this old anvil

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_on_re_us/us_ri_bishop_kennedy

A line in the news story above caught my eye: “Abortion is a major concern for the Catholic bishops because opposition to the procedure is based on the church’s earliest teachings on preserving human life, which have not changed.”

While that’s probably widely-believed (it’s certainly the line of the church hierarchy), if the reporter had done some research he’d have come up with a different story.

With no known reliable means of contraception, Roman law in the first century CE accepted abortion as a form of birth control. The only restriction was that a woman needed the permission of her husband or father to have one. The law upheld patriarchal, not fetal, rights. The nasciturus (“to be born”) was considered part of the woman’s body.

The first mention of a contrary position by Christians comes around 80 CE. The statement, “Thou shalt not slay the child by abortions,” appears in a document from that period attributed to leaders of the Jerusalem church.

I should point out that it was at least fifty more years before Christians started calling themselves that, and that the “church” was a rapidly expanding Jewish sect with four other centers challenging Jerusalem for influence over the followers of Yeshua bar Yosef, known as the Kristos to the Greek-speaking writers of the Gospels (of which there were at least a dozen floating around at the time). Those other centers were based in the Jewish quarters of Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus and Rome.

A unified Christian approach to abortion – or any other issue – cannot really be talked about until the end of the fourth century. By then Christianity was the official religion of the (crumbling) empire. Thinkers like Jerome and Augustine were putting the finishing touches on the integration of Judeo-Christian thought with the classical philosophy the Romans had absorbed from Greece.

Picking up on Aristotle’s distinction between the “souled” and “unsouled” fetus, a male fetus getting its soul after 40 days, a female after 80, Augustine held that an unsouled fetus could not be murdered. In such a case abortion was acceptable. (Where the numbers came from, or how to tell the difference between male and female fetuses is not addressed in any surviving documents.)

Over eight hundred years later, Thomas Aquinas expressed the same view. But in 1588 Pope Sixtus V ruled that secular and religious penalties should be the same for murder and abortion. Then, three years later, Pope Gregory XVI abolished penalties for abortion before ensoulment.

In 1599, the Jesuit theologian Thomas Sanchez expressed the (undisputed) view that abortion was justifiable at any time if intended to save the life of the woman. The intent was to kill not a fetus but an attacker or invader threatening the woman’s life.

It wasn’t until the 1860s that the church’s consistent opposition to abortion under any and all circumstances was put into place. That was accomplished by Pius IX, who also came up with papal infallibility and the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.

My weekend will be spent with a couple of bottles of wine and some good cigars, and deep in thought. I have a decision to make. CosmoDemonic Telecom, Inc. is offering a separation package to people in my job classification. The company will pay me to leave its employment. And it’s an offer that looks very hard to refuse.

It’s not unexpected. We negotiated a contract in August that not only got us a decent raise but preserved our 100 percent company-paid health coverage. That was an amazingly good deal – given the state of the economy and the (not so great) strength of our union. And there was more: a $10,000 bonus for employees taking a separation package.

I work in a call center, doing orders and billing. Seven or eight years ago we served customers in 28 states. Now it’s 13, and 10 of them are getting sold off. “Do the math,” right?

And it adds up to a pretty good deal. I get a payout based on my 16 years of service plus that bonus, and a lump sum distribution of my pension. I can roll that over into an IRA, then invest it (wisely I hope), producing the couple of hundred dollars a month I’ll need to live in Nicaragua.

I can’t move there yet though. I have to be here when Brendan graduates from high school in June. But that doesn’t look to be a problem as I would be able to claim unemployment benefits. And I would get six months continuation of my health coverage. So I can get myself checked over, get whatever cavities I have filled and get new glasses before I go.

Y’know, when it comes down to it, this probably won’t be a very tough decision to make.

The recent deal expanding the US military presence in Colombia from one to seven bases is roiling the region. It's supposed to be all about fighting in-country narcotraffickers and terrorists. But the recent US Air Force Construction Program budget states: it “provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical subregion of our hemisphere” and “supports mobility missions by providing access to the entire continent.”

Hugo Chavez, president of Colombia's neighboring Venezuela has been the most vocal in denouncing the agreement as a threat to other South American countries, and his government is moving military forces to the border areas.

There has been an offer, though, to mediate and help Venezuela and Colombia find “practical solutions” to the conflict. It came Friday from US State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly.

Funny, I always thought mediators were supposed to be neutral, third-party types.

Elena and I had dinner the other night at my favorite Mexican restaurant, El Ranchito in Oak Cliff. We both had the house specialty, cabrito, which was great (as usual). After our flan, she had a margarita while I drank a Negra Modelo and we talked.

Time to get it over with! I tried to “set the stage” by shelling out forty bucks for some mariachi music - $20 a song! I asked for Solamente una Vez, a romantic standard, and Treinta y Treinta (30-30, as in the rifle), a song from the Mexican Revolution – just to show my “varied interests.” I figured I’d bring up Cuba rather “innocently:”

“Did you hear about the concert by Juanes in Havana a while back?”

“What an idiot! He better be careful when he’s back in Miami – that’s where he lives, you know.”

“Right, well, I heard that a lot of people there defended him. I hear a lot of people in Miami these days think we should have normal relations with Cuba.”

“Don’t you believe that! Estos idiotas don’t know anything. Cuba is not normal. It’s a dictatorship. The people are suffering.”

“Well,” I said –getting bold – “they have free health care and education, more than we have here.”

“Ay cono chico! They don’t have free elections! They can’t vote those condenados comunistas out of office!”

“But if they did, wouldn’t they lose their free health care and education?”

That’s as close as I came to “outing” myself. The look she gave me was colder than the frozen concoction she had at her lips. I clammed up.

But sometimes cowardice has its rewards. I got an invite back to la casa.

I was born the year Eisenhower was elected president. By the time I was twelve I’d seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and civil rights marchers driven off streets with blasts from fire hoses on the evening news. I got my driver’s license the same year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and Chicago cops rioted against antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic Party convention. I registered for the draft the year just about every college in the country was shut down by a student strike over the Vietnam War and the killings at Kent State.

Long hot ghetto summers – a president shot –  Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis – legalized abortion – Black Panthers - Gay liberation – Malcolm X – Che Guevara – Salvador Allende – napalm - détente – Brown Berets – Ho Chi Minh – Tupamaros.

I saw Jimi Hendrix live in concert, the Grateful Dead too, and Elvis’s comeback concert on TV. I smoked pot and dropped acid. Had a threesome. Drove from Milwaukee to Miami (and back again). Spent 24 hours in Freeport, Bahamas before getting kicked out of the country. Worked in a couple of gas stations, and a cemetery. I was also a university student.

Then, a few months before I turned 22, I signed up with the communists. I wanted to be a revolutionary. I spent the next 17 years of my life in the party. For many reasons I’m not there now. But in my head, and my heart, I’m still the kid who joined “the movement” way back when.     

Which is why this thing with Elena won’t work. We had our second date – on our own this time. We saw “Amelia “ (which I highly do not recommend – dull as dishwater). But talking over drinks afterwards I had to be so “on guard” about everything. It never occurred to me how much political views and personal history influences everyday conversation.

Elena mentioned the late Celia Cruz, the great Cuban salsa singer. As much as I love her singing I can’t help but think of her betrayal of her country by “defecting” (oh, yes, for “freedom,” not money) and if I had met her I would have, respectfully – not hostilely – told her both of those things.

But Elena is so into that “anti-Castro” thing – like many Cubans here – that there’s just no point in talking about it. We’re going to go out again. I’m going to have to lay it on her. We’ll see what happens.        

Today is the 92^nd anniversary of the Russian Revolution – which took place October 25, 1917. The empire of the Tsars was still using the old Julian calendar. Before it could be replaced by the Gregorian calendar used by the rest of the world for nearly four hundred years, the outdated ruling classes that clung to it had to be overthrown.

It’s that process I want to look at here. The Revolution is often described as a Bolshevik coup: the result of a conspiracy by a small number of individuals acting behind the backs of the people. It was, in fact, the most democratic revolution in history. 

Here’s a quick rundown of why I believe that. In February 1917, the Tsar was forced to abdicate in the face of massive unrest brought on by a failing war effort and a crumbling economy. The movement was sparked by a demonstration of women in Petrograd demanding bread. 

A Provisional Government of capitalist and monarchist politicians was formed but had limited room to move. Workers and peasants all over the empire had – as they had done in the unsuccessful 1905 Revolution – formed soviets, councils of their own elected representatives. Three parties dominated the soviets: the Social Revolutionary (SRs), Menshevik and Bolshevik. The most influential soviets were those of Petrograd and Moscow.

The SRs – based on Russia’s enormous peasantry – held a big majority at first, in a coalition with the Mensheviks. Under this leadership the soviets were held to a supporting role under the provisional government. That government failed to feed the starving cities, redistribute rural lands or get Russia out of the war.

By the fall, the SRs and Mensheviks had alienated themselves from the working classes by continuing to support the government. In elections to the “All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies,” the Bolsheviks won a two-thirds majority. 

They had campaigned on the slogans: “Bread, Land, Peace:” and “All Power to the Soviets.” 

As the Congress’s delegates assembled in Petrograd, Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky and a handful of reactionary generals attempted to move “loyal” troops against the capital to disperse the congress and arrest its leaders. In some cases, soldiers refused their orders, in others, revolutionary troops convinced others to do the same. In other places railroad workers kept the trains from moving. The “uprising” collapsed without a shot being fired.

The Soviet Congress then voted to dissolve the Provisional Government. The legal basis for the move was the government’s violation of “Order No. 1.” Issued by the first Soviet (then under “moderate” control), it required any order involving the movement of troops within the country to be countersigned by leaders of the Soviet.

Government leaders agreed to the measure because it provided some political cover and tied the socialist leaders, and the masses behind them, closer to the regime. The socialist leaders were for it because they were well aware of plenty of generals who hated the thought of socialists – no matter how moderate – too close to the seats of power.

After voting to dissolve the government, the Congress then dispatched a detachment of Petrograd’s Workers Militia, backed by “red sailors” from the nearby Kronstadt naval base, to the Winter Palace to arrest the handful of cabinet ministers that hadn’t managed to slip out of town.

All major cities and military bases had been thoroughly “Bolshevized” over the preceding months. A massive peasant uprising was sweeping the landlords out of the countryside, and troops at the front declared their own ceasefire – when they weren’t deserting en masse.

Under such conditions, big battles were not required to take over government offices and installations. Those battles had already taken place, especially in July and August. The political insight and discipline of the Bolsheviks allowed them to wait until conditions were exactly right for them to strike their blow. They also had the courage to act when it was time.

And when the Bolsheviks acted, they did so with overwhelming mass support and full legality. That’s quite a revolution!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091105/ap_on_re_us/us_oswald_photo

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/photo_database/image/oswalds_backyard_photo/

Some people think Fidel Castro had John F. Kennedy killed – responding to US attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader. Others say it was rightwing Cuban exiles pissed off about the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. There are lots of other theories. The news story above, although presented as supporting the Warren Commission’s finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the murder, backs up my view of the case.

The photograph in question shows Oswald holding a rifle and two leftwing newspapers, The Militant and The Worker. “Conspiracy theorists” say it was faked. My own theory is served by it proving to be real. Oswald had worked for several years to establish his “radical” credentials.

After leaving the Marine Corps, he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959. He returned to the US in early 1962. While living in New Orleans he founded a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (which opposed US policy toward the island), of which he was the only member. He managed to get on the news being attacked by “anti-Castro” Cubans on the street while passing out leaflets.

The small office Oswald rented as his FPCC headquarters was next door to that of a private detective agency run by the retired head of the New Orleans FBI. The two were frequently seen together at a nearby diner. In Dallas, Oswald told his wife, Marina, and several acquaintances that he had been the man who tried to assassinate retired army general – and virulent rightwinger – William Walker. 

My theory, for which of course I have no evidence (which can also be said of all the other theories), is that Oswald was being groomed as a low-level government informer-infiltrator of the left. He got caught up in a very high-level plan to take out Kennedy. In my theory, Cuban exiles played a role but the orders came from the heart of the US ruling class.

Capitalism is a family operation. The capitalist class in the US is composed of about sixty families. Some, like the Du Ponts, go back to before the Revolution. Others, like the Rockefellers date from the post-Civil War period. It’s a closed-in group. Ranged around it, sort of in concentric rings of decreasing wealth and influence, are another hundred or so families.

In the 1920s, Joseph P. Kennedy allied a failing shipping line to the Prohibition-violating mob, and with his resulting fortune, bulled his way into the outer ring of power. That’s not so bad, but the Kennedy drive for political power was disturbing. Sure, the Rockefellers dabbled in politics, a governorship here or there, but a Kennedy in the White house? Another in the cabinet? And another in Congress? And look at all those kids! 

I think it was the very capitalist class that the Kennedys aspired to be a bigger part of – and perhaps, dominate – that killed JFK. The rulers believe in democracy, at least among themselves. 

No proof, I know. But the story about the picture bolsters my view of Oswald as an imitation leftist. The Militant was, and still is, the paper of the Socialist Workers Party, The Worker, that of the Communist Party. The former was Trotskyist, the latter Stalinist. You either read one, or the other. Not both – unless you were analyzing the other for errors. You certainly didn’t smilingly wave around both – along with a rifle – unless you were mindlessly trying to look like some sort of radical.    

            I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. 

            For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other. So that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

                                                         Ecclesiastes, 3:18-19

As we approach the 150^th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin, I offer the above as food for thought for believers in creationism, intelligent design and biblical inerrancy. It goes to show that the “Good Book,” though the product of an intellectual world very different from ours, can still offer guidance and inspiration. 

The groundbreaking naturalist’s work was, in fact, driven by a biblically-inspired belief in the common origins of humanity. When he set out on the voyage of HMS Beagle in 1831, the 22-year old Darwin had just finished his first year as a divinity student at Cambridge. The product of a family deeply involved for several generations in Britain’s anti-slavery movement, he felt that the story of Adam and Eve meant that all people were related and, fundamentally, equal.

I’m not sure how literally he took Genesis. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had been a prominent naturalist who, like many others, realized that advances in geology and newly-uncovered fossils implied that the earth and its inhabitants had gone through some type of evolution. How that evolution worked, though, and its relation to divine creation (which virtually no one doubted), were mysteries.

While confirming our common origins, his grandson’s theory took Adam and Eve out of the equation. Just as ironically, Darwin’s search for the principles of what he preferred to call “transmutation,” was driven by another concept, from a book just as scientifically-challenged as the Bible. That was An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus. A popular and influential work first published in 1798, Darwin read it when he was twenty.

Malthus said: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.” As a corrective, “epidemics, pestilence and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands….Should success be still incomplete, gigantic famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow, levels the population with the food of the world.”

Plants and animals, of course, reproduce just as “geometrically” as the humans who subsist on them. But like many, Darwin accepted the argument, and the resulting notion of a “struggle for survival” played a key role in his thinking: environmental conditions effectively select the creatures that will survive and reproduce, just as a pigeon-breeder chooses birds that show the characteristics he wants passed on to the offspring. The latter case was “artificial” selection; the former, “natural.”

And in yet another case of irony, Herbert Spencer, a sociologist and contemporary of Darwin, compounded Malthus’s error by applying his own notion of “survival of the fittest” to society in what he called “Social Darwinism.” Never endorsed by its eponym, the concept was, like its antecedent Malthusian mistake, an apologia for the excesses, in terms of human suffering, endured by the working classes during industrial capitalism’s rise to power as England’s dominant mode of production.

Even ignoring the vast differences between human social organization and the conditions of animal life, Spencer misinterpreted the role competition plays in Darwin’s explanation of evolution. Pressure from other creatures can and often will, lead to biological changes. This does not necessarily, or even usually, lead to the bloody annihilation of one species by another.

Until modern encroachments by humans, leopards and impalas lived together – in a predator-prey relationship – on the African savannah, unchanged for nearly three million years. Evolution, driven by competition, did not lead to stronger, more agile leopards or to faster impalas. Natural selection led to a balanced coexistence. Enough leopards catch enough impalas to keep their spotted species alive, while their intended prey produce enough speedy individuals to avoid being hunted to extinction. Competition is not necessarily a fight to the finish. 

It’s kind of funny, how a (true gem of a) theory that has become the basis of biological science was helped along by one mistake at its inception, only to give rise to another error after its formulation. It’s up to us to sort things out by questioning what often looks like a logical conclusion.

(A note on sources: I tried to read Origin (again), and failed (again) to get through it. Pigeons and flowers are not my cup of tea. There is a good new book called: Darwin’s Sacred Cause, How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution. You might also check out The Time before History by Colin Tudge, Bones of Contention by Roger Lewin, and Elizabeth Vrba’s The Pulse that Produced Us – she came up with the wonderful turn of phrase, “the dance of life.)  

How was I supposed to know she was Cuban? She didn’t look Cuban (Stupid! How do you look Cuban?). It wasn’t my fault; my so-called friends should have warned me. Anyway, I think I got away with it. Wait, I’m starting this story of my blind date a little too close to the end. Let’s back up.

For months, a union friend of mine with whom I occasionally do some organizing work had been bugging me about meeting a neighbor who had become friends with him and his wife. I finally agreed to a "blind date" but insisted they be there.  We met at a restaurant in Carrollton, where they live. 

Maybe I should have picked up on the fact that it specialized in Cuban cuisine. But I didn’t. Jerry – who’s Black – and his wife, Amanda – who’s chicana – had told me that Elena was Hispanic. Around here, you don’t meet many Cubans. And Jerry and Amanda picked the restaurant. I just assumed…wrongly. 

Things were okay at first. Elena impressed me first of all by not being coy about age. She’s 51, and happy to be that way. She’s also happy about celebrating the tenth anniversary of her divorce from a not-so-nice guy. A couple of grown kids; she’s financially secure: it was all good till we got to how I learned Spanish.

Well, I said: I took it in high school but didn’t really learn too much; later moved to San Antonio where folks tended to slip into Spanish whenever things got interesting so I took a home-study course in order to “keep up;” then I found myself in Nicaragua where it was “sink or swim.”

Inevitable question: What were you doing in Nicaragua? Stock response: Helping build the revolution. You know, the Sandinistas and all that, back in the ‘80s. 

Oh boy, did she know. Those Sandinistas were communists! Like Fidel and Raul who had ruined her beautiful country! Amanda saved the day, saying (before I could answer), well, Tom wasn’t down there doing political work, he was picking cotton. That’s right, I said, and the conversation shifted to underdevelopment and poverty. I let myself come across as one of those goodhearted but oft-times misled bleeding-heart liberals.

I know guys aren’t supposed to go the restroom together but when Jerry went I was right behind him – I had to let him know then and there how outraged I was at his lack of a political “heads-up” for me on this meeting. 

But like I said, I think I got away with it. Elena agreed to go out with me this weekend. I’m going to call her tomorrow to see about what we’re going to do. Maybe a movie. Then we’d have something “safe” to talk about after.  As to the long run, I don't know.  This little affair is probably going to come under the Three Date Rule.  

Most people produce a lot more than they consume, and a very few people consume most of what is produced, without having to produce anything themselves. 

Barack Obama is the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest – and most active – armed forces, with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.  

He has wars on in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the latter increasingly spilling over into Pakistan. He’s increasing the US military presence in Colombia from two military bases to seven.  Also, he recently signed an order extending the economic embargo of Cuba for another year.

He deserves that Nobel Prize for Peace.

Look at the other two US presidents that have won the award. Theodore Roosevelt won it for brokering a treaty settling the 1904 war between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan. Earlier in his career he had resigned as undersecretary of the Navy in the William McKinley administration to take part in the US military intervention in the Cuban war of independence from Spain, a successful effort to keep the island from falling under the control of…the Cubans. (Successful until 1959, that is.)

Roosevelt’s administration is identified with “Gunboat Diplomacy” in Latin America and the Caribbean: during his term US troops intervened in Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua, to name a few countries. And then there's the Panama Canal.  He left office in 1908.

By 1912 when Woodrow Wilson – the other “Nobelist” president – was elected, the peaceableness TR had left the globe was wearing thin. The “Great War” broke out in Europe in 1914, and although Wilson maintained US neutrality, he launched a brief invasion of northwestern Mexico. Reelected in 1916 as the man who “kept us out of war,” he took the US into the European conflict in 1917.

Wilson’s prize in 1919 was based on his idea of the League of Nations. No mention was made of his leading the US into the slaughter of the World War nor his signing the Treaty of Versailles, through which English and French capitalists punished their German rivals. (The onerous conditions of the treaty, combined with the later effects of the Great Depression, provided fertile ground for the growth of Nazism.)

In such company Obama looks, if not pacific, at least pretty good. He’s never fired a shot in anger at anyone, never invaded or intervened anywhere (ok, there’s that little action in Somalia a while back, but hey, they’re pirates there, right?). It’s clear though, that the Nobel Committee has its own idea of “peace.”

Maybe it starts with Alfred Nobel, who bequeathed part of his fortune to establish the operation. The inventor of dynamite, he “grew his business” into one of the world’s largest munitions manufacturers. It’s not a coincidence that the prize usually goes to someone – sometimes an organization – operating well within the bounds of bourgeois respectability, and usually, legality.

Look at the list. I found two people on it that I thought deserved a prize, not so much for peace, but for fighting for justice, the only real basis for peace.

http://www.almaz.com/nobel/peace/

Nick called a while ago, on the road to Austin. He’s going to spend a long weekend there with a young woman he met a few months ago. So, I’m home alone for the first time since he moved in this past January. Oh, he’d spent the odd night or so with a girlfriend he had here, but that ended a while ago. Since then he’s been pretty much all about school, work and working out.

All admirable pursuits: I’m proud of him. But sometimes the suppressed (or is it just worn out?) hedonist in me cries out that youth is wasted on the young! Not that I think he should repeat my dissolute youth. Well, it really wasn’t all that dissolute, except for that one year – nearly ended up in the hospital at the end, but, damn, it was fun while it lasted.

Wait, this is not coming out right. Nick will end up with the career I never had, and a lot more security when he gets to my age. And he did spend four years in the Navy – he had plenty of chances to “cut loose.” I don’t want him to screw up, but hey, you gotta have some R&R. 

Actually, I hope this Austin thing turns into a relationship. A “long distance romance” would be perfect for Nick. Someone he can count on, and who can count on him, without them seeing each other more than once or twice a month. She’s going to school and working too, so, it would work for her, too. 

And I would get the occasional long weekend to myself, like now. Nick’s not a pain to live with but I’d been on my own here for a good while, and had grown accustomed to solitude. It can be very relaxing to come home from work and not have to talk to anybody. I look forward to a quiet weekend.

Then again, maybe I’ll try to relive 1973 and throw a wild party Saturday night. Anybody interested? 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091013/ap_on_re_eu/eu_belarus_death_penalty


The two news stories from behind the former “Iron Curtain” are a “good news; bad news” kind of thing. The former relates how a grandson of Josef Stalin sued a Russian newspaper that called his forebear a mass murderer for libel – and lost.

The latter – from Belarus – is a tale of murder, torture, bigotry and the survival of some the worst excesses of the Stalinist regime. It is particularly chilling if the numbers regarding capital punishment there are accurate: roughly 400 executions since independence in 1991. That’s a huge number in relation to the country’s population of 9.7 million. For comparison, Texas – our “leading” death penalty state – with a population of 20.8 million has legally killed 423 people since 1974.

Then there’s the dark account of how executions are carried out: shades of Moscow 1937 and Kresty Prison. And even the good news story had a downside. A handful of “protesters” – all elderly – showed up at the libel trial to defend Uncle Joe’s “good name.”

Over 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, over 50 years since the death of the dictator, why are we still dealing with this? The problem, I think, is a failure to come to terms with history. And that failure is not just on the part of the peoples of the former USSR; it’s just as much a failure on our part in the good ol’ USA.

A couple years ago I managed to get to Belarus and Russia and I had an extended conversation with a woman who had survived the legendary siege of Leningrad. After rendering her praise (probably inadequate) for her role as one of the true heroes of humanity (some other time I will write about the place of the Soviet peoples in WWII and how they won it for us), I pressed her for her memories of life under Stalin.

She was in her late teens during the siege. During her life he had broken the Bolshevik Party, ordered the forced collectivization of agriculture, staged the Moscow Trials and the purges, signed the infamous pact with Hitler, suffered the doublecross of the German invasion, the siege, the postwar reconstruction, the “Doctors’ Plot,” and then, in 1953, died.

She was not politically involved, or even aware, more than the average citizen here is, about what was going on around her. I just wanted to get her impression, appraisal, or summary of all that. Her answer was interesting. Stalin, she said, was everywhere, he was everything. For her, it wasn’t so much fear as awe, a feeling that he represented something unchallengeable. 

All proportions guarded, I think that’s comparable to people here. Stalin personified the “system” in a way that precluded questioning.  He accomplished his task with a brutality that would be hard to surpass. Our come-and-go presidents don’t compare. Nor does our bourgeois democracy which, admittedly, allows us more rights than Stalinism. 

But let’s recall what Marcuse wrote: “By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For ‘totalitarian’ is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technological coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests. It thus precludes the emergence of an effective opposition against the whole. Not only a specific form of government or party rule makes for totalitarianism, but also a separate system of production and distribution which may well be compatible with a ‘pluralism’ of parties, newspapers, ‘countervailing powers,’ etc..”

The only way Stalin could beat his people down was with naked repression. Over here they do it with big-screen TVs. The difference is a function of the vast difference in the technological advantage of the US.   

On the "the popularly shared misunderstanding of such persons as Marx and Trotsky. If a man who sees the essence of social and individual reality says what he sees, without sham and equivocation, he is taken to be egocentric, aggressive and vain. If he has unshakable convictions, he is called a fanatic, quite regardless of whether these convictions are acquired by intense experience and thought, or whether they are irrational ideas with a paranoid tinge."


"The victory of Nazism in Germany was to a large extent due to the destructive, authoritarian, sadistic character structure of the lower middle class, which in itself was a result of their own position in the society (they were losing all their social function, and were actually decaying as a class). They were not tending to improve society, but they were driven to the gamble of choosing between total supremacy or self-destruction. This is always true, of course, for all conservative and reactionary classes."


"I feel that the male Social Democrats could never understand Rosa Luxemburg, nor could she acquire the influence for which she had the potential because she was a woman; and the men could not become full revolutionaries because they did not emancipate themselves from their male, patriarchal, and hence dominating, character structure.  After all, the original exploitation is that of women by men and there is no social liberation as long as there is no revolution in the sex war ending in full equality.... Unfortunately, I have known nobody who knew her personally.  What a bad break between generations!" 
   

"My main point is the need for constant interpenetration of economic, social and psychological factors. By that I do not mean that one cannot analyze the society without the psychological factor. If that were so, Marx’s theory would lack scientific basis, since the psychological factors were contained in it only occasionally and implicitly. Of course one can understand class struggle, interests of the dominant classes, revolutionary development, etc., etc., without any psychological considerations. The theory of Überbau [superstructure] and Unterbau [basis] is basically correct.

"I believe my contribution to the development of Marxism has been the attempt to answer the question Engels himself raised, and that is that they did not study in detail how this connection between Überbau and Unterbau occurs. What I am trying to show is that to make this analysis complete one has to consider the psychological needs which are produced by the social organization (as for instance Marx said, Habsucht [avarice] is a passion produced by capitalist society), and as I tried to say before, that while these psychological needs are a response to the social situation and its necessities, they are in themselves alternatives based on the biological existence of man and certain general psychological necessities which, however, are not identical with the specific necessities which develop in adaptation to social structures."


Then there's Mephistopheles, in Goethe's Faust: 
                       "On suns and worlds I can shed little light
                       I see but humans, and their piteous plight."

“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.’” That’s from The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. He was a psychologist-psychoanalyst, philosopher and secular-humanist-Marxist (I’m not convinced about that Marxist part). I picked up the book – which I had kind of breezed through back in the ‘70s – in the headshrinker section of the library where I was looking for help with a problem with dreams. 

The late Steffie keeps coming back to me, or more accurately, running away from me, in a recurring dream. Having read a little about dream interpretation, I know it’s an “anxiety dream;” the running without reaching the goal indicates that. Although apparently set off by the recent news of her death it may not even be about her. Maybe it’s about the possibility of an “early” early retirement (rumors of a separation package at work) – maybe, deep down, I’m scared about making the jump to Nicaragua.

Regardless, waking up sweating after mental chase scenes through crowds, never catching up – one time ending up alone in a dark alley, alone except for some very large rats (that was scary) – I can’t help but think, in the daylight aftermath, about the object of my futile nocturnal pursuit.

Steffie moved to San Antonio in 1981, I think about this time of year. We hit it off right away. It was funny, when she told her friends back in New York about me, a couple said they had figured we would. We were members a socialist group whose members moved around a lot. A comrade in San Antonio who had known her also told me later that he’d figured on us ending up together. 

Everyone else may have thought we were the perfect couple, but Steffie and I weren’t so sure. It was the proverbial roller-coaster ride, with all the ups and downs. After about two years it was over, I headed to Nicaragua (and all the changes that made in my life) and Steffie to other parts. The last time I saw her was in 1984 or ’85 (unless you count that time I talked about in my earlier post, the “sighting” reprised in my dreams).

I wonder: did I love Steffie? It’s terrible to admit but I don’t remember. There have been three women that (I know) I have loved. Did I ever say, “I love you” to her? Did she say it to me? No. I would remember something like that. I’m sure. 

I remember breaking up with her: the only time, as I pointed out in that earlier post, that I precipitated the end of a relationship. She won me back, by totally falling apart. Really, everybody was wondering about her physical and mental health. Having recovered me, and her health, Steffie then broke up with me – I cannot remember the reason.  

Like I said in my previous post, I bear no grudge for that. Life went on. Unfortunately for her, it has ended. Too soon, I think selfishly, because I never got the chance to see and talk with Steffie again. To “compare notes” after a quarter-century and laugh about what went before and share what happened after, and to think about “what if…”

I may not have the best record when it comes to lasting relationships but I don’t think the end of any of my relationships was due to any act of commission or omission on my part. Each one came to its end naturally – due to the needs and desires (sometimes rational, other times, not) of my partner. 

At least, I’m not guilty of the crime Fromm talks about: “Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most out of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.”  

Love is stupid. You don’t pick the one you love, love tells you who you love. You give it your best and maybe it lasts – I’m all for that, though it hasn’t happened to me (yet).  A weakness on my part? Maybe, but as the poet Dryden put it, over 300 years ago: “And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.”      

If you don’t tune in to Spanish TV or radio you probably didn’t hear about it but there was a big concert in Havana a few days ago. An estimated one million Cubans turned out for the show in Jose Marti Plaza, but its biggest impact may have been registered in Miami.

The “Concert for Peace” was organized by Colombian pop star Juanes (yes, his name is the plural for “John” – I have no idea why). He’s big, with a string of Latin Grammys and fans all over Latin America, Spain and the US (the world’s fourth-largest Spanish-speaking country). 

He staged a similar event on the Colombian-Venezuelan border early last year to help defuse tension after Colombia’s raid on a guerrilla camp in Ecuador. That caused no problem for Juanes in Miami – where he and his family have lived for several years – but Havana? That was another story.

The talk-radio lines lit up, the newspaper columnists condemned, the TV editorialists advised against. Then there were the death threats. Juanes hung tough, though, and the show went on. 

In Miami, the “Anti-Castro” crowd decided to mark the event with a protest outside the Versailles Restaurant on Calle Ocho in “Little Havana.” The eatery is a sort of headquarters for the counterrevolutionaries. When Orlando Bosch walks in he gets a “standing O” from patrons. The octogenarian Bosch’s claim to fame is helping Luis Posada Carriles (another CIA-trained “freedom-fighter”) blow up a Cubana Airways jet in 1976, killing 73 people.

Anyway, after the concert – which was broadcast live by two local TV stations – the gusanos (“worms,” which is what the Cubans on the island call these creeps) decided to show their disapproval by waving signs and smashing Juanes CDs on the corner outside the restaurant. 

So far, that’s par for the course in Miami: death threats, media manipulation and public protest. But this time – the first time as far as I know – other Cubans and Cuban-Americans came out to protest the protesters, and they outnumbered the worms! About 400 pro-Juanes demonstrators occupied three corners of the intersection, shouting down about 200 counterrevolutionaries.

I realize that most of the demonstrators weren’t necessarily partisans of the Cuban Revolution but they want, like other Latin American immigrants to be able to send money home to their poorer relatives and to visit them. They would like to see the US embargo lifted, to allow their relatives there a chance at a better life. 

Cuban-American politics in Miami never reflected this point of view. In the early ‘60s the first Cubans to “flee” the revolution were the richest. With their money and connections they became part of the political and economic establishment. In subsequent years, immigration from Cuba returned to the usual pattern: the people who came here were economic refugees. Politics, though, gave them a green card. 

The rich folks had no problem getting their families off the island. There were no travel restrictions until 1965. The Cubans who have come here since had to scramble to do so and still have family back there. They just want to help their relatives. They don’t want an economic embargo – or a war – against their people. It’s not about capitalism or communism, democracy or dictatorship. It’s about people.

And for the first time, this point of view has been able to be asserted in Miami. It’s a big change. Who knows, maybe music can change the world.

          http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1212:cuban-vs-cuban-community-clashes-over-juanes-concert&catid=40:lastest-news&Itemid=59

It was a dream. I was looking through a plate-glass window into a restaurant. That was Steffie sitting there, I thought – no, I was sure, even though I could only see a partial profile. The way she sat, the way she held her cigarette, the way she brushed her hair out of her face whether she needed to or not (it was kind of a nervous habit): it all said “Steffie.”

It had been years. I was married. We had a kid – he was four years old and standing there holding my hand on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to walk away when she turned and looked and saw me. She winked, then turned away. I rushed to the door, which was about ten feet high and five wide, with a gold handle, and very heavy – it took both hands and a lot of work to pull it open just a little.

Slipping through, I ran into a bouncer much taller and wider than me wearing glasses with inch-thick lenses who said I wasn’t on the list. I jumped and slapped the glasses off his face and shot past him. The restaurant was darker than it had looked from outside, and bigger. It took me a while to find the table by the window, and when I did, Steffie was gone.

I jumped up on the table yelling her name. A pretty, blonde waitress pointed across the room and I saw Steffie leaving through a door. I leapt after her, tossing people out my way. I followed her into another part of the restaurant, bigger, darker, more crowded; she was getting away. I had to fight my way through a mass of incredibly fat waitresses in tight spandex, tall skinny waiters wearing brass knuckles on their right hands and customers who all wanted to sell me life insurance.

I followed her through chamber after chamber, always falling farther behind. There was one last glance from her – I think she winked again – then she was gone, and I was awake.

If you recall my post about two months ago, you know Steffie was a woman I lived with well over twenty years ago. I found out – through a roundabout sort of grapevine – that she had died earlier this year. 

I feel cheated, in the sense that even though she and I had let ourselves fall out of contact, she was somebody I would have liked to run into someday, and sit down and talk with about all that’s has gone down since way back then. She “knew me when.” I don’t have anyone from the “good old days” to talk with. Sure, I know people my age, but they weren’t doing what Steffie and I were doing then.

We were special. She’s gone, and by that I am, as the poet said, somewhat “diminished.”