncuffed, and shoes, well, loafers for sure) and Susie (ditto Johnny) dressed up in her best frilly party dress (no bobby socks or nylons showing so I cannot discuss that issue here nor will I venture into the girl shoe night anymore than I would today into the woman’s shoe night) are comparing notes on the latest 45s.
For those not long in the tooth who may have wandered into this space and are not sure why that was the size record we played on our old time record players (no not wind-up Victrolas, wise guys) when we wanted to drown out ma, pa, and sibling noises about homework, chores, or just the stuff of everyday life. Each record had a one song A side (the hit) and a one song B side, each side a little over two minutes long. That idea didn’t last too long before responding to the crush of the market they started making LPs, records with several songs on each side. Oh, I forgot, for those who don’t know what a record is, long or short, look it up on Wikipedia. I have given enough time to the subject.
And in the year 1957 what might they be comparing on this night, this house party night (or on other school dance nights) well here, as usual the “battle of the sexes” will be played out just like from teen time immemorial. At least records and record player time immemorial. While Buddy Holly, Patsy Kline, Rickey Nelson, and the Everly Brothers have entries on this CD compilation the real fight, the real important fight, school dance or house party, is what song will be played for the last dance. Yes, the key last dance to see whether the evening continues when they hold each other tight after a night of apart self-expression rock and roll dancing. So the battle really boils down to Could This Be Magic? by The Dubs or Happy Happy Birthday Baby by the Tune Weavers and if Johnny does not want to be lonely tonight he better make the right choice. Good luck, brother Johnny.
CD Review
1957, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1995
Although I am not completely familiar with the range of their efforts, and of their purpose, I have already extensively reviewed many CD compilations from Time-Life Music’s Rock ‘N’ Rock Era series. A highlight of that series has been the cover artwork that has evoked, and evoked strongly, the themes that dominated our lives, our hubristic teenage lives, in the classic age of rock as we watched it unfold. Things like last dance school dances, lovers’ lanes, dancing the night away to the latest rock music, drive-in movies, drive-in restaurants, summer beach life and on and on. This later series also driven by year dates, at least as observed through the cover art, seems to be less concerned with strong old time evocations by flashy artwork. Nevertheless sometimes just a simple photograph as appears on the 1957 cover evokes those memories in a more subtle way.
And what does that photograph picture. Well, Johnny (we’ll just call him that for our purposes here, okay) suited up in sports coat, white shirt, and tie (pants not observed although they had to be black chinos, cuffed or uncuffed, and shoes, well, loafers for sure) and Susie (ditto Johnny) dressed up in her best frilly party dress (no bobby socks or nylons showing so I cannot discuss that issue here nor will I venture into the girl shoe night anymore than I would today into the woman’s shoe night) are comparing notes on the latest 45s.
For those not long in the tooth who may have wandered into this space and are not sure why that was the size record we played on our old time record players (no not wind-up Victrolas, wise guys) when we wanted to drown out ma, pa, and sibling noises about homework, chores, or just the stuff of everyday life. Each record had a one song A side (the hit) and a one song B side, each side a little over two minutes long. That idea didn’t last too long before responding to the crush of the market they started making LPs, records with several songs on each side. Oh, I forgot, for those who don’t know what a record is, long or short, look it up on Wikipedia. I have given enough time to the subject.
And in the year 1957 what might they be comparing on this night, this house party night (or on other school dance nights) well here, as usual the “battle of the sexes” will be played out just like from teen time immemorial. At least records and record player time immemorial. While Buddy Holly, Patsy Kline, Rickey Nelson, and the Everly Brothers have entries on this CD compilation the real fight, the real important fight, school dance or house party, is what song will be played for the last dance. Yes, the key last dance to see whether the evening continues when they hold each other tight after a night of apart self-expression rock and roll dancing. So the battle really boils down to Could This Be Magic? by The Dubs or Happy Happy Birthday Baby by the Tune Weavers and if Johnny does not want to be lonely tonight he better make the right choice. Good luck, brother Johnny.
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs-"Special Issue For Inductees"
Click on the headline to link to the GI Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and, at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me. *******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*********
Markin comment on this article:
Be still my heart, again. A picture comes to mind reading this issue. Someone hard at work pecking at the old typewriter, working against time, in some back room to produce this newsletter. The smell of the mimeograph fluid permeates the air even now, as does the noise made by the cranking out by hand of those few hundred copies (hopefully, if the master holds out). And always some ink, or some other fluid, on the hands. Why in my day.... You guys today have it easy with the new technology to blaze the stuff in about two seconds. Yadda Dadda Dadda.
We can cut up old touches some other time though. The important idea then, and today as well, is that this little two-page beauty got written by, and distributed by, GIs on base. The brass will forgive “grunts” many things (not as many as in civilian life though) but to put out anti-war propaganda cuts them where they live and they go crazy. See, they “know”, know deep down, that it doesn’t take much, a little spark like during Vietnam days, and you have horror of horrors, something like the Bolshevik Revolution on you hands, and you are on the wrong side. All over a little two-page spread. Ya, nice. As for the content of this issue it seems about right-talk of GI rights (always important to counteract the brass’ notion of no rights), trying to make connections with other GIs, especially those who have been in combat and know the hard face of war, and always, always, always the question of who fights these wars-black, Hispanics, immigrants, working class kids then, and now. Finally, a nice little jab at those liberal pacifists, aided and abetted in the Vietnam War period by many leftists (as well as this writer in that period), including the U.S. Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party, and the content-less nature of the slogan-peace now.
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*********
Markin comment on this article:
Be still my heart, again. A picture comes to mind reading this issue. Someone hard at work pecking at the old typewriter, working against time, in some back room to produce this newsletter. The smell of the mimeograph fluid permeates the air even now, as does the noise made by the cranking out by hand of those few hundred copies (hopefully, if the master holds out). And always some ink, or some other fluid, on the hands. Why in my day.... You guys today have it easy with the new technology to blaze the stuff in about two seconds. Yadda Dadda Dadda.
We can cut up old touches some other time though. The important idea then, and today as well, is that this little two-page beauty got written by, and distributed by, GIs on base. The brass will forgive “grunts” many things (not as many as in civilian life though) but to put out anti-war propaganda cuts them where they live and they go crazy. See, they “know”, know deep down, that it doesn’t take much, a little spark like during Vietnam days, and you have horror of horrors, something like the Bolshevik Revolution on you hands, and you are on the wrong side. All over a little two-page spread. Ya, nice. As for the content of this issue it seems about right-talk of GI rights (always important to counteract the brass’ notion of no rights), trying to make connections with other GIs, especially those who have been in combat and know the hard face of war, and always, always, always the question of who fights these wars-black, Hispanics, immigrants, working class kids then, and now. Finally, a nice little jab at those liberal pacifists, aided and abetted in the Vietnam War period by many leftists (as well as this writer in that period), including the U.S. Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party, and the content-less nature of the slogan-peace now.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"GI Voice"-The Spartacist League's Anti-War Work Among GIs-"Fort Polk GI Voice- You Have Rights"
Click on the headline to link to the GI Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this article:
Be still my heart. A picture comes to mind reading this issue. Someone hard at work pecking at the old typewriter, working against time, in some back room to produce this newsletter. The smell of the mimeograph fluid permeates the air even now, as does the noise made by the cranking out by hand of those few hundred copies (hopefully, if the master holds out). And always some ink, or some other fluid, on the hands. Why in my day... You guys today have it easy with the new technology to blaze the stuff in about two seconds. Yadda Dadda Dadda.
We can cut up old touches some other time though. The important idea then, and today as well, is that this little four-page beauty got written by, and distributed by, GIs on base. The brass will forgive “grunts” many things (not as many as in civilian life though) but to put out anti-war propaganda cuts them where they live and they go crazy. See, they “know”, know deep down, that it doesn’t take much, a little spark like during Vietnam days, and you have horror of horrors, something like the Bolshevik Revolution on you hands, and you are on the wrong side. All over a little four-page spread. Ya, nice. As for the contents of this issue it seems about right-talk of GI rights (always important to counteract the brass’ notion of no rights), trying to make connections with other GIs, especially those who have been in combat and know the hard face of war, and always, always, always the question of who fights these wars-black, Hispanics, immigrants, working class kids then, and now.
*******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library
******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
*******
Markin comment on this article:
Be still my heart. A picture comes to mind reading this issue. Someone hard at work pecking at the old typewriter, working against time, in some back room to produce this newsletter. The smell of the mimeograph fluid permeates the air even now, as does the noise made by the cranking out by hand of those few hundred copies (hopefully, if the master holds out). And always some ink, or some other fluid, on the hands. Why in my day... You guys today have it easy with the new technology to blaze the stuff in about two seconds. Yadda Dadda Dadda.
We can cut up old touches some other time though. The important idea then, and today as well, is that this little four-page beauty got written by, and distributed by, GIs on base. The brass will forgive “grunts” many things (not as many as in civilian life though) but to put out anti-war propaganda cuts them where they live and they go crazy. See, they “know”, know deep down, that it doesn’t take much, a little spark like during Vietnam days, and you have horror of horrors, something like the Bolshevik Revolution on you hands, and you are on the wrong side. All over a little four-page spread. Ya, nice. As for the contents of this issue it seems about right-talk of GI rights (always important to counteract the brass’ notion of no rights), trying to make connections with other GIs, especially those who have been in combat and know the hard face of war, and always, always, always the question of who fights these wars-black, Hispanics, immigrants, working class kids then, and now.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
***Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night- Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Stanley Kubrick's crime noir, The Killing.
DVD Review
The Killing, starring Sterling Hayden, Coleen Grey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, United Artists, 1956
As I have mentioned to start other reviews in this crime noir genre sure I am an aficionado, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, The Killing, is under that latter category.
Okay, okay we know crimes, crimes, large and small do not pay. We get our noses rubbed in that hard fact from almost infancy by parents, churches, and schools. Okay we get it, kind of. But in this little grade B crime film noir from the hills of Hollywood we are going to get our noses rubbed in it just one more time, although the way that the plot line sets up it looks like a sure thing that this time the thing will succeed. At least it had me rooting for the “bad” guys for a minute. And every kid from every misbegotten housing project, from every no dough neighborhood has secretly (or not so secretly) had to have been rooting for the caper to be pulled off too.
See here is the lay of land on the caper. Johnny (if it is not Joe in these crime noirs it's Johnny but we will let that lie, okay), fresh from stir (prison) Johnny (played by Sterling Hayden) wants to go straight, well, wants to live on easy street is more like it. And live on that easy street with neighborhood childhood sweetheart Coleen Grey. And, of course, Johnny had a little time to thing about it up in stir (prison, for those who forgot). So, naturally with that easy street goal in mind (and all that time on his hands) he plans to rob the local race track on the day of the big race for a cool couple of million. Now that might seem like pocket change today but back in those days, that was dough. Hey, I’ll take a cut of that, no problem.
But also see such a caper requires all kind of help, inside and outside, to pull it off and that is where, even if you are hoping against hope that Johnny scores big, you can see that things might get a little dicey. The cast of characters, black and white-etched film characters, is like a rogue’s gallery of every soft “hard” guy character actor that populated the be-bop 1950s television and movie screen (and at least one from the 1940s, Elisha Cook, Jr. as the insider ticket cashier, going back to Hammett’s Maltese Falcon film days, starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade). But we will let that go for now, as well. What is important once the motley crew is gathered is that the thing works like clockwork. And, from Johnny’s end, it does. The idea (a little loony in retrospect, if you thought about it) was to create a diversion to get into the track cash room where all the dough is (Johnny got that part right anyway), said diversion being the shooting of a famous race horse during the race to create the momentary confusion necessary so smart guy Johnny can get in and get all the dough. And, guess what it actually gets pulled off, and fairly easily.
But weren’t you paying attention- crime does not pay, get it. So, just as easily as the caper gets pulled off it starts to unravel. And all, or almost all, because of a two-timing dame. Figures right, figure right in a crime noir anyway. And the dame is no femme fatale like Gilda, no way, but some bar stool blonde wife that insider ticket cashier(Cook)is crazy about and blabbed the whole scene to. And said bar stool blonde tells the guy she is two-timing with and there you have it. See boyfriend is going to knock off the heist (a theme that has been done before, by the way, plenty, too plenty of times) and Ms. Two-timer and he are going to live on easy street. All this does is set up the inevitable all points police manhunt as Johnny (who still has the dough) and his honey try for easy street via the local airport. No dice, not even after such a fool-proof plan. Ya, now that I think about it though I wish Johnny had pulled it off.
Note: I mentioned above that Coleen Grey had a small role here as Johnny’s old neighborhood honey (and future easy street resident). I have now seen her in several of these film noir things starting with Kiss of Death. What I notice is that she is almost always type-cast as the angelic (yes, angelic) working class stick-with-her-guy-through-thick-and-thin-even-if he-is-a-wrong-gee gal, eternally waiting, it seems, for her guy to get out of stir (you know now what that is, right?). Ms. Grey didn’t your mother ever give to the word about wrong guys, wrong corner boy guys. Ya, I know, when you got it bad you’ve got it bad, wrong gee or not.
DVD Review
The Killing, starring Sterling Hayden, Coleen Grey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, United Artists, 1956
As I have mentioned to start other reviews in this crime noir genre sure I am an aficionado, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, The Killing, is under that latter category.
Okay, okay we know crimes, crimes, large and small do not pay. We get our noses rubbed in that hard fact from almost infancy by parents, churches, and schools. Okay we get it, kind of. But in this little grade B crime film noir from the hills of Hollywood we are going to get our noses rubbed in it just one more time, although the way that the plot line sets up it looks like a sure thing that this time the thing will succeed. At least it had me rooting for the “bad” guys for a minute. And every kid from every misbegotten housing project, from every no dough neighborhood has secretly (or not so secretly) had to have been rooting for the caper to be pulled off too.
See here is the lay of land on the caper. Johnny (if it is not Joe in these crime noirs it's Johnny but we will let that lie, okay), fresh from stir (prison) Johnny (played by Sterling Hayden) wants to go straight, well, wants to live on easy street is more like it. And live on that easy street with neighborhood childhood sweetheart Coleen Grey. And, of course, Johnny had a little time to thing about it up in stir (prison, for those who forgot). So, naturally with that easy street goal in mind (and all that time on his hands) he plans to rob the local race track on the day of the big race for a cool couple of million. Now that might seem like pocket change today but back in those days, that was dough. Hey, I’ll take a cut of that, no problem.
But also see such a caper requires all kind of help, inside and outside, to pull it off and that is where, even if you are hoping against hope that Johnny scores big, you can see that things might get a little dicey. The cast of characters, black and white-etched film characters, is like a rogue’s gallery of every soft “hard” guy character actor that populated the be-bop 1950s television and movie screen (and at least one from the 1940s, Elisha Cook, Jr. as the insider ticket cashier, going back to Hammett’s Maltese Falcon film days, starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade). But we will let that go for now, as well. What is important once the motley crew is gathered is that the thing works like clockwork. And, from Johnny’s end, it does. The idea (a little loony in retrospect, if you thought about it) was to create a diversion to get into the track cash room where all the dough is (Johnny got that part right anyway), said diversion being the shooting of a famous race horse during the race to create the momentary confusion necessary so smart guy Johnny can get in and get all the dough. And, guess what it actually gets pulled off, and fairly easily.
But weren’t you paying attention- crime does not pay, get it. So, just as easily as the caper gets pulled off it starts to unravel. And all, or almost all, because of a two-timing dame. Figures right, figure right in a crime noir anyway. And the dame is no femme fatale like Gilda, no way, but some bar stool blonde wife that insider ticket cashier(Cook)is crazy about and blabbed the whole scene to. And said bar stool blonde tells the guy she is two-timing with and there you have it. See boyfriend is going to knock off the heist (a theme that has been done before, by the way, plenty, too plenty of times) and Ms. Two-timer and he are going to live on easy street. All this does is set up the inevitable all points police manhunt as Johnny (who still has the dough) and his honey try for easy street via the local airport. No dice, not even after such a fool-proof plan. Ya, now that I think about it though I wish Johnny had pulled it off.
Note: I mentioned above that Coleen Grey had a small role here as Johnny’s old neighborhood honey (and future easy street resident). I have now seen her in several of these film noir things starting with Kiss of Death. What I notice is that she is almost always type-cast as the angelic (yes, angelic) working class stick-with-her-guy-through-thick-and-thin-even-if he-is-a-wrong-gee gal, eternally waiting, it seems, for her guy to get out of stir (you know now what that is, right?). Ms. Grey didn’t your mother ever give to the word about wrong guys, wrong corner boy guys. Ya, I know, when you got it bad you’ve got it bad, wrong gee or not.
From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"G.I. Voice"-The Sparacist League's Anti-War Work Among G.I.s-By Way Of An Introduction- "Better Red Than Fred."
Click on the headline to link to the G.I. Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me. *******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
***************
Markin comment on this article:
By 1968, a time by the way when this writer was deeply immersed in bourgeois politics at first through the campaign of Robert Kennedy and then, after his assassination in June 1968, the Hubert Humphrey campaign (ya, I know I still blush, blush profusely over that every time I think about it, but thems the facts Jack), the Socialist Workers Party and others were appealing to American soldiers to join the anti-Vietnam War movement. Was that notion based on the idea that the soldiers were the key agents in any strategy to, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued in World War I, “turn the guns the other way?” No way, GIs were “invited” to join as just another constituency (and very nice symbolically to lead the parade) in the endless mass marches strategy that was the hallmark of that organization in those days. The problem is that when you have a mass movement strategy that includes everyone from housewives to hardened bourgeois Democratic Party representatives (or Republicans, for that matter, if any could be found), especially the latter, you are not going to be able to provide that “big tent” without burying your politics. Particularly when the “guns that are going to be turned around” will be aimed (figuratively, if not literally) at those very politicians that are gracing the platform you have provided for them. See, I may have not been “wise” then but I have learned a few things since then-get to the soldiers. Break with the Democrats (Republicans should have been broken with when you were about twelve) ! Break with party of war and occupation!
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.
—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:
In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”
Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.
During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
***************
Markin comment on this article:
By 1968, a time by the way when this writer was deeply immersed in bourgeois politics at first through the campaign of Robert Kennedy and then, after his assassination in June 1968, the Hubert Humphrey campaign (ya, I know I still blush, blush profusely over that every time I think about it, but thems the facts Jack), the Socialist Workers Party and others were appealing to American soldiers to join the anti-Vietnam War movement. Was that notion based on the idea that the soldiers were the key agents in any strategy to, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued in World War I, “turn the guns the other way?” No way, GIs were “invited” to join as just another constituency (and very nice symbolically to lead the parade) in the endless mass marches strategy that was the hallmark of that organization in those days. The problem is that when you have a mass movement strategy that includes everyone from housewives to hardened bourgeois Democratic Party representatives (or Republicans, for that matter, if any could be found), especially the latter, you are not going to be able to provide that “big tent” without burying your politics. Particularly when the “guns that are going to be turned around” will be aimed (figuratively, if not literally) at those very politicians that are gracing the platform you have provided for them. See, I may have not been “wise” then but I have learned a few things since then-get to the soldiers. Break with the Democrats (Republicans should have been broken with when you were about twelve) ! Break with party of war and occupation!
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