Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me.
Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include: 

*that Private Manning  was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.

*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.

*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.

*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!

Signature ___________________________________________________________

Print Name __________________________________________________________

Address_____________________________________________________________

City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

***On “The Long March” From North Adamsville High School

 
For Linda, Class of 1964-With Ernesto “Che” Guevara In Mind

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

No, this will not be one of those everlasting screeds about the meaning of existent, the plight of modern humankind, or our personal and public trials and tribulations since leaving the friendly confines of North Adamsville High lo those many years ago. My excuse previously was that the class committee officers badgered me into writing that stuff (and one in particular who is, to be honest, obsessive about our opinions and comments. And honestly, as well, I am afraid of retribution so I will not mention her name, or maybe that she is a she, under penalty of death, okay). I have already done that “heavy meaning” road before in this space and, moreover, this class website is a lite-user site and cannot stand that kind of weighty matter. I can hear the collective sighs of relief already. Thanks, fellow classmates.

Nor is this to be an exegesis on the heroic “long march” of the Chinese Red Army in the 1930s, although that is an interesting story. For that you can turn to the old-time journalist Edgar Snow’s eye-witness account, Red Star Over China. Nor will it be about Fidel and "Che's" struggles in the Cuban Sierras that animated some of us in our youth. Today’s entry is much more mundane, although come to think it, in its own way it may have historic significance. The “long march’ in question is the one that some members of the class of 1964 (and 1963) took from North Adamsville High School over to North Adamsville Junior High (now Middle School) in the 7th grade. Those were the days, the post- World War II “baby-boomer” days when the then current facilities at the high school were not enough for the overflow. Older readers from other high schools during that period may have their own stories to tell on this over-crowding subject.

Recently I have sent out a blizzard of e-mails to virtually anyone on the various North Adamsville Alumni class lists that I could, by any stretch of the imagination, call upon to help me out with a problem that I am having. So some of you already know the gist of this entry and can move on. For the rest, here is the “skinny”:

"... I will get right to the point, although I feel a little awkward writing to classmates that I did not know at school or have not seen for a long time. I, moreover, do not want to get tough with senior citizens, particularly those grandmothers and grandfathers out there, but I need your help. And I intend to get it by any means necessary. As you may, or may not, know over the past couple of years I have, episodically, placed entries about the old days at North on our classof 1964 -related Internet site. Some of the entries have come from a perusal of the 1964 Magnet, but, mainly from memory, my memory, and that is the problem. I need to hear other voices, other takes on our experience. Recently I have been reduced to dragging out elementary school daydreams and writing in the third person just to keep things moving. So there is our dilemma.

The question of the “inner demons” that have driven me to this work we will leave aside for now. What I need is ideas, and that is where you come in. In 2010, as you are painfully aware, those of us who went to North Adamsville Junior High (now Middle School) we marked our 50th anniversary since graduation from that august institution. Ouch! So what I am looking for is junior high memories, especially of the “long march” from the high school over to North Adamsville Junior High when we were in 7th grade that I remember hearing much about at the time. I was not at the school at that time, having moved back to North Adamsville in the spring of 1959, so I need to be filled in again. However any story will do. If this is too painful then tell me your hopes and dreams. Hell, I will listen to your frustrations. From back then. I already ‘know’ your nicks and bruises since graduation; we will leave that for another day. Better still write them up and place them on the comment boards on your own.

And what if you decide not to cooperate? Well, then we will go back to that “any means necessary” statement above. Do you really want it broadcast all over the Internet about what you did, or did not do, at Adamsville Beach, Squaw Rock, or wherever I decide to place you, and with whom, on that hot, sultry July night in the summer of 1963? No, I thought not. So come on, let us show future generations of cyberspace-fixated North Adamsville graduates that the Class of 1964 knew the stuff of dreams, and how to write about them. And seek immortality. Friendly regards, Peter Paul Markin.

Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On Lyrics

Sung by Jerry Lee Lewis, 1957
(from the 1957 Sun release)

Come along my baby, whole lotta shakin' goin' on
Yes, I said come along my baby, baby you can't go wrong
We ain't fakin', while lotta shakin' goin' on.

Well, I said come along my baby, we got chicken in the corn
Woo-huh, come along my baby, really got the bull by the horn
We ain't fakin', whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

Well, I said shake, baby, shake,
I said shake, baby, shake
I said shake it, baby, shake it
I said shake, baby, shake
Come on over, whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

Oh, let's go . . .(Piano break, guitar rift)

Well, I said come along my baby, we got chicken in the barn,
Whose barn, what barn, my barn
Come along my baby, really got the bull by the horn
We ain't fakin', whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

(Talking break) Easy now. Shake.
Ah, shake it baby
Yeah, you can shake it one time for me

Yeah-huh-huh-ha-ha, Come along my baby,
Whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

(Talking break) Now let's get down real low one time now
Shake, baby, shake
All you gotta do, honey, is kinda stand in one spot
Wiggle around just a little bit, that's what you got
Yeah, come on baby, whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

Now let's go one time
Shake it baby, shake, shake it baby, shake
Woo, shake baby, come on baby, shake it, baby, shake
Come on over, whole lot-ta sha-kin' go-in' on.
******

The Struggle Continues...

The Struggle Continues...

 

The Struggle Continues...

 

The Struggle Continues...

In The Time Of The Dutch Masters…

 

…she was sick, sick unto death of being pawed at by every beer swilling burgomaster with a free hand. She swore (not Christian swore not in pious Dutch land and not in hearing distance of her pious family land) that the next burgher who touched her ever so slightly was going to get his, well, get his. She had no idea that  serving old men (old to her fifteen-year old eyes) at table was going to be a test of strength. Sure she had let Hans grab her a few times in back of the hayloft back home but that was pretty Hans full of youthful ardor and, well, good-looking too and so she maybe let him take a few more liberties than the elders would have approved of.  But then too they were practically betrothed and their two families had planned that event well before Hans (and she) got their grabbing habits.

But these old coots were a different matter. Especially the group of four at the far end of the Guildhall set off by themselves like they were so high and mighty (which on earth they were) sneaking their little pinchings when Govert was busy preparing the next course or Matilde was clearing the last set of dishes and setting up the next set for these fatted cows. One was just as bad as the next. The banker on his fifth glass talking about how his wife was poorly and wouldn’t he be just right with some little wench who could appreciate his ardor. Looking, no, leering directly at her. The merchant-general all serious talk with the men until she came into the room and then he would try to twist her breast right in front of the others like she didn’t know (from a distance anyway) that he had his own daughter her age. Then the commander and his insatiable desire to eat oysters in order to enhance his manliness so he said. What a laugh. And that red-headed one always pointing his single finger and always swishing his sword “by mistake” so he said when she came by tapping her on her ass and making suggestive sounds when he was trying to apologize.

Just then Govert called her to bring in another fistful of mugs for the gentlemen (Govert had a nicely snide way of saying that) and as she prepared herself for battle she thought that maybe if she just thought about Hans and that illicit hayloft she just might get through that miserable night …      

 

(please forward widely) Please see the call for Spring Days of Action to End Drone Killing, Surveillance and Global Militarization.  As you can see, the call is initiated by leading anti-war activists and groups including UNAC.  Please start your plans today for actions during the months of April and May.  Add your name and your organization to the growing list of supporters by clicking on the link below.  There will be a page set up to let people know of activity in their area.  For now, please send any information on planned actions to UNACpeace@gmail.com and they will appear on the national list.  We want to make this campaign international.  For any groups outside of the US who are interested in endorsing this campaign and/or building actions in your own country, please let us know.                       CALL FOR SPRING DAYS OF ACTION – 2014 Today we issue an international call for Spring Days of Action – 2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to:             End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global Militarization   The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.   The campaign will provide information on:   1. The suffering of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.   2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.   In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama's "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60% of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership.  We will show, among other things, how this surge of "pivot" forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the US military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival.  In short, we will connect drones and militarization with "austerity" in America.   3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.   We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor US citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.   The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.   The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180 and to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.   The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.   The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call:   Lyn Adamson – Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace Dennis Apel – Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California Judy Bello – Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars Medea Benjamin – Code Pink Leah Bolger – Former National President, Veterans for Peace Canadian Voice of Women for Peace Sung-Hee Choi – Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea Chelsea C. Faria – Graduate student, Yale  Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace Sandy Fessler – Rochester (NY) Against War Joy First Bruce K. Gagnon - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space Holly Gwinn Graham – Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA. Regina Hagen - Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence Malachy Kilbride Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo – Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition Tamara Lorincz – Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada Nick Mottern – KnowDrones.org Agneta Norberg – Swedish Peace Council Pepperwolf – Director, Women Against Military Madness Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American   Bases  CAAB UK Mathias Quackenbush – San Francisco, CA Lisa Savage – Code Pink, State of Maine Janice Sevre-Duszynska Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck- Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany Cindy Sheehan Lucia Wilkes Smith – Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) – Ground    Military Drones Committee David Soumis – Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin Debra Sweet – World Can’t Wait David Swanson - WarisACrime.org Brian Terrell – Voices for Creative Nonviolence United National Antiwar Coalition Veterans for Peace  Dave Webb – Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK) Curt Wechsler – Fire John Yoo! (a project of World Can’t Wait) – San Francisco, CA Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s) Loring Wirbel – Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO) Women Against Military Madness Ann Wright – Retired US Army colonel and former diplomat Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation click here to donate to UNAC Click here for the Facebook UNAC group. To add yourself to the UNAC listserv, please send an email to: UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

 

Dear Al, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) groups will march in South Boston on March 16 in the welcoming and inclusive Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, that follows the first parade on the same parade route, organized by Veterans For Peace. For the fourth year in a row, LGBT Groups will march in the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade in South Boston. “Some day these walls of exclusion and division will come tumbling down," said Carisa Cunningham, the Director of Public Affairs for the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). "It will be a proud day for the City of Boston when one’s sexual orientation is not a litmus test for who can participate in a parade”. Veterans For Peace is organizing what parade organizers call the only “Peace Parade” in the country. The Peace Parade is energizing, with great music, great messages and just a lot of fun for everyone! The Allied War Veterans Council (AWVC), the group that runs the traditional Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, has again snubbed the LGBT community and Veterans For Peace. Mayor Marty Walsh has attempted to negotiate an acceptable compromise with the AWVC with no results as of today. Mayor Walsh, as his predecessor before him, has announced that he will not walk in the traditional parade because of the parade’s exclusionary practices. For the past four years Veterans For Peace has organized their own alternative welcoming and inclusive parade after being denied to walk in the traditional parade in 2011. “We have never been denied permission to walk in any parade except for this parade”, stated Pat Scanlon, the Coordinator for Veterans For Peace for the greater Boston area and principal organizer of the Peace Parade. “I am a decorated Vietnam Veteran, with seventeen years of Catholic education, born on Saint Patrick’s Day and I can’t walk in their parade because my fellow veterans and I stand for peace. That is shameful and the exclusion an embarrassment to this great city”. “Bravo” said Scanlon, “to the new mayor of Boston Marty Walsh for standing on principle and announcing that he will not walk in the traditional parade unless LGBT groups can march under their own banners. It is 2014 and time for these antiquated divisive practices to come to an end,” added Scanlon. “We hope every politician follows Mayor Walsh’s lead and not participate in the first parade until every group who wants to celebrate Saint Patrick and the proud Irish traditions can”.  This year will be quite different. Street sweepers, that for the past three years have been placed behind the first parade, dispersing onlookers, will now be behind the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade allowing all the revelers in Southie to see and hear both parades. Scanlon added, “it is our hope that someday there will be one, welcoming, inclusive parade in South Boston, with everyone invited to celebrate Saint Patrick and the proud Irish traditions. Sadly, that probably will not happen this year -- maybe next." People's Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social & Economic Justice Unite, Participate, Celebrate Sunday, March 16, 2014, 1:00 pm D Street & West Broadway, South Boston • Look for white "Vets for Peace" Flags Assemble: 1pm.  Parade start: 2pm   Sign Up to Attend and Bring your Organization's Banner! There are several DIVISIONS marching in the parade, as well as two marching bands, Duck Boats, bagpipers, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.. The DIVISIONS are: Veterans groups; Peace groups; LGBT groups; Faith groups; environmental groups; social and economic justice groups; labor groups; political groups. Please invite your group(s) to come! Contact: Massachusetts Peace Action, Cole Harrison, info@masspeaceaction.org, 617-354-2169; Veterans for Peace, Pat Scanlon, info@massvfp.org, 978-475-1776; faith groups contact Lara Hoke, minister@uuandover.org. Please join us for our Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative People’s Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social and Economic Justice. Logistics & Directions Sign Up to Attend and Bring your Organization's Banner! The parade route is 4.5 miles and ends at Andrew Station. Rides along the parade route are available for those who need them, but please let us know ahead of time that you may need a ride. Come by T if at all possible as the area will be very congested. Broadway is the closest MBTA subway station. Parking is available for participants in the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade. Vehicles must enter from the north from Summer Street onto D Street; the parking lot is at 383 D Street. Look for the lot with 40 foot white truck trailers.   Allow extra time for traffic. Directions From North Route I-93 to South Station exit (20 A). Merge onto Purchase Street to light (100 feet). Make a left onto Summer Street (will pass South Station on right). Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag) From South Route I-93 – Take exit 20 toward South Station. Follow signs for Chinatown, continue straight onto Lincoln Street, turn right onto Kneeland Street, turn left onto Atlantic, south Station will be up on your right. Take a right onto Summer Street. Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag) Be sure to bring your Chapter’s or Organization’s banners, signs and costumes and join us in our fabulous Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade.  On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee. Thank you, Pat Scanlon (VN '69) Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade Vets4PeaceChapter9@gmail.com     Phone: 978-475-1776 Cole Harrison Executive Director, Massachusetts Peace Action

Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today!   Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income.  Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions.  Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2014!  Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter

***Free The Cuban Five- Ahora!-In Defense Of The Cuban Revolution-Some Good News
 

The following is being passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee (2008). Please note the link to the National Committee to Free the Five below to find more information about the Cuban Five. As always here is a case where defense of the Cuban revolution begins concretely with the defense of the Five- Libertad Ahora!

http://freethefive.org/

The Cuban Five have now been incarcerated for almost ten years. Three Cuban citizens and two U.S. citizens who infiltrated and monitored violent anti-communist exile groups in Florida in order to stop terrorist attacks against Cuba, these men were arrested in 1998 under the Clinton administration on bogus charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder, as well as lesser charges like failing to register as agents of a foreign power. After being tried in Miami, a den of counterrevolutionary gusano (worm) activities, Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years; Antonio Guerrero and Ram6n Labanino to life plus ten and 18 years, respectively; Fernando Gonzalez to 19 years; and Rene Gonzalez to 15 years. They are held in federal maximum security prisons, separated by hundreds of miles from loved ones, their lawyers and each other. As Marxists, we demand immediate freedom for the Cuban Five, whose heroic actions were in defense of the Cuban Revolution against U.S. imperialism and its counterrevolutionary agents.

From the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, to the repeated attempts on Fidel Castro's life, to the ongoing starvation embargo, the U.S. imperialists, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, have never ceased in their drive to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. In 2002, Ana Belen Montes, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer, was sentenced to 25 years for passing military information to the Cuban government.

In their drive to restore capitalism in Cuba, the U.S. rulers have trained terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who engineered the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people. In the 1990s, as the Cuban government began to promote tourism, gusano groups launched a campaign of bombings that targeted hotels and airport buses in an attempt to cripple the economy. Posada has admitted to masterminding bombings of tourist spots in Havana in 1997 that killed an Italian businessman. We say: Send Posada and Bosch back to Cuba to be tried by their victims!

It was in the context of such terrorist activity that gusano activities were being monitored by the Cuban Five, three of whom were veterans of Cuba's military campaign in Angola that in the 1970s and '80s fought the U.S.-sponsored invasion by the South African apartheid regime. In June 1998, the Cuban government shared its intelligence on gusano terrorist activity with the FBI. In September of that year, the FBI arrested the Cubans instead of the CIA's "ex"-employees.

The government built its case on "conspiracy to commit espionage" charges, conspiracy charges being the hallmark of political witchhunts when the government has no evidence that an actual crime has been committed. Months after their arrest, "conspiracy to commit murder" was tacked on to the charges against Gerardo Hernandez in connection with the deaths of four pilots from the Brothers to the Rescue gusano outfit. The latter were shot down by the Cuban air force in 1996 after repeatedly and provocatively flying into Cuban airspace in a brazen challenge to the country's air defenses.

Held in Miami, the trial was engulfed in anti-communist hysteria and intimidation of anyone not toeing the gusano line on Cuba. The judge refused five defense requests for a change of venue. During jury selection, potential jurors asked to be excused, fearing the consequences of rendering an "unsatisfactory" verdict. The impaneled jurors' license plates appeared on nightly news broadcasts. The prosecution claimed that Guerrero, who worked as a janitor at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West, had endangered secret U.S. military plans by watching aircraft take off and land in training exercises. As Guerrero's lawyer pointed out, the information he gathered "could've been published in the Miami Herald." So inflamed was the atmosphere that the jury even convicted Hernandez of conspiracy murder charges that the prosecution itself had already concluded would be an "insurmountable hurdle" to prove!

In 2005, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta threw out the 2001 convictions and ordered a new trial in a new venue because of the "pervasive community prejudice" in Miami. The Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales appealed for a rehearing by the full court, which reinstated the convictions in August 2006. Last August, another three-judge panel heard oral arguments in the case that this time focused on the bogus murder and espionage charges and the gross prosecutorial misconduct.

The brutality these five men endure in prison is designed to break them and echoes the treatment of other class-war prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Before their trial even started, the Cuban Five spent 17 months in solitary. Between their convictions in June and their sentencing in December 2001, they spent 48 days in the hole. In 2003 as they worked on their first appeal, they were sent to solitary and denied communication with the outside world, even their lawyers.

Every family visit involves an arduous and arbitrary visa process. Sometimes a relative waits out the precious time they are allotted and never gets to see their loved one. Adriana Perez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez, has been repeatedly denied a visa. Olga Salanueva, wife of Rene Gonzalez, was deported on phony spy charges in 2000.

In combatting the degenerate end-products of a decaying capitalism, the Cuban Five have performed a service not only in defense of Cuba but for working people throughout the hemisphere and around the world. Free the Cuban Five! Defend the Cuban Revolution

 

 

Good News For The Cuban Five-Free The Rest

Cuban Spy Set to Be Released from U.S. Prison

collapse story

A Cuban intelligence officer convicted of spying in the United States was set to be released from federal prison on Thursday after serving around 15 years.

Fernando Gonzalez, 50, a member of the so-called Cuban Five, will be released and is expected to return to Cuba in a few days, the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald reported.

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Gonzalez and fellow members of the spy ring -- that was also known as the Miami Five -- were arrested in 1998. The Cuban government eventually acknowledged that they targeted anti-Cuban government exile groups in the United States but denied they spied on American interests. All five were convicted of spying on U.S. military installations.

 

One member of the group, Gerardo Hernandez, was charged with conspiracy to murder after he gathered information on Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group that dropped anti-government leaflets on Cuba. Four members of Brothers to the Rescue died in 1996 after their two planes were shot down by the Cuban air force. Hernandez was handed a double life sentence plus 15 years.

Rene Gonzalez, another member of the jailed group, was released in 2011. Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero remain in prison.

 

F. Brinley Bruton and Mary Murray of NBC News contributed to this report.

Poet’s Corner- Claude McKay-If We Must Die-In Honor Of The 95^th Anniversary Of The Communist International- Take Five

 

 

…they had heard that a group of White Guards, a first detachment on horse, maybe from the dreaded mercenary Czech Legion that were running amok from Siberia to the Urals, paid for by who knows who, some said the English some said the French, or worst maybe the dreaded Cossacks, who needed no outside pay but only their  Ataman’s word to bend contemptible peasant heads to size, and who took no prisoners, none, were heading their way, heading right for their line of defense in the city ready to take back Kazan for the asking, so those Whites thought. Kazan fallen then the road to Moscow lay wide open and perhaps the end of the Soviet experiment in that dragged on second year of hellish civil war. But Commissar Vladimir ( assigned that title because he, a little more literate, a little cooler under pressure, than the vast bulk of  lumpish peasants, mostly from Monsieur Orlov’s land around Omsk, who had signed up to fight and to die for the land, their land from what they had heard, was listened to by that mass unlike the city boy reds) and his band of comrade brothers, five in all, (and one sixteen year old sister, one stray Red Emma, they called her who learned of revolution and sex, young love smitten sex even in war-torn Kazan  with young Zanoff, in that exact order while in their company and proved as fierce a fighter both ways, according to that same Zanoff, as any man), the last remnant from the old Orlov estate who survived the bloody endless Czar war  swore, swore a blood oath on their tattered red flag, the previous day that they would retreat no further, that here was their stand, their last stand if necessary, but no more moves away from Moscow.     

It had not always been that way with them, not even with Vladimir, not by a long shot. They had all farmed, like their fathers going back eons before them, the same fruitless task (for them) land for Orlov, the richest landowner in Omsk, and never lifted their heads when the Social Revolutionaries had come before the war and during that last revolution, the one back in 1905, with glad tidings (and before them other city radicals, narodniks or something like that, had spoken to their fathers and grandfathers). They just shoveled the dirt, kept shoveling, and kept their heads down.

Then the war came, the bloody world war as it turned out, and the Czar’s police (Orlov’s really but in the name of the Czar so the same thing) came and “drafted” them into some vast ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-armed peasant force which proved no match for the methodical Germans as they were slaughtered by the millions in and around those foul trenches. And still they kept their heads bent, Vladimir and his four Orlov surviving farm brothers the only healthy alive ones left from the twenty-two that had started out from Omsk in the summer of 1915. Kept them bent until the February revolution stirred things up although they held to the front line trenches even then since no one told them not to leave and in the fall of 1917 they had just followed their fellows out of the trenches and went home. Not the first ones out, nor the last but just out. Went home to farm Orlov’s land again they figured with bent heads again.  Even when the Bolsheviks took power in November and decreed the land of Orlov’s theirs they kept their heads bent. It was not until Orlov, his agents, and his White Guard friends came back and took the land, their now precious land, theirs, that they roared back. And they had joined one of Trotsky’s red brigades passing through on a recruiting drive. They had moved here and there as the lines of battle shifted but mainly back, mainly retreats or break-ups since then and hence the blood oath, and no more retreats. The peasant slows in them had been busted, busted good. 

Just then a messenger came to their line, a messenger from the river in front of Kazan, from the wind- swept Volga. The message said that Trotsky himself , Trotsky of the phantom armored train rushing to this and that front, seemingly everywhere at the same time, that put fear in the hearts of whites and reds alike, had decided to fight and die before Kazan if necessary to save the revolution, to save their precious land. Vladimir and his comrades, including Red Emma, Red Emma who if the truth be told despite her tender years of sweet sixteen was the best soldier of the lot, and should have been the commissar except those lumpish peasants would not have listened to her, reaffirmed their blood oath. They were not sure of Lenin, thinking him a little too smart, and maybe he had something up his sleeve, maybe he was just another Jew, he looked the part with that bald head of his, but stout-hearted Trotsky, if he was willing to die then what else could they do.   If they must die they would die in defense of Kazan, and maybe just maybe somebody would hear of their story, the story of five peasant boys and a pretty red-hearted city girl as brave as they, and lift their heads and roar back too….    

[Vladimir, Vladimir Suslov (whose grandson, Misha, would become a high Soviet dignitary in the 1980s) also deserves some additional mention so one does not get the impression that they had dug deep into the bottom of the barrel and he was all they could come up with from the loutish lumpish peasant mass that decided, decided almost just yesterday, that they should first raise their heads and then actually go out and fight for their land, come hell or high water. No Vladimir, even as a child was a leader of the boys, the peasant boys who spent more time avoiding work and hiding in the woods than bending to the plow. And contrary to his stolid appearance (added to, and aided by, those miserable years in the trenches) which endeared him to his fellows, made him appear older than his thirty years, he was a good reader,  and could write some, including fancying himself a minor peasant poet. Like he told the political commissar of his unit one night when things had dusted up it paid to NOT appear too much brighter than the fellows or else you would be treated like poor Red Emma, Nana, who actually had the heart, the heart of a red warrior princess. And so Vladimir led, led by just being a little ahead, being a little bit better able to read maps, and people and get his fellows out of more than a few scrapes. Of such men revolutions flourish, for a time. Then the grandsons, the Mishas, come along and think they have done it all themselves. ]  

 [Red Emma, real name Nana Kamkov, deserves a better fate that to written off as some play thing for some loutish peasant boy, Grisha  Zanoff by full name, no matter how Red Army brave he was just that moment and no matter how peasant handsome he was, and he was, to Nana’s eyes. Nana had come off the land as a child, as fate would have it Orlov’s land, when after the last revolution, the one in 1905, the government encouraged capitalist exploitation of the land in order to break down the backward-looking peasant communes. Her parents had abandoned the land had travelled to live in Kazan and her father had set up shop as a locksmith, a good one. Nana had gone school and had been an outstanding student if somewhat socially backward (she had not been like the other girls boy-crazy) and desperately wanted to become an engineer although the family resources precluded such a fate.

One day in the summer of 1917 at the height of the revolutionary fervor she ran across a Bolshevik agitator in Kazan (later killed in Kiev fighting off some White Guards in that location) who told her, young impressionable her, aged fourteen, no more, that if the Soviets survived she would be able to pursue her engineering career, hell, the Bolsheviks would encourage it. From that time she had been a single-minded Red Guard soldier performing many dangerous tasks until the Whites threatened Kazan and she was trapped in the city and had joined Vladimir’s remnants as a result. And there she spied Grisha among his soldiers, loutish, foolish Grisha, although handsome she admitted. Perhaps it was the time of her time, perhaps she still had a little foolish schoolgirl notion to be with a man just in case things didn’t work out and she was killed, or worse, executed but one cold night she snuggled up to the sleeping Grisha and that was that. She was teaching him to read better and to think about things just in case they weren’t killed, or worse executed. Practical young woman, very practical. And so young Nana enters the red pantheon, and maybe she will drag Grisha along too.]               

 

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

 

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Neil Young's I Believe In You  

 

Peter Paul Markin comment December 2013:

A while back, maybe a few years ago, I started a series presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs that I thought would get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Posted at a time, 2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of uprising against the economic royalists (chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the response from the American and world working classes has if anything entrenched those interests. So as the dog days continue I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

**********

WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.”  Meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                 

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.   

The origin of my emergence into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest.

I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.

And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) - Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin would surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.

On The 95th Anniversary Year Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"The Third International After Lenin"

 

 

Link below to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the document mentioned in the headline.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/index.htm

 

Markin comment:

After the struggle inside the Russian Communist Party in the mid-1920s around internal party democracy and the economics of the transition period the Leon Trotsky-led Left Opposition (and later the International Left Opposition) concentrated on Communist International policies. And chief among them was the contour and fate of the Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27. While Leon Trotsky was not around to write about the successful revolution of 1949 he did write many polemics on that second revolution and how, in the end, it like in Russian would have to follow the path that he outlined in his Theory Of Permanent Revolution in order to be successful. In the event, although successful, it never developed those soviet-type forms that would have eased the transition to socialism. Moreover for a number of historic reasons having to do with the defeat of the second revolution the Chinese working-class never was a central political factor in that victory. This material is still very helpful in sorting things out, and readable.