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In anticipation of an upcoming trip to Spain, I'm re-reading For Whom The Bell Tolls , Ernest Hemingway's novel based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. I haven't read Hemingway since the 1980s, and I'm enjoying it much more than I expected to. I had mis-remembered Hemingway as a harsher, more macho voice. Maybe it was his love of bullfighting and hunting, or his personal image as a tough guy, but I was expecting bellicosity and possibly sexism. I didn't find it. The voice is warm and generous, and he writes with great sensitivity and respect, and keen insight into human motivations. The Spanish Civil War itself is about resistance to fascism, more a story of rebellion and revolution than armies and battlefields. (I imagine the anti-fascists are more properly called counter-revolutionaries, because Franco's military takeover was a revolution.) Hemingway was part of the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigades, Americans who fought for the Spanish Republic, to tr

Revolutionary thought of the day: Across the road at the sawmill smoke was coming out of the chimney and Anselmo could smell it blown toward him through the snow. The fascists are warm, he thought, and they are comfortable, and tomorrow night we will kill them. It is a strange thing and I do not like to think of it. I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travellers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing. Ernest Hemingway from For Whom the Bell Tolls

One thousand days. Think of where you were one thousand days ago, and all you have done since then. In all that time, Bradley Manning has been in prison. For 62 days, he was held in a cage in Kuwait. For 265 days, he was held in solitary confinement. For 1,000 days, he has been imprisoned. And when Manning does receive a hearing, it will not be a trial. It will be a court martial: his accusers will be the only judge and jury. Manning's "crime" is exposing the truth about the murder of civilians by US forces in Iraq. While the real criminals go unpunished - indeed, while they lead lives of wealth and privilege - a courageous whistleblower is persecuted. This weekend, people in more than 70 cities around the world will stand in solidarity with Manning and mark his 1,000th day in jail without trial. To find an event near you, go here . To remember why Bradley Manning is being persecuted, go here , and watch the video . Good reading: Nobel Laureates Salute Bradley Mannin

Wladyslaw Lizon, Member of Parliament for Mississauga Cooksville East (my own riding), is back in the news. The Conservative MP has teamed up with two of his fellow backbenchers in an attack on Canadian women's reproductive rights. The last time Lizon surfaced , he had "alerted" Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney that a Mississauga woman had worn a niqab during a citizenship ceremony. Thanks to Lizon and Kenney, face veils are now banned from those ceremonies. This man is anti-choice in more ways than one. More recently, Lizon, Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon—Wanuskewin), and Leon Benoit (Vegreville—Wainwright) demanded that the RCMP investigate all later-term abortions performed in Canada over the last decade. According to these MPs , the doctors who performed these procedures should be charged with homicide. The three MPs claim that there were 490 later-term terminations performed in Canada between the years 2000 and 2009. Where did the men get this 490 numb

After finally getting Jill Lepore's "Lie Factory" posted on this blog , I will go back even further, to something I've wanted to post for nearly two years. No matter the date, this piece is timeless, and more relevant with every passing day. This lengthy essay by Nicholson Baker ran in Harper's in May of 2011: "Why I’m a pacifist: The dangerous myth of the Good War" . It's available by pdf download with a Harper's subscription, or (I hope) at your local library, or from me by request. (Artwork from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection , Swarthmore, PA.) Baker charts his evolution from moderately antiwar to complete pacifist, in part from learning about the "surprisingly vocal group of World War II pacifists". They weren’t, all of them, against personal or familial self-defense, or against law enforcement. But they did hold that war was, in the words of the British pacifist and parliamentarian Arthur Ponsonby, “a monster born of hyp

The current New Yorker stories by Joseph Mitchell  has given me an opportunity to post something I've been meaning to share for ages. Last September, Jill Lepore unearthed an incredible bit of history, a piece of the American past that is  alive with us today, and more dangerous than ever. (I am generally interested in anything Lepore writes; last year I gushed over her reviews of books about Clarence Darrow , one of my abiding heroes.) In this piece, Lepore writes about the roots of political advertising - the falsehoods and trickery, the lies and slander, the deception and distortion, the swiftboating and smearing that make us grit our teeth in frustration. The advertising firms that design and disseminate those orchestrated lies can be traced back to one company, an operation called Campaigns Inc. Its first victim was Upton Sinclair, the writer and socialist and one-time candidate for Governor of California. He called it The Lie Factory. In 1934, Sinclair explained what did ha

The New Yorker has given us a singularly rare gift: new writing by Joseph Mitchell. Joseph Mitchell wrote about New York City and the multiplicity of people who inhabit it. Mitchell wrote nonfiction portraits of quirky people, overlooked trades, unknown professions, obsessive collectors. His warm, meticulous prose brought people to life before your eyes. He wrote beautifully, and with great respect for the endless diversity of humanity, long before diversity was a buzzword. First edition, found here . Mitchell wrote from 1929 to 1964. Then he stopped writing - stopped completely, as far as we know. In one of the most famous writer's blocks known in this corner of the world, Mitchell continued to show up at The New Yorker magazine, sitting in his office every day, not writing. After Mitchell died in 1996, New Yorker colleague Roger Angell described it like this. Each morning, he stepped out of the elevator with a preoccupied air, nodded wordlessly if you were just coming down the

Ten years ago today, my partner and I took the day off work, dressed in many layers of clothing, and joined nearly a million people in the streets of New York City. It was February 15, 2003, and the world was saying no to war. The bitter cold didn't stop demonstrations in 80 Canadians towns and cities , including 150,000 people who braved minus-30 wind chill in Montreal. In the US, protests were held in 225 communities. In London, at least one million people gathered. Every European country saw huge crowds, but they were all topped by Rome, where three million people formed the largest antiwar demonstration in one place in history. In Australia, major protests were held in all six state capitals. The scientists stationed on Antarctica held a protest on the ice. In Brazil, in Argentina - in Tokyo, in Beirut - in Dhaka and Calcutta - in Seoul and Johannesburg - in every continent of the planet - large crowds gathered, all with the same message. In all, up to 30 million people in 800

This is the final post of my notes from the 2012 Marxism Conference. This was the first Marxism conference to include a talk on disability, an exciting development full of potential. I wanted to blog about it in great detail. A friend was recording the talk, so I stopped taking detailed notes... and then the audio didn't come out. Melissa Graham was kind enough to give me her notes, but the others didn't have anything written to share. What follows, then, is the general idea. What does disability have to do with capitalism and socialism? Where do disability and socialism intersect, how do they relate to each other? * * * * From Each According to Their Ability: the Role of Socialists in Disability Movement May 25, 2012 Melissa Graham, Michele Macaulay, Patricia Reilly Melissa Graham Member of IS Canada, Social Worker, Disability Rights Activist, Wheelchair User Melissa began by praising Marxism 2012 for being the first of the annual conferences to include a talk on disability, b

The wingnut media continues to redefine irony. Yesterday Fox News ran a piece called "To be happy, we must admit women and men aren't 'equal'". (Sorry, no link. Linking to bigots is a violation of wmtc policy.) To illustrate their homophobic, anti-woman twaddle, they used a picture of a wedding atop the Empire State Building, apparently not realizing it was... the wedding of two women! What a riot. Read the story: you'll come for the laughs, and stay for the wisdom. From Feministing. Yesterday the feminist internet collectively lol’d at Fox News when Jessica Valenti realized that the “wedding kiss” picture they’re using to accompany a piece about traditional gender roles is actually of a same sex couple. Turns out, the two women whose love was mistakenly highlighted by the tirelessly homophobic news outlet are no strangers to the spotlight. Lela Mc Arthur and Stephanie Figarelle of Anchorage, Alaska won a contest last year to have their dream wedding in New

Please watch this excellent clip of war resister Jules Tindungan and lawyer Alyssa Manning discussing their recent victory in Federal Court. Really, watch ! It's great.

Revolutionary thought of the day: "Mankind. Ready to kill. I wonder how humanity managed to survive." "We overcame our instinct for violence." -- Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk, " Spectre of the Gun ", Star Trek, original air date December 31, 1969

Another win in federal court! From the War Resisters Support Campaign : On Friday February 1st, the Federal Court of Canada released a decision granting U.S. war resister Jules Tindungan a new hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). The Court found errors in the original IRB decision pertaining to issues which are at the heart of asylum claims by U.S. soldiers in Canada. Mr. Tindungan is one of dozens of former U.S. soldiers who have sought asylum in Canada because of their objection to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tindungan refused to return to combat for the United States military in 2008 after serving a 15 month combat tour and seeing first-hand the breaches of the Geneva Conventions committed by U.S. forces. Mr. Tindungan argued before the Refugee Board that he faces differential punishment in the U.S. because he has spoken out publicly against U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also argued that he would not get a fair trial if returned because t

Revolutionary thought of the day: Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Oscar Wilde from The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Harper anti-choice brigade is back in the news, this time taking aim at a different abortion controversy to try to chip away at our fundamental rights. Wladyslaw Lizon - sadly, the MP for my own riding - is holding forth against later-term procedures. (You may remember Lizon's name through his memorable Islamophobia, which caused Jason Kenney to forbid the wearing of niqabs during citizenship ceremonies.) When it comes to later-term abortions, don't be fooled. The overwhelming majority of abortion procedures in Canada are performed in the first trimester of pregnancy. In the tiny minority performed later, the fetus is either dead or non-viable, or the woman's life is being endangered by the pregnancy. Women needing later-term abortions are usually in dire circumstances, mourning the loss of a wanted pregnancy. Even if a Canadian woman wanted to obtain a late-term abortion on a healthy fetus, she could never find a doctor to perform it. But whether it's sex-selected