This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Saturday, September 07, 2013
From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International
Workers Vanguard No. 943
25 September 2009
TROTSKY
LENIN
Trotskyists and the Second World War
(Quote of the Week)
Bourgeois scribblers and reformist swindlers falsely assert that
the Second World War, which began in September 1939, was a battle for “democracy
against fascism.” In fact, World War II was driven by the same underlying
economic impulse as the First World War: the struggle among the imperialist
powers to seize new arenas of exploitation around the planet and to defend their
existing ones. Against the tide of reactionary patriotism, Trotskyists carried
out their internationalist duty to rally the proletariat in its own class
interests: standing for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union,
a workers state despite its Stalinist degeneration, and opposing all the
imperialist combatants in that carnage—a position for which U.S. Trotskyists
were imprisoned in 1941. We print below excerpts from a resolution adopted by
the Eleventh Convention of the American Trotskyist movement in November 1944
that was originally printed in Fourth International, published by the
then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party.
When the United States entered the second World War, Roosevelt,
chief spokesman of American capitalism proclaimed that this war was a crusade
for democracy, for the “Four Freedoms,” for the destruction of fascism and
totalitarianism. The labor bureaucrats, recruiting sergeants for the war
machine, volunteered their services to sell the war as a conflict between “free
labor” and “slave labor.”
After three years of America’s participation in the war, the
demagogic slogans under which the people were dragooned into the slaughter have
been stripped bare. Democracy and freedom are among the first casualties of the
war. The slogans of “national unity” and “equality of sacrifice” are a snare.
The pledges to take the profits out of war to prevent a new crop of wartime
millionaires, are proved a monstrous hoax.
The capitalist government logically began its reactionary campaign
by striking its first blows at the class-conscious vanguard of the American
working class. On the very day war was declared, December 8, 1941, sentence was
passed on the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. They were convicted under
the anti-labor Smith “Gag” Act for their uncompromising and outspoken opposition
to the war program and because of their firm adherence to the principles of
revolutionary Socialism. The conviction and imprisonment of the 18 was
accompanied by a whole series of measures designed to throttle the unions and
paralyze labor’s resistance to the onslaught of Big Business.
The right to strike, basic to the freedom of the labor movement,
has been virtually outlawed. Workers have been frozen to their jobs at frozen
wages while the cost of living continues to rise. A “modified” version of forced
labor has been imposed by executive decree. An increasing weight of taxes is
being saddled on those least able to pay while corporation profits soar to the
highest levels in history.
The war immediately strengthened the most reactionary groups and
institutions. The surge of reaction, especially the persecution of minorities
and the spread of race-hatred, is a wartime continuation of tendencies inherent
in capitalist decay. Brutal discrimination and humiliating segregation of the
Negro people in the armed forces as well as in civilian life reduce the slogans
of “democracy and freedom” to a hideous mockery for 13-million American
citizens. The wave of anti-Semitism unloosed by capitalist reaction has already
risen to alarming proportions. Jim Crowism and anti-Semitism march hand in hand
with the assault against the organizations of the working class. This is the
reality behind the demagogic facade of the “Four Freedoms.”
Prior to America’s entry into the war, this reactionary trend was
analyzed and forecast in the Manifesto of the Fourth International on The
Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution which stated:
“Seeking to gain the advantages of a totalitarian regime, the
imperialist democracies launch their own defense with a redoubled drive against
the working class and the persecution of revolutionary organizations. The war
danger and now the war itself is utilized by them first and foremost to crush
internal enemies. The bourgeoisie invariably and unswervingly follows the rule:
‘The main enemy is in one’s own country’.”
—“The U.S. and the Second World War,” Fourth International
(January 1945)
**********
Manifesto of the Fourth International For Defense of the Soviet Union
August 1941
Adopted: August 1941 First Published: October, 1941 Source:Fourth International, New York, Volume II No. 8, October 1941, pp. 229-31. Author:Jean van Heijenoort (according to Robert Alexander’s History). Transcribed/HTML Markup: Daniel Gaido and David Walters, December, 2005 Public Domain: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive 2005. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the address of this work, and note the transcribers and proofreaders above.
The following manifesto, issued by the Executive Committee of the Fourth International, is reprinted From the International Bulletin Press Service.
The Soviet Union is at war! The Soviet Union is in mortal danger! In his desperate struggle to open the world to German imperialism, Hitler has turned to the east, hoping by a quick victory to strengthen his military and economic positions. At this hour of supreme danger the Fourth International proclaims what it has constantly said to the workers: Defend the U. S. S. R.! The defense of the Soviet Union is the elementary duty of all the workers true to their class.
We know very well—better than anyone—that the present government of the U.S.S.R. is very different than the Soviet power of the first years of the revolution, but we have something to defend and we defend it against the class enemy independently of all the misdeeds of its present leaders. The Soviet workers accomplished a tremendous revolution which changed the face of a vast country. They stood alone, they lacked the forces to realize all their hopes, and they had to tolerate on their necks vile usurpers. But now Hitler comes to annihilate everything. That, neither the peoples of the U. S. S. R. nor the world working class can permit.
How to defend the U. S. S. R.? To answer this question we must before all know why the first workers’ state, the first experiment in proletarian power, stands at the edge of the abyss. If a catastrophe is possible at this date, after almost a quarter century of survival, the cause lies above all in the internal degeneration of the workers’ state, now ruled over by a parasitic bureaucracy.
Stalinism Responsible for the Catastrophe
A little more than twenty years ago, the Soviet Union came through the civil war, having victoriously repulsed the attacks of the imperialist brigands of the whole world. If today the Soviet Union has been plunged into the most terrible of wars, if today its very existence is threatened, the responsibility for its plight falls first and foremost upon Stalin. The second imperialist war and the attack against the Soviet Union could occur only after the revolutionary forces of the world proletariat, and above all its European section, had been disorganized by the Stalinized Comintern.
The Soviet Union suffered a defeat each time that the workers’ ranks were smashed as a result of the treacherous policies of Stalinism. The Soviet Union suffered a defeat when the Chinese revolution was strangled by Chiang Kai-shek, protégé of Stalin, in 1927; when the Soviet bureaucracy crushed the Left Opposition, exiling and exterminating the flower of the Bolshevik party; when Hitler came to power in Germany, thanks to the fatal policy of the German communist party inspired directly by Stalin. The Soviet Union suffered a defeat when Stalin sold the French working class to the bourgeoisie as payment for a military pact; when the heroic Spanish Revolution was led to its defeat by Stalin’s agents, who fought for the maintenance of private ownership of the land and factories; when the horrible Moscow trials, staged by Stalin, alienated the sympathies of workers from the Soviet Union.
The present attack against the Soviet Union by Hitler is the last link in a large chain of defeats suffered by the forces of the working class throughout the whole world, and the responsible author of these defeats was the Comintern, acting under orders of the Soviet bureaucracy. Hitler is himself a product of the decline of the proletarian revolution, carried through by the great saboteur whose name is Stalin.
We have often stated: without a Stalin there could be no Hitler! Over the present decadence reigning in Europe, with its untold misery for the working masses and their great hopes lost, moves the black shadow of Stalin, the great organizer of working class defeats!
The Bureaucracy’s Foreign Policies
The Soviet Union remained isolated as a result of the betrayal by the Comintern of the revolutionary interests of the working class. The ruling bureaucrats endeavored to avoid the consequences of their crimes towards the workers by effecting diplomatic combinations with imperialist powers. But in the background of destroyed working class forces, they could go only from failure to failure. The disarray of the Kremlin, face to face with the results of its own policies, was never more apparent than on the dawn of June 22, when Hitler opened his campaign against the Soviet Union.
The foreign policies of Stalin during the last few years were in no way superior to those of Chamberlain. And for the same reason: they were both the policies of weakness. After the Munich pact Chamberlain promised the world a “new era of peace.” This “era” lasted less than a year. After the German-Soviet pact Molotov boasted that the agreement between the “two peoples,” Russian and German, would guarantee unlimited peace to the Soviet Union. With the military smashing of France and the German advances into the Balkans, Stalin found it necessary to give Hitler a series of “warnings,” which did not exceed the limits of small diplomatic maneuvers.
However, a warning which is unaccompanied by real force changes into its opposite, that is to say, instead of restraining the enemy, it incites him to proceed further. By all these acts Soviet diplomacy demonstrated only one thing: that the Kremlin was mortally afraid of war. That could only encourage Hitler to undertake decisive action. To what extent the Soviet leaders were victims of their own policies is shown by the speeches of Molotov and Stalin. All that the “genius-like leadership” could think of saying in the face of the Hitler attack consisted of pitiful jeremiads about the dishonesty of the aggressor.
Stalin Stifles the Revolutionary Struggle
The war can only intensify the profoundly conservative policies of the bureaucracy. Internally Stalin has already strengthened the mechanism of police dictatorship at the expense of military interests. The bureaucracy lets it be known in this way that it may be willing to defend the Soviet Union but it is first and foremost concerned with defending its privileged position in the country. Externally the principal concern of the bureaucracy is to appear like a genuine member of the Anglo-American imperialist camp. It is in the name of this program that the Kremlin maintains an unbroken silence on everything which might call to mind the proletarian revolution.
The country where “socialism has finally triumphed” is at war, but the very word socialism has disappeared from the vocabulary of spokesmen of the bureaucracy. The Kremlin, with its mercenary writers, revives all the patriotic memories of Czarist Russia. It does not even dare recall to the Soviet masses the great events of the civil war. There are two reasons for this: first, not to disturb Churchill with burning memories and new fears, and second, because it is itself in mortal fear of the revolutionary traditions of the masses. The Communist International plays dead. In the countries of the “democratic” camp, the Stalinist parties made an instantaneous about-face. Their already long experience in this sort of drill step made it possible to carry it out without the slightest incident.
The immediate ally of the Soviet Union is the German working class which has the same enemy directly in front of it: German imperialism. But even now, when pressed by the armies of Hitler, the bureaucracy dares not appeal to it. The bureaucracy has appealed to the German people, including “honest National-Socialists,” in a manifesto which contains not the slightest proletarian note but is filled instead with pitiful and ridiculous lamentations.
For the destruction of German imperialism, proletarian internationalism is a far more powerful force than any aid which Moscow may be able to get from London or Washington. Lenin often repeated that it was that force which prevented the imperialists from strangling the Russian revolution during its heroic days. But in that period the Soviet leaders knew how to speak to the workers in a revolutionary tongue.
The present Kremlin leaders can only whine to German soldiers in the language of Russian nationalism; they are completely incapable of opening a revolutionary perspective to them. It identifies its war aims with those of Churchill and Roosevelt, and thereby serves only to strengthen German nationalism and in the end to help Hitler. It calls upon the English and American workers to support their imperialists and thereby cannot fail to tie the German workers to their leaders as well. The stifling of the revolutionary struggle in one camp makes its development more difficult in the other. The bureaucracy conducts the war with its own characteristic methods. They are the methods of a profoundly conservative caste of parvenus, which grew up from and was nourished by the decline of the revolution. The leaders in the Kremlin have many times justified the long series of their betrayals of workers’ struggles on the grounds of the defense needs of the Soviet Union. In reality, thanks to the Stalinized Comintern, the working class was defeated and the Soviet Union found itself more isolated than ever. Today the results are obvious. Yesterday the Kremlin fawned upon the Germany of Hitler just as today it grasps desperately at Churchill and Roosevelt. What has been achieved by this? Where has it led?
The Spirit of the Soviet Masses
The balance sheet of Stalinist policy shows an enormous deficit. The present catastrophe is only the bankruptcy of this whole policy. But if at the decisive hour the leaders in the Kremlin could only reveal their confusion, the Soviet masses, on the other hand, were able to demonstrate their courage and daring. The first weeks of war have shown the devotion and spirit of sacrifice of the Soviet troops. That is the fundamental fact of the campaign up to this time.
The Russian soldiers have been able to oppose the terrifying methods of German militarism with boldness and initiative. They do not fight “for Stalin,” for the hated bureaucrats who oppress them, but they understand fully the difference between Stalin and Hitler. They are aware that Hitler did not enter upon this formidable campaign in order to liberate the country from the parasitic bureaucracy; that he comes on the contrary to complete the latter’s task, to put a definitive end to a revolution already deeply wounded. The Soviet people, by its ferocious struggle, have shown the world that there still remains something to defend and that it expects to defend it to the end.
Despite all the crimes of the bureaucracy, the October revolution, which brought a new life to all the peoples of Russia, is not yet dead. The worker and collectivized peasant are fully aware of what a Hitler victory would mean: seizure of the economy by the German trusts and cartels, transformation of the country into a colony, the end of the first experiment in planned economy outside the profit system, the end of all hopes. They do not want to allow that.
Tasks of the Working Class
The Fourth International has unceasingly proclaimed what the Soviet worker has grasped by his class instinct: unconditional defense of the Soviet Union!We defend the Soviet Union regardless of the betrayals by the bureaucracy and despite these betrayals. We do not demand this or that concession by the Stalinist bureaucracy as a condition for our support.
But we defend the Soviet Union with our own methods. We represent the revolutionary interests of the working class and our weapon is the revolutionary class struggle. The imperialist allies of the Kremlin are not our allies. We go on with the revolutionary struggle, even in the “democratic” camp.To support the imperialist masters of England or the United States would mean to aid Hitler in maintaining his hold over the German workers. Our stakes are wagered on the revolution, and the best method of assisting the revolutionary future of the German workers is to conduct and intensify working class struggles in the opposing camp.
In Germany and in the European countries occupied by German troops, defense of the Soviet Union means directly the sabotage of the German military machine. German workers and peasants in soldiers’ uniforms, the Fourth International calls upon you to pass over with your arms and equipment into the ranks of the Red Army! German workers and peasants now in the factories, on the railroads, and on the farms, and enslaved peoples of Europe, paralyze in every possible way the march of German militarism! You will not only by this means defend the Soviet Union, but you will also be preparing your own liberation, not the “liberation” which Churchill or Roosevelt holds in store for you, but your own, whereby you will be able as free men to build a new world.
In the Soviet Union, the Fourth International calls upon the Soviet workers to be the best soldiers at their combat stations. Our organization lives upon the teachings of the leader of the Red Army in the difficult first years of the revolution, Leon Trotsky, assassinated by the Kremlin’s hangman, but whose memory must now be recurring evermore frequently, in this hour of supreme danger, to the minds of all the former participants in the civil war. His example and the traditions of that great period must now be inspiring the soldiers, sailors and aviators!
But the miracles of heroism of those days were rendered possible only because the workers and peasants clearly understand what they were defending. In order to repeat these miracles of daring, which are so necessary if Hitler is to be defeated, the best weapon is the restoration of the democracy of the Soviets. War does not put an end to our struggles against the bureaucrats but, makes it more imperious than ever.
For the defense of the Soviet Union, form soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers! That is our rallying cry.
But our struggle against the bureaucracy remains subordinated to the war against imperialism. That is true on the political plane, where we consider our criticism of the parasitic oligarchy as the method of best arming the country against imperialism, and it is also true on the military plane where practical actions against the bureaucracy are subordinated to the needs for defense of the country. Under wartime conditions all the problems of the regime are posed more sharply than ever in the minds of the Soviet workers. The first task of the present hour is the formation of cadres and the organization of the Soviet section of the Fourth International.
Stalinism Is Doomed!
In a more or less brief period, the bureaucratic regime, now living on a compromise between the proletariat and imperialism, cannot survive the war. Even in case of victory, the days of the Stalinist clique are numbered. A victory, even in the form of prolonged resistance, would awaken all the hopes of the Soviet masses, and would destroy the accumulated apathy engendered by the years of defeats. The workers and collective farmers would increasingly oppose the arbitrary actions of bureaucrats. Besides, the failure of the German armies would inevitably produce what Stalin dreads the most—workers’ insurrections throughout all Europe. On the burning terrain of the revolution, Stalin would lose his footing and follow Hitler straight into the abyss.
The turmoil of war now resounds through the whole world. All the imperialists are working feverishly for the annihilation of humanity. A tremendous wave of reaction is sweeping before it all the liberties and all the conquests of yesterday. Hitler, Churchill and Roosevelt are eager rivals in this terrible contest. Stalin seeks only to conform to the “democratic” robbers and his greatest fear is that he may let slip some revolutionary word.
As for us, we can well continue to be optimists. Within the depths of the masses a revolt is ripening which nothing will be able to restrain. The first imperialist war of 1914-1918 now appears as a simple rehearsal for the present war, and the revolutionary whirlwind which will come out of the present war will dwarf the revolutionary crises of 1917-1920. The resistance of the Soviet masses to the German advance cannot but hasten the explosion. That is why all the peoples of the world must support that resistance, each according to the particular methods which we have indicated.
Defend the Soviet Union and you thereby defend yourselves, you will hasten the hour of your liberation!
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's pursuit of a military strike in
Syria has put congressional Democrats and party leaders around the country in a
tough spot.
They face loud opposition from war-weary constituents at home and are wary of
being pulled into another foreign conflict. But they also are confronted with
grim images from Syria of gassed children and the pleas of a president from
their own political party to consider the consequences of inaction.
Breaking from Democrats' long history of being the party typically opposed to
military conflict, Obama is pushing for a limited military strike in Syria in
response to President Bashar Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. House
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have
rallied behind him.
But some liberal and moderate Democrats, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
fresh in their minds, have begun joining dozens of conservative Republicans
registering their opposition. And many rank-and-file Democrats are undecided on
whether to support a congressional resolution for military action, questioning
whether it would turn the tide in a bloody civil war, whether it's in the U.S.
national interest and whether it would prompt Assad to retaliate with more
chemical weapons.
"We've been to this dance before and we saw what happened in Iraq," said Rep.
Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, who says he is leaning against supporting the resolution.
"And I have a solemn responsibility to understand what the risks are before I
vote to authorize the use of force. What's the risk to the U.S. and the
president's standing in the world if the Congress votes against the
resolution?"
Emerging from a closed-door briefing on Thursday, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard,
D-Hawaii, an Iraq war veteran, said she wanted answers about what would happen
after a U.S. attack but her own military experience was giving her "great pause"
before making a decision.
Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., was resolute in his opposition. "It's simply not
our responsibility," he said, wearing a tie covered with 1960s peace
symbols.
In the Senate, Democrats Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Tom Udall of New
Mexico opposed the resolution to authorize a strike when it was up for a
committee vote while recently elected Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who
succeeded Secretary of State John Kerry, voted present. West Virginia Sen. Joe
Manchin, one of the party's most moderate members, said he would oppose the
resolution. More than a dozen Democratic senators are supporting it.
Obama captured the Democratic nomination in 2008 in part because of his
opposition to the Iraq war, a position that he used effectively against primary
opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as senator voted in October 2002 to
authorize the war but then stumbled among anti-war Democratic voters.
Many Democrats in the House first won their seats in the elections of 2006
and 2008, when the party was fueled by voters who blamed President George W.
Bush for the enduring conflicts. It is difficult for many of those Democrats to
authorize U.S. intervention in a new conflict — even as Obama and Kerry assure
them that it will be narrowly focused and not include U.S. ground troops.
"Members are trying to really listen and hear and understand," said Rep.
Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., who said he was undecided after emerging from a private
briefing on the issue Thursday night. "They don't want to make the same mistake
that was made before."
The deliberations extend into households. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who
opposed the 2002 Iraq war authorization, is undecided this time but has said a
failure to hold Syria accountable for the chemical weapons attack would set a
"terrible precedent."
Schakowsky's husband, Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, supports the
plan. He wrote in a Huffington Post column last week that the U.S. needs to
punish Assad for using chemical weapons, writing, "The world cannot afford an
iconic use of chemical weapons to go unpunished."
The Syria vote has generated an intense lobbying effort by the left to
pressure Obama to stay out of the civil war.
Liberal activists are planning candlelight vigils across the country on
Monday night to urge members of Congress to oppose the resolution, and they
suggest those who support military action risk political punishment in the
future.
"Everyone who positions themselves as a progressive needs to think very hard
about what their vote will mean down the road," said Anna Galland, executive
director of MoveOn.org. Galland said the vote "could impact how our members view
future votes, future primaries."
At the same time, a large delegation of members representing the influential
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group with
strong ties to congressional Democrats, plans to press lawmakers on Capitol Hill
next week. The organization has urged the House and Senate to approve the
resolution, saying, "Barbarism on a mass scale must not be given a free
pass."
The vote could carry implications beyond this year. House Democrats who
represent liberal districts might face primary challenges if they support the
resolution. The votes could figure prominently in several key Senate races
crucial to Democrats' effort to maintain control of the chamber during Obama's
final two years.
Incumbents in three closely watched races — Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas,
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Begich of Alaska — remain undecided. Braley,
who is running to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, noted that in
2006 he aired an ad in his first congressional bid that said "serving in
Congress is a solemn responsibility because only Congress can authorize going to
war."
Among potential 2016 presidential candidates, Clinton said through an aide
that she supported Obama's efforts in Congress. As secretary of state she urged
the administration to intervene in Syria, and a speech in Philadelphia on
Tuesday could give the former first lady the opportunity to discuss a potential
U.S. response. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley told reporters last week that there
was a need for a "clear understanding of what it is exactly this mission would
hope to accomplish."
Wrapping up a trip to Sweden and Russia, Obama will try to make a full-court
press next week, addressing the nation on Tuesday while his administration fans
out to briefings and meetings with wavering lawmakers. The president said Friday
he understood the difficulty of the vote and posited that it was "conceivable"
he would not persuade a majority of the American people to get behind him.
"Ultimately, you listen to your constituents, but you've also got to make
some decisions about what you believe is right for America," Obama said. "And
that's the same for me as President of the United States."
———
Associated Press writers Alan Fram in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Des
Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
———
Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP—Ken—Thomas
For the second time in less than three years President Obama is leading an effort to take the U.S. to war. Calling on Congress to follow his lead, the President’s reasoning is to punish Syria for alleged chemical weapons use and to deter future deployment of this obscene and banned weapon. The President claims military action and killing more people is necessary to protect American values and national interests and to enforce international norms.
Veterans For Peace condemns the use of chemical weapons and we call for those responsible to be brought to justice by legal means via the United Nations and and not by US bombing.
Any military action without U.N. authorization is illegal and violates the international norms the President claims he wants to protect. VFP has made a clear statement opposing U.S. military intervention, whether direct or indirect and we call for an escalation of diplomacy not war. Most of the U.S. public agrees that war is not the answer yet the war drums keep pounding louder and the war hawks gather for their feast. Now we must act to stop the President’s drive to war by hitting the streets and concentrating on Congress.
Participate in a local action or plan one of your own – click here for lists of current actions being planned. Organize a peaceful protest, march, vigil in your local communities (city hall, federal building, etc) anytime this week, call for "NO attacks on Syria!"
***Out In The Be-Bop Crime Noir 1940s Night- “Dark Passage”- A Film Review
DVD Review
Dark Passage, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Warner Brothers, 1947 No question that grizzled beaten-up Humphrey Bogart and a young coyly beautiful Lauren Bacall heated up the 1940s screen, heated it up as much as two people could and keep their clothes on, in their first film pairing, William Faulkner’s screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have And Have Not (only loosely based on that short novel by the way). They also played together in the Raymond Chandler Phillip Marlowe detective noir classic, The Big Sleep and in Key Largo. In this Dark Passage pairing though, while still in thrall with each other off-screen, the steam is fading, fading fast. But not, perhaps, because of their familiarity to movie-goers as much as the plot line they had to perform under.
Let me explain a little. Vincent Parry (played by Bogart) is in stir up at Quentin for the foul murder of his wife. But, see, like they all say, he didn’t do it so he lams out of Q on his own to see if he can get out from under the life sentence he has received. So naturally when the cops are on his trail up shows come hither Irene Jansen (played by Bacall) to help him out. Seems that, for reasons of her own, she followed Vincent’s trial closely and is convinced that he might be innocent. So she hid him out at her place for a while until things got too hot. But getting out from under this life sentence is going to be harder than you would think. So while riding in a cab to another hide-out he is picked up by a friendly, very friendly cabbie who just happens to know a back alley plastic surgeon who will change Vincent’s face enough so that he can work without notoriety. Simple right.
Well the long and short of it is that while the facelift might have seemed like the answer to his problems everybody and their brother is on to him in the end. And as to finding the real murderer. Well she inconveniently falls out the window of her high rise apartment. While Vincent is there trying to talk sense into her. So, knowing he can’t win, new face and all, he lams it for parts south, way south.
You can see what I mean by the awkwardness of the main plot line. And what makes said plot lines even worst is that Irene has a big crush on Vincent, under either old or new face. Except, and here is the real crime, we do not see either face until fairly late in the film and by then any sense of the magic of To Have And Have Not or The Big Sleep has dissolved into the be-bop 1940s crime noir night. Too bad.
U.S. Hands Off Syria! – No War!
All Out
Saturday, Sept. 7, Boston!
Rally at Park
St. Station (Tremont & Park Sts.), 1:00 PM
Dear Antiwar and Social Justice
Activists,
A U.S. attack on Syria is imminent as the
Obama administration presses Congress to approve a war that the American people
and the whole world rejects. They say it is a limited punitive “surgical strike”
against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical
weapons. Make no mistake, any military intervention will be a war against the
Syrian people.
To date, neither the U.S. or anyone else has
presented credible proof of the use of Sarin gas by the Syrian government, the
current pretext for yet another war. We certainly know the U.S. government is
capable of manufacturing “evidence”, as they did with WMD’s in Iraq, so we
should remain skeptical.
More importantly, the U.S. has no political,
legal or moral standing to use force against any nation. The warmaking would-be
cop of the world has an unbroken record of military interventions that have
murdered millions to advance the interests of the ONE PERCENT. In fact, the
U.S. has used and/or supported the use of biological and chemical warfare all
over the world, and uses and manufactures these and many other weapons, equally
horrific.
With yet another war imminent, all antiwar and
social justice activists must assume a mobilization footing and challenge the
warmakers in the administration and in Congress on a daily basis. Protests and
campaigns to demand that Congress votes against war are planned across the
country and indeed, around the world.
All out to
oppose any U.S. attack on Syria! We stand for peace!
(Organizations supporting the rally on
Saturday – list in formation.)
United for
Justice with Peace, Committee for Peace & Human Rights, United National
Antiwar Coalition, International Action Center, Mass. Peace Action, Mass. Pirate
Party, #MassOps, American Friends Service Committee, American Iranian Friendship
Committee, Mass. Liberty Movement (Liberty Clubhouse), ANSWER Coalition, Mass.
Global Action/encuentro 5, Green-Rainbow Party, Women’s Int’l League for Peace
& Freedom-Boston, Community Church of Boston, Revolution is Evolution,
Jewish Voice for Peace, Syrian American Forum, ComeHomeAmerica-Boston Chapter,
Veterans For Peace-Smedley Butler Brigade, South Asia Center, South Asians for
Social Justice, Arlington United for Justice with Peace, Chelsea Uniting Against
the War, Global Strategy for Nonviolence, Women's Fightback
Network, Team Solidarity - United School Bus Union Workers, Workers World
Party, Justice First Foundation
To add your organization and designate a
speaker for the rally, contact Marilyn Levin, marilynl@alumni.neu.edu.
To see a list of national demonstrations, go
towww.UNACpeace.org . Particularly note: Syrian Americans will held a “No War” rally in Washington,
D.C. on Monday, September 9. Rally at the White House at 10 am followed by a
march to Congress for another rally. Please join them. See the Facebook
event:https://www.facebook.com/events/680761451934228/In addition, groups will be demonstrating at the Capitol round
the clock.
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-
Sterling Hayden’s Crime Wave –Take Two
FromThe Pen Of Frank Jackman
Once a con always a con, you can put
money in the bank on that proposition, big money. And I ought to know since I,
Detective Sergeant Hayden, Los Angeles Homicide Squad for twelve years and
before that on the bunko and vice squads and before that a few years of
pounding the pavement as a beat cop so I have seen it all. Seen crumb bums and
con artists, two-bit gas station hold-up guys, church collection box stealers,
white slavers, dopesters, hipsters, stone-cold killers, penny-ante
jack-rollers, even a guy one night in a bar, a cop hang-out bar, the Silver
Dollar, who tried, not knowingI was a cop, to get me to go in with him for
a few upfrontdollars on the profits to
be had from pimping his girlfriend, his underage runaway girlfriend, the whole
lot of them better off dead, off the streets anyway.
Yeah so I have put my share, no more
than my share of guys away, keeping them for running wild in the streets of
L.A. like rats and bothering the citizenry, the tax-paying citizenry. I swear
it has gotten worst since the war, guys coming back from the Pacific after
busting up a few Japs or from Europe kicking ass on a few Germans in Berlin, or
someplace like that, blood up, and not content to settle down in Boise or
Butte, small no action towns, and so they headed west like locust, yes, just
like locust expecting a golden rainbow to meet them at the California border
with a glad hand. Of course half of them thought they would be “discovered” in
Hollywood, like the world needed another homely cowboy from El Paso or stocky hardware
store clerk from Omaha to squire Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner around. Instead
when they found no jobs, no director wanting to cast them as the next Errol
Flynn, and they couldn’t go home to face Butte or Boston they took up with gees
on the wrong side of the street. Easy money guys, guys who let them, them just
then from hunger, in on a good thing. The thing being busting some union guys’
heads who wouldn’t co-operate, maybe small Mom and Pop store robberies for
twelve bucks and change, maybe muling some dope from Tijuana. Yah I have seen
it all, seen lots of guys change one uniform for another. And maybe they like
that, that three squares and a bunk rather than sitting in some rain-swollen
ravine, or some busted-out railroad “jungle” dodging the bulls.
So like I say you can put money in
the bank on that once a con proposition. Hey I don’t like it, would rather that
every ex-con who has paid his dues would go down the straight and narrow but it
just doesn’t work that way. Except maybe in socially uplifting movies like some
Spencer Tracey crap about reforming guys, reforming hard guys after they did a
short jolt, a short jolt the first time and came bragging about how easy it was
doing that time. A piece of cake (and really hoping nobody finds out they spend
that first night or two crying, crying for mother for chrissake). No the world
don’t work that way, sorry. The minute they hit the street, maybe before if
they belonged to some ferret-faced gang, they are back to their old tricks.
Hanging with guys they are not supposed to be hanging with, known felons with
rap sheets eight miles long, guys on the run who we are just waiting to pick up
once they show their faces, hanging in places, pool halls, sleazy wrong side of
the tracks bars where hard-ass criminals are known to hang, back alley actions
where they are not supposed to be hanging and generally giving their probation
officers, those that got an early ticket, the runaround.
As for work, yeah, as for work they,
as they are at pains to tell you when you collar them hanging one shoe off some
storefront wall, are just doing the best they can, a little of this, a little
of that.That answer always has my
dander up because that means they are without means, without legal means and
are ready to bother the good citizenry of the sunny streets of our town and the
people who pay me good money not to be bothered by the low-life. That this and
that means, in cop talk, in plain cop talk English, a little back alley jack-rolling
to meet expenses. Maybe pimping their
girlfriends on the mean streets and back alleys when they are short of dough
like that guy who propositioned me and is now finishing up a dime’s worth at
Folsom. That is if they have girlfriends after they get out. If they are
inclined toward girls after doing an all-male stretch, and some guys aren’t,
some guys like that all male environment so they don’t have to deal with women if
you know what I mean. You know turn homo, fags, light on their feet. Stuff they
don’t show at the movies or on television but goes on all the time and not just
in cozy Hollywood bungalow but all over, especially in stir. They have a whole
system set up about who is who’s “girl” and hands off or a shiv, Christ. Some
bottom feeders, guys short on brains and who don’t mind short money for their
efforts and risks maybe graduate to armed robberies, or small time stuff, gas
stations, Ma and Pa variety stores. Usually at that point though I, or one of
my fellow officers. have cuffed them, trussed them up good and they go up for
another jolt. Like I say, you can put, ah, I already gave you the skinny on
that. You know what I mean.
Let me give you an example, okay, an
example out of my own files, my own cases so there is no guesswork about it. No
stuff about a tough cop making stuff up to pad his record or to puff himself up
but stuff you can look up in any L.A. County courthouse. Yeah, let me give you
an example of this Steve Lacey guy. I sent Steve up to San Quentin, the Q, for
a nickel a few years back, a nickel as a wheelman for a busted bank caper. A
wheelman for you civilians is a guy who drives the getaway car on a caper, the
guy who if things go right make sure everybody gets away without a scratch.
That’s all he does, he is a specialist, and usually gets an even split of the
take, no questions asked. He spends his loose time working out ways to get that
machine of his to do impossible stuff, impossible trailing police car shaking stuff.
He also when the deal goes down and goes south gets the same time as the
principals and so that is what happened with Steve. A bank caper over in
Westminster went sour when a bank clerk decided to be to brave for long enough
to hold the Stover gang whom Steve worked for up and for the cops to surround
the place. Hence the nickel.
Steve did his nickel standing, and
drew some probation time by keeping out
of trouble at Q and also just so we could keep an eye on him since a couple of
guys from that Westminster job, planning guys not at the scene of the crime, never
were, like happens more than you would think,apprehended. Bank job guys you have to watch kind of close, okay,
something about the racket drives them screwy, maybe it is because like some
guy said, some guy that was a real pro at bank heists although he did his share
of time just the same, that is where the dough is. I don’t know all I know is
this kid Lacey got out of Q, got a job as a mechanic, an auto mechanic, was
working steady, and even got married, married to a dish from what his probation
officer told me. Later once I got a look at her I agreed she had something, something
to get worked up about, something to slip under the sheets with, but I also
could see where she wasn’t going to be satisfied with cute tiny apartments
forever and washing oily overalls either. Steve was an upright citizen for a
couple of years, so I didn’t bother him, didn’t put the squeeze on him to keep
me informed about stuff or about the whereabouts of his confederates in that
Westminster job in order to keep that job, that steady paycheck, that cute
little apartment, and that dishy wife with the big future wanting habits.But I knew he would break out sometime, all
he needed was a little coaxing, a little coaxing from her about needing new
furniture or something and a little proposition from a right guy, at the right
time, a big score.
Then we heard Doc Blanchard, Nibs
Bronson, and Slugger Burke broke out of the Q, worked a few small time penny
ante armed robberies to keep themselves in coffee and crullers and then made
the big mistake that brought them to my attention. One of those armed robberies
went bust, a cop, a state cop, got killed over in Inglewood and the whole thing
landed in my lap. See Slugger Burke took a couple of slugs in the melee too.
And that is where Steve comes in. He was buddy-buddy with these guys in Q,
don’t ask me how I know I just do, okay. I have my sources, private and
confidential, so don’t press the issue. So who do you think Slugger goes to see
about getting patched up? Not some priest or the county hospital, no way.Yeah, Steve, Steve with the open arms.
The problem, the big problem which
put him on the spot, for Steve though was that Slugger kind of ruined things
when he expired on Steve’s living room floor. So Steve, a smart guy in some
ways, calls his probation officer crying about how Slugger came in, how he,
Steve, tried to get rid of Slugger and all that malarkey. Naturally the
bleeding heart probation officer, Finney, a guy ready to retire so what does he
care, believed the sob story. Me, I thought it was hooey, nowhere, strictly
low-rent. I brought the kid in, let him simmer in the county jail for few days,
let him get used to that old walls closing in on him for good feeling and then
I just sprung him. See if Slugger knew exactly where to go for help then Doc
and Nibs were sure to know that too. So I put Steve out there as bait just to
make sure my case against him was airtight, no gum ups.I was working on all cylinders on this one, I
could smell the sweet smell of gas already.
And you know sure enough Doc and
Nibs showed. But here is the best part, as I learned later, later after the
some smoke had cleared. This Betty, Steve’s wife, the dish, apparently had some
influence over him, at least for a while some good influence before she lowered
the wanting habits on him. She begged him to cut these guys loose and he was
ready to. Ready to except they, tough guys and already as good as dead on that
cop killing, were going to cut her up if Steve didn’t play ball. Then Doc
explained this caper, this bank caper he had been planning all the time he was
in Q, a big caper for big dough and easy street down in cheap living Mexico.
Steve was all ears then, all set to take his cut, all set to cut from his
grease monkey job, his crummy apartment, his too small paycheck. Steve could
see, unlike this Betty, that that nine to five stuff was okay for the suckers,
for the chumps but he wanted his, and wanted his for her too. Naturally a big
bank heist needed an expert wheelman, and he was the king hell wheelman on the
coast, and so there it was.
Of course what Doc and the boys
didn’t know was that we were closing in on them, had used Steve as bait long
enough.We should have had the whole
crew right then at the house except Doc, with that con’s intuition that
sometimes “knows” something is not right, blows Steve’s place, taking this
Betty as a hostage just in case Steve backed off. We almost had them there but
we found something in the apartment that helped us, helped us nail the
bastards. So we were wise to the bank heist, a big onealright, the First National Bank of L.A. Jesus,
that Doc was thinking big I have to give him that. Not big enough though
because we had the whole thing wired. We had nothing but cops in the place acting
as employees and customers and the whole thing exploded in their faces.We grabbed them all like taking candy from a
baby. A nice day’s work.
Oh yeah, I forgot, that information
we got from Steve’s place was a note from Steve plastered on a mirror in the
bedroom giving us the skinny on the heist. So every once in a blue moon a guy
goes straight, goes nine to five, but that only goes to show that my idea is
right, right as rain. I’m still keeping one eye on him though, and maybe on
that Betty too if that eye she gave me when we sprung Steve and her meant anything
. Yeah, once a con always a con. The Steve exception only proves the rule. And
you can put money in the bank on that one, big money.
Protesters at a Walmart store Sept. 5, 2013, in Miami Gardens, Fla.
In the ongoing war to boost the federal minimum wage, the skirmishes have been getting larger and louder, yet success seems as far away as ever.
The latest round of protests Thursday targeted Wal-Mart, with organizers turning out crowds of varying sizes in 15 cities across the country demanding the world's largest retailer pay all employees at least $25,000 a year and stop what they claim is retaliation against strikers.
Two former Wal-Mart workers and one current employee were arrested in New York outside the Manhattan office of investment banker Christopher Williams, a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors.
Labor experts say that proponents of an increase in the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage, which buys less in real terms today than in a half century, face a set of powerful economic winds that have been blowing for decades: the weakening of unions, the flattening of wages versus productivity, sluggish economic growth and tepid support from politicians. Thursday's protests followed similar demonstrations last week when thousands of workers at fast-food restaurants in dozens of U.S. cities walked off the job demanding higher wages. Organizers called that effort one of the largest strikes ever against the nation's fast-food companies.
The debate over minimum wage has taken on new energy as the average worker's wage remains stalled in an economy still trying to shake off the lingering damage of the Great Recession. But the lowest paid of American workers have been steadily losing ground to a variety of economic and political forces since the 1970s.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the hourly minimum wage rate at 25 cents for covered workers. Since then, it has been raised 22 times, in part to keep up with rising prices. The latest boost, in July 2009, brought it to $7.25 an hour, or about $15,000 a year for a worker putting in 40 hours a week.
Opponents of a higher minimum wage, supported by a number of economic studies, contend that it would eliminate the very entry-level jobs that low-skilled workers need the most.
Wal-Mart officials say the recent protests don't reflect the views of all of its workers, and that its low-wage jobs offer entry-level employment for low-skilled workers who can earn more as they develop skills and take on more responsibility.
More than 99 percent of Wal-Mart employees make more than minimum wage, and some three-quarters of the company's U.S. managers began with the company as hourly workers, Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke told CNBC.
"Whatever we do, we sure don't want to take away from the opportunity to get started and the opportunity to grow and be a part of personal growth as well as the growth of our business and the growth of America," he said.
Wal-Mart has also responded forcefully to the periodic protests by unions and other labor groups calling for the company to boost pay and benefits.
In June the company filed a lawsuit in Fort Worth, Texas, against the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union for what it claimed were "confrontational and abusive" demonstrations at stores around the country over the past year.
"They have screamed through bullhorns, paraded around with banners and signs on sticks, conducted in-store 'flash mobs,' and diverted management and local police from their normal job functions," the lawsuit said, according to NBCDFW.com.
The company has filed similar legal actions against local groups in Florida and California.
Despite political support for increasing the federal standard, only 20 states and a number of cities have passed laws requiring higher minimum wages. (San Francisco, at $10.55 an hour, is the highest.) (Read more: Fast-food strike gets supersized over wages)
Protesters were arrested after an attempt to deliver a petition against Wal-Mart. The "Our Wal-Mart" group is protesting nationwide Thursday for higher wages. CNBC's Courtney Reagan reports.
The District of Columbia has become the latest battleground, where Mayor Vincent Gray could decide as early as this week whether to sign a minimum wage bill that would require big retailers, such as Wal-Mart, to pay 50 cents an hour more than the $8.25-an-hour local minimum wage.
If he signs the bill recently approved by the City Council, Wal-Mart could shelve plans to bring six stores—and 1,800 jobs—to the nation's capital, where unemployment, at 9 percent, remains higher than the national average of 7.3 percent.
Government wage mandates have taken on increasing importance following the decades-long decline of labor unions that negotiated pay and benefits. But the recent union-backed protests, which represent a shift away from more traditional efforts to recruit new members, company by company, have been much less successful.
"I think organized labor to some extent bears a significant responsibility for its own demise," said Julius Getman, a professor of employment law at the University of Texas. "Because they didn't put enough effort into organizing they were very much satisfied with the status quo for a long time."
But unions have also seen their power eroded by a lack of political support on Capitol Hill, most notably from the Democrats who have traditionally been organized labor's biggest backers, he said. (Read more:Minimum wage hike: Just what the economy ordered)
"When President Obama talks about the need to strengthen the middle class, it's stunning to me the extent to which he does not mention unions," said Getman. "It does reflect a modern sense unfortunately that unions have become outdated, that unions no longer are relevant."
Popular support for higher wages has also been tempered by American consumers' appetite, and increasing reliance, on the ultralow prices offered by fast-food chains such as McDonald's and superstores like Wal-Mart.
"We all rather buy cheap at McDonald's," said Getman. In one detailed study, MIT economist Jerry Hausman found that the arrival of superstores like Wal-Mart in a given area cut prices across a variety of products by an average of about 25 percent. While consumers across all income groups benefited from the drop in prices, low-income households benefited the most, the study found.
But stalled wage growth, especially for the lowest-income households, is beginning to hit discounters where it hurts the most: on the bottom line.
Flat wages, combined with higher payroll taxes, dampened consumer spending in the first half of the year, prompting Wal-Mart last month to warn investors to expect lower sales and profit results in the second half.
Depressed wages also cost taxpayers, according to an analysis earlier this year by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The report, which looked at the impact of Wal-Mart's operations in Wisconsin, found that the retailer had more workers enrolled in the state's public health-care programs than any other employer.
State and local public assistance such as earned-income tax credits, food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and other state programs for low-income households cost taxpayers as much as $5,800 per employee, according to the researchers. For a 300-worker store, the total tax burden came to as much as $1.7 million a year, the report said. (Read more: Campaign seeks to push Seattle minimum wage to $15)
Instead of devoting taxes to helping low-income households, proponents of higher minimum wages contend the government should do more to see that the fruits of economic growth and higher productivity are more broadly distributed.
Before 1970, wages rose almost in lockstep with the rising productivity of the workforce. But for a variety of reason, wages flattened, except for a brief period in the 1990s, while productivity continued to advance.
"We made deliberate economic policies that led to a reversal of that broadly shared prosperity," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
"It wasn't like we had an equal society in the pre-1970s world, but the growth of the economy then was not captured only by a tiny sliver at the top. You had rising living standards at the bottom, middle and the top."
One of the most powerful policies is the Federal Reserve's balancing act between the "dual mandate" of maintaining low unemployment and low inflation. The two goals often conflict: economic growth creates jobs, but also sows the seeds of inflation.
Shierholz argues that the modern Fed has leaned too heavily against inflation, allowing unemployment to rise to levels that dampened wage growth.
"If your bosses know you have job opportunities, they have to pay you more to keep you," she said. "Low unemployment is good for wage growth; high unemployment is bad for wage growth." —By CNBC's John W. Schoen. Follow him on Twitter
DVD Review The Howlin’ Wolf Story, Howlin’ Wolf and various artists and commentators, Productions, 2004
I have reviewed several of Howlin’ Wolf’s CDs in this space previously and had expected that this documentary about the life, the times and the influence of this incredible blues performer would merely be an appetizer for further reviews of his music. Not so. This well-done, lovingly put together and extremely informative documentary is a worthy viewing for the novice and old Wolf aficionados like me. Thus, rather than placing this commentary as a tail to some other Wolf entry it is worthy of separate entry here.
In this presentation filled, as always in this kind of work, with the inevitable “talking heads” we go from Wolf‘s roots down in the Mississippi Delta, cotton country and nothing else, in the 1920’s and 1930’s through to the first stop up the Mississippi at Memphis on to the Mecca Chicago in the post- World War II period and finally to international renown in the blues revival started by the likes of The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton the mid-1960s. In short we are treated to a view of the trajectory of Wolf’s life; unlike let us say Son House with whom Wolf worked with in the old days who stuck with the country roots, from country blues of the back road jukes to the electricity of the urban ghetto that made those old blues jump for, at first, migratory urban blacks and then young whites like this reviewer. Along the way many of the musicians that worked with Wolf like Hubert Sumerlin, a blues guitarist legend in his own right, and Sam Lay as well as Wolf’s daughters, the Chess Record producer Marshall Chess and others give some amusing stories and anecdotes on the life of the great bluesman. And seemingly as always when blues or rock and roll are mentioned little segments with the ubiquitous Sam Phillips of the well-known Sun Recording studio in Memphis.
I do not generally comment on (or for that matter look at) the special features sections of DVD. Not doing so here would be a mistake. There is some nice home movie footage, some interesting Wolf stories by his companions and rivals, a nice segment on the rivalry between Wolf and Muddy Waters to be “King of The Chicago Blues” and a recording of a radio broadcast of Wolf doing "Little Red Rooster". Damn, I flipped out the first time I heard that song when it was covered by The Rolling Stones in the early 1960’s. I also flipped out when I first heard a Wolf recording of it. I don’t know what I would have done had I heard it on my radio then. Probably started hitchhiking for Chicago.
All of this information is nice but I am sure the reader is just as interested to know about the music. Oh yes there is some great footage of classic Wolf efforts. Of course for this reviewer number one is always Wolf’s "Little Red Rooster". Christ, he is practically eating the harmonica by the end of the song. "Lovin’ Spoonful", "Moaning at Midnight" and a host of other songs get their usual professional Wolf treatment. That is a point to be underscored, he was a professional in his approach to the music, its presentation and the way that he could influence a genre that he practically build (along with his competitor Muddy Waters) from scratch. If you need an hour of the Wolf doin’ his Midnight Creep then you really have to see this documentary. Kudos to the filmmakers on this one.
***Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Wait Until Dark- A Film Review
DVD Review
Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn, Efram Zimbalist, Junior, Alan Arkin, Warner Brothers, 1967
If anybody touches a hair on the head of Audrey Hepburn they have to answer to me. Okay? Except in this little psychological thriller of a film, Wait Until Dark, from the late 1960s Ms. Hepburn seems to be doing just fine, just fine in her newly sightless world and therefore I will only need to provide back-up. And I am ready, more than ready, to provide such service if that main villain here, played by Alan Arkin, comes anyway near the neighborhood again. He may not be pure evil in the Faustian literary sense but on the streets of New York (or name the city) he is as close as one needs to get. And live.
Needless to say given the times, then or now, criminals, especially low-life master criminals like Arkin looking to move up the drug cartel food chain are a blight on society. And a terror to those without sight who stand in the way of, in the case, a drug-filled doll from foreign parts unknown brought in by a “mule” who decided to turn pro and run her own operation who passes off her ill-gotten bounty to Hepburn’s unsuspecting husband (played by Zimbalist) when the heat is on (and Arkin is hip to her plans). But here is where the dramatic tension comes in. The life and death duel between Arkin (and his confederates) balanced against the blind Ms. Hepburn’s fear-driven efforts to foil the bad guys which is a great sign for our side. But it still goes. Keep your mitts off Ms. H. Get it.
From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International
Workers Vanguard No. 942
11 September 2009
TROTSKY
LENIN
Slavery and the Origin of the Race Ideology
(Quote of the Week)
Veteran American Trotskyist Richard Fraser developed the
materialist approach to the black question in the 1950s in a series of articles
and lectures for internal discussion in the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers
Party. The ideology of race is a socially derived category used to justify the
system of black chattel slavery in the American South, and black oppression
continued as a bedrock of American capitalism even after the Civil War smashed
the slavocracy. Fraser advanced the program of revolutionary integrationism: a
proletarian-centered struggle against every manifestation of racial oppression
based on the understanding that the complete integration and equality of black
people can be realized only in an egalitarian socialist society. This means not
liberal nostrums of reform, but proletarian socialist revolution to overthrow
the capitalist system and eliminate the basis of racial and class oppression.
The excerpts below are from an unpublished manuscript in the collection of the
Prometheus Research Library that Fraser was working on at the time of his death
in 1988.
Race is a social relationship between people recognizably different
in skin color. Recognizability is a necessary element of the relation, but the
social aspects of prejudice, exploitation and segregation are the things race is
really about. Race has no legitimacy as a biological division of mankind.
Race relations today are a residue of relations between white
masters and black slaves. The fact that slaves were black and masters were white
was an accident of history. Light skinned Europeans enslaved dark skinned
Africans. Europeans had learned about gunpowder from the Chinese and had guns.
The Africans didn’t. Skin color was a fact of life that differed between these
people. That difference had an ancient and interesting origin, but did not have
anything to do with the ability of Europeans to enslave Africans....
The basic change in race ideology that took place at the end of the
eighteenth century was to transform the slave who was socially inferior by
virtue of enslavement, and was incidentally black, into a person who was
inferior because he was black and hence only fitted for slavery….
Why, after three hundred years of slavery did a race theory finally
appear? Several things came together. The French Revolution did not just declare
that people had personal rights by nature, but that reason ought to hold sway
over blind faith. The Age of Reason had been born, and a scientific, and
secular, rationale was needed to justify the enslavement of people.
Furthermore, opposition to slavery was beginning to occur. Slave
revolts began to give slave masters cause for concern, not to speak of the
nascent abolitionist movement. The hypocrisy of the U.S. Constitution which was
based on the ideal of human liberty, but recognized the legitimacy of slavery,
could be counteracted by the contention that slaves were not quite human, but
some sort of inferior race. This was the social basis for the appearance of race
ideology as a scientific discipline.
—Richard Fraser, The Struggle Against Slavery in the United
States
For the second time in less than three years President Obama is leading an effort to take the U.S. to war. Calling on Congress to follow his lead, the President’s reasoning is to punish Syria for alleged chemical weapons use and to deter future deployment of this obscene and banned weapon. The President claims military action and killing more people is necessary to protect American values and national interests and to enforce international norms. 
202-224-3121 
