Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
Of the Role of the Passions
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Source: The History Guide;
Translated: by Julia Franklin, and published as Selections from the Works of Fourier.
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All those philosophical whims called duties have no relation whatever to Nature; duty proceeds from men, Attraction proceeds from God; now, if we desire to know the designs of God, we must study Attraction, Nature only, without any regard to duty, which varies with every age, while the nature of the passions has been and will remain invariable among all nations of men.
The learned world is wholly imbued with a doctrine termed MORALITY, which is a mortal enemy of passional attraction.
Morality teaches man to be at war with himself, to resist his passions, to repress them, to believe that God was incapable of organizing our souls, our passions wisely; that he needed the teachings of Plato and Seneca in order to know how to distribute characteristics and instincts. Imbued with these prejudices regarding the impotence of God, the learned world was not qualified to estimate the natural impulses or passional attractions, which morality proscribes and relegates to the rank of vices.
It is true that these impulses entice us only to evil, if we yield to them individually; but we must calculate their effect upon a body of about two thousand persons socially combined, and not upon families or isolated individuals: this is what the learned world has not thought of; in studying it, it would have recognized that as soon as the number of associates (societaires) has reached 1600, the natural impulses, termed attractions, tend to form series of contrasting groups, in which everything incites to industry, become attractive, and to virtue, become lucrative.
The passions, believed to be the enemies of concord, in reality conduce to that unity from which we deem them so far removed. But outside of the mechanism termed “exalted,” emulatory, interlocked (engrenees) Series, they are but unchained tigers, incomprehensible enigmas. It is this which has caused philosophers to say that we ought to repress them; an opinion doubly absurd inasmuch as we can only repress our passions by violence or absorbing replacement, which replacement is no repression. On the other hand, should they be efficiently repressed, the civilized order would rapidly decline find relapse into the nomad state, where the passions would still be malevolent as with us. The virtue of shepherds is as doubtful as that of their apologists, and our utopia-makers, by thus attributing virtues to imaginary peoples, only succeed in proving the impossibility of introducing virtue into civilization.
We are quite familiar with the five sensitive passions tending to Luxury, the four affective ones tending to Groups; it only remains for us to learn about the three distributive ones whose combined impulse produces Series, a social method of which the secret has been lost since the age of primitive mankind, who were unable to maintain the Series more than about 300 years.
The four affective passions tending to form the four groups of friendship, love, ambition, paternity or consanguinity are familiar enough; but no analyses or parallels or scales have been made of them.
The three others, termed distributive, are totally misunderstood, and bear only the title of vices, although they are infinitely precious; for these three possess the property of forming and directing the series of groups, the mainspring of social harmony. Since these series are not formed in the civilized order, the three distributive passions cause disorder only. Let us define them.
10th. THE CABALIST is the passion that, like love, has the property of confounding ranks, drawing superiors and inferiors closer to each other. Everyone must recall occasions when he has been strongly drawn into some Path followed with complete success.
For instance: electoral cabal to elect a certain candidate; cabal on ‘Change in the stock-jobbing game; cabal of two pairs of lovers, planning a partie carrée without the father’s knowledge; a family cabal to secure a desirable match. If these intrigues are crowned with success, the participants become friends; in spite of some anxiety, they have passed happy moments together while conducting the intrigue; the emotions it arouses are necessities of the soul.
Far removed from the insipid calm whose charms are extolled by morality, the cabalistic spirit is the true destination of man. Plotting doubles his resources, enlarges his faculties. Compare the tone of a formal social gathering, its moral, stilted, languishing jargon, with the tone of these same people united in a cabal: they will appear transformed to you; you will admire their terseness, their animation, the quick play of ideas, the alertness of action, of decision; in a word, the rapidity of the spiritual or material motion. This fine development of the human faculties is the fruit of the cabalist or tenth passion, which constantly prevails in the labors and the reunions of a passionate series.
As it always results in some measure of success, and as its groups are all precious to each other, the attraction of the cabals becomes a potent bond of friendship between all the sectaires, even the most unequal.
The general perfection of industry will spring, then, from the passion which is most condemned by the philosophers; the cabalist or dissident, which has never been able to obtain among us the rank of a passion, notwithstanding that it is so strongly rooted even in the philosophers themselves, who are the greatest intriguers in the social world.
The cabalist is a favorite passion of women; they are excessively fond of intrigue, the rivalries and all the greater and lesser flights of a cabal. It is a proof of their eminent fitness (for the new social order, where cabals without number will be needed in every series, periodical schisms, in order to maintain a movement of coming and going among the sectaries of the different groups.
12th. THE COMPOSITE. – This passion requires in every action a composite allurement or pleasure of the senses and of the soul, and consequently the blind enthusiasm which is born only of the mingling of the two kinds of pleasure. These conditions are but little compatible with civilized labor, which, far from offering any allurement either to the senses or the soul, is only a double torment even in the most vaunted of work-shops, such as the spinning factories of England where the people, even the children, work fifteen hours a day, under the lash, in premises devoid of air.
The composite is the most beautiful of the twelve passions, the one which enhances the value of all the others. A love is not beautiful unless it is a composite love, combining the charm of the senses and of the soul. It becomes trifling or deception if it limits itself to one of these springs. An ambition is not vehement unless it brings into play the two springs, glory and interest. It is then that it becomes capable of brilliant efforts.
The composite commands so great a respect, that all are agreed in despising people inclined to simple pleasure. Let a man provide himself with fine viands, fine wines, with the intention of enjoying them alone, of giving himself up to gormandizing by himself, and he exposes himself to well-merited gibes. But if this man gathers a select company in his house, where one may enjoy at the same time the pleasure of the senses by good cheer, and the pleasure of the soul by companionship, he will be lauded, because these banquets will be a composite and not a simple pleasure.
If general opinion despises simple material pleasure, the same is true as well of simple spiritual pleasure, of gatherings where there is neither refreshment, nor dancing, nor love, nor anything for the senses, where one enjoys oneself only in imagination. Such a gathering, devoid of the composite or pleasure of the senses and the soul, becomes insipid to its participants, and it is not long before it “grows bored and dissolves.”
11th. THE PAPILLONNE [Butterfly] or Alternating. Although eleventh according to rank, it should be examined after the twelfth, because it serves as a link between the other two, the tenth and the twelfth. If the sessions of the series were meant to be prolonged twelve or fifteen hours like those of civilized workmen, who, from morning till night, stupefy themselves by being engaged in insipid duties without any diversion, God would have given us a taste for monotony, an abhorrence of variety. But as the sessions of the series are to be very short, and the enthusiasm inspired by the composite is incapable of being prolonged beyond an hour and a half, God, in conformity to this industrial order, had to endow us with the passion of papillonnage, the craving for periodic variety in the phases of life, and for frequent variety in our occupations. Instead of working twelve hours with a scant intermission for a poor, dull dinner, the associative state will never extend its sessions of labor beyond an hour and a half or at most two; besides, it will diffuse a host of pleasures, reunions of the two sexes terminating in a repast, from which one will proceed to new diversions, with different company and cabals.
Without this hypothesis of associative labor, arranged in the order I have described, it would be impossible to conceive for what purpose God should have given us three passions so antagonistic to the monotony experienced in civilization, and so unreasonable that, in the existing state, they have not even been accorded the rank of passions, but are termed only vices.
A series, on the contrary, could not be organized without the permanent cooperation of these three passions. They are bound to intervene constantly and simultaneously in the serial play of intrigue. Hence it comes that these three passions could not be discerned until the invention of the serial mechanism, and that up to that time they had to be regarded as vices. When the social order for which God has destined us shall be known in detail, it will be seen that these pretended vices, the Cabalist, the Papillonne, the Composite, become there three pledges of virtue and riches; that God did indeed know how to create passions such as are demanded by social unity; that He would have been wrong to change them in order to please Seneca and Plato; that on the contrary human reason ought to strive to discover a social condition which shall be in affinity with these passions. No moral theory will ever change them, and, in accordance with the rules of the duality of tendency, they will intervene for ever to lead us TO EVIL in the disjointed state or social limbo, and TO GOOD in the regime of association or serial labor.
The seven “affective” and “distributive” passions depend more upon the spirit than upon matter; they rank as PRIMITIVES. Their combined action engenders a collective passion or one formed by the union of the other seven, as white is formed by the union of the seven colors of a ray of light; I shall call this thirteenth passion Harmonism or Unityism; it is even less known than the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, of which I have not spoken.
Unityism is the inclination of the individual to reconcile his own happiness with that of all surrounding him, and of all human kind, to-day so odious. It is an unbounded philanthropy, a universal good-will which can only be developed when the entire human race shall be rich, free, and just.
Questions regarding gallantly and the love of eating are treated facetiously by the Civilized, who do not comprehend the importance that God attaches to our pleasures. Voluptuousness is the sole arm which God can employ to master us and lead us to carry out his designs; he rules the universe by Attraction and not by Force; therefore the enjoyments of his creatures are the most important object of the calculations of God.
I shall, in order to dispose others to share my confidence, explain the object of one of these impulses, accounted as vicious.
I select a propensity which is the most general and the most thwarted by education: it is the gluttony of children, their fondness for dainties, in opposition to the advice of the pedagogues who counsel them to like bread, to eat more bread than their allowance.
Nature, then, is very clumsy to endow children with tastes so opposed to sound doctrines! every child regards a breakfast of dry bread as a punishment; he would wish for sugared cream, sweetened milk-food and pastry, marmalades and stewed fruit, raw and preserved fruit, lemonades and orangeades, mild white wines. Let us observe closely these tastes which prevail among all children; on this point a great case is to be adjudged: the question to be determined is who is wrong, God or morality?
God, dispenser of attraction, gives all children a liking for dainties: it was in his power to give them a liking for dry bread and water; it would have suited the views of morality; why then does he knowingly militate against sound civilized doctrines? Let us explain these motives.
God has given children a liking for substances which will be the least costly in the associative state. When the entire globe shall be populated and cultivated, enjoying free-trade, exempt from all duties, the sweet viands mentioned above will be much less expensive than bread; the abundant edibles will be fruit, milk-foods, and sugar, but not bread, whose price will be greatly raised, because the labor incident to the growing of grain and the daily making of bread is wearisome and little attractive; these kinds of labor would have to be paid much higher than that in orchards or confectioneries.
And as it is fitting that the food and maintenance of children should involve less expense than those of their parents, God has acted judiciously in attracting them to those sweetmeats and dainties which will be cheaper than bread as soon as we shall have entered upon the associative state. Then the sound moral doctrines will be found to be altogether erroneous concerning the nourishment of children, as well as upon all other points which oppose attraction. It will be recognized that God did well what he did, that he was right in attracting children to milk-foods, fruit, and sweet pastries; and that, instead of foolishly losing three thousand years in declaiming against God’s wisest work, against the distribution of tastes and passionate attractions, it would have been better to study its aim, by reckoning with all those impulses combined, which morality insults singly, under the pretext that they are hurtful to the civilized and barbarous orders; this is true, but God did not create the passions for the civilized and barbarous orders. If he had wished to maintain these two forms of society exclusively, he would have given children a fondness for dry bread, and to the parents a love of poverty, since that is the lot of the immense majority of mankind in civilization and barbarism.
In the civilized state, love of eating does not ally itself to industry because the laboring producer does not enjoy the commodities which he has cultivated or manufactured. This passion therefore becomes an attribute of the idle; and through that alone it would be vicious, were it not so already by the outlay and the excesses which it occasions.
In the associative state love of eating plays an entirely opposite role; it is no longer a reward of idleness but of industry; because there the poorest tiller of the soil participates in the consumption of choice commodities. Moreover, its only influence will be to preserve us from excess, by dint of variety, and to stimulate us to work by allying the intrigues of consumption to those of production, preparation, and distribution. Production being the most important of the four, let us first state the principle which must guide it; it is the generalization of epicurism. In point of fact.
If the whole human race could be raised to a high degree of gastronomic refinement, even in regard to the most ordinary kinds of food, such as cabbages and radishes, and everyone be given a competence which would allow him to refuse all edibles which are mediocre in quality or treatment, the result would be that every cultivated country would, after a few years, be covered with delicious productions; for there would be no sale for mediocre ones, such as bitter melons, bitter peaches, which certain kinds of soil yield, upon which neither melons nor peaches would be cultivated; every district would confine itself to productions which its soil is capable of raising to perfection; it would fetch earth for spots where the soil is poor, or perhaps convert them into forests, artificial meadows, or whatever else might yield products of good quality. It is not that the passionate Series do not consume ordinary eatables and stuffs; but they desire, even in ordinary things such as beans and coarse cloth, the most perfect quality possible, in conformity to the proportions which Nature has established in industrial attraction.
The principle which must be our starting-point is, that a general perfection in industry will be attained by the universal demands and refinement of the consumers, regarding food and clothing, furniture and amusements.
My theory confines itself to utilizing the passions now condemned, just as Nature has given them to us and without in any way changing them. That is the whole mystery, the whole secret of the calculus of passionate Attraction. There is no arguing there whether God was right or wrong in giving mankind these or those passions; the associative order avails itself of them without changing them, and as God has given them to us.
Its mechanism produces coincidence in every respect between individual interest and collective interest, in civilization always divergent.
It makes use of men as they are, utilizing the discords arising from antipathies, and other motives accounted vicious, and vindicating the Creator from the reproach of a lacuna in providence, in the matter of general unity and individual foresight.
Finally, it in nowise disturbs the established order, limiting itself to trial on a small scale, which will incite to imitation by the double allurement of quadruple proceeds and attractive industry.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
From Out In The Doo Wop Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Golden Age – A CD
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing the classic doo wop song, Why Do Fools Fall In Love.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004
Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics
Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why
(Background Music)
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy
Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)
Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.
Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.
All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004
Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics
Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why
(Background Music)
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy
Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)
Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.
Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.
All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.
Ancient dreams, dreamed-A Detour - Magical Realism 101
Ancient dreams, dreamed-A Detour - Magical Realism 101
Fidgety. No, not some usual schoolboy preternatural eternal girl swaying in the mind’s eye breeze, next-up girl swaying fidgety, but fidgety, get out of town, get out of the rut, hit the Jack Kerouac asphalt highway curve- kicking Dean Moriarty gear-shifting road (pressing after a mad midnight to dawn fresh air late 1971 re-reading of On The Road, the first time was just 1962 kid’s stuff trying to get out of the house kid’s stuff, and just reading what everybody was reading to be cool, to be beat, faux beat as it turned out), farmer brown get the stink blown off fidgety after wasting away so much breeze on this and that, inconsequential this and that.
And just maybe too, get out of town, hit the highway, to rekindle a sagging girl sway relationship that was heading to the rocky shores (see I told you it goes to the grave, eternal, or close). It was that kind of time. Rocky shores, by the way, just then meaning “commitment,” commitment to white picket fence complete with fully mortgaged white picket fence house, running field dogs, mutts maybe, and flowered gardens (left unspoken those two point three kids to clutter up said house, to pet such dogs and to run amok in the petunias but she, Joyell she to sagging girl sway name her, at least knew how not to sell her case). Jesus, no, jesus one thousand, no, one million times no, not after just escaping, and barely, steel-barred rooms, dram shop de-drunks, and erased sweet bobby kennedy-visioned dreams of forty years, a pension, a gold watch and some minor thefts in the service of the people. No, let’s just shake the dust of this town and see what happens kind of gentle like. Okay. Ah, okay. Joyell finally seeing the light okay, I think.
So off into the chili night (no sic, chili, the final southern destination is winter Mexico before the drug cartels blew into mountain breeze Cuernavaca) we roamed, or rather prepared to roam. Prepared with Salvation Army’s, Joe’s Army-Navy, Harry’s Cheapo Depot cheap, serviceable camping gear, or rather the bare minimum we could squeeze in that broken down box of a car (a Datsun, a gone automobile name yellow, and far from boyhood dream ’57 Chevy cherry reds) that I had managed to cadge off some guy, a friend of a friend guy, who had no cash, needed to get west fast (or at least out of town and west was the only way unless he figured on swimming).West fast meaning either girl trouble or some imminent drug crash out, busted no question, knowing whose friend of a friend he was. We, smart we, smart Joyell we, had set aside plenty of funds just in case this rag-a-muffin of a car decided to join its Zen spirit master on some by-road west when we headed north. North then west then south.
Working funds to see us through thick and thin, you ask? Well said white picket fence dreaming yankee lady had some dough, some father Manhattan NYSE stockbroker (or some such profession I never really did get all the details of his occupation although he acted like a damned proper don in some Mafioso dream sequel and so just in case he or his capo progeny are around let’s stick with stockbroker), which then meant dough, daughter dough. But said princess daughter (WASP daughter, alright) found herself slumming (if dream slumming really, and talking about it too with all her waspish girlfriends like some red badge of courage, but you probably figured that out already) with some half-heathen, half-broken, faux Irishman and while she was not above white picket dreams she still insisted that on this trip we would do frugal, thrifty yankee “dutch treat.” And this fidgety dog-fearing, white paint-hating, and weed-loving half-heathen wanted to have his own dough just in case he decided that he had to go to Butte instead of Beverly Hills in a fit of hubris. Oh, freedom, dough freedom.
So our brother, our story brother, me, worked at this and that and if you asked me (or her, but with scowls) what he did you would receive the usual hobo tramp bum – “a little of this and that.” A little this and that really meaning “the best he could,” just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. And “the best he could” got him that yellow box car, a couple of army sleeping bags(vintage World War II, of course, no Korean War/Vietnam War stuff to revile his dreams, or her dreams of him when she played him a hero, their love was fresh, and they fell fitfully down in first days 1971 New Hampshire snows and kissed gentle kisses just to see what it was like to kiss a hero she later told him and he laughed, and she reddened, and he reached out his laughing hands to her, and, and, but on with our travel story, you can figure out what those laughing hands did, can’t you), a small two-man army surplus tent (excuse me, two person, both to reflect the “new age” of person-hood and that that two part was all that could possibly fit into the damn thing, not even a stray dog could nuzzle his or her nose in), and a “house” worth of utensils. Canteens, Coleman stoves, mess kits, all very travel-worthy stuff as he knew from his minute now expired field army experience. Cheapsville, very cheapsville stuff, got it.
And off, hot August dog days off, heading north to catch a breeze and a dream before it got too cold, or the funds ran out after those first days of spending more than was budgeted because this or that cost more than expected. Backup though- some yankee stockbroker would come through, or some half-heathen would take another stab at “doing this and that.” First stop old time yankee gangway to fresh seas hideout from the Irish and other assorted trash Kennebunkport. (Not Kennebunk, that was for the heathens, she told him without qualification or guile, personal knowledge told him, and he was proud that day she told him, proud of his little smitten waspy conquest and gave just a peep of a thought that maybe a white picket fence might not be so bad with such a find.)
First night sleep out in some yankee farmer’s blueberry late season black fly field and first crack of setting up camp. Long hours to set “pup” tent (with no room for pup, no way, save that for dream white picket fences and petunias), fix hungry dinner on the big pot averse Coleman stove and wait for eternal, infernal water to boil for fresh day coffees and giggles. We are off, we are free, and we are one day into hard adventure and still in one piece- the morning would tell that same tale. Hey, this is easy, he said, easy before the fidgets could speak.
Heading north bright next morning to yankee Bar Harbors, maybe deeper yankee than Kennebunkport (with no Kennebunk for the heathen refuge, just Ellsworth) and more tents, and more eternal, infernal waits for precious coffees. North more, Campobello, north Calais (callus; don’t call it some French thing though if you don’t want to get into an argument). Then more slowly, more north to New Brunswick, sweet Moncktons and switch off youth hostel indoor one night living (nobody probably every called that dorm hostel sweet before, no reason, but I will remain discrete and let you just think of laughing hands), north more to Nova Scotia (New Scotland, no question) Neil’s Harbor tents and Peggy’s Cove bed and breakfast inn (figured in funding, so don’t get nervous). Push until no more norths (or easts) can be seen short of flight or boats and then west, the great blue pink America west night adventure waits and we are both like two intrepid pioneer kids (although now, after a few weeks, old camping hands) hard –faced to the wind.
Still more Canadian lands but island Prince Edward Island lands, sweet Charlottetown, rocked inlet boats, and another bed and breakfast, this time with ocean view and white picket fences but both of us are too rough-hewn now, just now anyway after several weeks on the roads, to care a fig for white picket fences. Or rustic scenes and rolling farm lands, and endless sea-side fishing villages just starting to fog up and rust up with lack of shoals work. Time for the cities, time for Quebec City and Montreal down the mighty Saint Lawrence and ooh, la, la French delights. And lights other than stars, sounds other than night cicadas, and talk other than get firewood, get tent pegs set and hammered, sleeping bags morning dew aired out, and fresh coffee boiling waits, infinity waits. Edge city waits.
Fidgety. No, not some usual schoolboy preternatural eternal girl swaying in the mind’s eye breeze, next-up girl swaying fidgety, but fidgety, get out of town, get out of the rut, hit the Jack Kerouac asphalt highway curve- kicking Dean Moriarty gear-shifting road (pressing after a mad midnight to dawn fresh air late 1971 re-reading of On The Road, the first time was just 1962 kid’s stuff trying to get out of the house kid’s stuff, and just reading what everybody was reading to be cool, to be beat, faux beat as it turned out), farmer brown get the stink blown off fidgety after wasting away so much breeze on this and that, inconsequential this and that.
And just maybe too, get out of town, hit the highway, to rekindle a sagging girl sway relationship that was heading to the rocky shores (see I told you it goes to the grave, eternal, or close). It was that kind of time. Rocky shores, by the way, just then meaning “commitment,” commitment to white picket fence complete with fully mortgaged white picket fence house, running field dogs, mutts maybe, and flowered gardens (left unspoken those two point three kids to clutter up said house, to pet such dogs and to run amok in the petunias but she, Joyell she to sagging girl sway name her, at least knew how not to sell her case). Jesus, no, jesus one thousand, no, one million times no, not after just escaping, and barely, steel-barred rooms, dram shop de-drunks, and erased sweet bobby kennedy-visioned dreams of forty years, a pension, a gold watch and some minor thefts in the service of the people. No, let’s just shake the dust of this town and see what happens kind of gentle like. Okay. Ah, okay. Joyell finally seeing the light okay, I think.
So off into the chili night (no sic, chili, the final southern destination is winter Mexico before the drug cartels blew into mountain breeze Cuernavaca) we roamed, or rather prepared to roam. Prepared with Salvation Army’s, Joe’s Army-Navy, Harry’s Cheapo Depot cheap, serviceable camping gear, or rather the bare minimum we could squeeze in that broken down box of a car (a Datsun, a gone automobile name yellow, and far from boyhood dream ’57 Chevy cherry reds) that I had managed to cadge off some guy, a friend of a friend guy, who had no cash, needed to get west fast (or at least out of town and west was the only way unless he figured on swimming).West fast meaning either girl trouble or some imminent drug crash out, busted no question, knowing whose friend of a friend he was. We, smart we, smart Joyell we, had set aside plenty of funds just in case this rag-a-muffin of a car decided to join its Zen spirit master on some by-road west when we headed north. North then west then south.
Working funds to see us through thick and thin, you ask? Well said white picket fence dreaming yankee lady had some dough, some father Manhattan NYSE stockbroker (or some such profession I never really did get all the details of his occupation although he acted like a damned proper don in some Mafioso dream sequel and so just in case he or his capo progeny are around let’s stick with stockbroker), which then meant dough, daughter dough. But said princess daughter (WASP daughter, alright) found herself slumming (if dream slumming really, and talking about it too with all her waspish girlfriends like some red badge of courage, but you probably figured that out already) with some half-heathen, half-broken, faux Irishman and while she was not above white picket dreams she still insisted that on this trip we would do frugal, thrifty yankee “dutch treat.” And this fidgety dog-fearing, white paint-hating, and weed-loving half-heathen wanted to have his own dough just in case he decided that he had to go to Butte instead of Beverly Hills in a fit of hubris. Oh, freedom, dough freedom.
So our brother, our story brother, me, worked at this and that and if you asked me (or her, but with scowls) what he did you would receive the usual hobo tramp bum – “a little of this and that.” A little this and that really meaning “the best he could,” just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. And “the best he could” got him that yellow box car, a couple of army sleeping bags(vintage World War II, of course, no Korean War/Vietnam War stuff to revile his dreams, or her dreams of him when she played him a hero, their love was fresh, and they fell fitfully down in first days 1971 New Hampshire snows and kissed gentle kisses just to see what it was like to kiss a hero she later told him and he laughed, and she reddened, and he reached out his laughing hands to her, and, and, but on with our travel story, you can figure out what those laughing hands did, can’t you), a small two-man army surplus tent (excuse me, two person, both to reflect the “new age” of person-hood and that that two part was all that could possibly fit into the damn thing, not even a stray dog could nuzzle his or her nose in), and a “house” worth of utensils. Canteens, Coleman stoves, mess kits, all very travel-worthy stuff as he knew from his minute now expired field army experience. Cheapsville, very cheapsville stuff, got it.
And off, hot August dog days off, heading north to catch a breeze and a dream before it got too cold, or the funds ran out after those first days of spending more than was budgeted because this or that cost more than expected. Backup though- some yankee stockbroker would come through, or some half-heathen would take another stab at “doing this and that.” First stop old time yankee gangway to fresh seas hideout from the Irish and other assorted trash Kennebunkport. (Not Kennebunk, that was for the heathens, she told him without qualification or guile, personal knowledge told him, and he was proud that day she told him, proud of his little smitten waspy conquest and gave just a peep of a thought that maybe a white picket fence might not be so bad with such a find.)
First night sleep out in some yankee farmer’s blueberry late season black fly field and first crack of setting up camp. Long hours to set “pup” tent (with no room for pup, no way, save that for dream white picket fences and petunias), fix hungry dinner on the big pot averse Coleman stove and wait for eternal, infernal water to boil for fresh day coffees and giggles. We are off, we are free, and we are one day into hard adventure and still in one piece- the morning would tell that same tale. Hey, this is easy, he said, easy before the fidgets could speak.
Heading north bright next morning to yankee Bar Harbors, maybe deeper yankee than Kennebunkport (with no Kennebunk for the heathen refuge, just Ellsworth) and more tents, and more eternal, infernal waits for precious coffees. North more, Campobello, north Calais (callus; don’t call it some French thing though if you don’t want to get into an argument). Then more slowly, more north to New Brunswick, sweet Moncktons and switch off youth hostel indoor one night living (nobody probably every called that dorm hostel sweet before, no reason, but I will remain discrete and let you just think of laughing hands), north more to Nova Scotia (New Scotland, no question) Neil’s Harbor tents and Peggy’s Cove bed and breakfast inn (figured in funding, so don’t get nervous). Push until no more norths (or easts) can be seen short of flight or boats and then west, the great blue pink America west night adventure waits and we are both like two intrepid pioneer kids (although now, after a few weeks, old camping hands) hard –faced to the wind.
Still more Canadian lands but island Prince Edward Island lands, sweet Charlottetown, rocked inlet boats, and another bed and breakfast, this time with ocean view and white picket fences but both of us are too rough-hewn now, just now anyway after several weeks on the roads, to care a fig for white picket fences. Or rustic scenes and rolling farm lands, and endless sea-side fishing villages just starting to fog up and rust up with lack of shoals work. Time for the cities, time for Quebec City and Montreal down the mighty Saint Lawrence and ooh, la, la French delights. And lights other than stars, sounds other than night cicadas, and talk other than get firewood, get tent pegs set and hammered, sleeping bags morning dew aired out, and fresh coffee boiling waits, infinity waits. Edge city waits.
From The Lenin's Tomb Blog Via "The Boston Occupier"- The Upcoming Greek Elections And Syriza ( Union Of the Radical Left)
Greece: The Challenge of Syriza and the Radical Left
Richard SeymourJune 8, 20120
This post originally appeared on the author’s blog, Lenin’s Tomb.
The question of a workers’ government arises in Greece only because it has been raised in a certain form by Syriza, and only because they have come to hegemonise the left workers’ vote. Current (unofficial) polling seems to indicate they have up to 35% of the vote, though there is still a great deal of volatility, and some recent polls have even given New Democracy a very narrow lead. Nonetheless, with anything close 35% of the vote, they would be in a position to lead a government of the left. So, a great deal rests on why Syriza are in the position they’re in.
Explanations for Syriza’s success built on the insight that reformism is a first port of call for workers in struggle aren’t wrong, but they are rather complacent and general. Apart from anything else, Syriza aren’t classical reformists. Syriza comprises a coalition between a Eurocommunist bloc, Synaspismos, which has roots in a breakaway from the Communist Party (KKE) in 1968, and various Maoist and Trotskyist groups.The Eurocommunists are by far the dominant force, having comprised about 85% of the members before a rightist split in 2010, which I’ll come back to. But of course, they have their own internal differentiations, as Eurocommunism has always had its left and right currents, historically oscillating between centrism and reformism. The Maoist group, the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), is the second largest organisation in the coalition. Alongside them are the Trotskyist group, the International Workers Left, and the Communist Left for Ecology and Renewal.
The trajectory and composition of these hetroclite elements are discussed by Stathis Kouvelakis here (original here). Essentially, we are talking about divisions, redivisions, and realignments within the communist and non-communist left, with the leading role taken by a Eurocommunist organisation with an orientation toward what used to be called the ‘new social movements’. Not a typical reformism, then, and certainly more akin at an ideological level to Die Linke than to traditional social democracy. Moreover, they’re far from the only reformist option for workers, a point we will return to.
A refinement of the same argument is that since Greeks are overwhelmingly opposed to the Memorandum, yet simultaneously opposed to withdrawal from the euro, it is logical that Syriza, which favours continued membership of the Eurozone on a reformed basis, should have benefited from PASOK’s collapse. Hence, workers are gravitating to a reformist solution that matches their ‘level of consciousness’.
Again, though more specific, this explanation is inadequate to the complexity of reality. Polls show that about half of Greeks oppose remaining in the euro if it means sticking with the measures contained in the Memorandum, and these voters are overwhelmingly concentrated in the base of the left parties, including more than two thirds of Syriza voters. In other words, their attitude to the EU is context-driven.
Syriza itself is not that simple either. As Kouvelakis has pointed out: 1) its position is that the EU can be internally reformed “but on the basis of denouncing all the existing European Treaties (Maastricht, Lisbon etc)”; 2) it contains other currents hostile to the EU, including significant Trotskyist and Maoist groups who comprise about 15% of the membership; 3) most importantly, its position on austerity is inconsistent with its pro-European stance, an ambiguity whose resolution will depend significantly on the continuation and outcome of struggles in which Syriza is partially embedded.
Recall, moreover, that it looked for a while as if a right-wing breakaway from Syriza, the Democratic Left (DIMAR) would be the main beneficiary. DIMAR represented the ‘Europeanist’ Ananeotiki wing of Synaspismos, the dominant Eurocommunist component of Syriza. It departed amid some grievance over the leftist direction in which the leadership of Alexis Tsipras was taking the coalition, and took with it the former leader of Syriza, four sitting MPs, and hundreds of members. It selected Fotis Kouvelis as its leader, and lauded its attitude of “responsibility and accountability” before the press.
Strictly in terms of its programme and its attitude to austerity, it was somewhere between Syriza and PASOK, and slightly to the right of the Greens with whom it shared enough to cooperate in the 2010 regional elections. After the May elections, Kouvelis even indicated that he would be willing to join a coalition government with some of the austerity parties if Syriza could be persuaded to join.
So, having thus launched itself as both a critic of austerity and a ‘responsible party of government’, at one stage it had 15% in the polls. That is not far short of what Syriza actually received in the recent parliamentary elections. There was no necessary reason, if what mattered was a pro-European anti-austerity stance, why Syriza should have overtaken them. Syriza haven’t just won people on their main programmatic points; they’ve won the trust of millions of workers and, at that, the most radicalised workers.
It is also true, but inadequate, to say that Syriza is the beneficiary of militant struggles including 17 general strikes, several mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, and the spread of rank and file organisation. Syriza has benefited from this, but it has not been as important to these struggles as the KKE, so it was not inevitable that it should do so. Likewise, that Syriza’s claim on the majority of the left workers’ vote is only a recent development, following from the formation of a PASOK-led coalition government, is true, but doesn’t itself explain why Syriza should have benefited.
There are, of course, many determining factors, but I would suggest that a key determination was Syriza raising the slogan of a left government to stop austerity. This immediately distinguished it from its two main left electoral rivals – the respectability-hugging DIMAR, and the sectier-than-thou KKE. This is why Syriza could win the election with about a third of the vote, much of which it coming at the expense of other left parties. The Communists (KKE) have lost the most, with their vote pushed down to about 5%. The anticapitalist left coalition ANTARSYA have also been squeezed, from 1.2% to about 0.5%. DIMAR appears to be relatively steady on 7.5%.
Of course, the KKE remains a powerful force in the workers’ movement, but it is suffering from its appallingly sectarian position. Not only does it refuse to work with Syriza, but in true Third Period fashion it actually denounces them far more than it does the Nazis or the parties of the Memorandum. Its combination of militancy and sectarianism is partially rooted in the antiquated and mortified analysis of ‘monopoly capitalism’, and partially in its view of its role as the vanguard party uniquely tasked with taking on the EU and the ‘monopolists’. At any rate, the KKE have decided to make the EU the main point of division when it is clear that for most left-wing Greek workers, that is not the main antagonism.
Possibly, the KKE will comfort themselves with the idea that their electoral perdition is temporary, that soon the ideological and political vapours giving rise to Syrizismo will dispel as the KKE edge out their left rivals and take the leadership of the workers’ movement. But their strong industrial position is not written in stone, and this isn’t just another election. The choice is between a New Democracy-led austerity government, which would be immensely demoralising, and a Syriza-led anti-austerity government, which would give the whole continental left a massive shot in the arm and open up a host of new possibilities. This is a key moment in which a great deal is condensed, which will be formative of a great deal of the political and ideological terrain for some time, and any formation that appears to bring the latter possibility closer isn’t helping the industrial struggle.
The best hope is that the KKE’s delegates will be persuaded to give a vote of confidence in a Syriza-led minority government, and support its measures from the opposition benches, even if they refuse to join it. But one still can’t be sure that they aren’t waiting for the chance to say, “first the Golden Dawn, then us”.
As for ANTARSYA, they are standing without illusions, expecting to incur a humiliatingly low vote. They intend to use the electoral platform to organise around and push for a programme of anticapitalist transition. You may say that it is unlikely that this programme will benefit from an electoral drubbing. You may add that since the main locus of their leadership is in the industrial and social struggles, since that is where they are a most serious force, this is probably where such a programme could be raised most effectively. And, going further, you might assert that in this election, with the stakes this high, the presence of ANTARSYA candidates is unlikely to add any new dynamic to the electoral contest, thus actually increasing the turnout among left voters. You may say that say none of the usual reasons for the far left running no-hope election campaigns apply, while unusual ones why they shouldn’t, do.
You may say all that. I couldn’t possibly comment, except to nod vigorously and say ‘well, yes, of course’.
Nonetheless, the majority of Greece’s left-wing workers will support Syriza in their attempt to form a left government. And that may be enough to give them a parliamentary majority, or at least a working minority government, which can then revoke the laws implementing the Memorandum. No small thing, this, if it happens.
Now, judging from online conversations and opinion pieces, a large section of the far left is waiting for the other shoe to drop. The narratives of betrayal are already being readied, the old verities being ‘proved’ repeatedly. There are many variations, but the core of it is that: 1) Syriza are straightforwardly reformists, notwithstanding the substantial revolutionary fringe – the tail does not wag the dog; 2) reformists are apt to compromise with the forces of capitalism, and as such a sell-out of the working class cannot be long following Syriza’s election. In its latest instantiation, this is expressed in the tutting, sighing, and fanning of armpits over Tsipras chatting up the G20. There it is: the betrayal is already afoot, the reformists already making deals with the bosses. Perhaps so, but thus far Syriza have not withdrawn from their fundamental commitments, which are: abrogate the Memorandum, and stop austerity measures. They did not do so when there was pressure to do so after the last election, and are not doing so now.
I would advise caution on this line of critique, therefore: it is very well to criticise what Syriza has actually said and done, but it isn’t necessary to second guess what Syriza will do. The point will be to support the mass movements capable of pressuring a Syriza-led government from the left. No, they are not a revolutionary formation; no, they won’t overthrow capitalism; no, their manifesto is not a communist manifesto. Yet it is just possible that Syriza won’t betray workers in the interests of European capital, and that all the stern augury will have been displacement activity.
Of course there is an unresolved tension at the heart of Syriza’s agenda. Of course they can’t break the austerity deadlock within the EU. But it is not inevitable that they will resolve it by capitulation. For what it’s worth, I think they know very well that the their policy will not be tolerable to the EU’s masters. I think the talk of Europe’s leaders not being willing to see Greece exit is a knowing bluff. Of course, the Merkozy consensus is weaker than before, and may well be weakened still by Spain’s ongoing crisis, or by another plunge in Italy. But one can’t envision at any stage the EU’s leadership allowing themselves to give in to a junior, peripheral EU state. Tsipras talks about Greece joining Europe as an equal and a partner – that is exactly what the EU’s leadership will never allow.
So, I think the Syriza strategy is simply to avoid being blamed for Greece being forced out, in view of the potentially apocalyptic consequences of doing so. This is perfectly understandable, even if it is a position that one could not admit from a marxist perspective, since it means basically fudging the problem that the quasi-colonial, class-structured hierarchies of the EU can possibly be reformed, but they cannot be reformed away. The latter is a problem that will return, even if a Syriza success is followed by a graceful default, and a ‘Grexit’ under the most benign circumstances, and it has to be faced.
Moreover, the strongest likelihood for a Syriza-led government is that it will be in perpetual crisis. It would be a spot-lit enclave, under constant assault from capital and the media. One could well imagine that the severity of the social crisis, and the pressure from European capital, would force splits in such a government and bring about its early downfall. On the other hand, there would also be a pressure, which should be resisted, on the rank and file to temper its criticisms, and curtail its actions, in order to help ‘our’ government as it came under capitalist attack. The best way to ‘save’ such a government from capital would be to keep up the pressure and organisation, but not everyone would see it this way. And even if Syriza would lack a sufficient basis in the leadership of the workers’ movement to effect a quietening of class struggle, it would have undoubted authority within the movement.
So, these divisions would not merely be in the party of government, but would exert effects throughout the resistance. The election of a Syriza-led government will be a nodal point, not the end point, in the process of workers finding a solution to the problem.
However, I suggest you should compare those antagonisms to the sorts of demoralising splits and recriminations that would likely follow from a New Democracy victory and the prolonged imposition of austerity. Relatively speaking, the crisis of a Syriza government would be a benevolent crisis. This is Syriza’s challenge: the good crisis, or the bad crisis? The first radical left government in Europe for a generation, in a situation more serious than any radical movement has faced since the Carnation Revolution, the further exacerbation of divisions in the European bourgeoisie, a step forward for the Greek and all European workers’ movements, and possibly a new and uncertain terrain? Or, terra firma, in permanent opposition and division, with our weaknesses and hesitancy constantly making up for those of the bourgeoisie?
************
Richard SeymourJune 8, 20120
This post originally appeared on the author’s blog, Lenin’s Tomb.
The question of a workers’ government arises in Greece only because it has been raised in a certain form by Syriza, and only because they have come to hegemonise the left workers’ vote. Current (unofficial) polling seems to indicate they have up to 35% of the vote, though there is still a great deal of volatility, and some recent polls have even given New Democracy a very narrow lead. Nonetheless, with anything close 35% of the vote, they would be in a position to lead a government of the left. So, a great deal rests on why Syriza are in the position they’re in.
Explanations for Syriza’s success built on the insight that reformism is a first port of call for workers in struggle aren’t wrong, but they are rather complacent and general. Apart from anything else, Syriza aren’t classical reformists. Syriza comprises a coalition between a Eurocommunist bloc, Synaspismos, which has roots in a breakaway from the Communist Party (KKE) in 1968, and various Maoist and Trotskyist groups.The Eurocommunists are by far the dominant force, having comprised about 85% of the members before a rightist split in 2010, which I’ll come back to. But of course, they have their own internal differentiations, as Eurocommunism has always had its left and right currents, historically oscillating between centrism and reformism. The Maoist group, the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), is the second largest organisation in the coalition. Alongside them are the Trotskyist group, the International Workers Left, and the Communist Left for Ecology and Renewal.
The trajectory and composition of these hetroclite elements are discussed by Stathis Kouvelakis here (original here). Essentially, we are talking about divisions, redivisions, and realignments within the communist and non-communist left, with the leading role taken by a Eurocommunist organisation with an orientation toward what used to be called the ‘new social movements’. Not a typical reformism, then, and certainly more akin at an ideological level to Die Linke than to traditional social democracy. Moreover, they’re far from the only reformist option for workers, a point we will return to.
A refinement of the same argument is that since Greeks are overwhelmingly opposed to the Memorandum, yet simultaneously opposed to withdrawal from the euro, it is logical that Syriza, which favours continued membership of the Eurozone on a reformed basis, should have benefited from PASOK’s collapse. Hence, workers are gravitating to a reformist solution that matches their ‘level of consciousness’.
Again, though more specific, this explanation is inadequate to the complexity of reality. Polls show that about half of Greeks oppose remaining in the euro if it means sticking with the measures contained in the Memorandum, and these voters are overwhelmingly concentrated in the base of the left parties, including more than two thirds of Syriza voters. In other words, their attitude to the EU is context-driven.
Syriza itself is not that simple either. As Kouvelakis has pointed out: 1) its position is that the EU can be internally reformed “but on the basis of denouncing all the existing European Treaties (Maastricht, Lisbon etc)”; 2) it contains other currents hostile to the EU, including significant Trotskyist and Maoist groups who comprise about 15% of the membership; 3) most importantly, its position on austerity is inconsistent with its pro-European stance, an ambiguity whose resolution will depend significantly on the continuation and outcome of struggles in which Syriza is partially embedded.
Recall, moreover, that it looked for a while as if a right-wing breakaway from Syriza, the Democratic Left (DIMAR) would be the main beneficiary. DIMAR represented the ‘Europeanist’ Ananeotiki wing of Synaspismos, the dominant Eurocommunist component of Syriza. It departed amid some grievance over the leftist direction in which the leadership of Alexis Tsipras was taking the coalition, and took with it the former leader of Syriza, four sitting MPs, and hundreds of members. It selected Fotis Kouvelis as its leader, and lauded its attitude of “responsibility and accountability” before the press.
Strictly in terms of its programme and its attitude to austerity, it was somewhere between Syriza and PASOK, and slightly to the right of the Greens with whom it shared enough to cooperate in the 2010 regional elections. After the May elections, Kouvelis even indicated that he would be willing to join a coalition government with some of the austerity parties if Syriza could be persuaded to join.
So, having thus launched itself as both a critic of austerity and a ‘responsible party of government’, at one stage it had 15% in the polls. That is not far short of what Syriza actually received in the recent parliamentary elections. There was no necessary reason, if what mattered was a pro-European anti-austerity stance, why Syriza should have overtaken them. Syriza haven’t just won people on their main programmatic points; they’ve won the trust of millions of workers and, at that, the most radicalised workers.
It is also true, but inadequate, to say that Syriza is the beneficiary of militant struggles including 17 general strikes, several mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, and the spread of rank and file organisation. Syriza has benefited from this, but it has not been as important to these struggles as the KKE, so it was not inevitable that it should do so. Likewise, that Syriza’s claim on the majority of the left workers’ vote is only a recent development, following from the formation of a PASOK-led coalition government, is true, but doesn’t itself explain why Syriza should have benefited.
There are, of course, many determining factors, but I would suggest that a key determination was Syriza raising the slogan of a left government to stop austerity. This immediately distinguished it from its two main left electoral rivals – the respectability-hugging DIMAR, and the sectier-than-thou KKE. This is why Syriza could win the election with about a third of the vote, much of which it coming at the expense of other left parties. The Communists (KKE) have lost the most, with their vote pushed down to about 5%. The anticapitalist left coalition ANTARSYA have also been squeezed, from 1.2% to about 0.5%. DIMAR appears to be relatively steady on 7.5%.
Of course, the KKE remains a powerful force in the workers’ movement, but it is suffering from its appallingly sectarian position. Not only does it refuse to work with Syriza, but in true Third Period fashion it actually denounces them far more than it does the Nazis or the parties of the Memorandum. Its combination of militancy and sectarianism is partially rooted in the antiquated and mortified analysis of ‘monopoly capitalism’, and partially in its view of its role as the vanguard party uniquely tasked with taking on the EU and the ‘monopolists’. At any rate, the KKE have decided to make the EU the main point of division when it is clear that for most left-wing Greek workers, that is not the main antagonism.
Possibly, the KKE will comfort themselves with the idea that their electoral perdition is temporary, that soon the ideological and political vapours giving rise to Syrizismo will dispel as the KKE edge out their left rivals and take the leadership of the workers’ movement. But their strong industrial position is not written in stone, and this isn’t just another election. The choice is between a New Democracy-led austerity government, which would be immensely demoralising, and a Syriza-led anti-austerity government, which would give the whole continental left a massive shot in the arm and open up a host of new possibilities. This is a key moment in which a great deal is condensed, which will be formative of a great deal of the political and ideological terrain for some time, and any formation that appears to bring the latter possibility closer isn’t helping the industrial struggle.
The best hope is that the KKE’s delegates will be persuaded to give a vote of confidence in a Syriza-led minority government, and support its measures from the opposition benches, even if they refuse to join it. But one still can’t be sure that they aren’t waiting for the chance to say, “first the Golden Dawn, then us”.
As for ANTARSYA, they are standing without illusions, expecting to incur a humiliatingly low vote. They intend to use the electoral platform to organise around and push for a programme of anticapitalist transition. You may say that it is unlikely that this programme will benefit from an electoral drubbing. You may add that since the main locus of their leadership is in the industrial and social struggles, since that is where they are a most serious force, this is probably where such a programme could be raised most effectively. And, going further, you might assert that in this election, with the stakes this high, the presence of ANTARSYA candidates is unlikely to add any new dynamic to the electoral contest, thus actually increasing the turnout among left voters. You may say that say none of the usual reasons for the far left running no-hope election campaigns apply, while unusual ones why they shouldn’t, do.
You may say all that. I couldn’t possibly comment, except to nod vigorously and say ‘well, yes, of course’.
Nonetheless, the majority of Greece’s left-wing workers will support Syriza in their attempt to form a left government. And that may be enough to give them a parliamentary majority, or at least a working minority government, which can then revoke the laws implementing the Memorandum. No small thing, this, if it happens.
Now, judging from online conversations and opinion pieces, a large section of the far left is waiting for the other shoe to drop. The narratives of betrayal are already being readied, the old verities being ‘proved’ repeatedly. There are many variations, but the core of it is that: 1) Syriza are straightforwardly reformists, notwithstanding the substantial revolutionary fringe – the tail does not wag the dog; 2) reformists are apt to compromise with the forces of capitalism, and as such a sell-out of the working class cannot be long following Syriza’s election. In its latest instantiation, this is expressed in the tutting, sighing, and fanning of armpits over Tsipras chatting up the G20. There it is: the betrayal is already afoot, the reformists already making deals with the bosses. Perhaps so, but thus far Syriza have not withdrawn from their fundamental commitments, which are: abrogate the Memorandum, and stop austerity measures. They did not do so when there was pressure to do so after the last election, and are not doing so now.
I would advise caution on this line of critique, therefore: it is very well to criticise what Syriza has actually said and done, but it isn’t necessary to second guess what Syriza will do. The point will be to support the mass movements capable of pressuring a Syriza-led government from the left. No, they are not a revolutionary formation; no, they won’t overthrow capitalism; no, their manifesto is not a communist manifesto. Yet it is just possible that Syriza won’t betray workers in the interests of European capital, and that all the stern augury will have been displacement activity.
Of course there is an unresolved tension at the heart of Syriza’s agenda. Of course they can’t break the austerity deadlock within the EU. But it is not inevitable that they will resolve it by capitulation. For what it’s worth, I think they know very well that the their policy will not be tolerable to the EU’s masters. I think the talk of Europe’s leaders not being willing to see Greece exit is a knowing bluff. Of course, the Merkozy consensus is weaker than before, and may well be weakened still by Spain’s ongoing crisis, or by another plunge in Italy. But one can’t envision at any stage the EU’s leadership allowing themselves to give in to a junior, peripheral EU state. Tsipras talks about Greece joining Europe as an equal and a partner – that is exactly what the EU’s leadership will never allow.
So, I think the Syriza strategy is simply to avoid being blamed for Greece being forced out, in view of the potentially apocalyptic consequences of doing so. This is perfectly understandable, even if it is a position that one could not admit from a marxist perspective, since it means basically fudging the problem that the quasi-colonial, class-structured hierarchies of the EU can possibly be reformed, but they cannot be reformed away. The latter is a problem that will return, even if a Syriza success is followed by a graceful default, and a ‘Grexit’ under the most benign circumstances, and it has to be faced.
Moreover, the strongest likelihood for a Syriza-led government is that it will be in perpetual crisis. It would be a spot-lit enclave, under constant assault from capital and the media. One could well imagine that the severity of the social crisis, and the pressure from European capital, would force splits in such a government and bring about its early downfall. On the other hand, there would also be a pressure, which should be resisted, on the rank and file to temper its criticisms, and curtail its actions, in order to help ‘our’ government as it came under capitalist attack. The best way to ‘save’ such a government from capital would be to keep up the pressure and organisation, but not everyone would see it this way. And even if Syriza would lack a sufficient basis in the leadership of the workers’ movement to effect a quietening of class struggle, it would have undoubted authority within the movement.
So, these divisions would not merely be in the party of government, but would exert effects throughout the resistance. The election of a Syriza-led government will be a nodal point, not the end point, in the process of workers finding a solution to the problem.
However, I suggest you should compare those antagonisms to the sorts of demoralising splits and recriminations that would likely follow from a New Democracy victory and the prolonged imposition of austerity. Relatively speaking, the crisis of a Syriza government would be a benevolent crisis. This is Syriza’s challenge: the good crisis, or the bad crisis? The first radical left government in Europe for a generation, in a situation more serious than any radical movement has faced since the Carnation Revolution, the further exacerbation of divisions in the European bourgeoisie, a step forward for the Greek and all European workers’ movements, and possibly a new and uncertain terrain? Or, terra firma, in permanent opposition and division, with our weaknesses and hesitancy constantly making up for those of the bourgeoisie?
************
Sunday, June 10, 2012
From The HistoMat Blog-Revolutionary Socialists' statement on Egypt's presidential elections
Revolutionary Socialists' statement on Egypt's presidential elections
The Revolutionary Socialists Movement confirms its opposition on principle to the candidate of the Military Council, the dissolved National Democratic Party and the forces of the counter-revolution, Ahmad Shafiq.
Shafiq has managed to reach the second round of the presidential elections to face the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Dr Mohammed Morsi.
This is thanks to a massive mobilisation by the counter-revolutionary camp, which deployed the full, organised force of the resources at its command – the repressive apparatus of the state, the media and the business interests standing behind Shafiq.
His success reflects the smear campaigns, systematic repression and intimidation of the social and popular forces which peaked before the election and were expressed in the dregs of the old regime daring to run in the election.
This combined with the inability of the reformist and revolutionary forces to unite in a political front to prevent their candidacy. Finally it also reflects the failure of the candidates affiliated with the revolution to unite behind a single candidate clearly expressing the programme of the revolution as we recently warned.
On the other hand, the Revolutionary Socialists Movement welcomes the accomplishment of the millions of voters from the poor, the workers, the peasants, employees, the Copts, the unemployed and the youth of the revolution who backed Hamdeen Sabbahi.
He competed strongly for second place with Shafiq, scoring 21.2 percent of the total votes cast and coming third by a narrow margin. This reflects the great weight of support among the popular forces, the forces supporting the project of the revolution and the those aligned with the Left for a programme which addresses both social issues and the question of civil democracy – thus allowing for the construction of a front of the militant left which has a wide popularity in the Egyptian street.
We stress our full support for all moves aimed at the verification of instances of fraud which were carried out against Sabbahi and for efforts to apply the law of political exclusion to the criminal Ahmad Shafiq.
We are deeply convinced of the role of the masses as the most effective and influential force and guarantor in all the battles of democracy, which they won the right to participate in through their great revolutionary struggle.
They offered martyrs and injured from the beginning of the revolution until today. We are also convinced that the victory of Shafiq in the second round of the elections will be a great loss to the revolution and a powerful blow against its democratic and social gains.
Brutal
It would give a golden opportunity to the preparations of the counter-revolution for a more brutal and extensive revenge attack under the slogan of “restore security to the street within days”.
We therefore call on all the reformist and revolutionary forces and the remainder of the revolutionary candidates to form a national front which stands against the candidate of counter-revolution, and demands that the Muslim Brotherhood declares its commitment to the following:
1. Formation of a presidential coalition which includes Hamdeen Sabbahi and Abd-al-Moneim Abu-al-Fotouh as Vice-Presidents.
2. The selection of a Prime Minister from outside the ranks of the Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party and the formation of a government across the whole political spectrum in which the Copts are represented.
3. The approval of a law on trade union freedoms which clearly supports the pluralism and independence of the workers' movement in contrast to the draft law proposed by the Brotherhood to the People's Assembly.
4. The Brotherhood's agreement with other political forces on a civil constitution which guarantees social justice, the right to free, quality healthcare and education, the right to strike, demonstrate and organise peaceful sit-ins, the public and private rights of all citizens, and the genuinely representation of women, the Copts, working people and the youth in the Constituent Assembly. We cannot fail here to call on the Muslim Brotherhood and all the political forces to put the interests of the revolution before party-political interest and to unite against Shafiq so that we do not deliver our revolution to its enemies as easy prey.
Our position does not, of course, mean that we are dropping our criticism of the social and economic programme of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and its “Renaissance Project” which is essentially biased towards the market economy and finance and business.
Nor do we weaken our criticism of the political performance of the leadership of the Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party and of the trust of these leaders in the Military Council and their attacks on the revolutionaries during the battles of Mohammed Mahmoud Street and the Cabinet Offices and others.
These attacks included accusing the Revolutionary Socialists and other revolutionary forces of treason and the presentation of a legal complaint against us to the Attorney General.
However, what concerns us in the first place is the interest of the revolution, and its future. We have to defend the right of the masses to make choices and test those choices as a condition of the development of their consciousness and the development of their position in relation to different political forces.
We are also aware of the magnitude of the error in failure to discriminate between the reformism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the "fascism" of Shafiq. The Brotherhood is supported by millions in the elections who aspire to the redistribution of the revolution and genuine democracy. It depends on the grassroots of the unions and professional associations and other social and democratic organisations, and on an audience among poor peasants, workers and the unemployed.
The military's man Shafiq and the thugs of his campaign who are united in their desire to end the revolution and close the door on any democratic or economic struggle.
We pledge today to join in the widest possible struggle among the masses of our people against the candidate of the old regime. The election of Shafiq would cross a red line, as if Mubarak returned or he was found not guilty of his crimes. It would be exactly like rejecting the sacrifice of the martyrs and accepting the defeat of the revolution.
The conditions for the struggle, the battle for a decent life and the continuation of the political and social revolution will become extremely difficult with Shafiq installed in the presidential palace.
Turn the second round of the presidential elections into a blow against the old regime!
Fight to organise the popular forces against the slaveowners' revolt!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Revolutionary Socialists Movement confirms its opposition on principle to the candidate of the Military Council, the dissolved National Democratic Party and the forces of the counter-revolution, Ahmad Shafiq.
Shafiq has managed to reach the second round of the presidential elections to face the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Dr Mohammed Morsi.
This is thanks to a massive mobilisation by the counter-revolutionary camp, which deployed the full, organised force of the resources at its command – the repressive apparatus of the state, the media and the business interests standing behind Shafiq.
His success reflects the smear campaigns, systematic repression and intimidation of the social and popular forces which peaked before the election and were expressed in the dregs of the old regime daring to run in the election.
This combined with the inability of the reformist and revolutionary forces to unite in a political front to prevent their candidacy. Finally it also reflects the failure of the candidates affiliated with the revolution to unite behind a single candidate clearly expressing the programme of the revolution as we recently warned.
On the other hand, the Revolutionary Socialists Movement welcomes the accomplishment of the millions of voters from the poor, the workers, the peasants, employees, the Copts, the unemployed and the youth of the revolution who backed Hamdeen Sabbahi.
He competed strongly for second place with Shafiq, scoring 21.2 percent of the total votes cast and coming third by a narrow margin. This reflects the great weight of support among the popular forces, the forces supporting the project of the revolution and the those aligned with the Left for a programme which addresses both social issues and the question of civil democracy – thus allowing for the construction of a front of the militant left which has a wide popularity in the Egyptian street.
We stress our full support for all moves aimed at the verification of instances of fraud which were carried out against Sabbahi and for efforts to apply the law of political exclusion to the criminal Ahmad Shafiq.
We are deeply convinced of the role of the masses as the most effective and influential force and guarantor in all the battles of democracy, which they won the right to participate in through their great revolutionary struggle.
They offered martyrs and injured from the beginning of the revolution until today. We are also convinced that the victory of Shafiq in the second round of the elections will be a great loss to the revolution and a powerful blow against its democratic and social gains.
Brutal
It would give a golden opportunity to the preparations of the counter-revolution for a more brutal and extensive revenge attack under the slogan of “restore security to the street within days”.
We therefore call on all the reformist and revolutionary forces and the remainder of the revolutionary candidates to form a national front which stands against the candidate of counter-revolution, and demands that the Muslim Brotherhood declares its commitment to the following:
1. Formation of a presidential coalition which includes Hamdeen Sabbahi and Abd-al-Moneim Abu-al-Fotouh as Vice-Presidents.
2. The selection of a Prime Minister from outside the ranks of the Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party and the formation of a government across the whole political spectrum in which the Copts are represented.
3. The approval of a law on trade union freedoms which clearly supports the pluralism and independence of the workers' movement in contrast to the draft law proposed by the Brotherhood to the People's Assembly.
4. The Brotherhood's agreement with other political forces on a civil constitution which guarantees social justice, the right to free, quality healthcare and education, the right to strike, demonstrate and organise peaceful sit-ins, the public and private rights of all citizens, and the genuinely representation of women, the Copts, working people and the youth in the Constituent Assembly. We cannot fail here to call on the Muslim Brotherhood and all the political forces to put the interests of the revolution before party-political interest and to unite against Shafiq so that we do not deliver our revolution to its enemies as easy prey.
Our position does not, of course, mean that we are dropping our criticism of the social and economic programme of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and its “Renaissance Project” which is essentially biased towards the market economy and finance and business.
Nor do we weaken our criticism of the political performance of the leadership of the Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party and of the trust of these leaders in the Military Council and their attacks on the revolutionaries during the battles of Mohammed Mahmoud Street and the Cabinet Offices and others.
These attacks included accusing the Revolutionary Socialists and other revolutionary forces of treason and the presentation of a legal complaint against us to the Attorney General.
However, what concerns us in the first place is the interest of the revolution, and its future. We have to defend the right of the masses to make choices and test those choices as a condition of the development of their consciousness and the development of their position in relation to different political forces.
We are also aware of the magnitude of the error in failure to discriminate between the reformism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the "fascism" of Shafiq. The Brotherhood is supported by millions in the elections who aspire to the redistribution of the revolution and genuine democracy. It depends on the grassroots of the unions and professional associations and other social and democratic organisations, and on an audience among poor peasants, workers and the unemployed.
The military's man Shafiq and the thugs of his campaign who are united in their desire to end the revolution and close the door on any democratic or economic struggle.
We pledge today to join in the widest possible struggle among the masses of our people against the candidate of the old regime. The election of Shafiq would cross a red line, as if Mubarak returned or he was found not guilty of his crimes. It would be exactly like rejecting the sacrifice of the martyrs and accepting the defeat of the revolution.
The conditions for the struggle, the battle for a decent life and the continuation of the political and social revolution will become extremely difficult with Shafiq installed in the presidential palace.
Turn the second round of the presidential elections into a blow against the old regime!
Fight to organise the popular forces against the slaveowners' revolt!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From The SteveLendmanBlog-Stepped Up Media War on Syria
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Stepped Up Media War on Syria
by Stephen Lendman
When America goes to war or plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep. Journalism is the first casualty. Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure.
Cheerleading propaganda is relentless. Readers and viewers are betrayed. Imperial wars are called liberating ones. Separating fact from fiction is challenging.
Only replacing independent regimes with pro-Western puppet ones matters. Media scoundrels support it. Blood on their hands doesn't deter them. Steady income eases conscience pangs. Soul selling pays well.
NYT and Washington Post editorials discussed below reflect the latest White House statement on Syria. It reads like bad fiction, saying:
"The United States strongly condemns the outrageous targeted killings of civilians including women and children in Al-Qubeir in Hama province as reported by multiple credible sources."
"This, coupled with the Syrian regime’s refusal to let UN observers into the area to verify these reports, is an affront to human dignity and justice."
"There is no justification for this regime’s continued defiance of its obligations under the Annan Plan, and Assad’s continued abdication of responsibility for these horrific acts has no credibility and only further underscores the illegitimate and immoral nature of his rule."
"The future of Syria will be determined by the Syrian people, and the international community must come together in support of their legitimate aspirations."
"We call once more on all nations to abandon support for this brutal and illegitimate regime, and to join together to support a political transition in Syria—one that upholds the promise of a future for which far too many have already died."
Fact check
Assad security forces and/or supporters had nothing to do with Houla and Qubeir village massacres. Western-recruited death squads bear full responsibility. Claiming otherwise won't change facts.
According to Reuters, UN monitors visited Qubeir. So did journalists accompanying them. Claiming otherwise ignores what some media sources reported.
"The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air and body parts lay scattered around the deserted" village, said Reuters.
UN spokeswoman Sausan Ghosheh said one house showed bullet and rocket fire damage. Another was burnt.
One home had "pieces of brains on the floor." Blood was everywhere. Around 78 people were shot at close range, stabbed, or "burned alive." Targeted Qubeir residents were pro-Assad loyalists.
They were murdered for supporting the wrong side. Pro-Gaddafi Libyans were killed the same way. Reuters may have inadvertently absolved Assad, saying:
Qubeir killings replicated Houla deaths two weeks earlier. "The conflict is becoming increasingly sectarian. (Pro-Assad) shabbiha militiamen from the Alawite community appear to be off the leash...."
UK journalist Alex Thomson said Syrian insurgents tried to get him killed. On June 8, his blog site headlined "Set up to be shot in Syria's no man's land?" saying:
Dead journalists are bad news for Assad. His Channel 4 News team travelled in UN vehicles. They were abandoned when surrounded by "shouting militia."
They were fired on. They had to take evasive action. The incident took place last weekend. Thomson and crew are back home.
Were they set up to be shot, he asked?
"Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind."
"We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land."
"At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead-end."
"Predictably the black car....led us to the trap....I'm quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot...."
"The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town."
"Please, do not for one moment believe that my experience with the rebels....was a one-off."
Human rights lawyer Nawaf al Thani tweeted him. He was also set up. Thomson believes so have others getting too close to insurgents.
"In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what's the big deal in sending a van full of journalist into the killing zone" to die?”
On June 8, a New York Times editorial headlined "Assad, the Butcher," saying:
Qubeir was "the fourth massacre in two weeks."
"Despite his claims that the violence is the work of 'terrorists,' (Assad) has a lot to hide. On Thursday, Syrian troops and pro-government supporters barred the monitors from Qubeir, and the monitors were fired upon."
Fact check
Insurgents fired on monitors, not Assad forces. It wasn't the first time and won't be the last. Earlier, observer head General Robert Mood had a close call.
He could have been killed but said little. The incident passed. It's forgotten. Maybe it warned him to support pro-Western forces, not Assad.
It happened again. On May 9, Reuters headlined "Syria rebels kill 7, bomb explodes near UN monitors," saying:
Eight Syrian soldiers were wounded. They were escorting UN monitors. Mood led them. He downplayed the incident, saying:
"The important thing is not speculating about who was the target, what was the target, but to make the point that this is what the Syrian people are seeing every day and it needs to stop."
Speaking forthrightly might help. Downplaying attacks that could have killed him betrays his mandate. So does not naming responsible parties.
Assad forces were protecting him. Insurgents attacked. Twice he escaped unharmed. Maybe next time he won't be as lucky.
As explained above, monitors went to Qubeir. They were delayed but not deterred. Neither were journalists accompanying them.
According to Times-think, Annan's peace plan "g(ave) Russia, China and some other" Security Council members "six more weeks to excuse their inaction."
Russia and China are "complicit in more than 12,000 Syrian deaths....A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman was still in a fantasy world on Friday, calling on both sides in the conflict to stop the fighting."
"....Washington needs to marshal all of the pressure and shaming it can find" to get both countries to bend.
Fact check
Moscow and Beijing reject foreign intervention. They understand Washington's regime change plans. They don't want Syria to replicate Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They support conflict resolution, not more war.
They have no blood on their hands. Obama's are irreparably stained. Scoundrel media share guilt. Promoting bloodshed is unconscionable.
"With every new atrocity, calls for military action grow."
The Times effectively endorsed it. Imperial interests alone matter. Mass killing followed by more of it is a small price to pay. Who's keeping count?
A same day Washington Post editorial headlined "The UN's Syria disaster," saying:
"THIS MAY BE remembered as the week in which the illusion that the bloodshed in Syria could be stopped by United Nations diplomats was destroyed once and for all. Inside the country, the killing sharply and sickeningly accelerated."
These type comments come perilously close to endorsing war.
Regime change "in Syria" depends on "Assad (being) confronted with irresistible force."
This one crosses the line.
How long Russia and China can prevent what looks certain remains unclear. They're trying. On June 8, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:
"There will not be a Security Council mandate for outside intervention, I guarantee you that."
"There are sides in the Syria conflict, especially the so called (opposition) Syrian National Council, who are saying no negotiations with the regime, only continued armed battle until the Security Council gives a mandate for outside intervention."
"Either we gather everyone with influence at the negotiating table or once again we depart into ideology... where it is declared shamelessly that everything is the fault of the regime, while everyone else are angels and therefore the regime should be changed."
On June 9, SANA state media reported Syrian UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari saying Qubeir killings occurred hours before armed clashes happened. He added that Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia, and other media aired fake videos.
"The Syrian TVs will air the true images of the massacre," he explained. "The instigative media channels have taken to airing such fabrications before the UN Security Council meetings."
Responsible gunmen came from Jreijes village. Residents called police for help.
"What is taking place in some parts of Syria is an unjustifiable heinous massacre, but some statements made during this session are part of the butchery, since the diagnosis of the situation is incorrect as it is based on political and media operation rooms that are detached from the situation on the ground."
"The Syrian government extends a hand of reconciliation with all political powers whose hands are clear of the Syrian blood to reach the shores of safety we all spire to."
"Are suicide bombings that targeted Syria acts in self-defense? Are attacks on hospitals, medical staffs and schools democratic (acts)?''
On June 9, Press TV reported that insurgents attacked Damascus infrastructure. A power station was shelled. Blackouts followed.
"Gunmen have also reportedly targeted military units charged with protecting an oilfield in" Dayr al-Zawr.
Car bombs killed police and civilians in Damascus. Another one killed police in Idlib.
Insurgents bear full responsibility for months of violence. Assad is right calling them "outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups." He also said unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.
The buck stops in Washington. Media scoundrels share blame. Don't they always?
A Final Comment
On June 8, DEBKAfile said Moscow "flatly rejected (Obama's) proposal to post 5,000 armed UN monitors in Syria, most of them Russian troops, as the core of a new plan to resolve the Syrian crisis."
DF said Russia is getting more hardline. Talks aren't being held to replace Assad. Annan's peace plan failed. It wasn't designed to succeed.
Washington's mission to Moscow reached a "dead end." The "Syrian conflict and Iranian nuclear controversy are becoming inextricably intermeshed."
P5+1 countries are "seriously considering not turning up for their third round of nuclear talks in Moscow on June 18 - 19."
DF also says "Russia is prepared to use military power to defend Iran and Syria."
Last February, Russia Today interviewed Colonel-General (ret.) Leonid Ivashov. He's a former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff member.
He said maneuvers conducted at the time were meant to "demonstrate Russia's readiness to use military power to defend its national interests and to bolster its political position."
Iran and Syria are allies, he said. They're "guaranteed partners of Russia."
"A strike against" either country "is an indirect strike against Russia and its interests. Russia would lose important positions and allies in the Arab world. Therefore, by defending Syria (and Iran), Russia is defending its own interests."
He added that Russia is "defending the entire world from Fascism. Everybody should acknowledge that Fascism is making strides on our planet. What they did in Libya is nearly identical to what Hitler and his armies did against Poland and then Russia. Today, therefore, Russia is defending the entire world from Fascism."
On June 4, DF said Obama this fall plans to implement "an embargo on aircraft and sea vessels visiting Iranian ports. Any national airline or international aircraft (entering) Iran will be barred from US and West European airports."
The same holds for "private and government-owned vessels, including oil tankers."
Obama keeps advancing the ball closer to war. First Syria, then Iran, then other targeted states.
Canadian psychiatrist Robert Hare describes psychopathic behavior clinically. He said 10% on Wall Street exhibit it. It holds for Obama, top administration officials, and congressional party leaders.
They're amoral, deceitful, manipulative, and completely self-interested. They breach social and legal standards. They suffer no guilt. They exhibit callous unconcern for others.
They disregard safety and can't maintain long-term relationships. They're anti-social and have no sense of moral responsibility. They're "without conscience." Clinically, they're psychopathic. "(T)heir game is self-gratification at" the expense of others.
They're all take and no give. They flagrantly violate societal rules. They're psychopathically vicious. They're indifferent to human suffering.
Hare stressed that "if we can't spot them, we are doomed to be their victims, both as individuals and as a society."
Perhaps he had George Bush, Dick Cheney, Obama, Romney, and other amoral hawks in mind.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War"
http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html
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
Stepped Up Media War on Syria
by Stephen Lendman
When America goes to war or plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep. Journalism is the first casualty. Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure.
Cheerleading propaganda is relentless. Readers and viewers are betrayed. Imperial wars are called liberating ones. Separating fact from fiction is challenging.
Only replacing independent regimes with pro-Western puppet ones matters. Media scoundrels support it. Blood on their hands doesn't deter them. Steady income eases conscience pangs. Soul selling pays well.
NYT and Washington Post editorials discussed below reflect the latest White House statement on Syria. It reads like bad fiction, saying:
"The United States strongly condemns the outrageous targeted killings of civilians including women and children in Al-Qubeir in Hama province as reported by multiple credible sources."
"This, coupled with the Syrian regime’s refusal to let UN observers into the area to verify these reports, is an affront to human dignity and justice."
"There is no justification for this regime’s continued defiance of its obligations under the Annan Plan, and Assad’s continued abdication of responsibility for these horrific acts has no credibility and only further underscores the illegitimate and immoral nature of his rule."
"The future of Syria will be determined by the Syrian people, and the international community must come together in support of their legitimate aspirations."
"We call once more on all nations to abandon support for this brutal and illegitimate regime, and to join together to support a political transition in Syria—one that upholds the promise of a future for which far too many have already died."
Fact check
Assad security forces and/or supporters had nothing to do with Houla and Qubeir village massacres. Western-recruited death squads bear full responsibility. Claiming otherwise won't change facts.
According to Reuters, UN monitors visited Qubeir. So did journalists accompanying them. Claiming otherwise ignores what some media sources reported.
"The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air and body parts lay scattered around the deserted" village, said Reuters.
UN spokeswoman Sausan Ghosheh said one house showed bullet and rocket fire damage. Another was burnt.
One home had "pieces of brains on the floor." Blood was everywhere. Around 78 people were shot at close range, stabbed, or "burned alive." Targeted Qubeir residents were pro-Assad loyalists.
They were murdered for supporting the wrong side. Pro-Gaddafi Libyans were killed the same way. Reuters may have inadvertently absolved Assad, saying:
Qubeir killings replicated Houla deaths two weeks earlier. "The conflict is becoming increasingly sectarian. (Pro-Assad) shabbiha militiamen from the Alawite community appear to be off the leash...."
UK journalist Alex Thomson said Syrian insurgents tried to get him killed. On June 8, his blog site headlined "Set up to be shot in Syria's no man's land?" saying:
Dead journalists are bad news for Assad. His Channel 4 News team travelled in UN vehicles. They were abandoned when surrounded by "shouting militia."
They were fired on. They had to take evasive action. The incident took place last weekend. Thomson and crew are back home.
Were they set up to be shot, he asked?
"Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind."
"We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land."
"At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead-end."
"Predictably the black car....led us to the trap....I'm quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot...."
"The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town."
"Please, do not for one moment believe that my experience with the rebels....was a one-off."
Human rights lawyer Nawaf al Thani tweeted him. He was also set up. Thomson believes so have others getting too close to insurgents.
"In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what's the big deal in sending a van full of journalist into the killing zone" to die?”
On June 8, a New York Times editorial headlined "Assad, the Butcher," saying:
Qubeir was "the fourth massacre in two weeks."
"Despite his claims that the violence is the work of 'terrorists,' (Assad) has a lot to hide. On Thursday, Syrian troops and pro-government supporters barred the monitors from Qubeir, and the monitors were fired upon."
Fact check
Insurgents fired on monitors, not Assad forces. It wasn't the first time and won't be the last. Earlier, observer head General Robert Mood had a close call.
He could have been killed but said little. The incident passed. It's forgotten. Maybe it warned him to support pro-Western forces, not Assad.
It happened again. On May 9, Reuters headlined "Syria rebels kill 7, bomb explodes near UN monitors," saying:
Eight Syrian soldiers were wounded. They were escorting UN monitors. Mood led them. He downplayed the incident, saying:
"The important thing is not speculating about who was the target, what was the target, but to make the point that this is what the Syrian people are seeing every day and it needs to stop."
Speaking forthrightly might help. Downplaying attacks that could have killed him betrays his mandate. So does not naming responsible parties.
Assad forces were protecting him. Insurgents attacked. Twice he escaped unharmed. Maybe next time he won't be as lucky.
As explained above, monitors went to Qubeir. They were delayed but not deterred. Neither were journalists accompanying them.
According to Times-think, Annan's peace plan "g(ave) Russia, China and some other" Security Council members "six more weeks to excuse their inaction."
Russia and China are "complicit in more than 12,000 Syrian deaths....A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman was still in a fantasy world on Friday, calling on both sides in the conflict to stop the fighting."
"....Washington needs to marshal all of the pressure and shaming it can find" to get both countries to bend.
Fact check
Moscow and Beijing reject foreign intervention. They understand Washington's regime change plans. They don't want Syria to replicate Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They support conflict resolution, not more war.
They have no blood on their hands. Obama's are irreparably stained. Scoundrel media share guilt. Promoting bloodshed is unconscionable.
"With every new atrocity, calls for military action grow."
The Times effectively endorsed it. Imperial interests alone matter. Mass killing followed by more of it is a small price to pay. Who's keeping count?
A same day Washington Post editorial headlined "The UN's Syria disaster," saying:
"THIS MAY BE remembered as the week in which the illusion that the bloodshed in Syria could be stopped by United Nations diplomats was destroyed once and for all. Inside the country, the killing sharply and sickeningly accelerated."
These type comments come perilously close to endorsing war.
Regime change "in Syria" depends on "Assad (being) confronted with irresistible force."
This one crosses the line.
How long Russia and China can prevent what looks certain remains unclear. They're trying. On June 8, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:
"There will not be a Security Council mandate for outside intervention, I guarantee you that."
"There are sides in the Syria conflict, especially the so called (opposition) Syrian National Council, who are saying no negotiations with the regime, only continued armed battle until the Security Council gives a mandate for outside intervention."
"Either we gather everyone with influence at the negotiating table or once again we depart into ideology... where it is declared shamelessly that everything is the fault of the regime, while everyone else are angels and therefore the regime should be changed."
On June 9, SANA state media reported Syrian UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari saying Qubeir killings occurred hours before armed clashes happened. He added that Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia, and other media aired fake videos.
"The Syrian TVs will air the true images of the massacre," he explained. "The instigative media channels have taken to airing such fabrications before the UN Security Council meetings."
Responsible gunmen came from Jreijes village. Residents called police for help.
"What is taking place in some parts of Syria is an unjustifiable heinous massacre, but some statements made during this session are part of the butchery, since the diagnosis of the situation is incorrect as it is based on political and media operation rooms that are detached from the situation on the ground."
"The Syrian government extends a hand of reconciliation with all political powers whose hands are clear of the Syrian blood to reach the shores of safety we all spire to."
"Are suicide bombings that targeted Syria acts in self-defense? Are attacks on hospitals, medical staffs and schools democratic (acts)?''
On June 9, Press TV reported that insurgents attacked Damascus infrastructure. A power station was shelled. Blackouts followed.
"Gunmen have also reportedly targeted military units charged with protecting an oilfield in" Dayr al-Zawr.
Car bombs killed police and civilians in Damascus. Another one killed police in Idlib.
Insurgents bear full responsibility for months of violence. Assad is right calling them "outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups." He also said unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.
The buck stops in Washington. Media scoundrels share blame. Don't they always?
A Final Comment
On June 8, DEBKAfile said Moscow "flatly rejected (Obama's) proposal to post 5,000 armed UN monitors in Syria, most of them Russian troops, as the core of a new plan to resolve the Syrian crisis."
DF said Russia is getting more hardline. Talks aren't being held to replace Assad. Annan's peace plan failed. It wasn't designed to succeed.
Washington's mission to Moscow reached a "dead end." The "Syrian conflict and Iranian nuclear controversy are becoming inextricably intermeshed."
P5+1 countries are "seriously considering not turning up for their third round of nuclear talks in Moscow on June 18 - 19."
DF also says "Russia is prepared to use military power to defend Iran and Syria."
Last February, Russia Today interviewed Colonel-General (ret.) Leonid Ivashov. He's a former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff member.
He said maneuvers conducted at the time were meant to "demonstrate Russia's readiness to use military power to defend its national interests and to bolster its political position."
Iran and Syria are allies, he said. They're "guaranteed partners of Russia."
"A strike against" either country "is an indirect strike against Russia and its interests. Russia would lose important positions and allies in the Arab world. Therefore, by defending Syria (and Iran), Russia is defending its own interests."
He added that Russia is "defending the entire world from Fascism. Everybody should acknowledge that Fascism is making strides on our planet. What they did in Libya is nearly identical to what Hitler and his armies did against Poland and then Russia. Today, therefore, Russia is defending the entire world from Fascism."
On June 4, DF said Obama this fall plans to implement "an embargo on aircraft and sea vessels visiting Iranian ports. Any national airline or international aircraft (entering) Iran will be barred from US and West European airports."
The same holds for "private and government-owned vessels, including oil tankers."
Obama keeps advancing the ball closer to war. First Syria, then Iran, then other targeted states.
Canadian psychiatrist Robert Hare describes psychopathic behavior clinically. He said 10% on Wall Street exhibit it. It holds for Obama, top administration officials, and congressional party leaders.
They're amoral, deceitful, manipulative, and completely self-interested. They breach social and legal standards. They suffer no guilt. They exhibit callous unconcern for others.
They disregard safety and can't maintain long-term relationships. They're anti-social and have no sense of moral responsibility. They're "without conscience." Clinically, they're psychopathic. "(T)heir game is self-gratification at" the expense of others.
They're all take and no give. They flagrantly violate societal rules. They're psychopathically vicious. They're indifferent to human suffering.
Hare stressed that "if we can't spot them, we are doomed to be their victims, both as individuals and as a society."
Perhaps he had George Bush, Dick Cheney, Obama, Romney, and other amoral hawks in mind.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War"
http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html
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
From The Bob Feldman Blog-U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert's New Autobiography: A Review of `Love and Struggle'
Friday, April 27, 2012
U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert's New Autobiography: A Review of `Love and Struggle'
LOVE AND STRUGGLE:
My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond
by David Gilbert
Oakland : PM Press 2012
Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond is a well-written, intellectually and politically exciting, and emotionally moving autobiography. Published by the alternative non-commercial collective PM Press, it presents a more balanced picture of Gilbert than has been portrayed in the U.S. mass media since his arrest in 1981. Most people have previously had the chance to hear Gilbert speak for himself only in Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2003 Academy Award-nominated documentary film, The Weather Underground.
Love and Struggle provides its readers with a sweeping history of the growth and development of the Movement of the 1960s that reflects the historical perspective of politically radical anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist/organizers of the 1960s. Gilbert explains how he—the son of a toy company production manager and scoutmaster who grew up in upper middle-class Brookline, Massachusetts in the 1950s, “went on to become an Eagle Scout and also to win the highest religious medal for Jewish scouts” and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1966—ended up, at the age of 37, “handcuffed and getting worked over in the back of a police car” on the night of October 20, 1981; before being, subsequently, indicted, tried and convicted of felony murder and sentenced to 75 years-to-life in prison. Like Dave Dellinger’s autobiography, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter, Gilbert’s Love and Struggle documents the sweeping life changes experienced by many radicals of the time.
He recalls how the impact of Martin Luther King and the late 1950s/early 1960s Civil Rights Movement led him to approach religious leaders in Greater Boston’s white community about allowing the local NAACP chapter to set up anti-racist education programs for white people. A friend’s acquaintance with a Vietnamese exchange student inspired him to write an article in his school’s student newspaper in 1961 “saying America was in danger of getting drawn into a major civil war in South Vietnam, and on the wrong side at that,” while still a liberal anti-communist high school senior.
Love and Struggle then revisits Gilbert’s political, academic and personal life and the history of the New Left Movement of the Sixties after his arrival on Columbia University’s campus in the Morningside Heights/West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan . In one section, “The 1960s and The Making Of A Revolutionary,” Gilbert explains why he and other New Left anti-war and anti-racist activists, along with Black Liberation Movement activists, became more politically radicalized, anti-imperialist and militant in their political thinking and street actions during the decade; and he also describes how he went about organizing students into SDS chapters at Columbia, Barnard and the New School for Social Research prior to the historic Columbia Student Revolt that shut-down Columbia University in 1968. He recalls, for example, how, in the spring of 1965, anti-war student activists at Columbia “set-up literature tables on the main plaza on campus, and we’d be there all day discussing and debating with those who stopped by.” He incisively observes:
I don’t want to give the wrong impression that our great arguments immediately turned people around. It is rare indeed that someone will give up on presuppositions in the course of a discussion. Ideas don’t change that quickly, and ego makes it hard for most of us to readily admit we are wrong. Organizers who expect instant conversions will become overbearing. Instead, our educational work, planted seeds and helped people see there were alternative interpretations and sources of information, so that once events developed to create more stress—the war intensified and the military draft expanded—people had a way to see that something was wrong, instead of just becoming more fervent about escalations to `win.’”
Given the decisions of university administrations at Columbia, Harvard and Stanford in 2011 to bring ROTC back to U.S. elite university campuses that had terminated their campus programs in response to late 1960s anti-ROTC campaigns of campus SDS chapters, Gilbert’s timely reference to his participation in a May 1965 anti-ROTC protest on Columbia’s campus may also be of special interest to 21st-century anti-war student activists:
“…We carried out a valuable early example of civil disobedience against university complicity with the war machine. This action was initiated by the civil rights group CORE, which planned to repeat an action done the preceding year, when a few of them sat-in to disrupt a Naval ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) ceremony…The administration moved the ceremony inside and when we marched to the door we were locked out, so people jammed up in the doorway and refused to disperse. The university called in the police, who started to pull people away, one by one…The cops twisted the tie around my neck, choking me, until, fortunately, it broke. They dragged me away and threw me down, ripping my jacket almost in half…
“Afterward, Columbia threatened to suspend the `ringleaders,’ but we were able to rally a lot of support…Some liberals wanted to reduce all organizing to defense of the right to dissent; but we maintained a balance, building a coalition on those terms while continuing to speak out against having the military on campus. And there was a tendency for students to get pumped up about how they had been subject to `police brutality.’…But I knew from my civil rights work that our bruises were minor compared to what was done routinely in Harlem…”
In the following section, “The Most Sane/Insane of Times,” Gilbert looks back in a self-critical way at the 1969/1970 period of New Left Movement history. During this period, the Weatherman faction attempted to mobilize anti-war youth to “bring the war home” to Chicago in the October 1969 “Days of Rage” protests; the Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial began; Black Panther Party organizers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated; and Gilbert’s best friend, former Columbia SDS Vice-Chairman Ted Gold, and two other members of the Weatherman faction were accidentally killed in a West Village townhouse explosion, while building bombs to target a military base, possibly including civilians. Living in a Weatherman collective in Denver at the time, Gilbert provides readers with an interesting sense of how members and leaders of the Weatherman faction reacted on a political and emotional level to the shock of hearing the news about the deaths of their three comrades.
Love and Struggle’s next section, “Underground,” provides an exciting and vivid recollection by Gilbert of what it was like to be a member of the Weather Underground Organization [WUO] whose members were being hunted by the FBI. He also discusses the internal political differences and divisive debates that contributed to the demise of the WUO by the late 1970s.
The last four sections of Gilbert’s autobiography tell of his life in the nearly 35 years since the collapse of the WUO. He recalls his aboveground life as a furniture mover and Men Against Sexism activist in Denver in the late 1970s; some of the political, emotional and psychological reasons that he chose to resume his underground lifestyle in 1979; his return East and involvement in underground activity in support of the Black Liberation Army [BLA]. Stating that “I deeply regret the loss of lives and the pain for those families caused by our actions on October 20, 1981,” Gilbert also engages in self-criticism and self-analysis about the political appropriateness of his decision in 1979 to begin working in a clandestine way as an ally of a BLA unit “on such a high-risk tactical level with so little knowledge of the political context.” He cites “my corruption of ego” as possibly influencing the political choices he made after the collapse of the WUO, when he “was anxious to reestablish myself as a `revolutionary on the highest level,’ and `as the most anti-racist white activist.’”
Gilbert also describes, in an emotionally open way, how he reunited underground with fellow WUO member Kathy Boudin and their decision to become parents while underground. His account of how they prepared for the birth of their son in August 1980, how he felt at the time of his son’s birth and during the first year of his life and the sadness of his separation from both after his and Boudin’s arrests (she was released in 2003 after serving 22 years) are some of his most moving passages.
Some readers who were politically active in the Movement of the 1960s and 1970s may have a different political view of U.S. white working-class people’s historical revolutionary potential or the primacy of internal national liberation struggles within the US than what Gilbert presents in Love and Struggle. But there’s so much great political and psychological analysis of both U.S. society and the inter-personal dynamics within the U.S. left movement in this fascinating book—which also resembles an exciting mystery novel in some parts—that Love and Struggle should be required reading for everyone interested in 1960s and 1970s U.S. Movement history and how this history relates to current struggles.
Since David Gilbert has already been a political prisoner for more than 30 years he (as well as over 60 other U.S. political prisoners) should finally be released by U.S. state and federal government officials in 2012. In the North of Ireland, Italy and Germany, most of the political activists of the 1970s and 1980s who were involved in armed actions similar in nature to the one Gilbert was involved in were generally released from prison by the early 21st century. So why shouldn’t Love and Struggle author Gilbert and the BLA members who are also still imprisoned now also be released by the government authorities in the United States? For as Gilbert concludes in Love and Struggle’s “Afterward” section: “The book ends here; the struggle of course continues…with love and for the unity of humankind.”
U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert's New Autobiography: A Review of `Love and Struggle'
LOVE AND STRUGGLE:
My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond
by David Gilbert
Oakland : PM Press 2012
Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond is a well-written, intellectually and politically exciting, and emotionally moving autobiography. Published by the alternative non-commercial collective PM Press, it presents a more balanced picture of Gilbert than has been portrayed in the U.S. mass media since his arrest in 1981. Most people have previously had the chance to hear Gilbert speak for himself only in Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2003 Academy Award-nominated documentary film, The Weather Underground.
Love and Struggle provides its readers with a sweeping history of the growth and development of the Movement of the 1960s that reflects the historical perspective of politically radical anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist/organizers of the 1960s. Gilbert explains how he—the son of a toy company production manager and scoutmaster who grew up in upper middle-class Brookline, Massachusetts in the 1950s, “went on to become an Eagle Scout and also to win the highest religious medal for Jewish scouts” and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1966—ended up, at the age of 37, “handcuffed and getting worked over in the back of a police car” on the night of October 20, 1981; before being, subsequently, indicted, tried and convicted of felony murder and sentenced to 75 years-to-life in prison. Like Dave Dellinger’s autobiography, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter, Gilbert’s Love and Struggle documents the sweeping life changes experienced by many radicals of the time.
He recalls how the impact of Martin Luther King and the late 1950s/early 1960s Civil Rights Movement led him to approach religious leaders in Greater Boston’s white community about allowing the local NAACP chapter to set up anti-racist education programs for white people. A friend’s acquaintance with a Vietnamese exchange student inspired him to write an article in his school’s student newspaper in 1961 “saying America was in danger of getting drawn into a major civil war in South Vietnam, and on the wrong side at that,” while still a liberal anti-communist high school senior.
Love and Struggle then revisits Gilbert’s political, academic and personal life and the history of the New Left Movement of the Sixties after his arrival on Columbia University’s campus in the Morningside Heights/West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan . In one section, “The 1960s and The Making Of A Revolutionary,” Gilbert explains why he and other New Left anti-war and anti-racist activists, along with Black Liberation Movement activists, became more politically radicalized, anti-imperialist and militant in their political thinking and street actions during the decade; and he also describes how he went about organizing students into SDS chapters at Columbia, Barnard and the New School for Social Research prior to the historic Columbia Student Revolt that shut-down Columbia University in 1968. He recalls, for example, how, in the spring of 1965, anti-war student activists at Columbia “set-up literature tables on the main plaza on campus, and we’d be there all day discussing and debating with those who stopped by.” He incisively observes:
I don’t want to give the wrong impression that our great arguments immediately turned people around. It is rare indeed that someone will give up on presuppositions in the course of a discussion. Ideas don’t change that quickly, and ego makes it hard for most of us to readily admit we are wrong. Organizers who expect instant conversions will become overbearing. Instead, our educational work, planted seeds and helped people see there were alternative interpretations and sources of information, so that once events developed to create more stress—the war intensified and the military draft expanded—people had a way to see that something was wrong, instead of just becoming more fervent about escalations to `win.’”
Given the decisions of university administrations at Columbia, Harvard and Stanford in 2011 to bring ROTC back to U.S. elite university campuses that had terminated their campus programs in response to late 1960s anti-ROTC campaigns of campus SDS chapters, Gilbert’s timely reference to his participation in a May 1965 anti-ROTC protest on Columbia’s campus may also be of special interest to 21st-century anti-war student activists:
“…We carried out a valuable early example of civil disobedience against university complicity with the war machine. This action was initiated by the civil rights group CORE, which planned to repeat an action done the preceding year, when a few of them sat-in to disrupt a Naval ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) ceremony…The administration moved the ceremony inside and when we marched to the door we were locked out, so people jammed up in the doorway and refused to disperse. The university called in the police, who started to pull people away, one by one…The cops twisted the tie around my neck, choking me, until, fortunately, it broke. They dragged me away and threw me down, ripping my jacket almost in half…
“Afterward, Columbia threatened to suspend the `ringleaders,’ but we were able to rally a lot of support…Some liberals wanted to reduce all organizing to defense of the right to dissent; but we maintained a balance, building a coalition on those terms while continuing to speak out against having the military on campus. And there was a tendency for students to get pumped up about how they had been subject to `police brutality.’…But I knew from my civil rights work that our bruises were minor compared to what was done routinely in Harlem…”
In the following section, “The Most Sane/Insane of Times,” Gilbert looks back in a self-critical way at the 1969/1970 period of New Left Movement history. During this period, the Weatherman faction attempted to mobilize anti-war youth to “bring the war home” to Chicago in the October 1969 “Days of Rage” protests; the Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial began; Black Panther Party organizers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated; and Gilbert’s best friend, former Columbia SDS Vice-Chairman Ted Gold, and two other members of the Weatherman faction were accidentally killed in a West Village townhouse explosion, while building bombs to target a military base, possibly including civilians. Living in a Weatherman collective in Denver at the time, Gilbert provides readers with an interesting sense of how members and leaders of the Weatherman faction reacted on a political and emotional level to the shock of hearing the news about the deaths of their three comrades.
Love and Struggle’s next section, “Underground,” provides an exciting and vivid recollection by Gilbert of what it was like to be a member of the Weather Underground Organization [WUO] whose members were being hunted by the FBI. He also discusses the internal political differences and divisive debates that contributed to the demise of the WUO by the late 1970s.
The last four sections of Gilbert’s autobiography tell of his life in the nearly 35 years since the collapse of the WUO. He recalls his aboveground life as a furniture mover and Men Against Sexism activist in Denver in the late 1970s; some of the political, emotional and psychological reasons that he chose to resume his underground lifestyle in 1979; his return East and involvement in underground activity in support of the Black Liberation Army [BLA]. Stating that “I deeply regret the loss of lives and the pain for those families caused by our actions on October 20, 1981,” Gilbert also engages in self-criticism and self-analysis about the political appropriateness of his decision in 1979 to begin working in a clandestine way as an ally of a BLA unit “on such a high-risk tactical level with so little knowledge of the political context.” He cites “my corruption of ego” as possibly influencing the political choices he made after the collapse of the WUO, when he “was anxious to reestablish myself as a `revolutionary on the highest level,’ and `as the most anti-racist white activist.’”
Gilbert also describes, in an emotionally open way, how he reunited underground with fellow WUO member Kathy Boudin and their decision to become parents while underground. His account of how they prepared for the birth of their son in August 1980, how he felt at the time of his son’s birth and during the first year of his life and the sadness of his separation from both after his and Boudin’s arrests (she was released in 2003 after serving 22 years) are some of his most moving passages.
Some readers who were politically active in the Movement of the 1960s and 1970s may have a different political view of U.S. white working-class people’s historical revolutionary potential or the primacy of internal national liberation struggles within the US than what Gilbert presents in Love and Struggle. But there’s so much great political and psychological analysis of both U.S. society and the inter-personal dynamics within the U.S. left movement in this fascinating book—which also resembles an exciting mystery novel in some parts—that Love and Struggle should be required reading for everyone interested in 1960s and 1970s U.S. Movement history and how this history relates to current struggles.
Since David Gilbert has already been a political prisoner for more than 30 years he (as well as over 60 other U.S. political prisoners) should finally be released by U.S. state and federal government officials in 2012. In the North of Ireland, Italy and Germany, most of the political activists of the 1970s and 1980s who were involved in armed actions similar in nature to the one Gilbert was involved in were generally released from prison by the early 21st century. So why shouldn’t Love and Struggle author Gilbert and the BLA members who are also still imprisoned now also be released by the government authorities in the United States? For as Gilbert concludes in Love and Struggle’s “Afterward” section: “The book ends here; the struggle of course continues…with love and for the unity of humankind.”
From The Tarek Mehanna Defense Commitee Via Boston IndyMedia-Tarek Mehanna Moved to New Federal Holding Facility, Audio of Sentencing Statement Released
Tarek Mehanna Moved to New Federal Holding Facility, Audio of Sentencing Statement Released
by Boston IMC
(No verified email address)
12 May 2012
The following statement was released today by the Tarek Mehanna Support Committee.
1) Early this morning an anonymously leaked audio recording of Tarek giving his statement at the sentencing hearing was made public and is now being circulated!
http://boston.indymedia.org/usermedia/audio/4/tarek_sentencing.mp3
2) *Tarek has been transferred again. *Now he is in Manhattan at the MCC New York. We have no idea when he will be moved again. Chances are he will be placed in a federal prison, rather than these detention centers, very soon. Please pray for him and his family. Will keep you all posted.
Expect mail sent earlier this week (to the MDC Brooklyn) to be returned. If you would like to send him mail at his current location, please do, but expect that he could be moved at any moment.
Tarek Mehanna
ID # 05315748
MCC NEW YORK
METROPOLITAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER
150 PARK ROW
NEW YORK, NY 10007
The full text of Tarek's statement follows.
In the name of God, the most Gracious, the most Merciful.
Exactly four years ago this month, I was finishing my work shift at a local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The “easy “ way, as they explained, was that I become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard – and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people had offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by charging me with the “crime” of supporting the mujahidin fighting the occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or, as they like to call them, “the terrorists.” I wasn’t born in a Muslim country, though. I was born and raised right here in America and this is something which angers many people: how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and I’m no different. So, in more ways than one, it’s because of America that I am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigm – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendents of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III. I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forces – an insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. As a kid I even went on school field trips to the sites of its battlefields, some just blocks from this courthouse. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the civil rights struggle. I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa.
Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend them – regardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home.
From all the historical figures I learned about, one stood out above the rest. I was impressed by many things about Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of transformation, his transformation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “X” by Spike Lee, it’s over three and a half hours long, and the Malcolm at the beginning is different from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim performing the Hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr. Malcolm’s life taught me that Islam is not something inherited; it’s not a culture or ethnicity. It’s a way of life, a state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come from or how they were raised. This led me to look deeper into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were clueless about, the question that drives the rich & famous to depression and suicide from being unable to answer: what is the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it also answered the question of how we’re supposed to exist. And since there’s no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Qur’an and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the journey of understanding what this was all about, the implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an individual, for the people around me, for the world. And the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.
With that, my attention turned to what was happening to other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere I looked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the Muslims of Bosnia. I learned what the Russians were doing to the Muslims of Chechnya. I learned what Israel had done in Lebanon – and what it continues to do in Palestine – with the full backing of the United States.
And I learned what America itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf War, and the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq. I learned about the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine, and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and how – according to the United Nations – over half a million children perished as a result. I remember a clip from a ‘60 Minutes’ interview of Madeline Albright where she expressed her view that these dead children were “worth it.” I watched on September 11th as a group of people felt driven to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at the deaths of these children. I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of ‘Shock & Awe’ in the opening days of the invasion – the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking out of their foreheads (of course, none of this was shown on CNN). I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslims – including a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlers – were shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as they slept by US Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women don’t even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, as she is being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the seventeen Afghan Muslims – mostly mothers and their kids – shot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses. These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of brotherhood – that each Muslim woman in the world is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. In other words, I couldn’t witness these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them.
I mentioned Paul Revere – when he jumped on a horse and went on his midnight ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons stored there by the Minutemen. By the time they got to Concord, they found the Minuteman waiting for them, weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution. There’s an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen did that day. It was a word repeated many times in this courtroom. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial was about. All those videos and translations and childish bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he edited that sentence,’ and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to “kill Americans” at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little “terror plots,” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – whether they are Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It’s what I’ve always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it’s not extremism. It’s the simple logic of self-defense. It’s what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you don’t have to agree with my beliefs – no. Anyone with common sense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home. But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed “terrorism” and the people defending themselves against those who came to kill them from across the ocean become “the terrorists” who are “killing Americans.” The mentality that America was victimized by when British soldiers walked these streets 2 ½ centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. It’s the mentality of colonialism. When Sgt. Bales shot those Afghans to death last month, I followed the discussion in the media just to see what people were saying and what I noticed was that all of the focus was on him – his life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his home – as if he was the victim. I didn’t see anyone talking about the people he actually killed, as if they’re not real, they’re not humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to everyone in society, whether they realize it or not. Even with my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining, and clarifying before they were finally able to think outside the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected jury under the premise that they’re my “impartial peers,” I mean, come on. I wasn’t tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me – not because they needed to, but simply because they could.
I learned one more thing in history class: America has historically supported the most unjust policies against its minorities – practices that were even protected by the law – only to look back later and ask: ‘What were we thinking?’ Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during World War II – each was widely accepted by American society, each was defended by the Supreme Court. But as time passed and America changed, both people and courts looked back and asked ‘What were we thinking?’ Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the South African government, and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were, that it was not he who was the terrorist, and they released him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is subjective – even this whole business of “terrorism” and who is a “terrorist.” It all depends on the time and place and who the superpower happens to be at the moment.
In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, I’m the only one standing here in an orange jumpsuit, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But history repeats itself. One day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a “terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moments she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.
The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with “killing Americans.” But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.
-Tariq Mehanna
4/12/12
See also:
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/214806/index.php
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/214825/index.php
This work is in the public domain.
by Boston IMC
(No verified email address)
12 May 2012
The following statement was released today by the Tarek Mehanna Support Committee.
1) Early this morning an anonymously leaked audio recording of Tarek giving his statement at the sentencing hearing was made public and is now being circulated!
http://boston.indymedia.org/usermedia/audio/4/tarek_sentencing.mp3
2) *Tarek has been transferred again. *Now he is in Manhattan at the MCC New York. We have no idea when he will be moved again. Chances are he will be placed in a federal prison, rather than these detention centers, very soon. Please pray for him and his family. Will keep you all posted.
Expect mail sent earlier this week (to the MDC Brooklyn) to be returned. If you would like to send him mail at his current location, please do, but expect that he could be moved at any moment.
Tarek Mehanna
ID # 05315748
MCC NEW YORK
METROPOLITAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER
150 PARK ROW
NEW YORK, NY 10007
The full text of Tarek's statement follows.
In the name of God, the most Gracious, the most Merciful.
Exactly four years ago this month, I was finishing my work shift at a local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The “easy “ way, as they explained, was that I become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard – and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people had offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by charging me with the “crime” of supporting the mujahidin fighting the occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or, as they like to call them, “the terrorists.” I wasn’t born in a Muslim country, though. I was born and raised right here in America and this is something which angers many people: how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and I’m no different. So, in more ways than one, it’s because of America that I am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigm – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendents of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III. I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forces – an insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. As a kid I even went on school field trips to the sites of its battlefields, some just blocks from this courthouse. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the civil rights struggle. I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa.
Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend them – regardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home.
From all the historical figures I learned about, one stood out above the rest. I was impressed by many things about Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of transformation, his transformation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “X” by Spike Lee, it’s over three and a half hours long, and the Malcolm at the beginning is different from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim performing the Hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr. Malcolm’s life taught me that Islam is not something inherited; it’s not a culture or ethnicity. It’s a way of life, a state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come from or how they were raised. This led me to look deeper into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were clueless about, the question that drives the rich & famous to depression and suicide from being unable to answer: what is the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it also answered the question of how we’re supposed to exist. And since there’s no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Qur’an and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the journey of understanding what this was all about, the implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an individual, for the people around me, for the world. And the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.
With that, my attention turned to what was happening to other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere I looked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the Muslims of Bosnia. I learned what the Russians were doing to the Muslims of Chechnya. I learned what Israel had done in Lebanon – and what it continues to do in Palestine – with the full backing of the United States.
And I learned what America itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf War, and the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq. I learned about the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine, and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and how – according to the United Nations – over half a million children perished as a result. I remember a clip from a ‘60 Minutes’ interview of Madeline Albright where she expressed her view that these dead children were “worth it.” I watched on September 11th as a group of people felt driven to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at the deaths of these children. I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of ‘Shock & Awe’ in the opening days of the invasion – the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking out of their foreheads (of course, none of this was shown on CNN). I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslims – including a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlers – were shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as they slept by US Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women don’t even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, as she is being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the seventeen Afghan Muslims – mostly mothers and their kids – shot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses. These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of brotherhood – that each Muslim woman in the world is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. In other words, I couldn’t witness these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them.
I mentioned Paul Revere – when he jumped on a horse and went on his midnight ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons stored there by the Minutemen. By the time they got to Concord, they found the Minuteman waiting for them, weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution. There’s an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen did that day. It was a word repeated many times in this courtroom. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial was about. All those videos and translations and childish bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he edited that sentence,’ and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to “kill Americans” at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little “terror plots,” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – whether they are Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It’s what I’ve always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it’s not extremism. It’s the simple logic of self-defense. It’s what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you don’t have to agree with my beliefs – no. Anyone with common sense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home. But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed “terrorism” and the people defending themselves against those who came to kill them from across the ocean become “the terrorists” who are “killing Americans.” The mentality that America was victimized by when British soldiers walked these streets 2 ½ centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. It’s the mentality of colonialism. When Sgt. Bales shot those Afghans to death last month, I followed the discussion in the media just to see what people were saying and what I noticed was that all of the focus was on him – his life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his home – as if he was the victim. I didn’t see anyone talking about the people he actually killed, as if they’re not real, they’re not humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to everyone in society, whether they realize it or not. Even with my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining, and clarifying before they were finally able to think outside the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected jury under the premise that they’re my “impartial peers,” I mean, come on. I wasn’t tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me – not because they needed to, but simply because they could.
I learned one more thing in history class: America has historically supported the most unjust policies against its minorities – practices that were even protected by the law – only to look back later and ask: ‘What were we thinking?’ Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during World War II – each was widely accepted by American society, each was defended by the Supreme Court. But as time passed and America changed, both people and courts looked back and asked ‘What were we thinking?’ Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the South African government, and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were, that it was not he who was the terrorist, and they released him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is subjective – even this whole business of “terrorism” and who is a “terrorist.” It all depends on the time and place and who the superpower happens to be at the moment.
In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, I’m the only one standing here in an orange jumpsuit, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But history repeats itself. One day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a “terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moments she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.
The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with “killing Americans.” But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.
-Tariq Mehanna
4/12/12
See also:
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/214806/index.php
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/214825/index.php
This work is in the public domain.
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