A Military Defeat, a Political Victory

1916 Rebellion Walking Tour, Dublin Ireland

The 1916 ‘rising’ against the English is the seminal event in the independence of southern Ireland.  That would be 26 counties out of 32.  Everywhere you go, you see references if you are paying attention.  If you have come for the Guinness or the repetitive pub music, well, not so much.  The proclamation of independence, signed by 7 revolutionaries, with Thomas Clarke an old Fenian at the top, is posted all over the country still.  “To Irishmen and Irishwomen…” it starts, a rarity in revolutionary proclamations.  Our female guide consistently pointed out the role of at least 70 women in the insurrection – and they were not making sandwiches.  This was no accident by her, as the effort to repeal an amendment to the Irish Constitution forbidding abortion was in full swing.  (See below reportage.)  This amendment will help working women the most.

The tour started at the International Bar, south of the Liffey River on Wicklow Street.  Our guide, when asked, mentioned the more distant Collins Barracks and the Gilmainham Gaol as additional sites that play a large role in the rising.  We visited them as well on our own. 

Irish Volunteers in GPO

While 10,000 men were prepared to rise against the English, the majority were warned off when weapons did not arrive on Bana Strand  in the west of Ireland south of Heuston.  This was due to their interception by the English and a truck crash by the Irish drivers.  Roger Casement was arrested when he came on the ship bringing arms. (See book review below.)  So only a minority rose on Easter Sunday, most in Dublin but some in other parts of Ireland, especially in Galway.  

100,000 Irish men volunteered to fight in the English Army in World War I, which should quell any notion that all Irish are somehow radicals.   Yet the later British draft of all Irishmen by the British put steam and steel into the eventual successful guerrilla war against Britain that followed the 1916 rising some years later.  The 5 day insurrection in Dublin was a military defeat but a political victory, especially after the martyrdom of the leaders.

The guide described the various positions of the rebels and the English, and walked us down O’Connell Street and then around to City Hall.  The rebellion started on Monday, April 24, 1916, the day after Easter.  Easter was not chosen for religious reasons but because British troops would be observing a holiday and recovering from one.  The rebellion started at Liberty Hall, on the north bank of the Liffey not far from O’Connell Street, the large main thoroughfare.  From Liberty Hall and other locations, about a 1,200 rebels spread out through town from the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) and the Irish Volunteers  / Irish Republican Brotherhood organizations.  Some dug in at St. Stephen’s Green in makeshift trenches, south of the main part of the city, which involved the leadership of a woman, Countess Georgine Markievicz.  Eamon de Valera led a group of 17 blocking an eastern bridge on Mount Street, where British reinforcements might arrive by ship.  Others had seized City Hall, the 4 Courts area, some railroad stations, the Magazine at Phoenix Park and others.  Buildings along O’Connell Street were taken, with snipers in the top floors.  The main rebel headquarters was at the General Post Office (GPO) just up O’Connell Street, where James Connolly, a socialist, organized the military actions.  (Review of Connolly’s life, below.)  Dublin Castle, just south of City Hall, was not taken.  Patrick Pearse read out the Proclamation of the Irish Republic at the GPO to a small crowd when it was first occupied.  All these locations stand to this day except Liberty Hall, which has been replaced by an ugly tower 16 stories tall.

For three days, the English were not able to retake the city.  A British general stupidly attacked de Valera’s position on the Mount Street bridge, and hundreds of raw English recruits were shot.  They had been told they were going to France, and expected a cheery welcome.  Instead of sending troops across nearby bridges to enfilade de Valera’s group, he insisted on frontal attack after frontal attack.  After this significant resistance, the English decided on a ‘ring of iron” around the GPO.  They moved slowly, taking out outnumbered rebel positions until they had cannons placed across the Liffey shooting up O’Connell Street towards it.  Their cannonade destroyed many buildings and killed many Irish civilians, some of whom had taken the chance to loot, as the citizens of Dublin were extremely poor.  (Class stratification in Ireland is still very obvious…)

The rebels made sure one of the biggest capitalists in Dublin, who owned among other things a nearby hotel, had the Irish flag flying over his property opposite the GPO.  

The Damaged GPO on O'Connell Street

Ultimately, the superior weight of British guns and troops forced the final rebels in the GPO to unconditionally surrender in the next 2 days.  The rebels decided that they could not countenance any more civilian deaths or destruction.  Connolly was injured and taken through an alley behind the GPO towards a nearby hospital.  From there he was captured and taken to Dublin castle.  Most of the rest of the leaders gave themselves up.  Women were also captured, but except for the Countess they were let go because the British did not suspect they were anything more than hangers-on.  They were not.  Markievicz was eventually given clemency after spending jail-time in Kilmainham and much later she ended up serving in the Irish parliament.

Oddly, James Joyce was with the radicals in the ICA, the labor-based military organization promoted by Connolly.  On that Monday in 1916 young Joyce worked in Davy's Pub as a bottle-washer.  With his friends in the ICA, they took over the pub to repel British troops.  At this he was given two weeks notice by his conservative boss at the time, and Joyce retorted: "I'm giving you 5 minutes notice..." and shot off his rifle in the air.   That is the story... 

COLLINS BARRACKS

Of course it wasn’t called Collins Barracks in 1916.  Michael Collins was a leader of the revolutionary war against the English and it was named for him when it became an Irish military post later.  In 1916 it was the main quartering post for English soldiers in Dublin.  A huge square surrounded by 3 stories, far enough outside the main part of the city, close enough to the north bank of the Liffey, within easy reach of anything in small downtown Dublin.   It is now two free museums dedicated to fashion and to Irish military history.  The latter shows the Irish role in warfare and military duty all over the world, in many different countries, including in the U.S. Civil War. (see book review on Meagher, below)  Living in broken down rural farms must have made military life attractive.  The Irish diaspora contributed as well.  Behind the Barracks, in a back churchyard, in a mass grave, lie the bodies of the executed martyrs of 1916.

KILMAINHAM GAOL

Across the Liffey and a bit farther west, was the main jail of Dublin – Kilmainham – located on a high hill.  It consists of five parts – a court with a chair for the defendant sitting on a table across from the judge.  A chapel where one of the young men arrested in 1916 married his sweetheart, to be shot the next day.  An older dark part of the jail, where Irish nationalist rebels were kept, including earlier rebels like Robert Emmet and Charles Parnell, along with most of the arrested in the Easter rising.  Then there is a newer, airy jail that reminds one of Alcatraz and is of the ‘panopticon’ variety.  And lastly, the execution yard, where 16 leaders of the Easter Rising were shot.  Crosses mark the spot on the east side.  Of particular note is the cross on the west side of the yard.  Connolly was brought from the medical ward at Dublin Castle.  They unloaded him through a door in the yard next to this spot and dragged him to a chair.  He fell off the chair due to his wound, so he was roped in place and shot sitting.

These criminal executions inflamed world and Irish opinion.  With the institution of an Irish draft by the British to fight in the barbaric World War I, the English sealed their fate.  A year and a half struggle between an aroused nation and the British colonialists resulted in the independence of the 26 counties in 1922.  A civil war between the Irish over the abandonment of the last 6 counties ensued, leaving Michael Collins dead and including more shot in Kilmainham jail … this time by Irish government soldiers.

The jail is now a museum.  But its history is not.

Red Frog

June 6, 2018

Irish Week

“The Immortal Irishman – The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero,” by Timothy Egan, 2016

There is a whole pantheon of Irish revolutionaries, given the long occupation of southern Ireland by the British, which only ended less than a 100 years ago.  Connolly, Pearse, de Valera, Parnell, O’Brien, Larkin, Casement, Clarke, Emmet, Collins and O’Connell are some of the most prominent.  Let’s add one. 

Thomas Meagher, who is of particular interest to people in the U.S.  He was part of the “Young Ireland” movement that challenged Daniel O’Connell for leadership of the Irish national struggle.  O’Connell had helped win the right to practice Catholicism in Ireland in the early 1800s from the British colonialists.  Prior to that Irish Catholicism had been against British colonial law.  O’Connell, the “Liberator,” had then been elected as a member of the English parliament and had become partly integrated into English rule in Ireland and elsewhere.  While attempting to repeal the bond between the two countries, O’Connell’s supporters had become corrupt and close to their English overseers.  The men and women of the Young Irelanders advocated a continuing independence struggle, up to and including revolutionary action, and so clashed with O’Connell. 

Buying off the top strata of an oppressed country or group is standard practice among colonial, imperial or capitalist rulers.  It was at work here as well, in the taming of a wing of the independence movement.

Meagher was from an upper-crust Irish family, sent to school in England, but had become an excellent orator at a young age.  He was like others in the Young Ireland movement – poets, writers, journalists and intellectuals.  They represented a wing of the upper class that still wanted to kick out the British completely, and were supported by thousands of peasants and some workers as well.  Thousands had signed up to rise against the British. 

In 1847 (“Black ‘47”) the Irish famine hit and conditions in Ireland became intolerable. The potato crop was the basis of most Irish families’ food, 2/3^rd of the population.  The potato blight followed for 5 years and 1 million Irish people starved to death, while another 2 million began to emigrate.  This was out of a total population of 8 million.  In 1925 at the time of national independence, 4 million were left.  Since Irish farmers had no money, evictions became commonplace and ‘lucky’ people ended up in work or poor houses.  The British during this whole period rejected providing free food because it would threaten the sacred free market system which commodifies food.  It can only be bought ‘for a price.’  Remember, the Irish were supposedly ‘citizens’ of the United Kingdom at this time. Instead the English gentry and businessmen continued to export massive quantities of Irish agricultural products like corn, wheat, rye, meat, fish, butter, milk and vegetables from Ireland to England.  By doing this, the English ruling class actually helped starve the Irish people in a holocaust that has not been forgotten. 

Meagher gave speeches in Dublin and all over the country against this tyranny.  In 1848 Meagher designed the present tricolor flag of Ireland.  Ultimately he and others were forced to call for a rising against these conditions.  Yet these were intellectuals - and warfare was not in their skill-set. While many thousands of farmers were ready, they had no adequate weapons or organization of any consequence.  After a somewhat pathetic military attack on some police in Ballingarry, the leaders were arrested for sedition and condemned to die, but then their sentences were commuted.  Most were transported to Tasmania, an island prison colony south of Australia.  Meagher became an exile there, similar to the exile faced by Russian revolutionaries. 

At first Meagher tried to adapt to Tasmania – marrying a young frail woman, trying to start a family, farming and riding.  But after another exile escaped, he too decided to plan an escape with help from supporters in Ireland and the U.S.  He could not waste away on this lonely bit of land.  He could not return to Ireland, so he planned on heading to the U.S.  He escaped on a tiny boat, was marooned on a small island, and barely caught the ship that was to take him to the U.S.  In 1852, he landed in California and made his way to New York, where he was greeted as a hero.  Meagher gave speeches all over the country and even had an audience with the U.S. president. 
 

Meagher In Montana

At this time the U.S. was in the midst of the early crisis over slavery that led up to the U.S. Civil War.  Unlike the image of the ‘radical’ Irishman, most Irish people were not revolutionaries or abolitionist.  While many later joined the Union Army, many in New York later protested the draft for class reasons, but also attacked and killed freedmen.  One of Meagher’s best friends from the Young Irelanders, John Mitchel, became a virulent slaver.  Meagher himself did not call for an end to slavery, and stayed silent as it was legal in the U.S. at the time.   

When the Confederacy seceded and then fired on Fort Sumter, Meagher came out for the Union and began raising troops for the legendary Irish Brigade, the ‘fighting ‘69th.’  Later he supported Lincoln and came out against slavery, for which he was much reviled by the Irish right.  He became the Brigade’s leader, a brigadier general appointed by Lincoln, and heroically led his troops into battle on horseback – no longer only a man of words.  Because the Brigade was made up of long-reviled Irishmen, it was looked down on as a bunch of lazy uncontrollable farm boys by the press and the Army.  But at the battles of First Bull Run, the 7 Days, Chancellorsville and the bloody hell of Fredericksburg, they proved to be one of the best, if not the best unit in the Federal Army. 

Meagher hoped that these Irish men trained in military tactics could take the skills and use them back in Ireland in a military confrontation with the English occupiers when the war was over.  But after General Burnsides’ incredible incompetence at Fredericksburg, Meagher could no longer stomach Union generals and resigned from the Army.  He took his second wife, a former scion of East Coast money, and moved to Montana.  He had given up trying to launch a military revolt in Ireland as a Fenian, especially after a failed Fenian attack from the U.S. on British Canada in 1866. 

In Montana he had been appointed the acting governor by President Johnson, residing in Virginia City in a crude cabin.  He recruited Irish settlers to leave the big cities and start to farm and ranch in Montana, or become miners.  He fought corruption, attempted to incorporate Montana as a state and opposed the bloody reign of terror of a group of Protestant and Republican businessmen and ranchers.  For this he was assassinated, pushed into the Missouri river off of a steamboat by a hired thug in 1867.  Meagher’s statue now stands in front of the Montana State Capital, along with a memorial in Fort Benton, as reminders of the Irish revolutionary who also became one of the best opponents of slavery in the U.S.

The book is a well-written novelistic history and shows the connection between the national liberation struggle in Ireland and the fight against chattel slavery in the U.S.  It also shows that some people can’t connect different kinds of oppression for the life of them.  In all, lessons for the present.

Other reviews on this topic – use these search terms:  James Connolly, Abortion Referendum, Jimmy’s Hall, The Dream of the Celt.  Also many book and film reviews on the U.S. Civil War.  Use blog search box, upper left.

And I got it in the Library!

Red Frog

June 3, 2018

Tears of Joy

Abortion Referendum in Ireland

Happy is an inadequate description.  Young women across Ireland led the fight to repeal the 8^th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which outlaws abortion.  It was repealed by 66% of the voters, with only one county, heavily rural Donegal in the north, voting no.  Thousands of posters went up on lampposts all over Ireland saying “Yes” and “No,” while the two sides battled politely and not so politely on O’Connell Street, Dublin’s center.  The Catholic Church probably funded most of the no posters, and it looked like it mobilized the young girls in its confirmation classes to be the ‘female’ face of ‘no.’  The Archbishop of Ireland was ‘disappointed’ by the result – at least that is what he said from behind his ten-foot walled and wooded compound in Drumcondra.

"The Quiet Revolution" - May 27th Irish Sunday Mirror Front Page, with 6 more pages inside. 

This was also clearly a vote supported by the Irish working classes.  A young man working as a clerk in an insurance company in Dublin said he would vote yes.  He mentioned that he had asked his girlfriend how to vote.  A 40+ year-old house cleaner in Galway told us she would vote yes.  A 40+ farm wife in Kilarney said she would vote yes, but wasn’t going to tell her husband how she was going to vote.  An activist from Limerick noted that her ‘honk for yes’ sign brought out honks from male truck drivers, construction workers and postal carriers.  She knew then that men were behind repeal.  They were not unaware that unwanted children might bring years of child support or a sad marriage for themselves too, not just their girlfriends or wives, so forced baby-making was not in their interest either.  

Bars in Dublin had ‘yes’ tables and signs, while trade unions hung enormous ‘yes’ banners over their offices.   In the streets of Dublin it was clear nearly all young women in their 20s and 30s supported repeal.  The pictures of celebration in the square at Dublin Castle featured mostly young women. 

The main body of the conservative Fianna Fail party was against repeal, but Labour, Sinn Fein and a small wing of Fianna Fail supported it.  All the socialist organizations supported repeal.  Sinn Fein immediately announced the need for a similar referendum to be held in northern Ireland, still a British colony but with a 8^th Amendment similar to Ireland’s itself.  This referendum might also juggle northern Ireland's attachment to England, given the "UK's" Brexit vote which would detach northern Ireland from the EU.  In the past, Irish women would have had to travel to the U.K. to get an abortion.  This made it harder for working class women and girls, but that will no longer be true.

The Good Girls Finally Win One

Clearly this is a huge defeat for the reactionary positions of the Catholic Church, which opposes abortion, contraception, family planning advice, homosexuality, divorce and won’t allow women to become priests.  This archaic attitude towards sexuality, children and women is a world-wide problem for the Church.  This comes from its roots in a medieval economy and history.  Just as its occasional ‘anti-capitalism’ comes from its nostalgia for a non-commodity society based on serfdom.  It is as if it is still promoting children in the face of the Black Death.  Certainly it is promoting the child labor needed for a primitive rural peasant economy.

Scandals around clerical child abuse and the starvation of orphans had weakened the Irish Church already.  Especially noted was the forced death of Savita Hlappanavar, who was denied an abortion in Galway during a miscarriage and died of sepsis.  Just after the vote, another scandal erupted, as one headline screamed ‘Nuns Forge Birth Papers.’ A Catholic adoption society was caught by the government claiming that some foster parents were actually ‘birth parents.’  Adoption activists pointed out that if other Catholic adoption societies were looked at, the same would be found true.

One commentator noted that Ireland, which at one time was an ethnically homogeneous society, has now being impacted by the world-wide pattern of migration and travel.  As a result Irish people were being exposed to influences and people they had never had contact with before.  As any trip to Ireland will confirm, this is a society much like Italy – seemingly stuck in the past.  That is now changing.

The Poll

The detail lost in the whole fight is that this repeal only allows the law to be ‘redrawn’ - it mandates little else.  This allows the parliamentary right-wing to try to create an abortion law that is restrictive… similar to the efforts of anti-abortion politicians in the U.S. in various states.  “Democracy” as we know has a way of breaking down when it travels up the pipeline of capitalist 'representative' legislating, where a mountain can become a molehill.  So all is not won yet, even after this landslide for abortion rights.

At any rate, a great win for the people of Ireland. Tears were shed.

P.S. - Sinn Fein has proposed an immediate end to a clause in the Irish constitution (41.2) which reads: "The state shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

Red Frog

June 1, 2018  

Ha Ha Ha?

What Can You Say About Bill Maher?

Millionaire comics are a dime a half-dozen at least.  Just look on TV.  Bill Maher is one of them, in spite of his independent streak and being on cable. He was heroically fired from a major network for saying it took guts to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.  Then he made a film making fun of religion (“Religulous”).  So he was never very ingratiated into the politics of the power elite.  That has changed.

What ya smokin' now Bill?

Now, whether smoking too much weed or trying to beat Rachel Maddow at the Trump hysteria / Russia game, he’s become a somewhat sad figure.  His self-reverential shtick is familiar, as it’s usually all about him and his Trump angst.  He only occasionally throws out some off-line opinions to his mostly Democratic Party audience.  This week’s program (Friday, May 18*) was peopled by creepy, suspicious types.  He started out with an ex-FBI agent, Clint Watts, discussing his new book on social media’s influence in politics.  As if the FBI did not engage in social media and media manipulations itself.  So perhaps they are losing now?  His talking-head ‘panel’ consisted of a former CIA agent and Republican, Evan McMullin; Dan Savage, a gay Democrat; and the dreadful opinion editor of the New York Times, hard-core Zionist and former Wall Street Journal reporter Bari Weiss.

Maher’s ‘special guest’ was a neo-liberal woman formerly from Zambia, Dambisa Moyo, who had just written a book on the degeneration of ‘democracy.’ She recommended paying politicians as is done in the private sector, but for their improvements to the country.  As if CEO’s actually get paid for performance.  She pretended there were not enough lawyers in Congress, when they are the majority in the Senate (60%) and 37% in the House.  She advocated knowledge tests in order to vote.  She said that the U.S. is the ‘vanguard of liberal democracy,' the kind of tripe that always gets plaudits from her new benefactors.

Past Maher shows have included generals, Trumps promoters, vicious Republican performance artists like Ann Coulter and a stable of approved editorial figures of the mostly moderate Democrat or Republican stripe.  He used to have Sander’s supporters on, but has run from any left-wingers for a long time now.  For instance, trying to get Tom Morello to agree with him about Hillary Clinton was just too much for Bill.

The panel was united in non-stop talk about Trump’s personal foibles, ignoring any detail of the crimes he and his party are committing every day.  The worst moment was when pro-Israeli NYT editor Weiss claimed that Hamas or the Palestinians trickily staged their protests to coincide with the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem - just to make Ivanka look bad.  Everyone made easy on her bloody Trump-lite comments, including for the most part Maher.  “When is there not a riot in that region of the world?” archly asked Moyo.  McMullin made a noise that perhaps the choice of the date was Trump’s, not Hamas, but he approved moving the embassy at some point anyway.  Savage did not challenge Weiss frontally, but he did agree with McMullin on the timing. They all agreed not to negotiate with Hamas.  The 70^th commemoration of Naqba was never mentioned, nor the mass shooting of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza itself.  Weiss was most distressed that 'conservatives' had taken the Israel issue for themselves, taking it from the liberals.  Amazing.

The timing is really Trump’s – he was too stupid to realize that opening an embassy at this particular moment was ‘impolitic,’ as they say.  And so the isolated ruling class in the U.S. again ignores the thrice invaded open air prison that is Gaza, which originated from an episode of ethnic cleansing 70 years ago.

On this program, Savage was the best of this sad bunch, scandalizing the stiffies by making the point that legal prostitution is the best solution to people who cannot get ‘laid.’  This in a discussion of a topic Bill seems to have just discovered, ‘incels.’  Savage himself is not yet integrated enough into the ‘line’ of the Democratic elite or the U.S. ruling class, so he ended up being a bit of a dissident on this program.  The ex-CIA agent promoted the new head of the CIA, Gina Haspel.  Moyo finally challenged him.  Savage pointed out that the Nazis used the some of the same tactics of 'enhanced interrogation' at Dachau.

From this program ‘the Resistance’ to Trump consists of a united front of Republicans, 'ex'-FBI and 'ex'-CIA members, Zionist NYT editors, millionaire comics and neo-liberal black women.  Trump is a criminal but this array is a fake unauthentic Resistance®, the business-as-usual crowd.  A wing of capital stands behind this ‘resistance.’  Maher himself has yearned for ‘business-as-usual’ quite openly.  

Another wing of capital has other ideas.

Note:  Glenn Greenwald took Bari Weiss apart in an Intercept essay in August 2017.  Nothing has changed.

More postings related to this issue or these people:  “Stolichnaya…,” "Religulous," "The Holocaust Industry," "The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution," etc.  Use blog search box, upper left.

Red Frog

May 20, 2018

Land of Ire

IRELAND – What's Up?

ABORTION VOTE

Will be covering Ireland and will report issues of political and cultural interest.  The greatest right now is the vote on abortion on May 25, 2018.  Given Ireland voted for civil unions as the first country in the world to do so, its right-wing Catholic heritage is eroding.  The scandals around dead orphans packed into graves at Catholic orphanages didn’t help.  The Irish, like the rest of Europe, now say they might be ‘religious’ but no longer attend church in the numbers they once did.  I expect mass demonstrations in Dublin around the vote on the 25^th.

England's Colony Rises

EASTER RISING

Dublin was the scene of the Easter Rising in 1916, part of the revolutionary waves that moved through the world during WWI.  There is a tour of Dublin based on that insurrection.   Jim Juice will get a nod too and any such Viking relics that are interesting.
 
THE SOUTH

Other than the scenery, there are bits of more recent history in the south of Ireland.  Besides the beer, music, windswept, wet and cool land.   A British poorhouse for the Irish.  Ruined cottages, abandoned during the famine.  The location where Michael Collins was assassinated.  The ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell.  And …

THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN

Reading a book about the Irish revolutionary and Union Civil War general Thomas Meagher, who was part of the “Young Ireland” movement in 1848 during the ‘great hunger.’  He was arrested by the English for his role in that struggle, and was sent to a penal colony in Tasmania.  Then he ended up in the U.S. where he led the union Irish Brigade in some key battles of the U.S. Civil War.  Slavery and the oppression of the Irish seemed similar struggles to Meagher.  To be reviewed fully.

Red Frog
May 17, 2018

Author Interviews Herself

Arundhati Roy – At the Fitzgerald Theater and on “The Thread,” Minnesota Public Radio

Arundhati Roy, Indian fiction writer and political essayist, came to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA to promote her new work of fiction “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.”  (reviewed below) Unfortunately the book was barely mentioned.

Born in Small Village in Kerala to Single Mom

Hosting the event was Kerri Miller, who joined Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) in 2004 after a stint at KARE 11 local news as a reporter.  Miller was unable to rise to the occasion to adequately interview Roy, whose politics are head and shoulders above what Miller was used to.  A good number of times Roy had to say ‘no’ to some misdirected question by Miller.  As the interview progressed, Miller was left almost silent as Roy understood she had to fill in the time.  I doubt Miller has read any of Roy’s political books, which might have helped. The program is to be broadcast on MPR later.

Roy is a radical intellectual, something Miller’s well-modulated and conventional approach cannot handle.  There were no questions about the occupation of Kashmir, which is at the heart of the new book. Or a question about why ‘the market,’ as Roy calls it, and Hindu supremacists, have both united in India. Nor a question about caste, which plays a role in the violence against women occurring in India, a topic Roy brought up. Miller was instead obsessed with asking about Roy’s first novel, “The God of Small Things,” which won the Booker prize years ago and about Roy’s personal fierceness or other perceptions of her.  Roy at one point had to say ‘it’s not about me.’  

During Roy’s long responses, she said many valuable things that go against conventional wisdom in the U.S.  She pointed out that fiction is the most holistic artistic method of describing the world, as it weaves together separate issues and silos.  Because of that, reading fiction demands that the reader not be a passive receptor but an active ‘contemplator.’  In this context she said that feminism or any other partial approach or issue is not sufficient to deal with current reality.  She decried the artificial separation between art and politics imposed by modern bourgeois literature standards.  This includes the supposed opposition of so-called ‘fact’ and so-called ‘fiction.’ She joked that some people think her scenes of poor outcasts living in cemeteries were ‘magical realism.’ Yet people in India do live in cemeteries.

Roy chided some Indian liberals for calling for the oppressed Adivasi people of the Indian forests to become pacifists in the face of violent Indian government repression over corporate mining.  She used a line from her book ‘Walking With the Comrades,” (reviewed below) to ask, “Should they go on hunger strikes when they are already starving?”  For anyone who is familiar with her work, this might bring up her long introduction to Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste” where she took Gandhi to task.  Gandhi supported the caste system.  But ah, another question left unasked, another sacred cow left alone.

Roy has a quick wit and handles words like a poet.  She thinks in many languages, as she has been immersed in India's profusion of languages.  She described the present situation in India as ‘micro-fascism.’  The demonetarization policy of the Modi government devastated workers and small businessmen.  It took small money bills out of circulation in a situation where the majority exist in a cash economy.  Roy thinks that the elite promotion of practices for the Hindu masses like oppressing Muslims or women is a placebo for their own oppression.  Many rapes are linked to caste, as upper-caste / class men think they have every right to beat and rape girls and women.  What she found most disturbing was the mass of men and women that would come out in demonstrations in support of the rapists.  Roy addressed so-called ‘development’ and ‘modernization.’  She saw these as merely words for destructive market-rule, which she pointed out should be obvious ‘even to those in the most contorted yoga position.’

I think the reason that Miller is unable to actually interview someone like Roy is because of the ideas of the literary mafia in the U.S.  Politics and class are not their forte.  This mafia is headquartered in New York. Its local Minnesota arms are the Star Tribune newspaper, the Loft literary center and MPR’s Talking Volumes/ The Thread radio program.  They urge readers to cherish memoirs, especially dysfunctional ones.  Or read and write stories of families, emotions and personalities exclusively.  They focus on the life of the middle-class and individualism. They go into raptures over words and phrases alone, while greater meanings and stories go out the window.  They advocate a separation of politics and art and ignore working-class life.  People like Jonathan Franzen, Augusten Burroughs and D.F. Wallace are exemplars of these styles.  None of this is done in Roy’s fiction, as she understands that the personal cannot be separated from its social and economic context.

A few questions from the Indian audience members reflected their frustration with current Indian political conditions.  Roy had no answer as to how to end fundamentalist Hinduism or caste or class oppression.  She is an honest observer and even activist with excellent instincts, but is not allied to any political tendency.

Prior reviews on books by Roy, below:  Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Walking with the Comrades, Field Notes on Democracy, the introduction to Annihilation of Caste and  Capitalism, a Ghost Story.  Also commentary: "Turning Off NPR."  Use blog search box, upper left.

Most of these books are available at May Day.

Fitzgerald Theater

Red Frog / May 12, 2018

Capital is Vulnerable to Labor

“On New Terrain – How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War,” by Kim Moody, 2017

What is interesting about the flood of books from leftists is how they continue to analyze the actual conditions of society right now, not nostalgia from 150 or 100 or 80 or 50 years ago.  This is the heart of the Marxist method and necessary if the labor left is to make ANY headway.  Moody is an editor for Labor Notes and now a professor in England.  This book takes a look at changes in the U.S. in the geographic, economic, class and political terrain since neo-liberal capitalist methods were implemented in the late 1970s under Carter.  Some of his insights are actually new or more detailed, which makes this a useful book.

The Past Is Past

Moody tracks the shift in a factual style, upending old clichés or ideas about U.S. proletarian reality, some of which are familiar to anyone who studies this issue.  But his updates actually clarify the situation.  I’ll bullet point them:

1.          1.  Moody’s most contentious point is that only 25% of the jobs lost in the U.S. over the past  40 years are due to ‘outsourcing’ work to Mexico, China, Bangladesh, India, etc. This is not the position of most analyses of job losses in the U.S.

         2.  The culprits for the other 75% are not imperialist globalism or even domestic ‘outsourcing’ but two things that any worker will find familiar – speed-up and over-work, which lead to higher productivity or profits. Or better technology and machinery, which lead to higher productivity or profits.  Both led to the rest of the job losses over the last 40 years according to Moody.

3.         The weakness in this argument is that Moody does not understand the anti-union and cheap labor economic role of the geographic U.S. south.  A case of 'combined and uneven' development. It has absorbed factories and jobs from the U.S. north, as well as imported factories from overseas.  The case of car and machinery production is the most obvious.  If Moody included the ‘South” as a separate ‘nation’ in his statistics, it would move the 25% number significantly upwards.

         4.   Moody understands Marx’s theory of the background effects of the ‘falling rate of profit,’ agreeing with Michael Roberts and others. (See review of the The Long Depression, below.)  Neo-liberalism has essentially turbo-charged profiteering since 1977.  That was the point. This vulnerability discovered by Marx basically says that upgrading production methods with more machinery or computers or buildings (fixed capital) will ultimately stall out in another profit crisis as other firms do the same thing.  Since only labor creates surplus value, profits will drop as less human labor is used.  This will make corporations again come for workers blood and increase class conflict.

5.          Capital has created smaller, more efficient plants, dispersing workers.  Moody uses the example of steel-making mini-mills.  But it has also concentrated workers in large industrial parks and areas in urban cities. This is a big vulnerability for capital.  Moody uses the example of the Chicago area, where tens of thousands of truckers and warehouse workers handle the majority of shipping in the country.  This mass of workers doing similar jobs in industrial parks is an example of new concentrations of labor. (BTW, I pointed this out in the 1980s in a Global Class War bulletin.)

6.          The lie that this is a ‘post- industrial’ society is just that, an obvious dodge.  The working class, according to Moody's look at U.S. government statistics, is still the clear majority - industrial, transport, service and white collar.  One flaw in his analysis will actually increase the numbers. Moody considers teachers and nurses to be ‘proletarianizing professionals’ (i.e. middle class).  I would consider them already members of the upper levels of the white-collar or ‘pink’ collar working class.   Teachers and nurses might replace the older 'aristocracy of labor' that was the province of the 'trades,' but that still puts them in the working class.  This would also increase the numbers of workers he cites.

7.          Another vulnerability for capital is ‘just-in-time’ production methods.  These have resulted in fewer vendors, very little inventory in stock or warehouse and thin supply chains that stretch across the country and world, even from the ports.  This leaves capital more vulnerable to industrial action.  He calls this new terrain part of the ‘logistics’ revolution in production.

8.          A third vulnerability is that the big cities concentrate millions of low-paid workers, who are unemployed, work part time or work several jobs or fill in full-time on others.   A partial ‘reserve army of labor.’ Now they are mostly African-American or Latino or immigrants, but in greater numbers than in the past.  These are ethnic and color castes of the population that capital has super-oppressed since the beginning of the country. As a result they have no love for the bosses.

9.          Capital, as Marx pointed out, tends to monopoly or oligopoly.  Presently in the U.S. through constant mergers and acquisitions, a few big firms control nearly every sector, some hiding behind many brands or names.  This means that companies are connecting many more workers together, which can lead to the success of strike action or any kind of rebellion against the remaining companies.  The decline of the corporate conglomerate also has concentrated companies in single, more vulnerable industries, not across industries.  These are part of a 4^th vulnerability for capital.

10.        Moody is not a syndicalist like some who only advocate labor strikes.  He understands that politics plays a role in labor’s overall power.  As a result, he looks at the changes in the Democratic Party, which have made it a more tightly controlled, powerful ‘conglomerate’ than in the 1970s when McGovern's activists overwhelmed the DP structure.  The present construction of the DP absolutely mitigates against labor or any other movement EVER taking over the party.  This means the destructive lure of the DP as a place were ‘movements go to die’ is weakening – though still operative.  The Republican Party is transparently a party of some big and most small capital, and as such, merely an obvious liar when it comes to fealty to 'the working man.'

11.        Most cities are now one-party states controlled by the Democrats.  Republicans play almost no role.  As a result, the DP hacks are open to an electoral challenge from the left, as the ‘spoiler’ allegation doesn’t work in these locales.  This is another vulnerability to the DP's wing of capital.

12.        Republicans have used state-level and local-level political arenas to shape gerrymandered districts, thus controlling the national agenda. This is why so much money now flows into even city counsel races. Moody sees the states and cities as key areas of left political and social struggle, building  blocks to a national approach.  He ultimately supports a mass-based, activist labor party on a national level which combines separate struggles like BLM, Fight for $15, NoDAPL, MeToo, Dreamers, etc.

13.        Moody carefully looks at Democrats in cities, even the ‘Progressive Caucus’ in New York, and shows how they are basically nearly all tied to the real estate and building industries in those cities.  There is never a ‘public-private’ partnership or development project they don’t like.  Moody looks at how public money flows to the real estate industries through these politicians, not for the housing needs of the mass of proletarians.

The basic thrust of Moody’s book is optimistic, especially the first third.  Because of the recent reorganization of capital, openings are beginning to appear that a labor movement inspired by a ‘militant minority’ could take advantage of.  Public approval of unions has increased, especially among young millennials.

His dissection of the Democratic Party seems familiar, but he goes into a level of detail on its rigid and monied structure that few on the left have done before.  Essentially he is addressing the post-Sanders “Our Revolution” crowd, the DSA and the union bureaucrat / leaders who still think a takeover of the DP in a social-democratic direction is possible. It is not. He says a strategy of attempting to 'split' the Democrats without having something to split 'to' will not work either.  These groups will end up as tolerated ‘pressure’ groups that gain lip-service as their prime reward.  

Moody dates the day that the DP basically rejected union power to 1977, when the majority of a new, young wave of Democratic politicians no longer voted for union proposals.  This has continued to this day, even when in ‘power’ – from Carter to Clinton to Obama – as corporations and the rich gained a stranglehold over the party. 

This abandonment of union or working class demands is no secret, but it never seems to occur to those who insist on revitalizing the graveyard.

Other reviews on labor issues:  Class Against Class; Reviving the Strike; Save Our Unions; Embedded With Organized Labor.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 9, 2018

Journalism Nostalgia

“The Post,” directed by Stephen Spielberg, 2017

Ah, the good old days, when bourgeois journalism actually had some bite.  Put the most popular mainstream liberal director together with the vanilla skills of the two top actors in Hollywood, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks - and what do you have?  “The Post” about the publishing of the Pentagon Papers.  This story of the past will mostly resonate with freshman journalism students and Democratic Party loyalists.  What is left unsaid is that present journalism is a disaster, rightist and liberal alike.

Instead of being owned by a tony upper-class family, the Grahams, the Washington Post is now owned by Jeff Bezos, a crass internet multi-billionaire.  And the New York Times?  No longer the respected ruler of U.S. journalism.  Instead it is a paper waiting for someone to do a film on the NYT promotion of another criminal war, the Iraq war.  With the modern Post not far behind.

Government AG Tries to Censor NY Times

How the mighty have fallen.  The best parts of the film are the brief bits with Daniel Ellsberg and about Vietnam.  Through Ben Bradlee, the Post editor and Ellsberg, the whistle-blower, it reminds the historically clueless that the government lies, commits bloody crimes and then sends working-class kids off to war. Nothing has changed except people’s intentional memories.  War in the U.S. is like Groundhog Day.  Each war is always the first.

The film actually puts Vietnam in the background so that we can see heroic journalism in action and a vacillating rich woman, Katharine Graham, become a real leader.   The war is just their stage.  The Supreme Court, the top of our corrupt two-tier legal system, actually makes a right decision by allowing publication. Today’s Supreme Court?  Not so much.

The film centers on Bradlee’s push to publish the Pentagon papers at the Post.  The papers were an internal academic exercise by the military and government looking into the war that was supposed to be secret.  The papers exposed the deceptions and failures of  the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations in this long-running disaster.

The rush to publish seems to happen just a few days before a federal hearing on the NYT excerpts of the same Pentagon papers.  The NYT actually beat the Post to publication, but this seems to be peripheral in this story, which sidelines the NYT!   The rush also seems to happen towards the end of a 1 week liability period after an initial public offering of Washington Post stock.  The 4 hour mad dash to edit and publish seems odd in this context.  Even the scenes of writers and editors attempting to piece together the documents page by page seem bogus.  It assumes Ellsberg didn’t copy them in order or organize them.  Is the rush some attempt to help the NYT in their lawsuit? Exempt others from scooping the Post?  Or just an example of psychological agitation?  The Post was attempting to end their  ‘local’ status by trying to beat the Times.  A few days of delay does not seem fatal. 

The square-head lawyers hired by the Post to defend them against Nixon mostly oppose the Post and side with the government.  The business people in the IPO oppose Graham, Bradlee and the reporters on publication. The key line in the Nixonian court injunction against the NYT is that ‘the paper and its agents’ shall not publish.  The lawyers insist that Ellsberg is an ‘agent’ but he is not, he is a source. Nor is the Post an ‘agent.’  So their legal arguments for Nixon seem to make no sense either.  Normally you would fire lawyers that are not defending you.

The Real Bradlee and Graham

Of most interest are the personal relationships of Graham and Bradlee with people in the government.  Graham was a big friend of William McNamara, one of the leading architects of the war.  He shows up in the film several times as a personable liar. She also hobnobbed with Lyndon Johnson, the war president.  Bradlee was a personal friend of John Kennedy, another architect of the American war in Vietnam.  They regret that the people they liked were involved in this grave crime.  This shows the rarefied atmosphere at the top of bourgeois journalism, EVEN in those days.  Now the situation is even more pronounced, as leading journalists are many times in the same class as those they cover, and thus sympathetic to them and their aims. A recent study indicated that the majority of reporters at the NYT and the Wall Street Journal are from Harvard or Yale.  Many more are from other Ivy League schools.  These are no longer street-wise reality reporters.

While the NYT recently published Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, they have since then joined in the corporate chorus of hatred for Snowden and Wikileaks.  Perhaps if Snowden had given them secret academic papers on the failed wars in the Middle East, would they have published?  Certainly, Chelsea Manning didn’t get their nod.

The film is worth watching, if only for its nostalgia in a past that is almost gone.

Other reviews on journalism issues below:  Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent,” Mander’s “4 Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” “Southern Cultural Nationalism,” “Empire of Illusion,” “Turning Off NPR,” “The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital,” and many books on Vietnam. Use blog search box, upper left.

Riverview Theater

Red Frog

May 5, 2018

Poisoning the Well - Another Day in Paradise

Sulfuric Acid and the Boundary Waters National Canoe Area

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is Minnesota’s Grand Canyon.  It is the most visited wilderness area in the nation.  A Chilean copper company, Antofagasta and their subsidiary, Twin Metals, wants to put in a copper/nickel mine near it on Birch Lake in northern Minnesota.  The mine would grind up 99.5% of the rock to get .5% of the valuable ores. Read that again. This shows the extent of capitalist desperation at this point in history, given the increasing scarcity of copper and nickel.  This mine will create sulfuric acid, heavy metals like mercury and sulfates in the process, as rock exposed to oxygen creates the acid.  Antofagasta will only store the tailings in natural rock which has all kinds of fissures, so this toxic soup will leak.  Huge amounts of waste rock will be created, as well as the leveling of large areas of forest.  For the proposed mine on Birch Lake, the chemicals will leak and head north into the Boundary Area through the Kawishiwi river, then Canada’s Quetico Park, then into Voyageur National Park.  Any cleanup that costs over a certain amount will be the responsibility of the public.  Every sulfide mine like this in the past has had toxic cleanup problems.  Contamination could last 500 years.

BWCA Canoeing is like bicycling on water

Seems like a no-brainer, right?  Unsurprisingly Democratic governor Dayton is on the fence about the proposed mines (plural), as there is another mine proposed farther south from Birch Lake called “PolyMet.”  Most of the water flowing from that mine will go into the St. Louis River, through an indigenous reservation, then into Lake Superior.  The present Democratic U.S. House representative, Rick Nolan, supports the projects.  Of course the whole criminal Republican Party led by Tom Emmer is in favor, siding with a Chilean corporation against Minnesotans.  70% of Minnesotans and across the country, 98.4% of comments on the Interior Dept./ Bureau of Land Management/ Forest Service website opposed this proposal potentially draining into the Boundary Waters. Only 22% of Minnesotans are in favor. 

The Trump administration’s lackeys in the Interior Department reversed a legal ruling under Obama against the mine, and now have proposed a lower threshold of facts and public input for approval.  There are 9 months left before they have to make a decision.  Again, the U.S. is shown to have a sham democracy, as the capitalists will rape whatever land they can to extract profits, no matter what the public thinks!  As an aside, the whole Minnesota Republican Party and a wing of the Democratic Party supports these mines and also supports getting rid of general sulfide standards throughout the whole state.  The mining industry has wanted this repeal for years.

This issue also concerns the Canadian government, as their waters could potentially be affected.  If the Boundary Waters begins dying, a national park will be slowly destroyed.   More jobs will be lost in tourism, education and clothing businesses associated with the park then created by the mine.  If waters north or south of the park are contaminated, this will impact wildlife, plants, rice harvesting and humans.

Hegman Lake pictographs in BWCA

Amy and Dave Freeman are right now pedaling bicycles from Ely, Minnesota to Washington, D.C. with a signed canoe to lobby Congress about the importance of the Boundary Waters to people across the country.  They stopped in Minneapolis this weekend.  In every town they visited on a prior canoe paddling trip from Ely to Washington D.C. (yes, you read that right…), people had been to the Boundary Waters. This is not a local issue, no more than issues with the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Everglades or the Appalachian Trail are local issues.

Support “Save the Boundary Waters.”  https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/

The real question here is that in the present political situation, where the capitalists have absolutely free reign on the government, will lobbying work?  Will having corporations like Patagonia on your side help?  Or the Big Green organizations?  The odds are not good.  The other travesty of environmental damage, the Enbridge oil pipeline through northern Minnesota, is a bi-partisan project.  The main opposition is coming from 2 Ojibwe tribes and the ‘usual suspects,’ but no one in power.  If this attempt to protect the boundary waters fails, something more radical will have to emerge.

Prior relevant reviews: “The Race for What’s Left,” “Tar Sands,” and ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ and “Collapse.”  Use blog search box, upper left.

Postscript:  The Trump Interior Dept. has just approved the BWCA mine today, Monday May 7.  'Save the Boundary Waters' will or has already filed a lawsuit. 

Red Frog

May 2, 2018