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Little Red Firecracker 1.1
LITTLE RED FIRECRACKER - ELECTRIC
______________________________________________
Little Red Firecracker
6666 Odana Road #371
Madison, WI 53719
E-mail
MEONION@aol.com
or
David W Fields@macline.fullfeed.com
all contents * 1994 little red firecracker, all rights revert to authors upon
publication
_______________________________________________________
Welcome to Little Red Firecracker, Electric!
Little Red Firecracker is still in print, for any of you subscribers out
there, but will not be out until the end of February. All folks who want to
submit articles, art, comics, reviews, and so forth, feel free to e-mail it to
me, or to send to the above address!
The electric version of little red firecracker will consist mostly of
reprinted articles for the enjoyment and pleasure of all that use Usenet, and
subscribe to alt.zines.
__________________________________________________________________
Editorial Sizzles
by
David Fields
After two "explorations" here at last is the real "little red firecracker"!
What is little red firecracker?
Originally, when I started doing this, firecracker was no more than a one
sheet hand out with a small, satirical article by me, and a couple of
reprinted political cartoons. Not much, but it was fun for me to make, and my
friends enjoyed the little "magazine".
After looking at the state (or lack) of progressive commentary, humor, satire,
poetry, etc. I decided to attempt to expand on my idea, and make a try for a
"real" magazine. (Actually, what you see is what you get, and if you want to
call this a "real magazine" that's your privilege.)
We make no pretensions about being a great magazine. Instead, we promise to
try to publish the best progressive material that comes across our desk.
One question that I'm sure is on some people's minds is "what did little red
firecracker mean when they said 'no politically correct jargon, please' in
their Factsheet Five advertisement?"
I don't look at "PC" the same as the right wing does. What we are trying to
avoid is making people, look stupid, uncaring, selfish, and so forth because
they do not hold the same views as we do (I'm talking about Joe Lunchpail
here, not George Bush). Let's face it, the media is a pretty powerful tool,
and that's where most of us get our education about the peace movement, labor,
gay rights, left-wing parties, community organizations, and so forth. It's up
to us to educate those folks, and we aren't going to do it by spitting on them
or what they love best.
So, if you have a problem with Joe Lunchpail going home from work, opening up
a Budweiser, and turning on to the latest Redskins game because: a) the man
should be at the latest peace rally, on your side, listening to Professor
Lovejoy speaking about the horrors of war or b) the Redskins football team has
a racist name or c) the National Football League is a multi million dollar
corporation, and you don't cater to capitalists, and Joe shouldn't either or
d) Mr. Lunchpail is a white, heterosexual male jerk, and he is immediately
suspect, or ...(get the picture?) If that's the way you think about Mr.
Lunchpail, this magazine probably isn't for you.
If you look at Joe Lunchpail as your friend, or as someone that could be your
friend or as someone that is decent, hard-working and deserving of our
respect, then this is going to be an interesting trip.
The challenge with Mr. Lunchpail is: how do we get him on our side? If you
think you got the answer to that, or think you have an idea why it's difficult
to convince people like Mr. Lunchpail to look at the problems of our country
with progressive eyes, and want to submit an article (serious or satirical),
poetry, cartoon, artwork or whatever, we'll be happy to hear from you.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge, The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism,
tr. George Shriver, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, pp. 903, np
(app. $20 pb).
In one of his poems Osip Mandelstam, who died in one of Stalin's camps,
labeled Stalin a monster. Roy Medvedev absolutely confirms, with horrifying
detail and substantiation, the accuracy of Mandelstam's verdict of Stalin.
This book needs to be considered essential reading for those interested in the
history of this century as it has been influenced by the USSR. It should also
be considered essential for those interested in understanding the process by
which the principles of socialism were distorted and expropriated by Stalin
for his personal dictatorship.
One reason this book appeals to me is that its author is not opposed to
socialism-- I am therefore provided some assurance of its fairness in
evaluating the topic of Stalin's dominion. In fact, if the book has a
singular fault, it is Mevedev's need to substantiate his assertions sometimes
with an abundance of evidence that surpasses the requirements of reasonable
proof. On the other hand, Medvedev is well aware of those instances and
issues of controversy that haunt the history of Stalinism and at such times he
provides the reader with the rationale and evidence to support his
conclusions, often times excerpting the evidence or testimony for the reader
to evaluate directly. One has the feeling that this book is an argument
against many previous erroneous conclusions, written for the benefit of
historians as much as the average reader. In fact, there are times when
Medvedev seems to assume that the reader is necessarily familiar with the
events. Medvedev's apparent sensitivity to previous claims about Stalin only
provides me with more belief in his fairness toward his topic.
The extent of Stalin's crimes have yet to be admitted and absolutely condemned
by official organs of many Left parties. This reluctance to condemn Stalinism
and refute its tactics is terribly harmful to the cause of socialism.
However, I have no difficulty in concluding from this book that Stalin was a
major criminal and an enemy against socialism. It is not without reason that
Mussolini admired him. A conservative estimate suggests that in a two year
period, 1937-1938 two thirds of a million people were executed (455). By
1939, 110 of the 139 members of the Central Committee elected in the 1934
Seventeenth Party Congress were executed (396). "Between 1936 and 1939 more
than 1 million members were expelled from the party. Under the conditions of
the time such expulsion almost always meant arrest. To this number should be
added the 1.1 million expelled in the purges of 1933-34, most of whom were
also arrested." (449). Stalin systematically attacked the veterans of the
revolution, the party membership, the cadre of the Red Army, and finally the
population at large. Short of the military campaign by which Hitler attempted
to conquer the USSR, no one could have destroyed more socialists and done more
damage to socialism than Stalin, and given the recent collapse of the USSR,
which we must remember was built on a Stalinist foundation, it is not an
exaggeration to suggest that Stalin destroyed the socialist revolution
initially guided by Lenin, whose writings are not in agreement with the
undemocratic tactics Stalin implemented under his name.
It is clear that if socialism is going to be advanced as a viable answer to
the brutalities of capitalism, which need no elaboration, its advocates must
simultaneously refute undemocratic, and particularly Stalinist, tactics and
instead come to trust the class such advocates purport to represent. To that
end, this book is an education.
-Dale Jacobson
Paul Laraque, Camourade, Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1988, pp. 124,
$9.95 pb.
Paul Laraque was born in Haiti in 1920. His poetry speaks of the poverty and
political oppression as deeply as it speaks of the potentials of love, as we
can see suggested in the marriage of the two words "amour" and "comrade" in
the title. His language might seem difficult at times to a U.S. audience,
with its roots in the tradition of surrealism, a movement in poetry that never
really took hold in our language, at least in the "recognized" culture. And
yet, if we can look beyond Williams' insistence upon a limited kind of
concrete language, and if we can allow our dream-mind to make associations
through these poems, Laraque's language can startle us awake to a camaraderie,
as the title suggests, that is deep within us even if it is contradicted by
the political realities of our world. Regardless of those realities, Laraque
recognizes this deeper, if future, reality waiting to be born: "dawn rises/in
the look of our children." These poems, influenced by the great French poet
Paul Eluard, continually invoke a haunting imagined world, in Blake's sense,
more real than our "objective" political one. "I announce the dawn/where
every black torch will become a red torch."
- Dale Jacobson
Rogue Dalton, Miguel Marmol, trans. Kathleen Ross and Richard Schaff, 1987.
Pp. 503, $19.95 cloth, $12.95 paper. (Curbstone Press, 321 Jackson Street,
Willimantic, Connecticut 06226).
This book is history as it should be written, the testimony of one who
participated in shaping it, whose words are written out and given narrative vitality
by someone who understands history as the struggle between the producing but
exploited class and the profiting parasitic class. The writer is Roque
Dalton, whose poetry is widely known (when I asked Yevtushenko during his visit
to Grand Forks about Dalton, he acclaimed him as a great poet). Dalton, who
joined the Communist Party in 1955, was himself active in the People's
Revolutionary Army in El Salvador. He was assassinated by an extremist faction
in 1975.
This book is the story of Miguel Marmol, born in 1905, who was one of the
organizing communists of the valiant, but disastrous 1032 insurrection in El
Salvador, who never ceased his commitment to the socialist cause in Central
America, which to him is one cultural entity, one nation artificially "cut up
into five pieces by exploitive interests" (478). I mention this passing
comment of his to provide a deeper understanding to the interest the U.S. government
(with congressional acquiescence had in overthrowing the revolution in
Nicaragua, a full half a century after the failed insurrection in El Salvador,
whose then dictator Martinez the U.S. fully supported. If Central America is
not technically one nation, U.S. policy toward it seems to consistently treat
it as such. Mermol often traveled between Guatemala and El Salvador and
"fought in both countries as if they were one"(478). However, such boundaries
are available to the U.S. in its argument that revolution is fomented by
foreign insurgents, a charge that becomes absurdly hypocritical when we
consider the distance U.S. forces have traveled for purposes of
counter-revolution.
Marmol was twelve years old at the time of the Russian Revolution, an event much noticed in El Salvador,m and already by December of 1922, Marmol was forced to arrange an escape from arrest in San Martin, where
his political activities had "earned the deep hatred of the local authorities"
(87). He relates his political history up to 1954 and so provides a detailed
accounting of the forces of oppression in El Salvador--and later in
Guatemala--against which he continually struggled. His focus is nearly
entirely social, political, and historical rather than personal. At one point
he says "I don't have personal enemies, only political enemies" (483)--and
while admitting to "aversions" felt toward certain individuals, this remark
exemplifies his purposefulness, both in the telling of his story and as a
revolutionary.
While Marmol is certainly a man of talent and commitment who should attract
our interest, we see him only secondarily, precisely because he sees first the
historical processes with which he is involved. On one level the book is a
wonderful testimony of a life, while on another higher level it is an
elucidating and instructive historical document relevant not only to our
knowledge of Central America, but as we fully should know, to our
understanding of our own political forces, recently so chauvinistically
championed, with great avuncular anecdotal style, by Reagan.
It is more than an interesting irony that, while U.S. romantic literature seems intent on escaping or ignoring the class nature of history, we have in Marmol an individual
whose life story contains all the elements that any fiction writer would envy.
Marmol was, and still very much is, interested in changing society so that
those who are exploited might instead benefit from their labors. I can think
of not story that no more clearly illustrates the realities, and the
irreconciliabilities, of the owning and exploited classes than does the story
Marmol tells, sometimes with humor, sometimes with the conviction of anger,
but always with deliberation, with political assessment.
The history itself is shocking, the 30 thousand deaths (2.5% of the population) attributed to General Martinez in response to the 1932 insurrection (while our U.S. press, which
ignored this mass murder, was obsessed with a possible 22 deaths committed by
revolutionaries). It is a history of the U.S. even mentioning human rights,
let alone advocating them. As I keep suggesting, this book is a clear and
dark mirror to our nation.
Marmol's personal story is an incredible one of endurance, perseverance, and
chance-- several times he nearly starves to death, several times he is nearly
executed, one time he is executed and survives by the purest luck, wounded but
presumed dead from someone else's blood-- often on the run and hunted-- and
despite all his sufferings and sacrifice, put under suspicion by the Party--
and still not losing his commitment as a Communist. One wonders to what
extent an ardent capitalist would remain to capitalism, say Reagan or Bush, if
confronted with even a fraction of the difficulties Marmol endured. Even so,
he understands perfectly well that political events derive from political
causes and can be assessed only in that context.
Having noted the personal and historical aspects of the book, even more interesting to me-- and woven throughout the telling-- are Marmol's political analysis and assessments, which are
reasoned, clear, and specific. As a communist he has the advantage of
understanding in political terms the rationale, as murderous as it is, that
determines bourgeois actions, without the confusions, the muddy reflections,
of moral indignation or outrage. He understands without illusions the
motivations of the ruling oligarchy (the 14 Creole families) for the massacre
of '32:
"The idea was to wipe out every vestige of popular organization, eliminating
physically the actual and potential militancy of the democratic, popular
organizations,including less radical ones. And the idea was to do it for
good, in order to create a desolation that would last for years and years."
(303)
This brief comment explains much about the roots of the present day Salvadoran
armed class struggle, particularly when we juxtapose the following observation
by Marmol with the fact that voting lists were used, in the '32 massacre, as
death lists:
"...participation in the elections, and our work in petty bourgeois and
bourgeois organizations has generally ended up bringing our grist to the mill
of the ones we least expected." (477)
The notion presented for U.S. popular consumption for the last decade that
elective "democracy" is around the corner in El Salvador is particularly
strange when there is evidence of Salvadoran death squad activity even within
the borders of the United States, where democracy is supposed to be sacred.
We can see the extremes to which our government, and by collusion our press,
will go to put an acceptable mask on fascism. A similar attempt might be seen
in Reagan's visit to Bitburg, where he seemed to suggest that the statute of
limitations has passed on the condemnation of the fascist crimes of World War
Two. Such statements by our government can only be intended to protect from
U.S. popular objection and protest the oppressive forces that rule El
Salvador, whose government our own government supports at the cost of a
million and a half dollars a day.
While Marmol is analytical about oppression in his country assessing it from
the perspective of political cause and effect, he is equally discerning about
Marxist politics, in a very critical, and again specific, manner. He is
anything but a blind ideologue (and such types can be found in all camps), and
to my mind, he confirms Lenin's-- and Engel's-- assertion that communism
cannot be learned by rote. A few obvious realities present themselves through
his often elaborate and thorough criticism and evaluation of Marxist political
activities. We discover exactly how complex the political situation can be
(usually was), how difficult it is to know how precisely most effective action
to take, and how unpredictable can be the response of the bourgeoisie, as well
as the masses, who may or may not contribute their energies in the politically
necessary way. All of these elements in combination make revolutionary
activity risky, variable and uncertain, a considerable exercise in
calculation. On several occasions, while the necessity to act was urgent, no
correct action or consequences were knowable. Such conditions existed during
the '32 insurrection.
As he relates specific struggles, one can understand how arguments over
tactics develop. There are also difficulties of factionalism, mobilization,
information and communications and resources-- many problems the bourgeoisie
simply does not have, who nevertheless lack one resource indispensable:
popular support. However, Marmol also knows that all impediments to freedom
do not necessarily arise from the bourgeoise class:
'It shouldn't be forgotten, because of bourgeois nationalist prejudices, that
the average Salvadoran is an individualist, firmly tied to the principle of
small personal property-- even though he may have only a doghouse and a
stool-- fucked-up and weighed down from all the inferiority complexes that
hammer our brains and fill our heads with stuff about being "real machos" and
useless fits of anger." (476)
We can, perhaps, recognize some of the same qualities that come out of our
tradition of the "wild west,"which was fairly safe and tame for those with the
money.
In terms of effective struggle, he presents an eloquent argument for the
necessity of "mutual criticism" between communists, not only within each
communist party, but also between parties, criticism which must provide for
the growth and strength necessary to the struggle, as well as providing for an
international solidarity and understanding:
"And for the lack of this mutual criticism, the differences grown
uncontrollably and when they become publicly known, it's because there's a
split and then you aren't talking about mutual criticism, but mutual attack."
(473)
He refers to the historical division between the USSR and China as an example
as he points out, "No one in particular owns the international communist movement,
just as no one, in particular, owns Marxism." (475)
There are many questions he raises regarding the most effective tactics and
struggles. In themselves, these questions indicate the complexity of the
struggle, the complexity of organizing and, if nothing else, they demolish the
simple minded myth promoted by bourgeois intellectuals that Marxism is
simplistic. One reality emerges from Marmol's discussion: Marxism is born
out of the actual process of class struggle itself and certainly, therefore,
it cannot be any more simplistic than is capitalism, which we know from a
quick glance at the stock market, is not a child's game.
So here is a very exciting book, one that should be considered absolutely
useful for a comprehension of our times, particularly relevant now. The book
also provides many examples of heroes an heroism, although none whose focus is
isolated, singular, exempt from history and the result of lives in
solitude...unlike so many characters in U.S. romantic literature.
-Dale Jacobson
__________________________________________________________
Epitaph
Not this land hers, she learned at last.
Vanished to dust, night, and the wind so vast!
Said Karen Silkwood at twenty-eight:
Plutonium poisoning augments the death rate.
How right she was! the corporation grinned:
And so Kerr-McGee did her in...
-Dale Jacobson
Comment Upon Taxes
For all the damned paper in this country
the bastards send to infiltrate our days,
I'd think they could find a scrap or two
and declare an outbreak of peace for the poor!
-Dale Jacobson
Night Vision of the Gulf War
1.
They came to rearrange the dust and shadows.
They were right because it felt good.
They released the power of seven
Hiroshima bombs, 88,500 tons,
to alter the attitude of bridges,
modify the roads and their vistas,
amend the attitude of buildings...
Some 200,000 buried alive-- no one
cared to keep count, or could.
Through the billowing smoke, the clouds of earth,
the light shifted and the dust.
Everything shifted.
2.
In the capitals of the empire the trees
dormant in their winter sturdiness
waited in their branches for their green
elaboration toward the sky.
If the stars were the nation's pity
they would be dark and hard
like the dense core of the golf ball
the Commander-in-Chief, "the great Ass-Kicker,"
shot around the green while
on the desert soldiers died.
It was a festival of death, yellow ribbons
everywhere, the color of pale distance by moonlight,
or the water-logged blade of a fallen windmill--
or the color of poison--easy hatred, easy love,
the sentimental crime: the citizens, so angry lost or afraid
in their own country, they raveled in bombing another--
power in their name, though they themselves had none.
The million-dollar missiles rose over the sea,
and the swift jets. The pilot said:
"We own the night."
3.
More likely the night now owns us...
It is a country larger than the nation,
more ancient than history,
and flies no flag.
In Iraq the night is owned by the corrupted water.
It rises like a poisonous mist around the Iraqi children,
hurries them away--55,000--
perhaps more than 170,000 within the year.
The night belongs to the rising and falling of the wind,
its additions and subtractions
through which their deaths move, unnoticed.
No stealth bomber is as stealthy as the night
that comes home.
4.
Near Fort Ransom, North Dakota
is perhaps the oldest pyramid in the world.
No one knows who built it.
The Fort is long gone.
The rains that fall on the absent Fort,
and on the pyramid, arrive
out of the horizon where the waters climb
tiny ladders and everything is flat.
The droplets spin through
the immense shadow of the clouds.
-Dale Jacobson
__________________________________________________________
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BLUES FOR TOM McGRATH
ISBN 1-882191-01-3 $2.50 8 pages
a poem in five parts by Dale Jacobson
SHOUTING AT MIDNIGHT
ISBN 1-882191-00-5 $4.95 55 pages
a political poem in twelve parts
by Dale Jacobson
A MEMOIR FOR TOM McGRATH
ISBN 1-882191-02-1 $4.00 30 pages
a remembrance and a poem for Tom McGrath by his life-long friend Jack Beeching
Postage: add $1.00 for one book. Additional
books, add 50 cents per book up to $3.00
_________________________________________________________
Conferred upon Bill Holm
the HIGH HONOR OF
LOGICAL PERVERSIONS
for committing in public
fallacious obfuscation:
"I watched Rush Limbaugh on television the other night. I had neither seen
nor heard him before, but had heard writers and other friends bemoan the
popularity of this redneck buffoon, this crypto-Nazi fear-monger. That's not
quite accurate. Limbaugh is a canny showman, who in entertainment jargon,
knows how to "work a house." For all anyone knows, he may go home and read
Thorstein Veblen and R.H.Tawney in the privacy of his easy chair, but in
public he simply shows his audience the cant, sentimentality, and pious
blather of the left, then winks knowingly. Limbaugh does not lie; everything
he points out is true. ... if the left will not do its own work, excoriating
its own cant, satirizing its own PC piety, then nature (which so abhors a
vacuum) will provide Limbaugh to do it for them. They ought to stop
complaining and get busy, doing a little hackle and gut work." (Hungry Mind
Review, Fall 1993, page 8)
THE LIST OF FALLACIES FOR WHICH THIS HONOR IS CONFERRED:
1, If Holm has never seen Limbaugh previously, how does he know from one viewing that "everything he points out is true"?
2. Hitler was himself "a canny showman," and yet no one seems to rush (bad
pun here, inordinate apologies) to suggest that this talent precluded him from
being a fairly accomplished Nazi (not that I am suggesting that Limbaugh is)
and fear-monger (not that I am suggesting that Limbaugh isn't).
3. Holm correctly points out that we don't know what Limbaugh might read and
think in private (for which I am grateful), suggesting, therefore, that we
should not draw conclusions from what he says in public. The illogic of this
thinking is wondrous, the effect being that no one should judge what anyone
anywhere or anytime says in public, because that person might not believe his
or her own words in private. There is the suggestion also that Limbaugh,who
might admire Veblen(something we don't know but also don't not know), might
really sympathize with the left (a possibility that might come as a surprise
to Limbaugh himself. Makes one wonder what we don't know about Reagan and
Bush).
4. If Limbaugh in private is not committed to what he says in public, and if
everything he points out in public is true, we can only conclude that he must
believe what is false in private. Would such a person need help? We are
also told that he doesn't lie, so we must assume that he believes to be true
what he says in public, in which case he must believe what he believes in
private is false. Is this a Zen koan? Could it be that the Sumerian tower
at Nippur (the origin of the story of the Tower of Babel) was built this way?
And the larger question: does marine life have these problems?
5. Holm asserts that the left suffers from "cant, sentimentality, and pious
blather" (an easy enough charge given the reality that people are involved),
which Limbaugh, who can wink knowingly, supposedly exposes. The erroneous
premise here is in the implication that Limbaugh necessarily does not suffer
from cant, sentimentality, and pious blather, someone whom Holm suggests
"knows how to work a house" and might say in public other than what he
believes in private. One meaning of cant and pious blather is hypocrisy and
insincerity. Am I missing something? On the other hand, if Limbaugh really
belongs to the left and is simply doing it a service by exposing its cant and
blather, would we not equally need someone from the right who belongs to the
right to expose the sentimentality and blather of the right, unless, of
course, the right does not suffer from cant and blather? Would it be
posssible for the right to rent Limbaugh for a session or two to do it some
good work? Of course, such a prospect might further complicate his private
life.
6. Holm praises Limbaugh for complaining about the left and yet suggests that
the left shoud stop complaining about the right and begin complaining about
the left. Has this been thought out? With the resulting imbalance, what
would be left for the right to complain about? And since the right does not
seem to be wrong but only right, it would hardly be right to expect the right
to complain about the right. On the other hand, perhaps Holm is right and the
left will then, by taking all the complaints away from the right, be the only
side left to be heard. Go figure...
Dale Jacobson
John Lights Up the Night
He burned himself
with the whisky he was drinking
and the match he was lighting
his joint with
a blue flame shot out from the
bottle
he started, let go
and caught fire
he was last seen
running down the street
the only light not broken
for ten miles
-David Fields
While We Sleep
The cup is full
but not forgotten!
-David Fields
The Oxford Peace Program Writes a Note to the Pentagon
Oxford has no prison
but they do dissect cadavers
if that would make your folks happy
we'll arrange something
-David Fields
Denise's Last Day at the Bakery
She made her last roll
and now the boss will
have to explain
where all that rat shit
came from
without blaming her
-David Fields
Greed Rules- OK?
A priestess in the temple of Greed Rules,
Her eyes screwed tighter as her status grew,
Loiters to finger a comelier morning face
from coloured jars along her alter glass.
A winter holiday in a wittier place?
A more expensive, more aggressive car?
A live-in friend who cannot answer back-
Siamese cat a tricksy concubine?
Stretch haggard sockets with astringent slime,
Up the slack gizzard thumb a creamy dream,
Whittle your tongue, and pit your lacquered brain
For one more day against that long slide down.
A clever mandarin. How could disdain
Fall to hysterics in the lonely night?
Who faked two criteria, wealth and power?
Who changed the password? Where's my orgasm?
Down the long drain, where all waste products go.
Greed rules, OK? This is a greasy pole.
Who kneel and claw to the top make one mistake.
The pole is not a ladder, but a snake.
-Jack Beeching
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