Marxist Forum meeting set for July 22nd

The next Triangle Marxist Forum meeting is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, July 22nd 1:30-3:30pm in the conference room (downstairs from the lobby, to the left). 

 

The topic of the meeting is monopoly capitalism and imperialism.  I'm not sure about the readings yet, but they will probably include some of Imperialism by Lenin (which could still be in print and is probably available online at www.marxists.org or elsewhere online).  The rest of the last Marx reading would be useful to read, but I'm not sure that it will come up directly.

 

At the last meeting we had 5 participants (and almost another person), and two new people.  We started with the Lenin reading and then discussed some issues from the Marx reading or contemporary events, such as why groceries are cheaper in Brazil than in the Triangle and recent US economic history, and a study outline (the question of how a market does not gear production to meet demand).      

Discussion Saturday moved to 4-6pm

I didn't realize that the Carrboro Book Fair, a progressive annual event organized (?) by Internationalist Books, would be June 3rd when I scheduled the next TMF meeting.  I was able to move the meeting to 4-6pm Saturday at the same place.  At the last minute we also tried to get room at the Fair for a Marxism discussion.  I might table at the event.  The meeting might have at least 5 people based on replies to my announcements.  I'm depending on the Independent and online resources for publicity, and this is another not very much publicized meeting unfortunately.      

Marxist Forum information

The next Triangle Marxist Forum discussion will be
about what capitalism is and how it works.  It will be
Saturday, June 3rd 1:30-3:30pm in the conference room
downstairs in the Chapel Hill Public Library (100
Library Dr., off of Estes Dr. on the north side, very
close to the intersection with East Franklin St.).

For readings, I suggest the next section from Lenin's
The Teachings of Karl Marx (or just titled Karl Marx)
-Marx's Economic Doctrine, covering value and surplus
value.  Also Marx's Wages, Prices, and Profit in vol.
2 of his Selected Works (or Value, Prices, and Profit
in vol. 20 of his Collected Works).  My course outline
suggests pages 103-149, but that is kind of long, so
we could look at about half of it in June, up to
Section 7.  It is available online at

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume20/index.htm.

We could look at the rest next time or move on (the
next outline focuses on macroeconomics, monopoly
capitalism, and imperialism).

I'm still looking for a short article illustrating
these ideas currently.
 

The history of CIA torture techniques

This is the article I mentioned a few months ago, covering some of the history and development of American "soft torture" techniques.  It is chilling and heinous what they did (and may still be doing) to people.  It is by Rebecca Lemov and was published November 16, 2005, by Slate magazine.    

 

A Wikipedia article about Cardinal Mindszenty is available at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindszenty .  If he was tortured, it was wrong, but you can see that he was right-wing and would have had reasons to oppose and possibly act illegally against left governments.  Lemov tries to link this to the "Russians" and "Communists" but gives little information to prove that this was a systematic practice of the officially Marxist-Leninists states.  He sounds like a reactionary cleric, too reactionary even for the Vatican in the 60's, who made at least one anti-semitic statement (blaming the Jews for revolution in Hungary), according to a brief Web search.  He was reportedly an enemy of the Hungarian Bolsheviks after WWI and the "communist" Hungarian government after WWII (whether it was ML or not is another question, and it could have been ultra-left to attack the Catholic Church), but also an enemy of the Arrow Cross (?) Hungarian fascists during WWII.  This is based on just a little research, mainly through Wikipedia, though, so I could be wrong about the historical context.       

 

The Birth of Soft Torture

CIA interrogation techniques—a history.

By Rebecca Lemov
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005, at 5:07 PM ET

In 1949, Cardinal Jószef Mindszenty appeared before the world's cameras to mumble his confession to treasonous crimes against the Hungarian church and state. For resisting communism, the World War II hero had been subjected for 39 days to sleep deprivation and humiliation, alternating with long hours of interrogation, by Russian-trained Hungarian police. His staged confession riveted the Central Intelligence Agency, which theorized in a security memorandum that Soviet-trained experts were controlling Mindszenty by "some unknown force." If the Communists had interrogation weapons that were evidently more subtle and effective than brute physical torture, the CIA decided, then it needed such weapons, too.

Illustration of an experiment run by Hull at Yale on university students in 1937.

 

Months later, the agency began a program to explore "avenues to the control of human behavior," as John Marks discusses in his book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. During the next decade and a half, CIA experts honed the use of "chemical and biological materials capable of producing human behavioral and physiological changes" according to a retrospective CIA catalog written in 1963. And thus soft torture in the United States was born...

The rest of the article is available at www.slate.com/id/2130301?nav=nw

Is the USA fascist?

What kind of a threat to democracy and the working class is Bush?  Have we passed from bourgeois democracy to a kind of
fascism or more authoritarian bourgeois democracy
under GW Bush or his predecessors?

I have my doubts about this, but the American system is definitely becoming more like fascism and maybe we are very close to a qualitative
change, if it hasn't happened already.  Marxist-Leninists (and everyone else too) should discuss this so we can analyze whether it has happened
already or how we will know American fascism when it appears.

Some Evidence

Some evidence is in the news every week (see www.votetoimpeach.org, www.afterdowningstreet.org, www.impeachbushcheney.net, www.commondreams.org, www.counterpunch.org , etc.), but the 2000
election, 9/11, and the 2004 election aspects are not.  I have not read in detail about the elections, but what I have read shows that the elections could have been stolen with electronic voting machines that do not leave paper trails, and there is evidence that this happened, such as the astonishing discrepancies between exit polls and the 'actual' results.  The Supreme Court in 2000 gave Bush the victory, while saying that this is not a legal precedent.  I thought Congress was the body charged with deciding undecided presidential elections (but I'm not sure about this).  Along with Bush's undemocratic methods and actions like lying to Congress and the people (a neo-conservative tactic), smearing opponents, excessive government secrecy, claiming divine inspiration, often ignoring Congressional and public pressure, and enriching friends and the rich in general, and the reactionary nature of the Republican Party (chauvinist, fundamentalist, and often racist in part, if not in whole, such as regarding Latino immigrants and Muslims) there are even more clearly fascist doctrines.  These include the idea of a unitary executive, having all powers not granted to Congress, that Bush is Commander-in-Chief of the country, not just of the military, claiming that fighting his "War on Terrorism" justifies ignoring the law, and his many signing statements, such as the one on the McCain 'anti-torture' rule, saying that he did not feel bound by it.  The Bush Administration didn't do all of this by itself, and some of these things aren't necessarily fascist, but taken together they are very undemocratic and against the Constitution and law regulated representative government.      

 
David Ray Griffin in "The New Pearl Harbor" and
Michael Ruppert in "Crossing the Rubicon" (his website is www.fromthewilderness.com) argue
persuasively that the US government was involved in
the 9/11/2001 attacks.  High level and active
involvement in allowing and carrying out the terrorist
attacks seems likely.  There are various revisionist theories (not all meant to fit together into a new story of 9/11) using physical evidence (such as that the WTC towers could not have collapsed due to jet fuel fires, that the three WTC collapses looked like controlled demolitions, that Flight 93 might have been shot down, and that a missile or small aircraft hit the Pentagon, not a jetliner, etc.), documentary or other evidence (such as hinderance of investigations that could have exposed the plot, several war games were going on that allowed the hijacked planes to reach their targets, evidence that US leaders expected the attacks and lied about this, a CIA official meeting with bin Laden after he was decalared to be a terrorist, etc.), and following the money trails (Pakistani intelligence financing of al-Qaida, huge futures trading spikes indicating that someone expected exactly what happened, who benefits from the attacks, etc.).  You can learn more through www.911truth.org, the 9/11 truth movement's website.  Right now I'm going through the
9/11 Commission Report for the official version of what
happened; it of course basically ignores and does
not address the idea of a governmental conspiracy.
Under revisionist theories 9/11 was hidden terrorism
by the government to justify its planned actions, like
the Operation Northwoods plan to create a pretext for
attacking Cuba in the 60's.  This isn't the open
terrorism by the most reactionary sections of the
bourgeoisie mentioned in Dimitrov's (?) definition of
classical fascism, but it would be a very different
strategy for the US government since WWII.

Ruppert's book links Wall Street, illegal drugs, the
CIA, Peak Oil (permanently declining oil production),
9/11, and Bush domestic and foreign policies.  It
might sound too conspiratorial, but it is interesting
and he provides seemingly good arguments and evidence
(as much as someone outside of government can know).
He argues that the government knows we are facing an energy crisis, so it staged 9/11 to provide
justification for seizing oil supplies.  He argues
that the anthrax attacks and alleged assassinations
(such as the plane crash of Paul Wellstone of
Minnesota) have basically ended Congressional
resistance except for token resistance by people such
as Cynthia McKinney (D-GA).  He provides a chilling account
of what the Patriot Act and other laws make possible,
such as the deportation of American citizens,
dictatorial emergency rule, and imprisonment for refusing
potentially unsafe vaccinations.  It sounds like the
framework for political fascism is already here, but
not openly in action.  We would disagree on
some things; for example, imperialism theoretically
could involve many kinds of resources, not just energy
supplies).  What he says about bioweapons is
interesting but he didn't provide many details about
the idea that the elites actually want to reduce the
world population with disease and that seems overly
conspiratorial and not in the interests of the
bourgeoisie outside of war.  The bourgeoisie has allowed millions to die of starvation, preventable diseases, "natural disasters," etc., why would it need to use biological weapons now? 

I have the impression that this goes back to the 70's
and 80's and has gotten worse since the 90's.  I
noticed that in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of
the U.S. he refers to a bipartisan consensus since the
70's or 80's.  I want to look at this more in the future, to see how we got to today, but also how the Democrats are as bad for the working class as the Republicans and what capitalist faction each party serves.  The Democrats have obviously enabled Bush and they often work for similar goals.  Maybe there is a difference between
corporatist economic fascism, which could already
exist here, and political fascism, which is not in
place yet.

Counter-Arguments

It is hard for me to call this fascism when things don't
seem greatly different now and they aren't like the
classical fascist systems (or are the US and those
states alike already?).  Bush serves business
interests very openly, but government institutional
control of the economy has in a way decreased since
WWII.  The economy is still regulated as it was in the 30's, but there has been deregulation, the creation of loss of profit lawsuits by free trade agreements, less drafting and enforcement of health, safety, and environmental rules, etc.  It is hard to believe that American fascism
started before the 70's, since the 60's were supposed
to have seen an expansion of democractic rights.  I know of an ML who I think argues that FDR created fascism, if I understand his position.  I think historian Karl Polanyi argues that everyone in the 30's was reacting to similar economic changes in somewhat similar ways, which is why we need a good definition of fascism, since most or all of the major powers (Germany, I assume Italy, though it became fascist in the 20's, the USSR, the US, and Japan (maybe in the 20's also), changed greatly during the 30's.   
It is valid to argue that it isn't
fascist since there is still basically freedom of
speech and protest and impeachment and censure can be
advocated in Congress.  

 

Average people probably

consider the charge of fascist extreme (and the
Republicans argue this already), and it is too easy a charge
to make if you are already fed up with government
policies.  Being able to call the USA fascist is
like calling your opponent evil, so if it isn't
obvious people will think we are crazy.  I myself am
suspicious of people saying the US is already fascist
or a police state, because it ignores shades
of gray and they usually don't define their terms.

 

Some people
are repressed, but from my position it seems like the
exception, not the rule. On the other hand, non-whites
are said to be repressed routinely, but not for
directly political reasons.  In a way prisoners in
the "War on Drugs" are very much political prisoners, though.

Would the American people accept Bush being an open
fascist, such as by suspending an election without having
an event like 9/11 happen again?  On the one hand
there might be a massive, grassroots revolt, but if
the military supported Bush maybe there wouldn't be enough
resistance to stop it.  If it were seemingly
legitimate we could have a situation like Germany in
the 30's when the Social-Democrats had weapons and
numbers to resist but didn't because the Nazis gained
power relatively legitimately.  Because the opposition
hesitated, they were neutralized, though I can't
remember whether they were disarmed first or somehow
just gave up and lost the organization to fight back.

What Do We Do to Stop Bush?

Then there is the question of what to do about this. If there were an election a logical step
seems to be refusing to accept it, following the
example of the US-inspired protests in the former
USSR.  We don't have enough support to follow the
examples of Bolivia and Nepal right now, but we can
work on that before 2008.  The public expects this approach and I think impeachment and using the law is still a way to go, though Republican (especially Bushist Republican) control of Congress does make impeachment harder to achieve. 

Locally I am working on a group lobbying for
impeachment (website
www.impeachbushcheney.net and unofficial blog
downingstreetactionnc.blogspot.com).  Rep. David Price seems to think Congress has become
passive and stifled, but he won't directly support
impeachment or push for binding Congressional
investigations that could lead to impeachment.  He has
supported letters asking for explanation of the
Downing Street memos and for an independent special
counsel on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping, but this
requires Bush to create an investigation of his own
policies (and was of course rejected, the White House
calling for investigation of who leaked the program's
existence).

I organized a petition campaign and so far the Grass Roots Impeachment Movement has
organized 4 town meetings, with up to 150 participants
(to the capacity of the city hall).  April 27th we had
a meeting in Durham.  Democrat Kent Kanoy (www.kanoy4congress.org) ran in the
May 2nd primary in part for impeachment.  He beat the
more conservative Democrat, but received far fewer
votes than our current representative, in a primary
that I've heard had about 1% turnout.  Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and maybe Durham next, have passed impeachment resolutions and it is
possible for state legislatures to force discussion in
Congress (and three are considering
this).

The local movement is mainly white, older, and the
usual leftists, so we need to work on that.  Speakers
at the Durham meeting and possibly at the other town
meetings linked impeachment to social demands and
pointed out that the Democrats as a whole have
supported Bush's policies, which could broaden our
support and points out the truth about the Democrats.  The Marxist-Leninist Organizer (some pamphlets available at www.mltranslations.org) has a very good general proposal on a working class approach to impeachment, though things such as anti-unionism are not unconstitutional (unless the US has ratified international treaties on it perhaps)
The movement is mainly composed of Democrats, but we
have contact with socialists and the Green and
Libertarian parties.  We haven't reached out to
anti-Bush Republicans yet (according to national polls
they do exist, and in relatively large numbers).

So, what do you think about the idea that the
US is fascistic and what we can or are already doing
about it in practical terms?

Mother's Day - an anti-war day of action!

Mother's Day is usually treated today at best as a day to honor individual mothers, but it began as an anti-war event.  Some groups, such as Code Pink, sponsored anti-war events to mark Mother's Day 2006.  This link to a 2003 article I found at www.commondreams.org gives a brief history of Mother's Day.  There are also articles on the site on anti-war actions marking the day this year.  The Stop Torture Now vigil this month in Johnston County just happened to fall on Mother's Day Weekend, but it fortuitously fits the occasion.   

 

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0508-11.htm 

Thoughts on the Durham May Day forum

The Re-Imagining May Day / International Workers' Day community forum the evening of May 1st went well but was not as big as the organizers had hoped.  It was at the Friends Meeting House on the Duke Campus, which is a nice space, but would have been very cramped if lots of people had turned out.  Nicole Rowan of the Durham People's Alliance spoke on May Day history and passed out an article by Rosa Luxembourg.  Next there were speakers from the Forest Foundation (speaking on fair trade), the NC Coalition to Defend Health Care, myself (on local labor struggles), El Pueblo (on immigration), and I can't remember the name of the group represented on pay day lending.  It was probably the Center for Responsible Lending of the Self Help Credit Union.  It was very informative, and lots of questions were asked, mainly about immigration and healthcare I think.  NC House bill 1358 on healthcare was praised I think.  El Pueblo supports a compromise on immigration that is more progressive, but still fines undocumented immigrants to not offend public opinion.  It shows how broken our system is that, while free trade destroys Latin American economies, legal immigration can require years of waiting, and a wait of I think up to 15 years for reuniting families.  No wonder immigration, encouraged by American employers, occurs illegally.  North Carolina has attacked predatory lending, but it hasn't been ended here yet.  A $50 dollar loan from these companies ends up costing the average debtor hundreds of dollars.           

 

I went over the 5 minute speaking time because I didn't plan my remarks in detail and left out some more distant campaigns out.  No one asked any questions about labor, and I expect that that indicates a problem with communication on these issues.  On the other hand, the audience did seem to know about some local campaigns.     

 

There were 16 of us in all, including the vice chair of the Durham Republican Party (!), one or two activists with the International Socialist Organization, Lori Khamala of the National Farm Worker Ministry, and others.  There was some balance, but I was also disappointed that the audience was mostly white.  There was more diversity by age (still younger than at the Durham impeachment meeting though) and sex.  I think part of the problem is that we started detailed publicity late and we didn't know the Independent wouldn't have an issue out the week before.  I didn't do as much online publicity for this, apart from emails.  Having gotten upper front page publicity that Sunday and in the A section Monday in the Herald-Sun, I expected a crowd.  Nicole expected more Durham People's Alliance members to turn out.  Maybe it has something to do with all the stuff organized for for May Day 2006, but I still think our publicity and approach could be improved.   

 

It was a start, and the DPA plans to do something next year too.  Next year hopefully we can organize something bigger, even multiple events, and I would encourage again organizing in Chapel Hill.  The immigration events probably added weight to the occasion, so it will be in people's minds for next year.  

 

I'm thinking of things to organize for July 2006, since July 4th relates to civil rights, democracy, and revolution.  The DPA might be interested in this idea.  I'm not sure exactly how to approach this.  Doing something like the May Day forum would be practical and could draw in other groups and more people, while organizing something specifically socialist would be my ideal, but maybe draw fewer people (because it is abstract and because there might not be strong local organizations to sponsor it, definitely not Alliance, unfortunately).  July 23rd is the anniversary of the Downing Street Minutes and should be marked by the Grass Roots Impeachment Movement and there will probably be a town meeting on impeachment somewhere in the Triangle for July.  I'm sure the Orange County and Durham Bill of Rights Defense Committees will have actions for July 4th.  Close before July 4th will be the Southeast Social Forum at NCCU in late June.   

May 1st in Durham and TMF update

May Day events in Durham:

 

El Centro Hispano is planning an open house/community
forum - 201 W Main Street in Durham - 3:00 to 5pm (?).

For more information call them at 919.687.4635.


ReImagining May Day: International Worker's Day
Community Forum

May 1st.

Listen. Share. Empower. Act. (a Durham People's
Alliance committee) and the May Day Committee Bring
you this wonderful Community Forum.  What is May Day?
A short article:
http://students.washington.edu/ruckus/vol-2/issue-6/mayday.html
provides a great overview and history of the workers'
holiday.  We will highlight the history of May Day as
a workers' day, learn more about current worker issues
from a diverse panel and discuss what they mean to us
locally. Finally, we will regroup together to share
any activism or insights that came out of the break
out groups.

The Five panelists will speak on:  health care,
immigration, unions, fair trade and family matters.
Representatives from The Forest Foundation, NC
Committee to Defend Health Care, El Pueblo and others
will be on the panel.

We will meet at Durham at the Friends' Meeting House
on May 1st, 2006 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.  The address
is 404 Alexander Ave in Durham.  For more info call
641-5474 or 544-7397.  If you are interested in
helping facilitate the small groups, please let us
know!


The May Day Agenda:

Understanding May Day and its HISTORY  (We will hold a
moment of silence to honor those workers who fought
hard for a reasonable work day, a weekend and other
worker rights.)  15 minutes
Current ISSUES and a 5 person PANEL discussing for 5
minutes each, followed by q&a.  - 45 minutes
GROUPS break-out around issue with facilitator (from 5
or more issues) for a plan of action, building deeper
awareness or getting involved in current activism….30
minutes
Groups can share their discussion with others if
desired, especially if action items or activism comes
out of it to invite others to be involved in. 30
minutes.

When: May 1st, 2006 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Where: Friends Meeting House located at 404 Alexander
Ave in Durham.  For directions and a map visit:
http://durhammonthlymtg.home.mindspring.com/Directions.htm
 

 

Triangle Marxist Forum update:

 

Currently the next meeting is scheduled for Saturday,
June 3rd 1:30-3:30 at the Chapel Hill Public Library
again.  Does this work for everyone who wants to participate?

This was another small meeting, in part because some
people were out of town or busy.  I think the lack of
an ad in the Indpendent contributed, along with the
late publicity.  We talked about several different
things, but also referred to the readings.  Some
subjects were the origins of materialism and
dialectics, how is Marxism scientific?, the crisis in
modern academic anthropology, and why the US isn't
more revolutionary after all that has happened to American workers and the people in general.

I haven't decided about the next readings yet, but
they will be about how capitalism works and might
include part II of the Communist Manifesto, the next
section of the Teachings of Karl Marx, something from
Marx's Wages, Prices and Profit, Capital, or some
other text, and a modern case study.  Let me know if
you have suggestions.  I'm not sure if more of Zinn's
book would fit for the next topic.

Announcements:

Another Freeing the Mind program, Predatory
Class War, is coming up on The People's Channel in Orange
County.

See above for the May Day events.  There was also a forum at the Hayti Heritage Center this afternoon that sounds like it was very similar to the event tomorrow evening.  It was not publicized much (at least where I might hear of it), so there was duplicated effort. 

Reportback about the town meeting on impeachment Thursday

The town meeting went pretty well and I've heard that
it could have been the best one yet in terms of
discussion and interest. There might have been around
60 people, up from 55 at the Hillsborough event, but
less than the Auditorium's capacity. Did anyone make
an exact count? I thought there were around 30 when I
got there, but later there were more people and I
might have underestimated. The crowd was somewhat
diverse, but mostly white and there were few people
under 30. GRIM, the Durham and Orange Co. BORDC's,
Kent Kanoy, and Stan Goff tabled.

Thanks to Joan, also representing the Durham Bill of
Rights Defense Committee, and John for moderating
(Joan moderated during the first half and John did so
for the second half). The meeting started with three
songs by the Raging Grannies, including one on
impeachment and the one saying "I'm going to let it
shine." Stan spoke first, linking the case for
impeachment to the Iraq War and from there to social
issues such as the huge and predominantly black US
prison population. He also pointed out Democratic
Party cooperation with Bush and the need to exert
pressure on both parties. Al McSurely spoke next and
talked about strategy and GRIM's list of impeachment
objections and answers, from the objection that
getting rid of Bush gives us Cheney to the argument
that working for impeachment detracts fron other
causes. Rev. Curtis Gatewood spoke about the
hypocrisy of "Bush Christians" (unfortunately none
came) and also linked impeachment to working class
issues and poverty.

There was time for several questions and comments.
There was some back and forth discussion, especially
about whether Iran will be attacked overtly and how
this could be sold to the public. We could have
talked for a while, but the Library was close to
closing. Kanoy was invited to speak briefly. Bowser,
a former Durham official and candidate for sheriff
this year, attended. I plan to write more here on
what was said later.

I'll write about the process of organizing this later,
since it could be useful for future events. I don't
think any of the media we contacted attended this time
and we don't have a recording. It could have been
better organized, since some decisions were made at
the start of the meeting and it started late, and the
publicity was good but could be better. There also
might have been conflicting election related events.
At the earliest we could have a second Durham event in
June without being in too much of a rush. In the
future it would be good to have women speakers
represented, but we were not able to find anyone this
time.

What are other people's impressions of or comments
about the meeting (see also
downingstreetactionnc.blogspot.com, the unofficial
campaign blog)?

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Durham town meeting on impeaching Bush and Cheney Thursday

Come discuss the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney,
the process, and what citizens can do, Thursday, April
27th, 7-9pm in the Auditorium (to the right at the
entrance) of the Durham Main Library (300 North
Roxboro St.). Featured are NC NAACP 2nd Vice Pres.
Rev. Curtis Gatewood, civil rights lawyer Al McSurely,
Raleigh activist and author Stan Goff, and the Raging
Grannies.

This meeting was organized by the non-partisan Grass
Roots Impeachment Movement and follows the format of
the previous Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough
town meetings. The next GRIM meeting might be around
May 19th. A formal organizing meeting was last Friday
in Chapel Hill, though the group has been around since
the beginning of the year under that name. Pittsboro
and Raleigh town meetings are being planned (and we
could use help). You can contact me by commenting here
or emailing me at southplumb@gmail.com.

www.davidpricewatch.org and www.impeachbushcheney.net
are also useful local sites and GRIM's new listserve
is grim@impeachbushcheney.net. The petition to Price
is still available online at
www.petitiononline.com/dsmnc/petition.html and on
paper in various places. There is also a campaign to
have people wear orange for impeachment on Fridays
(see orangetoimpeach.blogspot.com).

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Triangle Marxist Forum meeting April 29th

The last meeting, March 25th, went well, though it was not as well organized as it should have been and we are still on the same topic this month. The next meeting will be in the afternoon on Saturday, April 29th, 1:30-3:30 at the Chapel Hill Public Library in the conference room downstairs from the lobby. I announced this earlier by email, but I've been late in posting it here.

I procrastinated and am still busy, so I'm suggesting readings for the meeting only now. The readings are: the Communist Manifesto, Sections I and II; The Teachings of Karl Marx, also called Karl Marx - A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (by Lenin) , in Section I, Marx's Teachings to the section Marx's Economic Doctrine, and Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, chapter 5, especially towards the end where Zinn writes about the US Constitution. I might suggest short articles about the revolutionary politics in Venezuela and Nepal also, so we have three concrete examples, along with theoretical works to look at.

Chapter 4 Section II of A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) goes into more detail, but is basically like the Lenin text. I'll postpone beginning argument about Stalin, if that is necessary, till later. I think we should discuss Stalin, pro and con. I argue that Stalin was a Marxist who has been villified because the Soviet Union under his leadership was so succesful in building and defending an alternative to capitalism.

Legalized Torture and Creepinfg Fascism

A third useful article on US use of torture is the following by Alfred McCoy, from TomDispatch (see http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=57336).  I heard McCoy speak on Democracy Now recently and he had many interesting things to say about the CIA's development of psychological torture techniques (and later about the CIA's involvement in the illegal drug trade).  Maybe I will post an article I saw a while ago on the mind breaking methods developed by the CIA in the 60's or 70's, supposedly modelled on Soviet methods (it could be true, but I won't believe it automatically out of prejudice against the USSR).  Britain is seemingly taking a higher road on torture than our government, although I am skeptical (and I recall that Britain had its own Iraqi prisoner torture photos coming out at one point). This article also shows the creep of American fascism.  Bush's claim of a "unitary executive branch" violates the Constitutional separation of powers and in this case is a claim that the President is above the law and Congressional oversight.  I'm currently reading Michael Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon, which links Peak Oil, illegal drugs, and the 9/11 attacks, and this week I got to the chapter on repressing the American people and it was chilling.  We might have the form of democracy right now, but everything is in place for the mask to come off when the ruling class feels truly threatened.  Without a strong revolutionary movement the government is not threatened enough domestically to crackdown at home.  That isn't to say that things are good now (witness Bush's flouting of Congress and other literally criminal acts and the militarization of New Orleans after Katrina). 

 

Why the McCain Torture Ban Won't Work
   By Alfred W. McCoy
   TomDispatch.com


   Wednesday 08 February 2006

The Bush legacy of legalized torture.
   Just before Christmas, two of the world's most
venerable legislative bodies engaged in erudite,
impassioned debate over what the right balance should
be between the imperatives of national security and
international prohibitions on torture. They arrived at
starkly divergent conclusions that reveal the depth of
damage the war on terror is doing to this country's
civil liberties.

   On December 7, the House of Lords, reviewing cases
in which a dozen Muslim militants were to be deported,
spoke with moral clarity on the issue of torture,
branding it "an unqualified evil" which should have no
place in the proud, thousand-year tradition of British
justice. Just a week later, the U.S. Senate amended
the Defense Appropriations Bill to prohibit the
"abuse" of detainees in American custody, including
the many Muslims at our Guantanamo prison, but did so
on the purely pragmatic, almost amoral grounds that it
"leads to bad intelligence." Under pressure from the
White House, the senators also loaded this legislation
with loopholes that may soon allow coerced testimony -
extracted through torture - into American courts for
the first time in two centuries.

   This disconcerting contrast is but one sign that,
under the Bush administration, the United States is
moving to publicly legitimate the use of torture, even
to the point of twisting this congressional ban on
inhumane interrogation in ways that could ultimately
legalize such acts. And following their President's
lead, the American people seem to be developing a
tolerance, even a taste, for torture.

   This country may, in fact, be undergoing an
historic shift with profound implications for
America's international standing. It seems to be
moving from the wide-ranging but highly secretive
tortures wielded by the Central Intelligence Agency
during the Cold War decades to an open, even proud use
of coercive interrogation as a formal weapon in the
arsenal of American power, acceptable both to U.S.
courts and the American people.

 

(the rest is at the Web address above)

Study group update - meeting March 25th

Below is an update on the next study group meeting.  I
suggest a Lenin reading, but it probably doesn't add
to what is said in the other readings and is more of a
summary.  Please let interested people or calendars
know about this.  For more information email
alliance_trianglenc@hotmail.com.

The group was advertised at the Conference of Students
United for a Responsible Global Environment February
25th at NCCU and I plan to table March 18th at the
Fayetteville anti-war protest.

Triangle Marxist Forum March discussion on the
evolution of society (the theory of historical
materialism), Saturday March 25th at 1:30pm at Duke's
Center for Documentary Studies (cds.aas.duke.edu).
For the list of background readings see
durhamspark.blogspot.com.

Readings for the March meeting:

Marx and Engels:  Communist Manifesto, Sections I and
III

Engels:  The Origin of the Family, Private Propety,
and the State, Sections I and II

A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (Bolshevik),  Chapter 4 Section II

A useful overview:  Lenin:  The Teachings of Karl
Marx, Section I:  Marx's Teachings – The Class
Struggle

These readings are also available on the Web.
Marx2Mao is a recommended source, if it is still
available, and the Marxist Internet Archive might have
all of these readings as well.  Email me for help
finding texts.

The discussion won't be completely reading based, so
if you don't read everything you can still participate.  The

format will be a discussion based on what questions/comments

people bring and on general study questions.
 

Second Rendition Article - How NC Relates to the USA's Global Torture Archipelago

The Guradian/UK published an article March 19th (republished at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0319-07.htm), Afghanistan: "One Huge US Jail," which was the first article I saw on the Johnston County torture connection. The article alleges that the airplane based here has been used in the kidnapping of foreign citizens for torture and in several cases murder under torture. It also describes the lawless and oppressive occupation of Afghanistan by our country and supposedly more peace loving countries in Europe that later verbally opposed the Iraq War. There are also articles on the global torture network in Alliance!, www.allianceml.com.

Triangle Marxist Forum discussion group update: The next meeting will be March 25th 1:30-3:30 at the Center for Documentary Studies again. Also, I'm going to suggest a Lenin reading that provides a good overview, but the other readings cover the same material, so they are somewhat interchangeable. I'll post more later in the week.

Spotlighting North Carolina's CIA Torture Conection

Below is the first of three useful articles I will post on the current CIA's involvement in torture, especially the connection to activities at an airport in Johnston County, North Carolina. There are protests every second Saturday (but maybe not in March, because of the March 18th anti-war demonstration in Fayetteville) against this near the airport (see the Independent Weely Act Now section for details).

There will probably be an article about this is the spring issue of Alliance! (probably coming out in April), and we have already published at least one article on the government's use of torture.

Another thing to look at is whether Lockheed's RTP offices (there are two listed in the phone book) are involved in supplying civilian interrogators, who might practice torture, for the government.

What Is AERO CONTRACTORS? Here's the rundown.
Saturday, 19 November 2005
by Clayton Hallmark
St. Louis Independent Media Center:http://www.stlimc.org/

BREAKING SCOOP IN NORTH CAROLINA [Smithfield, North Carolina, Nov. 18, 2005] Tarheels won't be put under the boot heel of Big Brother. They were well represented among the 60 protestors of CIA torture flights out of Smithfield, NC. Fourteen protesters were arrested Friday for trespassing at the Johnston County Airport near Smithfield. They gathered to protest the use of the airport by a company that reportedly shuttles prisoners to torture and nonjudicial confinement for the CIA. Channel 5 (WRAL-TV) in Raleigh is doing a good job of covering the story.

The group targeted Aero Contractors Limited, a company located on the airport grounds. News organizations, including Indymediahttp://chapelhill.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/17197.php, have reported that planes for secret CIA rendition (kidnap-torture) flights originate from the airport. Of course the CIA says that it does not conductrenditions.

THE CIA PILOT'S EMPLOYMENT AGENCY Aero Contractors, Ltd, is one of the real (as opposed to shell) companies tied to the CIA. It owns no planes, according to the FAA's registry database, but its operation in eastern North Carolina is perhaps th emain hub of the CIA airline. Another hub is the Camp Peary Naval Reservation, "the Farm" near Williamsburg, VA, which the CIA uses for training and other purposes. (Is this the "family farm" where the DCIA, Porter Goss, hopes to retire soon?) Still another is the Bob Sikes Field airport in Florida, which Tepper Aviation operates from as discussed later. And then there is Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC, which is a hub of government activity of all kinds.

All of those CIA prison plane flights that are so much in the news lately? Here is the typical flight plan: Johnston County, NC, to Dulles (to pick up CIA personnel), to Sweden (or some other country with a sizable Muslim population), to some destination in theMiddle East or North Africa -- one of the countries that torture as a part of interrogations.

AERO CONTRACTORS HISTORY Aero Contractors, Ltd, was founded in 1979 by the late (he "bought the farm" near Johnston County Airport in 2001), Jim "Peg Leg" Rhyne, who was one of the chief pilots of Air America, the CIA's airline of the Vietnam era [which I think has been tied to illegal drug smuggling up to the present], which has been succeeded by Aero Contractors and about a dozen other companies.

The current proprietor (president) of Aero Contractors is Stormin' Norman Richardson, an old hand at the "hospitality" business. Richardson once operated a truck stop (Stormin' Norman's) and apparently operates a Stormin' Norman's chicken-and-ribs joint in his home town of Kenly, NC. Richardson appears to be a figurehead at the company, more involved in his chicken-and-ribs business, since almost all public contact is with Robert W. Blowers, the assistant general manager, who has actually run the company since about 1994.

Dun and Bradstreet lists Aero Contractors' business as "aircraft rental with pilot." This company probably is the primary supplier of pilots for CIA-owned and-operated planes http://chapelhill.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/17197.php.I t has no planes of its own, but has claimed to lease them from Premier Executive Transport, a well known CIA front company (whose planes have been moved to other holding companies). As a supplier of planes to Aero and the CIA, Premier has been supplanted by the other shell companies shown in the CIA plane-ownership table http://chapelhill.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/17197.php.

Aero Contractors has no website and does no advertising for business, apparently getting all it needs from the CIA, the military, and possibly other government agencies. It is, however, a real company with premises and about 80 employees. The company operates out a blue hangar at the south end of the 5500-ft runway, at the end of Charlie Day St., at Johnston County Airport (identifier code JNX) near Raleigh, NC. This fact makes the Johnston CountyAirport a hub, perhaps the hub, of CIA air operations. Its address is 3463 Swift Creek Rd, Smithfield, NC 27577.

AERO CONTRACTORS PLAYS GAMES WITH THE PLANES Interestingly, although the company has no planes registered, the Kinston (NC) Free Press newspaper reported that the "Smithfield charter plane company" was building a 20,000-square-foot, $2 million hangar at the Kinston Regional Jetport TO STORE *ITS* BOEING 737 BUSINESS JET! This apparently is a reference toTHE *CIA'S* (not Aero's) 737, Boeing serial number 33010, N-number 4476S (currently owned under the cover of the Nevada shell company Keeler and Tate Management, LLC, which shares an address and telephone with former U.S. Senator and Reagan "First Friend" Paul Laxalt).

In an article published on March 9, 2005, Aero's assistant general manager, Robert W. Blowers, told the Raleigh News & Observer that "Aero Contractors, which
leased the jets for about a year, in about 2002 or 2003, from Massachusetts-based Premier Executive Transport Services, Blowers said." The same article reported: "Aero Contractors let its leases with Premier Executive expire about a year ago, Blowers said. Aero Contractors no longer offers jets for its clients and instead leases turboprop planes, he said.

"http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2192261p-8573362c.html

Though Blowers said that Aero let its jet leases expire about March 2004, the Goldsboro (NC) News Argus reported two months *after* that, quote, "...a 20,000-square-foot hangar is being built by Aero Contractors, an aircraft charter company. It will house a Boeing Business Jet 737-700 aircraft."http://64.233.161.104/search?q\u003dcache:2e6qpm3hidIJ:www.ncdot.org/news/dailyclips/2004-06-24t.html+kinston+jetport+%22aero+contractors%22&hl\u003den

Why build a hangar when you no longer have the plane (the CIA's 737)?

Including the 737 owned by the dummy Keeler and Tate, Aero Contractors operates about 20 planes, probably mostly drawn from the 27-plane roster of CIA planes (one of which is the Boston Red Sox executive jet) shown in the table, plus about 26 of its own, mostly small Cessnas. It also provides avionics modification and repair services as well as pilots.

PLANESPOTTER'S GUIDE TO AERO CONTRACTORS Planespotter hobbyists use high-power binoculars at the end of runways to record the comings and goings of specific planes at airports around the world, and post sightings and photos on websites like http://www.airliners.net/ . For example searching that site for the CIA's 737, tail No. N4476S, you can find that it was in Prague this year and you can see a photo of it during a takeoff in Spain the day after the Madrid terrorist attack last year. The Prague sighting alone belies the claims that the CIA does not conduct prison plane flights to EasternEurope.

Planespotters monitor the radio transmissions to and from these planes around the world and at CIA hubs like the Johnston County Airport near Smithfield ,North Carolina, where they contact the airport on122.8 MHz and the Raleigh approach-and-departure controllers on 125.8 MHz. Sites like http://www.airnav.com/airport/ give the frequencies for the vast majority of the world's airports. Note: Reporting the sighting of airplanes is legal; reporting the*content* of radio transmissions is not. Merely listening to communications using an ordinary receiver that covers the aviation frequencies is legal and helps planespotters get photographs and record activities of desired planes. Of course the CIA says that it does not conduct renditions.

Since the runway at Johnston County is too short to accommodate the CIA 737, Aero Contractors operates that plane out of the Kinston Regional Jetport (identifier code ISO) near Kinston, NC (Lenoir county), which has an 11,500-ft runway. Aero Contractors stored the $50-million-plus aircraft outside at the North Carolina Global TransPark (GTP) site of the jetport, pending completion of the hangar. The GTP is a failed state-run industrial park for aviation-dependent
handful of employees at this location next to MountainAir Cargo, at the end of Jetport Rd (2780 Jetport Rd,Suite A, Kinston, NC 28504-8032), which may be theheadquarters of the management.

If you take a Delta Airlines commuter flight to Kinston (from Atlanta), you might get a glimpse of theCIA's 737 (N33010) on the ground, or of its Gulfstream V, N44982 (serial number 581). You might see any ofthe CIA planes (except the 737) at Johnston County, especially the planes of CIA aircraft holding companies Aviation Specialties and Stevens Express Leasing. This is because Aero Contractors is their main source of pilots. The CIA frequently changes the N-numbers. It also creates new companies as needed to provide cover, and plays a shell game with the shell companies, shifting the planes from one company to another. When the CIA-owned Gulfstream V heads overseas to snatch a victim, it takes off from the Johnston County Airport (JNX) at Smithville, NC, stops at the Dulles International Airport (IAD) in Virginia (near Washington, DC) to pick up the snatch team, and heads overseas. Frequently it stops at the Shannon Airport in Ireland for refueling.

For other jobs and other planes (the 737, forexample), there is sometimes a stop at the CAMP PEARYLANDING STRIP (W94), about 2 miles NE of Queens Lake, Virginia, before heading for Dulles. Camp Peary is just east of the route 143 Williamsburg exit ofInterstate 64. From Queens Drive in Queens Lake, youcan see the planes landing or taking off. If you happened to be "fishing" on the York River, you would pass within a few meters of runway 23 about a mile and a half north of the outlet of the Queen Creek. The landing strip is within the Camp Peary NavalReservation. All of this is in southeastern Virginia, just east of Williamsburg, a town famous for its historical restorations. The coastal plain of Virginia and neighboring North Carolina, a limited area with a width of up to about 100 miles, has most of the main centers of CIA aviation and other activities.

The CIA's Gulfstream, N44982 (ex-N379P), and other Aero Contractors planes except the 737 can operate out of the Johnston County Airport (JNX) in North Carolina. Other frequent visitors to JNX are the planes of CIA aircraft holding companies (see table) AVIATION SPECIALTIES, INC.; STEVENS EXPRESS LEASING, INC.; DEVON HOLDING AND LEASING, INC.; and CIA contractor (plane owner-operator) AVIATION WORLDWIDESERVICES / PRESIDENTIAL AVIATION. The JNX airport uses the following communications channels (frequencies arein megahertz, Mhz). Of course the CIA says that itdoes not conduct renditions.

JOHNSTON COUNTY AIRPORT, NORTH CAROLINA, (JNX) FREQUENCIES (perhttp://www.airnav.com/)CTAF/UNICOM: 122.8RALEIGH APPROACH: 125.3RALEIGH DEPARTURE: 125.3

The CIA airline's flagship, Boeing 737 N4476S, operates out of the Kinston Regional Jetport (KISO).Kinston uses these frequencies (megahertz, MHz):
KINSTON REGIONAL JETPORT, NORTH CAROLINA, (ISO) FREQUENCIESCTAF: 120.6UNICOM: 122.95KINSTON GROUND: 121.9 [0630-2200] KINSTON TOWER: 120.6 335.55 [0630-2200] SEYMOUR JOHNSON APPROACH: 127.3 SEYMOUR JOHNSON DEPARTURE: 127.3

* COMMUNICATIONS PROVIDED BY NEW BERN RADIO ON FREQ122.15R.

* APCH/DEP SVC PRVDD BY WASHINGTON ARTCC (NEW BERNRCAG) ON FREQ135.5/272.75 WHEN APCH CTL CLSD

Triangle Marxist Forum study group information

The meeting on January 28th was very small, but a number of people said they were interested in this, so there will be a second meeting. What towns, venues, and times work for people who want to come? Unless I hear otherwise (here or by the local Alliance email), I am thinking of having it on a Saturday at the Center for Documentary Studies again, later this month or early in March.

My proposal for group is to start by following the eight thematic classes produced by Bill Bland of Britain's Communist League in the early 70's and some of Alliance's added suggested readings. After this we could either go deeper into some of the readings, look at modern issues like national questions in this country or why the USSR fell (what were the economic and political reasons?), or discuss non-Marxist, but possibly informative books like "What's the Matter With Kansas?" or whatever participants suggest.

The first course is on the evolution of society (the theory of historical materialism). The readings I propose are sections I and III of the Communist Manifesto (pages 482-496 and 506-517) , Sections I and II of Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (pages 134-190), and Chapter 4 Section II (pages 105-132) of A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), a theortical section. I probably haven't read the Engels reading before, so that will be new to me.

Is this too much reading? Unless we focus on the readings, just reading the Manifesto might be enough for the discussion. The courses have a question and answer format focusing on basics, rather than directly focusing on readings. Alliance recommends the Marx2Mao site for readings these works online, which I am told is now available from a European mirror site. The Marxist Internet Archive might also be useful.

Study group meeting and impeachment actions this week

An interest meeting for a Marxism discussion group will be held Saturday, January 28, at 3pm at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies (1317 W. Pettigrew St., near the intersection with Swift Avenue/Broad Street, directions available at cds.aas.duke.edu). The group will combine
classical texts (probably starting with The Communist Manifesto and going on thematically) with modern or non-Marxist works on current issues and situations (possibly Thomas Franks' What's The Matter With Kansas?). It will look at Marxist economic, political, and social theories and practice. Organized by Alliance Marxist-Leninist (www.allianceml.com) but not limited to Alliance's viewpoint and discussion with members of other groups welcome (I asked local FRSO, Ray O. Light, and Solidarity groups if they would like to be involved, and others are welcome). There seems to be at least some individual interest in doing this, so there will probably be at least a handful of people at the first meeting. For more information email alliance_trianglenc at hotmail.com.

Thursday at 7pm there will be a meeting at Internationalist Books (405 W. Franklin St.) in Chapel Hill to plan a group meeting with Representative David Price (D-NC), which will probably be Monday, the 30th at 1:30 at his Chapel Hill office. The meeting is to present a Bush impeachment petition (mainly relating to the Downing Street memos, available at www.afterdowningstreet.org) petition to him. The petition is online at www.petitiononline.com/dsmnc/petition.html. This Friday there will be a Triangle town meeting on impeachment at the Carrboro Town Hall (I think the address is 105 W. Main Street), possibly the first in a series, the next one being February 28th at the Chapel Hill Town Hall. For more information, see downingstreetactionnc.blogspot.com. Things are starting to move more with this locally, and we will know better where we stand next week.

Defending the US Constitution

I believe in socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat (meaning the dominance of the working class, instead of the current domination of the bourgeoisie), but this doesn't mean I don't respect our Constitution or that I am hypocritical in saying the Bush Administration is unConstitutional.

The Constitution is bourgeois and designed to limit democracy, oppressing the lower classes, as are the constitutions of all capitalist states. For example, the two house Congress, Electoral College, Executive, illusion of an impartial judiciary, original protection of slavery, and other features. Some of these features might be useful in the future, but from what the Founding Fathers wrote, it looks like these were used to safeguard the wealthy classes. There isn't an abstract government system that is always best, it depends on the context of who that government serves.

That said, the Constitution was an improvement over the feudal remnants in Britain during the American Revolution and it makes classical fascism difficult to implement here. The Bill of Rights, which wasn't in the original draft of the Constitution, is democratic in many ways. The separation of powers, which will probably be reduced after a revolution (to combine the executive and legislative bodies in councils like communes and soviets), was designed to prevent change threatening the rich, but today it protects us against Bush's authoritarianism. I say it protects us, but really it is up to the people to safeguard the Constitution, otherwise it is just the scrap of paper Bush thinks it is. For worst case scenarios the Constitution allows citizens to be armed against tyranny (as did the Paris Commune, the original socialist government). A revolution within the Constitution and parliamentary means is unlikely, but the Constitution does allow that possibility.

We can respect the Constitution and demand that the bourgeoisie follow it, but for true democracy and the end of class oppression we must go beyond it. The working class and others, even part of the bourgeoisie, defend the Constitution against those who want to limit democracy to suit the era of monopoly capitalism (see Lenin's Imperialism). But even Jefferson, writing before the existence of a clear proletariat, acknowledged that to defend democracy there might have to be future watering of the "tree of liberty" with blood, which I assume would also mean new government. Following the second American Revolution, the a new constitution will probably be written, following American principles and establishing the rule of law, but not designed to legitimate the oppression of the working class (Capital and other works explain why the existence of wealthy capitalists is oppression and not just the way things are). As socialism develops into communism new constitutions might be needed, to better suit the economic system of the time, this time written without revolution to overthrow vested interests who prevent necessary change.

The Constitution is flawed, but one side wants to ignore or rewrite it to increase oppression and subvert democracy, while progressives want to safeguard the bourgeois democracy it creates and increase the power of the people, which I think will require going outside and beyond the Constitution.

Today is the Anniversary of Stalin's Birth

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was born in Gori in the country of Georgia December 21, 1879. Edvard Radzhinsky argues convincingly in his biography of Stalin that Stalin was actually born on that date in 1878, though. The bourgeoisie, especially in the West, views Stalin as being as bad, or worse than, Hitler, a totalitarian dictator who killed millions of Soviet and foreign citizens. Allegations of Stalin's "crimes" are usually based on exaggerations and deliberate lies, spread by dishonest Trotskyists, fascists, revisionists like Khrushchev, and Western secret service agents like Conquest, not that Stalin and the USSR were never wrong. From a working class and intenationalist standpoint what the bourgeoisie call crimes (collectivization, purges, trials of saboteurs and spies, the nonaggression pact with Germany, etc) were instead essentially correct and beneficial policies which helped the majority of people - leading the USSR along Leninist lines towards socialism, defeating Nazi Germany and other fascists, and supporting revolutions and national liberation struggles. At the same time, Alliance Marxist-Leninist argues that within the Soviet Union there was a battle going on between Stalin's true, or revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist faction and revisionists who wanted to restore capitalism. Also Stalin does not deserve credit or blame for everything the USSR did, so it takes analysis to judge the usefulness of policies and whether Stalin deserves credit (or criticism) for a given policy.

The unofficial party line of American and Western historians is against Stalin because he was a revolutionary leader who consolidated Soviet socialism and successfully encouraged indigeneous revolutions worldwide. Compare this to subsequent Soviet leaders who presided over the dismantling of socialism, corrupted the struggles of others (such as the Afghans and unsuccessfully with the Albanians), and in the end encouraged the collapse of the USSR and its allies, who had been reduced to what some call Soviet social-imperialist colonies. It is partly because of counterrevolution in the USSR that the Taliban controlled Afghanistan and then fell to an imperialist occupation, perhaps millions of Iraqis died under the UN sanctions and tens of thousands more in the Iraq War, Haiti is under a brutal UN occupation, and conditions and life spans in the former Soviet Union have fallen while a few get rich off state property almost given away for nothing. For this reason it is obvious that the bourgeoisie should hate Stalin and praise Gorbachev, Deng, and other "communist" leaders. For these reasons I would say that Stalin made a great contribution to the social, economic, and even spiritual progress of humanity (as did the USSR for much of its existence) and to Marxist-Leninist theory and practice.

In the future I will add more details or sources to read for a revolutionary view of Stalin so you can judge this for yourself. The introduction to Bruce Franklin's "The Essential Stalin," an anthology of Stalin's writings, is a useful overview, as are articles at www.allianceml.com, www.plp.org, and www.northstarcompass.org.

Merry winter solstice holidays (today is the shortest day of the year and the beginning of astronomical winter, which is probably why so many holidays mark this time of the year)!

The Democrats' Wars

Below is another article (posted at www.counterpunch.org) on Edwards' and the Democratic Party's overall support for the Iraq War. I feel that the Democrats didn't vote for war only out of "ambition" (and the if they did they should see now that they made a terrible political miscalculation and I hope they are called to account for it). They are as pro-monopoly, pro-war as Republicans, and welcomed the chance to topple the Iraqi government on any grounds. If they didn't actually think this (although I think many did), their actions still served an imperialist agenda, yet again. The Afghan War at least had some connection to defense of the nation, but I think bin Laden is only a small part of the reason for it (the rest being geopolitics and Unocal's gas pipeline), and even that has been minimized by the White House now. They also let bin Laden escape before 2001 and after the invasion of Afghanistan, at Tora Bora.

http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh12052005.html
What Did the Democrats Know and When Did they Know It?
The Lies of John Edwards
By JOHN WALSH

The apology of John Edwards, former Senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate, for voting for the Iraq war in 2002, has been widely praised. But his apology is based on a lie, one that other Democrats are likely to embrace and one which will serve their ambitions but hide the truth. We should have no illusions about this, for to believe otherwise is to set ourselves up for the continuation of Bush's war by a Democrat.

Edwards declared in an op-ed column in the Washington Post on November 13, 2005: “The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president—and that I was being given by our intelligence community—wasn’t the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.” Sounds simple enough. “Had I known then what I know now, etc.” Poor John Edwards was deceived. But was he? How was it that 21 other Democratic Senators and 2 Republicans were not deceived and voted against the war?

Part of the answer arrived in another op-ed the Washington Post one week later, November 20, 2005, by another former Senator, Bob Graham, entitled: “What I knew Before the Invasion.” Like Edwards, Graham was a member, in fact the chair, of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee in the period leading up to the war and on October 11, 2002 when the vote on the war on Iraq was taken. In a nutshell, Graham tells us that everyone on that committee knew that Bush was lying about weapons of mass destruction. Graham begins like a good, loyal Democrat, telling us that his colleagues were deceived, at least “most” of them. But he then tells us that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee knew better. Here are some of Graham’s words:

“At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used Senatorial authority, I directed completion of an NIE.”

“Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein’s capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE”.

“There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein’s will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.”

“Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States’ removing Hussein, by force if necessary.” (Note by jw: Who do you suppose those “third countries” were that were fanning the flames of war?)

“The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs.’ It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as “If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year,” underscored the White House’s claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.”

“From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth—or even had an interest in knowing the truth.”

“On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.”

John Edwards was a member of that Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and he voted for the war. Who were the other Democratic senators? They were Senators Bayh, Edwards, DURBIN, Feinstein, LEVIN, MIKULSKI, Rockefeller and WYDEN as well as Tom Daschle, then majority leader, an ex officio member. I have capitalized those who voted against the war resolution and who should be hailed as senators of integrity. But Bayh, Daschle, Edwards, Feinstein and Rockefeller, all of whom with the exception of Feinstein, have presidential ambitions, voted for the war despite the fact that they had good reason to know the administration was Bushies were lying. (And let’s not forget the Republicans on the committee: Dewine, Hatch, Inhoffe, Kyle, Lugar, Roberts, Richard Shelby, Fred Thompson and ex officio, Trent Lott.)

There were 19 members of that committee, all of whom had to know that Bush was lying. Only the four in caps above voted against the war. But if 19, out of what is often called a small and intimate club of 100 Senators, knew that the war was based on a lie, can one believe that the rest did not know? And given the bloodletting that was about to be unleashed, why did none of these 19, including Graham, release the “confidential” NIE report? What sort of men and women are these?

Let us carry this one step further. There were 23 Senate votes against the war, only 4 of whom were on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. If we add to that 23, the five Democrats (Bayh, Daschle, Edwards, Feinstein and Rockefeller), we have 28. It would have taken only 5 more to sustain a veto against the war. Let’s see who was available among the pro-war votes. There were Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Max Cleland (Yes, he voted for the war!), Christopher Dodd, Tom Harkin (Yes, he voted for the war!), Ernst Hollings, Harry Reid (now minority leader) and Charles Schumer. (That’s 8, bringing the total to 36.) So those Dems cannot say their votes did not matter. They cannot claim we would have gone to war anyway. If they had been willing to filibuster against the war or filibuster to allow the inspectors to complete their work, there would have been no war. These are Dems on whom progressives rely. They betrayed us, and they have blood on their hands since it was in their power to stop the war. But their ambitions came first. (Chuck Hagel who now professes to be anti-war and John McCain who wears his “integrity” on his sleeve would have made two excellent additions among the Republicans.)

Finally it is worth recalling that the Democrats were in the majority in the Senate at the time the war vote was taken on October, 11, 2002. So this is every bit as much a Democratic war as a Republican one.

And that brings us full circle. Why did Graham write his column which, if read carefully, so implicates Edwards and so many others? Actually Graham set out to do the opposite, to excuse his colleagues. He was trying to explain how he could vote against the war while 99 other Dems voted for it. He was trying to excuse them with his insiders knowledge. As he says in the opening to his op-ed:

“In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. ‘More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power,’ he said.”

“The president’s attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace—that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.”

Bush is telling a lie, of course, when he says the Dems had “the same intelligence” as he had. But it contains a kernel of truth, which must be scaring the hell out of the Dems as they feel pressure to abandon the war. (Bush and Cheney finally say something with an element of truth!!!) The kernel is that enough Democrats had enough knowledge to know that we were being lied into war in October, 2002. And except for a courageous 21 Senators, along with 2 Republicans, they went along for the ride - with their careers in mind. So in attempting to excuse his colleagues, Graham’s op-ed leaves his fellow members of the Select Intelligence Committee hanging out to dry. (It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of folks. And just perhaps, that very thought occurred to Graham as he penned his piece. ) And he raises suspicions about the rest of the Senate, with the exception of the 23. (And of course how is he to explain the votes of the 23; are they to be labeled traitors to save the reputations of Hillary, Kerry et al? That is a tough sell.)

Where does that leave us? The crisis that is the war in Iraq has become a crisis of Democracy. Right now it is crystal clear that there is no true opposition party, although there are minor elements (very minor ones) among the Left in the Democratic party and the Libertarians in the Republican party. These could constitute a genuine antiwar opposition. Until that happens, the war will go on, the neocons may drive us into further wars and our democracy will be further imperiled.

It is worthwhile looking back at the Senate membership of the 107th Congress and comparing the list to those Senators voting against the war on Iraq (http://www.democrats.com/node/6890). Pick your own favorite Judas.
John Walsh can be reached at http://us.f540.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=jvwalshmd@gmail.com.