From The Cambridge Film Archives

Verita$: Everybody Loves Harvard [see trailer] Showing Thursday, June 18, in Cambridge [please download & distribute flyer] 'The best and the brightest' is how Harvard University is described today. People all over the world admire Harvard. But Harvard is not just an Ivory Tower. It is an organ of American ruling class. This documentary critically examines Harvard's historical role and its global impact. As a training ground for the elite, Harvard has maintained close ties with the U.S. government and provided crucial dimensions of state ideology, particularly during the Cold War. Including the Harvard Russia aid scandal which led the Russian economy into bankruptcy, the director exposes many unknown episodes in Harvard's history. The documentary questions what the real purpose of education should be. It contains interviews with many progressive American intellectuals including Prof. Noam Chomsky. "Today, everybody loves Harvard. But noone knows what it is  and what it really stands for. Understanding the real Harvard is a first step in understanding the world controlled by US capitalism."  ~Verita$ "Harvard today is more of a business than a university. It's more of an arm of the military than it is of intellectual freedom. This is a sad commentary on the state of the United States."  ~George Katsiaficas, MIT class of 1970, Professor at Wentworth Institutue of Technology; member of SDS at MIT "The most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers houses." ~James B Conant, Harvard President (1933-1953) - suggesting target for the nuclear bombs "A University which does not try to develop a maximal degree of interest, cooperation and understanding between its staff members and those of the National Defense forces is not doing its full job."  ~McGeorge Bundy (Harvard dean) - in a 1955 presentation to a ROTC panel "If Harvard would celebrate its 300th anniversary by burning itself to the ground and sowing its site with salt, the ceremony would give me the liveliest satisfaction."  ~George Bernard Shaw "I thought at the time, and still think now, that Harvard is a terrible mess of a place ...an incubator for an American ruling class that is smug, stratified, self-congratulatory, and intellectually adrift... Meritocracy is the ideological veneer, but social and economic stratification are the reality." ~ Ross Gregory Douthat, in his memoir Privilege of his four years in college, class of 2002 When/where doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm 243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on Windsor rule19.org/videos Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends! free film & free door prizes[donations are encouraged]feel free to bring your own snacks and soft drinks - no alcohol allowed "You can't legislate good will - that comes through education." ~ Malcolm X UPandOUT film series - see rule19.org/videos Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc etc - for billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for the loss of liberty and civil rights...

From United National Anti-War Coaliton

UNACpeace@gmail.com           518-227-6947             www.UNACpeace.org     Please Join UNAC at the Million People's March Against: Police Brutality, Racial Injustice and Economic Inequality July 25, 2015 at noon, Lincoln Monument at Springfield Ave and West Market Street, Newark, NJ The march is initiated by the People's Organization for Progress and endorsed by dozens of organizations. For more information: 973-801-0001 or info@njpop.org Join the Facebood event at: https://www.facebook.com/events/418074548350082/   Comments on UNAC Conference       Just one month ago, the United National Antiwar Coalition held a unique national gathering. Under the main theme of "Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad" the conference was able to pull together diverse struggles against U.S. wars on a global scale while giving full attention to the uprising against police violence. Panelists linked labor and community struggles against austerity and the growing cost of U.S. wars. Despite the diverse topics the conference was cohesive and the mood was overwhelmingly enthusiastic and reflected great determination to build unity and resistance. We are encouraged by the strong turnout of over 400 activists, who registered from 29 states representing 116 different organizations.  Delegates also came from Canada, Britain, Germany and Ukraine as well as a number of now-U.S.-based activists representing struggles in their home countries of Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Mexico, Palestine, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Syria and Venezuela. The conference also received solidarity messages from Cuba, Ireland, New Zealand and Russia. A beautiful 32 page conference journal included solidarity greetings from hundreds of organizations and individuals.   Conference participants took part in six plenary session and 28 workshops.  The entire conference was also seen by thousands of others who watched or listened to the conference by video or audio livestream.   You can see videos of the plenary sessions and a few of the workshops and other events on our Conference Website where they are identified by the original schedule which functions as a menu. Here you can find videos and sound recordings suitable for radio.  The Action Plan that came out of the Conference is also on the Conference Website along with links.      On the home page of the UNAC Peace Website you can read a detailed report of the events of the conference along with the videos of the conference and information about UNAC’s other activities.     Here are report backs by some of our guests:                        The New Jersey Journal, a local newspaper printed a great article about the conference, by Rev. Alexander Santora,              “Faith Matters: Jersey City group envisions peace, works to make it real” . It ran in the hard copy paper as well as on the internet.                            Bruce Gagnon of Keep Space for Peace, Organizing Notes:  Notes on the UNAC Conference                 Socialist Action: UNAC Conference Draws 400 Activists                   Workers World: Conference: ‘End wars at home and abroad’                      Fight Back News: United National Antiwar Coalition conference a big success            Black Agenda Report:  http://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom_rider_unac_shows_way In the Action Plan we decided to support a number of events throughout the coming year.    In May, we supported a German Call to stand in solidarity with the family of innocent victims of a drone strike in Yemen who are demanding that the German government get rid of a critical electronic relay necessary for flying drones which the U.S. has housed at its Ramstein base in Germany.   Learn more about this campaign on Actions Reports, where The Call, actions across the U.S., an Open Letter to Angela Merkel from American Activists, and links to other information re posted. UNAC Supports Arizona Mosque that is Under Attack  On Friday, May 29th 200 right-wing protesters, some armed, held a provocative protest at an Arizona mosque where they berated Islam and its Prophet Mohammed.  The protesters were met by an even larger group of people who were there to support the the mosque and freedom of religion.  UNAC sent the following message to the mosque:     On behalf of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), a peace and justice coalition representing over 150 member groups, we express our     support and solidarity with you as you face hostility, provocation, and violence from right-wing bigots.  We strongly condemn these Islamophobic     acts.  Please know that these despicable people do not represent the millions that stand for religious freedom and tolerance.  We believe that a         unified grassroots response will drive these forces back and ultimately defeat them.   Muslim Congressmen Call On Obama Admin. To Investigate Armed Rally At Phoenix Mosque   Freedom Beyond Occupation & Incarceration an afternoon with Angela Davis & Rasmea Odeh Sunday, June 28, 2:30 pm, University of Chicago 750 S. Halsted St., Student Center East, Illinois Room For more information: www.justice4rasmea.org of justice4rasmea@uspcn.org Rally & Speak-Out: Stop U.S. Proxy Wars from Yemen to Donbass Saturday, June 13, at1:00 pm at CNN 10 Columbus, Cir, New York, NY Tell the White House & Congress, "Stop funding right-wing terror against Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Palestine For more information: 212-633-6646 or www.IACenter.org Join the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1643084999236990/  Please click here to donate to UNAC

Defend The Florida Farmworkers

Are you ready? VT workers’ Milk with Dignity National Day of Action around the corner… Dairy workers, allies gearing up for June 20th Day of Action; Meanwhile, CIW and Worker-driven Social Responsibility take center stage at CGI America in Denver! Even as the season winds down in Immokalee, the ever-expanding Fair Food movement is gearing up for an action-filled summer!  Last week, we shared an exciting report from the Fair Food Program education team as CIW members headed north for the Program’s first-ever “Know Your Rights” trainings on tomato farms outside of Florida.  This week we have more news from the Fair Food front, as the model at the heart of the FFP, Worker-driven Social Responsibility, makes its own waves across the country. First up:  Make sure to circle next Saturday, June 20th, on your calendar!  Migrant Justice members are calling on Ben & Jerry’s to make a real, enforceable commitment to much-needed human rights standards — standards which would be authored and monitored by workers themselves — in the Vermont dairy industry, and they’ve released yet another great new campaign video to state their case [...] [...]  Meanwhile, the WSR model that unites the Fair Food Program and the nascent Milk with Dignity initiative was front and center earlier this week at CGI America, the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual “working meeting that promotes collaboration and actionable ideas.”  The CIW’s Lucas Benitez shared the stage with Chelsea Clinton, the Secretary of  Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, and other leaders from the worlds of business, government and social change for the opening plenary panel of the gathering in Denver... Don't miss the new Milk with Dignity campaign video as well as a report from CGI America over at the CIW website!

You are subscribed to the CIW Mailing List. To unsubscribe, please email us at workers@ciw-online.org.  Coalition of Immokalee Workers • PO Box 603, Immokalee, FL 34143 • (239) 657-8311 • workers@ciw-online.org

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

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

 

Stop the Escalation of War in Iraq!

President Obama just announced that he will send 450 more American service members to Iraq. They will join the 3,000 troops already there, risking their lives in a deepening crisis that has no U.S. military solution.



Luckily, two Iraq War veterans in Congress are standing up to calls for even more war. Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Mark Takai (D-HI) are currently organizing a sign-on letter against escalating the U.S. military mission in Iraq.

Please urge your Representative to sign the letter against escalating the war in Iraq.

Reps. Gallego and Takai know about Iraq because they fought there themselves. They understand the hard truth that American troops will not bring peace to Iraq nor heal the bitter sectarian divide fueling the conflict. They understand that if the Iraqi military won't fight - as it has repeatedly failed to do when ISIS has advanced - we cannot fight this war for them. As Reps. Gallego and Takai say in their letter:

"While the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people deserve our support in this struggle, an enduring victory over ISIS will only be possible if they demonstrate a real and lasting commitment to defeat our mutual foe. If we fight in their stead, our success will be temporary and our gains will be fragile."

 

‘The American Century’ Has Plunged the World Into Crisis

There’s a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the name of “American exceptionalism,” it’s the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine, technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world…  The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.

According Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — including the long-term health problems of veterans — will cost U.S. taxpayers around $6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related items. The “official” defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn’t include such items as nuclear weapons, veterans’ benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions a year in interest we’ll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already paid out $316 billion in interest. The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.

 

'Humanitarian' Warmongers

When the modern human rights movement began in the 1970s, no one expected it to become part of the antiwar camp. Indeed, Human Rights Watch’s predecessor, Helsinki Watch, was funded by a fat grant from the Ford Foundation, then led by McGeorge Bundy, a leading architect of the Vietnam War. But it’s also true that no one expected the human rights industry to acquiesce so uncritically in Washington’s militarism. It’s one thing for John McCain to criticise Obama for not being confrontational enough with Russia. But it’s a bit jarring to hear Suzanne Nossel, the former head of Amnesty International’s US branch, sniping at Obama for ‘reiterating that military options are off the table’ in dealing with the Ukraine crisis. Senior figures in the human rights world, in and out of government, have been less sceptical about the humanitarian benefits of assassination and counterinsurgency warfare than many military figures.  More

 

What If There Is No Plan B for Iraq?

In one form or another, the U.S. has been at war with Iraq since 1990, including a sort-of invasion in 1991 and a full-scale one in 2003. During that quarter-century, Washington imposed several changes of government, spent trillions of dollars, and was involved in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. None of those efforts were a success by any conceivable definition of the term Washington has been capable of offering. Nonetheless, it’s the American Way to believe with all our hearts that every problem is ours to solve and every problem must have a solution, which simply must be found. As a result, the indispensable nation faces a new round of calls for ideas on what “we” should do next in Iraq… Yet despite the risk of escalating Iraq's shadow civil war, the U.S. now is moving to directly arm the Sunnis… The fundamental problem underlying nearly every facet of U.S. policy toward Iraq is that “success,” as defined in Washington, requires all the players to act against their own wills, motivations, and goals in order to achieve U.S. aims.  More

 

Isis: A Year of the Caliphate

Have US tactics played into Islamist hands?

The “Islamic State” is stronger than it was when it was first proclaimed on 29 June last year, shortly after Isis fighters captured much of northern and western Iraq. Its ability to go on winning victories was confirmed on 17 May this year in Iraq, when it seized Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and again four days later in Syria, when it took Palmyra, one of the most famous cities of antiquity and at the centre of modern transport routes… Isis has more long-term opportunities in Syria than Iraq because some 60 per cent of Syrians are Sunni Arabs, compared to only 20 per cent in Iraq. It has yet to dominate the Sunni opposition in Syria to the extent it does in Iraq, but this may come. As sectarian warfare escalates, Isis’s combination of fanatical Sunni ideology and military expertise will be difficult to overcome.  More

 

U.S. to pre-position tanks, artillery in Baltics, eastern Europe

The United States will pre-position tanks, artillery and other military equipment in eastern and central Europe, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday, moving to reassure NATO allies unnerved by Russian involvement in Ukraine.  Carter made the announcement a little over 200 km (125 miles) from the Russian border, in the Estonian capital Tallinn, where he met Baltic defense chiefs and spoke to troops aboard a U.S. warship that had just completed drills in the Baltic Sea… Carter said the Baltic states - Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia -- as well as Bulgaria, Romania and Poland had agreed to host the arms and heavy equipment. Some of the weaponry would also be located in Germany. The U.S. decision to stage heavy equipment closer to Russia's borders will speed deployment of rotating U.S. forces as NATO steps up exercises in Europe following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region last year.  More

 

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

The horrific racist massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, has stimulated a long-overdue national dialogue – and actions – to clarify the meaning of displaying the Confederate battle flag. It has also drawn attention to the role of slavery in the history of our nation.  If unfree labor, enshrined in our founding constitution, was one pillar of colonial America, and later the independent United States, Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham reminds us that our nation was also created through the slaughter of its indigenous people. 

 

While the Confederate flag is now, thankfully, in retreat nearly everywhere, our own state continues to commemorate the massacre and subjugation of the native inhabitants in its official flag and seal. The ribbon beneath the stereotypical Indian (above, center – click on it to see a larger image in your browser) says, in Latin: “By the sword, [our State] seeks a tranquil peace under liberty.” Above the placid native appears an arm bearing a sword. (Irony is not a strong point of official iconographers.) Racist images of Native Americans also continue to be flaunted in countless schools and sports teams – not least the professional football team in Washington, DC.

 

It’s no coincidence that our own nation-building through colonial displacement of natives and genocide was an early justification among the US supporters of Zionism and defenders of the state of Israel. Otherwise progressive figures like Louis Brandeis alluded to this history, approvingly, as a model for building the Jewish State in Palestine.  One-time Liberal Israeli historian Benny Morris cited the US experience as a model in a 2004 interview defending ethnic cleansing: “Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."  Palestinians also well understand the meaning of this comparison.  Above, right, is from a demonstration greeting Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a 2007 visit to Israel (click on it to view a larger image).

 

On a more positive note, three important Supreme Court decisions this week remind us that good news can come from unexpected quarters.  The upholding of equal marriage rights illustrates the power – and speed – of broadly-based and aroused public opinion. The court’s refusal to overturn a key provision of the Affordable Care Act – as flawed as that measure is –also preserves access to health insurance or millions of people.  Another decision, less well publicized, upheld a key regulation against housing discrimination.

 

Why Is the Flag Still There?

But as a political symbol, the flag was revived when northern Democrats began to press for an end to the South’s system of racial oppression. In 1948, the Dixiecrats revolted against President Harry Truman—who had desegregated the armed forces and supported anti-lynching bills. The movement began in Mississippi in February of 1948, with thousands of activists “shouting rebel yells and waving the Confederate flag,” as the Associated Press reported at the time. Some actually removed old, mothballed flags from the trunks where they had until then been gathering dust… Over the next two decades, the flag was waved at Klan rallies, at White Citizens’ Council meetings, and by those committing horrifying acts of violence. And despite the growing range of its meanings in pop culture, as a political symbol, it offered little ambiguity.  Georgia inserted the battle flag into its state flag in 1956. Two years later, South Carolina made it a crime to desecrate the Confederate flag. And then, on the centennial of the day South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter came in 1961, it hoisted the battle flag above its Capitol… The flag was created by an army raised to kill in defense of slavery, revived by a movement that killed in defense of segregation, and now flaunted by a man who killed nine innocents in defense of white supremacy.  More

 

War, Murder and the American Way

Mass murders have increased fourteenfold in the United States since the 1960s, sociologist Peter Turchin wrote two and a half years ago, after the Sandy Hook killings. In his essay, called “Canaries in a Coal Mine,” Turchin made a disturbing comparison: Mass murderers kill the same way soldiers do, without personal hatred for their victims but to right some large social wrong… “On the battlefield,” Turchin wrote, “you are supposed to try to kill a person whom you’ve never met before. You are not trying to kill this particular person, you are shooting because he is wearing the enemy uniform. . . . That is to say,” I notedat the time, “the definition and practice of war and the definition and practice of mass murder have eerie congruencies. Might this not be the source of the social poison?.” … Dylann Roof had a toxic “cause” — to reclaim the Old South, to reclaim the country, from an unwelcome human subgroup — but the solidarity in which he acted wasn’t so much with his fellow racists as with the strategists and planners of war. Any war. Every war.  More

 

KRUGMAN: Hooray for Obamacare

Now, you might wonder why a law that works so well and does so much good is the object of so much political venom — venom that is, by the way, on full display in Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion, with its rants against “interpretive jiggery-pokery.” But what conservatives have always feared about health reform is the possibility that it might succeed, and in so doing remind voters that sometimes government action can improve ordinary Americans’ lives. That’s why the right went all out to destroy the Clinton health plan in 1993, and tried to do the same to the Affordable Care Act. But Obamacare has survived, it’s here, and it’s working. The great conservative nightmare has come true. And it’s a beautiful thing.  More

 

Supreme Court upholds far-reaching rules against racial discrimination in housing

The Supreme Court on Thursday handed a rare victory to civil-rights advocates, endorsing a broad interpretation of a landmark 1960s-era law that forbids racial discrimination in housing. In a 5-4 decision that at times recalled the rhetoric of the liberal Warren court, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the court's liberal justices agreed that the 1968 Fair Housing Act covers discrimination regardless of whether it was caused by intentional and blatant racial bias. The lawsuit challenged the construction of low-income housing predominantly in inner-city minority neighborhoods in Dallas rather than in white suburbs. The justices said that under the law, discrimination can be shown even when there is no overt bias but when statistics prove that a particular practice or policy has had a “disparate impact” on minorities.  More

 

Celebration Day at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? A Debate on Who Benefits from the TPP

Big business just won its top priority for this U.S. Congress. If this deal—if the vote today ultimately leads to adoption of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we know, with some high degree of certainty, what’s going to happen. We’re going to lose many more jobs in the United States. We’re going to have real downward pressure on wages and an increase, an ongoing increase, in the huge problem of inequality. We’re going to see huge empowerment for Big Pharma and its ability to charge monopoly prices in all the TPP countries, the developing countries but also in the United States. And we’re going to see the creation and expansion of a special system that gives corporations the right to sue governments directly if those governments take action that the companies say infringe on their expected profits.  More

 

Our two Senators and all House members voted against TPP – but the measure passed with nea- unanimous Republican votes, plus enough Democratic defectors.

 

Democracy Wrecked Again: On the Fast Track of Corporate Authoritarianism

Consistent with numerous surveys revealing a preponderantly progressive populace in the U.S. over many years, they show majority support for greater economic equality and opportunity, increased worker rights, a roll-back of corporate power, and trade regulation.

The U.S. economic power elite has a response to such popular sentiments: So what? Who cares? Public opinion is pitilessly mocked by harshly lopsided socioeconomic realities and coldly plutocratic politics and policy in the U.S. America is mired in a New Gilded Age of savage inequality and abject financial corporatocracy so extreme that the top 1 percent garnered 95 of all U.S. income gains during Barack Obama’s first administration and owns more 90 percent of the nation’s wealth along with a probably equivalent portion of the nation’s “democratically elected” officials.  More

 

America’s Slave Empire

In Alabama prisons, as in nearly all such state facilities across the United States, prisoners do nearly every job, including cooking, cleaning, maintenance, laundry and staffing the prison barbershop. In the St. Clair prison there is also a chemical plant, a furniture company and a repair shop for state vehicles. Other Alabama prisons run printing companies and recycling plants, stamp license plates, make metal bed frames, operate sand pits and tend fish farms. Only a few hundred of Alabama’s 26,200 prisoners—the system is designed to hold only 13,130 people—are paid to work; they get 17 to 71 cents an hour. The rest are slaves… “It says America is what it has always been, America,” said Ray. “It says if you are poor and black you will be exploited, brutalized and murdered. It says most of American society, especially white society, is indifferent. It says nothing has really changed for us since slavery.”  More

 

Why Don’t More of the Poor Rise Up?

Society has drastically changed since the high-water mark of the 1930s and 1960s when collective movements captured the public imagination. Now, there is an inexorable pressure on individuals to, in effect, fly solo. There is very little social support for class-based protest – what used to be called solidarity… All of which brings us back to the question of why there is so little rebellion against entrenched social and economic injustice. The answer is that those bearing the most severe costs of inequality are irrelevant to the agenda-setters in both parties. They are political orphans in the new order. They may have a voice in urban politics, but on the national scene they no longer fit into the schema of the left or the right. They are pushed to the periphery except for a brief moment on Election Day when one party wants their votes counted, and the other doesn’t.   More

 

*   *   *   *

GIVE WAR A CHANCE?

The Iran Deal Proves That Peace Is Possible

We need to recognize that this is an unprecedented diplomatic effort.

If the two sides manage to reach a deal by their June 30 deadline, their achievement will go beyond just preventing a war or blocking Iran’s paths to a bomb. The real achievement may be that a major international conflict — a conflict that has brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war in recent years — has been resolved through a compromise achieved by diplomacy… If Iran and the United States can reach a détente and avoid getting entangled with each other, this would be a radical shift from their antagonistic rivalry of the past three decades. It wouldn’t necessarily be a partnership — much less an alliance — but their relationship would no longer be characterized by enmity, but rather by a truce.  More

 

What do Iranians think about their nuclear programme?

A survey carried out by the University of Tehran provided important insights into the views of the Iranian people. According to the poll taken in January 2015, 91 percent of Iranians living in Iran view the expansion of the nuclear infrastructure as important for their country, citing its relevance to medical science, agriculture, increasing production of electricity, and strengthening self-sufficiency of the nation. 65 percent of the Iranians polled believe that production of nuclear weapons is against Islam [a poll taken in 2008 by World Public Opinion had found similar sentiments], and 78 percent supported the government’s decision during the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s not to produce and use chemical weapons against Iraq, even though Iraq had used on a large scale the same weapons against Iranian soldiers… Most importantly, 78 percent believed that Iran’s nuclear programme is only an excuse for the West to pressure their nation. The participants in the poll appeared to be well-informed: 58 percent were familiar with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), whereas polls consistently indicate that only 20-30 percent of American know about the NPT.   More

 

Of weapons programs in Iran and Israel, and the need for journalists to report on both

It is noteworthy that while negotiations over limiting Iran’s enrichment program have taken center stage in news coverage—and will likely dominate the headlines as a final agreement is or is not reached at the end of this month—the history of Israel’s covert nuclear program draws relatively little media attention. Israel has long maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor directly denying that it has a nuclear deterrent, and the United States government has officially taken the same stance, prohibiting its officials from stating that Israel is a nuclear weapons country.  More

 

Pro-Israel Lobby Prepares to Battle Obama Over Iran

Since last month, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has mobilized its members to press legislators to endorse five principles for a nuclear deal -- principles that are almost certain not to be reflected in a final agreement. Parallel to this campaign, major donors to AIPAC and other pro-Israel causes are forming a new and independent 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, according to fundraisers and other lobbyists involved in the effort. The new organization will buy TV, radio and Internet ads targeting lawmakers from both parties who are on the fence about the nuclear deal, these sources say. Officially, AIPAC is still reserving judgment on the nuclear deal being ironed out now in Vienna by the U.S., Iran and five other world powers. But it's clear that the agreement now being negotiated would be unsatisfactory to AIPAC..  More

 

From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon

Click below to link to the “James P. Cannon Internet Archives.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/index.htm

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Markin comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review, James P. Cannon and the Early American Communist Party, on the “American Left History” blog:

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.

These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third- party bourgeois candidates;trade union policy; class-war prisoner defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.

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BOOK REVIEW

NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.

I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.

The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.

It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.

I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.

Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.

I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2014 That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.

For Immediate Press Release: A. F. Markin Will Not Run For President In 2016

For Immediate Press Release: A. F. Markin Will Not Run For President In 2016    

From The American Left History Blog-June 2015

“Apparently the perennial third-party presidential candidate Mister Allan Frederick Markin, although he takes pains to make it clear to everybody that since childhood he has always gone by the moniker “A. F.,” is the only politician in America, or at least who is not inside the Democratic or Republican Party, who has not thrown his or her hat, or tried to throw his or her hat,  into the ring this election cycle for a chance at the brass ring, or Hillary Rodham Clinton’s big target. He must be a rare bird.”-John Stewart, WDJA News

When asked by a reporter at the press conference held in New York City where he has always made such announcements about his political plans about the possibility of endorsing Hilary Rodham Clinton for President to keep that office out of the clutches of the bastard Republicans A.F. Markin who had just announced that he would not run for the office this cycle, quoted one of his favorite old time bluesman, Skip James, a man who had many problems with wine, women and song in his time -“I’d rather be the devil that to be that woman’s man.” When pressed further by a reporter from the Detroit Globe he simply stated “Enough said” as he left the microphones. Laura Perkins, The Chicago Patriot-Ledger        

Routers 24/7 Media Flash: A. F. Markin, long time anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist activist and the evil genius behind the blog American Left History, has announced today that under no conditions will he be a candidate for President of the United States in 2016. In prior election cycles he has run for the office as an Independent Social-Democrat (2000), the Rainbow Left Coalition (2004), and after a fierce nomination fight on the Green Wave Party ticket (2008, although in that case he waged an opportunistic low-level campaign because according to one disappointed campaign worker Markin did not want to ruin then Senator Barack Obama’s chances at the White House expecting some kind of job offer for doing so. To once again prove that opportunism does not pay, especially for so-called principled socialists like him and Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, he was never offered any position in that administration).

In 2012 Markin got what he called at the time “religion” and sat out the campaign although without any thoughts of not ruining the chances of that “miserable sell-out bastard Obama” (Markin’s harsh words not apparently due to the failure to get an appointed job but because Obama had hood-winked everybody with any sense in 2008 that he was another garden variety Democrat hustle wars and sacrifice to a jaded public). Rather because he had read an obscure document from the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922 (Vladimir Lenin’s old-time operation to create world revolution established in 1919 and which went out of business in 1943) in an obscure left-wing socialist newspaper which stated that socialists should not seek, not even run for, the executive offices (President, Governor, sheriff) of what they called the “bourgeois capitalist state.” Chastised, thoroughly chastised by that obscure odd-ball reference he is again sitting the 2016 election cycle out.    

At the press conference held in New York City’s Best Eastern Hotel making the announcement Markin, paraphrasing the great 19th century Northern Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman (hero of “Billy’s bummers” traipsing through Georgia and its environs and scourge of the rebels) stated that “if drafted I will not run and if elected I will not serve” in that post. He, however, did not rule out the possibility of running for some legislative office like the United States Senate or U.S. House of Representatives. –Josh Breslin, Portland Free Press

A.F. Markin commentary on the American Politics Today website expanding on his decision not to run (originally posted on the American Left History blog on June 6, 2015):     

“I know that the long suffering readers of this blog have been waiting breathlessly for me to announce my intentions for the presidential campaign of 2016. Wait a minute! What kind of madness is this on my part to impose on readers who I am sure are still recovering from the shell-shock of that seemingly endless and mendacious 2012 presidential campaign. Well… Okay, as usual I want to, for good or ill, make a little point about running for the executive offices of the bourgeois state now that I have gotten ‘religion’ about the necessary of radicals and revolutionaries, even garden variety socialists like me who in the past has run for such offices to get out the socialist message and because during election cycles you at least have people half paying attention, NOT to do so. I think this point can really be driven home today now that we have a ‘progressive’ Democratic president, one Barack Obama, as a foil.

I have detailed elsewhere in a more scholarly journal (Political Affairs Today, June 2012) the controversial and checkered history of running for executive office of the bourgeois capitalist state in the international workers movement, and especially in the Communist International in its heroic days in the early 1920's, surrounding the question of whether radicals and revolutionaries, on principle, should run for these office. I need not repeat that argument here. (See also June 2012 Archives, "If Drafted I Will Not Run, If Elected I Will Not Serve-Revolutionaries and Running For Executive Offices," American Left History blog, dated June 15, 2012). I have also noted there the trajectory of my own conversion to the position of opposition to such runs.

Previously I had seen such electoral efforts as good propaganda tools and/or basically harmless attempts to intersect political reality at times when the electorate is tuned in. Always under the assumption made clear during the campaign that, of course, if elected one would not assume the office.

In any case, I admit to a previously rather cavalier attitude toward the whole question, even as I began to see the wisdom of opposition. But having gone through the recent presidential campaign and, more importantly, the inauguration and installation of a ‘progressive’ black man to the highest office attainable under the imperium I have begun to wipe that smirk off my face.

Why? I have hardly been unaware throughout my leftist political career that Social Democratic and Communist (Stalinist/Maoist varieties especially) Party politicians have, individually or in popular front alliances with capitalist parties, wreaked havoc on working people while administrating the bourgeois state. I have, in particular, spent a good part of my political career fighting against the notion of popular front strategies as they have been forged in the past, disastrously in places like Spain during the Civil War in the 1930s and Chile in 1973 or less disastrously in France in the 1980s. However this question of the realities of running the imperial state in America really hit home with the coming into office of Barack Obama.

Certainly, Obama did not have, and in the course of such things could not have had, any qualms about administering the bourgeois state, even if such toilsome work contradicted his most basic principles. Assuming, for the sake of argument here, that Obama is not the worst bourgeois politician, progressive or not, that has come down the pike. Already, after a few short weeks in office, he had escalated the troop levels in Afghanistan. He was from the get-go most earnestly committed to bailing out the financial heart of the imperial system, at the long term expense of working people. Where is the room for that vaunted ‘progressive’ designation in all of this? Oh yes he has said he is against torture and illegal torture centers but look at the still open Guantanamo and other evil deeds when a few documents about the nefarious doing of the CIA were rolled out by Congress. That, dear readers might have passed for progressive action- in the 17th century. Jesus, is there no end to this madness in taking grandstanding kudos for stuff that Voltaire would have dismissed out of hand. So the next time someone asks you to run for President of the United States (or governor of a state or mayor of a city) take the Markin pledge - Just say NO!

In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake In Mind

In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake In Mind    

In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake In Mind    

 

 

Recently in discussing Sam Lowell’s relationship with mountain music, the music from down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky where his father and his people before him had lived dirt poor for generations eking almost nothing out of the land that had been abandoned decades before by some going west driven spirits who played the land out and moved on, some moving on until they reached ocean edge California, Bart Webber noticed that he had concentrated a little too heavily on the music of Sam’ s father’s  Kentucky hills and hollows. There were other places down south like in the Piedmont of North Carolina where a cleaner picking style had been developed by the likes of Etta Baker and exemplified more recently by Norman Blake who has revived the work of performers like Aunt Helen Alder and Pappy Sims by playing the old tunes. There are other places as well like down in the inner edges of Tennessee and Georgia where the kindred also dwelled, places as well where if the land had played out there they, the ones who stayed behind in there tacky cabins barely protected against the weathers, their lack of niceties of modern existence a result not because they distained such things but down in the hollows they did not know about them, did not seem to notice the bustling outside world.

 

They all, all the hills and hollows people, just kept plucking away barely making ends meet, usually not doing so in some periods, and once they had abandoned cultivating the land these sedentary heredity “master-less men” thrown out their old countries, mainly the British Isles, for any number of petty crimes, but crimes against property and so they had to go on their own or face involuntary transportation they went into the “black god” mines or sharecropping for some Mister to live short, nasty, brutish lives before the deluge.

But come Saturday night, come old Fred Brown’s worn out in need of paint red barn the hill people, the mountain people, the piedmont brethren, hell, maybe a few swamp-dwellers too, would gather up their instruments, their sweet liquor jugs, their un-scrubbed bare-foot children or their best guy or gal and play the night away as the winds came down the mountains. This DNA etched in his bones by his father and the kindred is what Sam had denied for much of his life.          

But like Bart had mentioned when discussing the matter with Sam one night sometimes “what goes around comes around” as the old-time expression had it. Take for example Sam Lowell’s youthful interest in folk music back in the early 1960s when it had crashed out of exotic haunts like Harvard Square, Ann Arbor, Old Town Chi Town and North Beach/Berkeley out in Frisco. Crashed out by word of mouth at first and ran into a lot of kids, a lot of kids like Sam, who got his word from Diana Nelson who got it from a cousin from North Adamsville nearer Boston who frequented the coffeehouse on Beacon Hill and Harvard Square who had “hipped” her to this new folk music program that he had found flipping the dial of his transistor radio one Sunday night.

 

See Sam and Diana were tucked away from the swirl down in Carver about thirty miles as the crow flies from Boston and Cambridge but maybe a million social miles from those locales and had picked up the thread somewhat belatedly. He, along with his corner boys, had lived in their little corner boy cocoon out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner figuring out ways to get next to girls like Diana but who were stuck, stuck like glue to listening to the “put to sleep” music that was finding its way to clog up Jimmy Jack’s’ hither-to-fore “boss” jukebox. Christ, stuff like Percy Faith’s Moon River that parents could swoon over, and dance to. Had picked the sound up belatedly when they were fed up with what was being presented on American Bandstand and WJDA the local rock station, while they were looking for something different, something that they were not sure of but that smelled, tasted, felt, and looked different from a kind of one-size-fits-all vanilla existence.

Oh sure, as Bart recognized once he thought about it for a while, every generation in their youth since the days when you could draw a distinction between youth and adulthood a century or so ago and have it count has tried to draw its own symbolic beat but this was different, this involved a big mix of things all jumbled together, political, social, economic, cultural, the whole bag of societal distinctions which would not be settled until the end of that decade, maybe the first part of the next. That big picture is what interested him. What Sam was interested then down there in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston was the music, his interest in the other trends did not come until later, much later long after the whole thing had ebbed and they were fighting an unsuccessful rearguard action against the night-takers and he was forced to consider other issues. And Sam had been like that ever after. 

 

The way Sam told it one night a few years back, according to Bart, some forty or so years after his ear changed forever that change had been a bumpy road. Sam had been at his bi-weekly book club in Plymouth where the topic selected for the next meeting was the musical influences, if any, that defined one’s tastes and he had volunteered to speak then since he had just read a book, The Mountain View, about the central place of mountain music, for lack of a better term, in the American songbook. He had along with Bart and Jack Dawson also had been around that time discussing how they had been looking for roots as kids. Musical roots which were a very big concern for a part of their  generation, a generation that was looking for roots, for rootedness not just in music but in literature, art, and even in the family tree.

 

Their parents’ generation no matter how long it had been since the first family immigration wave had spilled them onto these shores was in the red scare Cold War post-World War II period very consciously ignoring every trace of roots in order to be fully vanilla Americanized. So their generation had had to pick up the pieces not only of that very shaky family tree but everything else that had been downplayed during that period.

 

Since Sam had tired of the lazy hazy rock and roll that was being produced and which the local rock radio stations were force- feeding him and others like him looking to break out through their beloved transistor radios he had started looking elsewhere on the tiny dial for something different after Diana had clued him in about that folk music program. Although for a while he could not find that particular program or Carver was out of range for the airwaves. But like a lot of young people, as he would find out later when he would meet kindred in Harvard Square, the Village, Ann Arbor, Berkeley he fortunately had been looking for that something different at just that moment when something called folk music, roots music, actually was being played on select stations for short periods of time each week and so it was before long that he was tuned in.

 

His own lucky station had been a small station, an AM station, from Providence in Rhode Island which he would find out later had put the program on Monday nights from eight to eleven at the request of Brown and URI students who had picked up the folk music bug on trips to the Village (Monday a dead music night in advertising circles then, maybe now too, thus fine for talk shows, community service programs and odd-ball stuff like roots music to comply with whatever necessary FCC mandates went with the license.) That is where he first heard the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk, a new guy named Tom Rush from Harvard whom he would hear in person many times over the years, and another guy, Eric Von Schmidt whom he would meet later in one of the Harvard Square coffeehouses that were proliferating to feed the demand to hear folk music. Those coffeehouses were manna from heaven, well, because they were cheap for guys with little money. Cheap alone or on a date, basically as Sam related to his book club listeners for a couple of bucks at most admission, the price of a cup of coffee to keep in front of you and thus your place, maybe a pastry if alone and just double that up for a date except share the pasty you had your date deal all set for the evening hearing performers perfecting their acts before hitting the A-list clubs.

 

He listened to it all, liked some of it, other stuff, the more protest stuff he could take or leave depending on the performer but what drew his attention, strangely then was when somebody on the radio or on stage performed mountain music, you know, the music of the hills and hollows that came out of Appalachia mainly down among the dust and weeds. Things like Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow, Gold Watch and Chain, Fair and Tender Ladies, Pretty Saro, and lots of instrumentals by guys like Buell Kazee, Hobart Smith, The Charles River Boys. Norman Blake just starting his rise along with various expert band members to bring bluegrass to the wider younger audience that did not relate to guys like Bill Monroe and his various band combinations, and some other bluegrass bands as well that had now escaped his memory.

 

This is where it all got jumbled up for him Sam said since he was strictly a city boy, made private fun of the farm boys, the cranberry boggers, who then made up a significant part of his high school. He furthermore had no interest in stuff like the Grand Ole Opry and that kind of thing, none. Still he always wondered about the source, about why he felt some kinship with the music of the Saturday night red barn, probably broken down, certainly in need of paint, and thus available for the dance complete with the full complement of guitars, fiddles, bass, mandolin and full complement too of Bobby Joe’s just made white lightening, playing plainsong for the folk down in the wind-swept hills and hollows.  

 

Then one night, a Sunday night after he had picked up the Boston folk program station on the family radio (apparently the weak transistor radio did not have the energy to pick up a Boston station) he was listening to the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower when his father came in and began singing along. After asking Sam about whether he liked the song and Sam answered that he did but could not explain why his father told him a story that maybe put the whole thing in perspective. After Sam’s older brother, Lawrence, had been born and things looked pretty dicey for a guy from the South with no education and no skill except useless coal-mining his father decided that maybe they should go back to Kentucky and see if things were better for a guy like him there. No dice, after had been in the north, after seeing the same old tacky cabins, the played out land, the endless streams of a new generation of shoeless kids Sam’s father decided to head back north and try to eke something out in a better place. But get this while Sam’s parents were in Kentucky Sam had been conceived. Yeah, so maybe it was in the genes all along.