Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 1.14.2019

Revolutionary socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were executed 100 years ago in Berlin. In the ensuing century, Luxemburg has become a cult figure for the left — and for feminists, artists and pacifists.

On Sunday morning, some 10,000 people braved the rain and cold to march through eastern Berlin and place red carnations at the graves of Rosa Luxemburg and her comrade, Karl Liebknecht.

The march was commemorating 100 years since the brutal execution of the two revolutionary socialists on January 15, 1919.

In the ensuing century, this diminutive Polish-born Jewish intellectual with a limp has become a cult icon for the revolutionary left. Yet she has also had a broader appeal, admired by feminists, socialists and pacifists.

She has become part of Germany’s cultural memory, immortalized in art, poetry, an award-winning biopic, a musical and a graphic novel. And in her own words too: as well as being a brilliant Marxist theorist, Luxemburg was a prolific writer of letters, and her emotive, lyrical writing has seen her emerge as a literary figure in her own right.

Luxemburg, who as a teenager fled Russian-occupied Poland due to her socialist activities, first attained her doctorate in Zurich before arriving in Berlin in 1898. She quickly rose through the ranks of the Social Democratic Party, the biggest labor movement in Europe at the time. Yet she broke with the SPD due to its support for World War I in 1914, helped form the breakaway Spartacist League in 1916 and spent most of the war in prison.

In November 1918, a revolt by sailors and soldiers led to the overthrow of the Hohenzollern monarchy and the end of the war. In December, the Spartacist League renamed itself the German Communist Party (KPD) and Luxemburg asserted that they would not try to seize power without the support of the majority of Germans. Yet when a second revolt broke out on January 5, 1919, she and Liebknecht gave the movement their full support. The uprising quickly faltered and the SPD leadership ordered the army and right-wing paramilitaries, the Freikorps, to crush it.

On the night of January 15, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were abducted, tortured in the luxury Hotel Eden, and then driven separately to the nearby Tiergarten Park and murdered. Liebknecht was delivered to the city morgue while Luxemburg was dumped into a canal.

Her body was only recovered five months later after the winter ice had thawed. She was buried next to Liebknecht in the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery.

A History Lesson from Europe

Deutsche Welle 1.13.2019

Some 10,000 people from across Europe joined in the marches which have been going on for nearly 100 years. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were prominent socialists and activists in early 20th century Germany.

Germany’s annual Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration took place in Berlin on Sunday, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1919 executions of prominent socialists Rosa Luxemburgand Karl Liebknecht.

Prominent anti-war activists Liebknecht and Luxemburg were killed by a government-supported paramilitary after they led a general strike known as the Spartacus Uprising.

Some 10,000 people, also hailing from other EU countries such as France and Spain, marched through the capital to mark the pair’s deaths. Prominent Lefty party politicians Katja Kipping, Bernd Riexinger and Sahra Wagenknecht were also there.

Both were born in 1871, Luxemburg in what is now Poland but then the Russian Empire, and Liebknecht in Leipzig. During World War I, they were fierce opponents of World War I. Originally members of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) party that still exists in Germany today, they split from the SPD to form the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1918.

In January 1919, the KPD and other leftists called for a general strike to protest working conditions and the administration of the Weimar Republic. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were shot dead by militants contracted by the government that same month.

The yearly Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstrations began almost immediately after the pair were killed, and has been ongoing almost without pause, with the exception of during the Nazi regime, when exiles arranged smaller protests in cities like New York and Mexico City.  The Berlin march goes from the city’s Frankfurter Tor square to the socialists’ monument in Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery.

As prominent writers and activists on the subjects of socialism and workers rights, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were held up as martyrs by communist East Germany. Since the war, the demonstrations have been held around different themes, including for example opposition to the First Gulf War and the Iraq War.

Over the years, the Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstrations have never lost steam, sometimes attracting up to 80,000 participants.

Totally Outrageous.  Innocent Man, Feds Admit Should Never Have Been Jailed, May Finally be Released

San Francisco Chronicle 1.12.2019

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Lodi-man-convicted-of-terrorism-in-2006-should-go-13527931.php#photo-16760275

The Twilight Zone Meets Mad Magazine

Talking Points Memo – 1.11.2019

Upon returning back to the White House following a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border — a trip he admitted to reporters was just a photo op — President Trump concluded that the U.S. is being invaded by immigrants.

Artwork created by my daughter Atlanta Kane

Check out the photo.  It’s Great. Hillary, second from the left, along with her San Francisco City Hall staff.

It is really shameful that Hillary Ronen was not selected by her comrades.  More glaring is the fact the  presumed Progs now have eight of the 11 Supervisorial seats.

Last Friday  I was cycling across McAllister and Polk by City Hall.  Supervisors Sandy Fewer and Norman Yee walked across the street by me in deep conversation.

That should have been a “heads up.”

Heather Knight’s column on the masthead of the Bay Area section in Tuesday’s Chronicle says it all.  There’s a vicious double standard at work here.  Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, now Hillary Ronen all get dissed because they are assertive and aggressive women.

I have never liked this misogynistic behavior.  Sandy and Aaron Peskin should be ashamed of themselves.  I suppose Sandy has a quasi-decent rationale because Norman Yee is Asian and now that late Mayor Ed Lee is gone the Asian community needs an influential voice in a power position at San Francisco City Hall.

There is no excuse for Aaron’s behavior.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez has a good column in today’s Examiner about the internecine warfare amongst the Progs.

This is typical disgraceful Board of Supervisors behavior and all too typical of San Francisco. Leave it to the presumed Cadres, Sandy Fewer and Aaron Peskin, to torch the advancement of a True Progressive. I am a D1 resident and supported Marjan Philhour in 2016. Moderate (whatever that means) she may be. At least I knew what to expect in supporting her candidacy. Let the Cadres hope for their day in San Francisco. It’s going to be a long wait.

Amazing and Shameful … So much for Freedom of Speech in America

Excerpted from The Guardian of London 1.8.2019

The veteran civil rights activist Angela Davis said she was “stunned” by the decision of Alabama’s Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to revoke an award she was set to receive.

The institute announced in October that Davis, a Birmingham native, would receive the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights award, calling her “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak”.

But last week, the organization reversed course and said she does not meet the criteria after all, in an apparent response to objections over her outspoken support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

“I have devoted much of my own activism to international solidarity and, specifically, to linking struggles in other parts of the world to US grassroots campaigns against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly,” Davis said in a statement on Monday night.

“The rescinding of this invitation and the cancellation of the event where I was scheduled to speak was thus not primarily an attack against me but rather against the very spirit of the indivisibility of justice.”

Davis, who was an active member of the Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the US communist party, said her support for Palestinian prisoners is consistent with her support for political prisoners in other parts of the world.

Why are the Republicans so Upset? What AOC said on 60 Minutes is credible.

Washington Times 1.8.2019

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday there is “no question” that President Trump is a racist.

“The president certainly didn’t invent racism. But he’s certainly given a voice to it and expanded it and created a platform for those things,” the new New York congresswoman told Anderson Cooper in her “60 Minutes” interview.

She argued that the president’s rhetoric includes the “historic dog whistles of white supremacy.”

“When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it’s — it’s night and day,” she said.

In a statement to CBS, the White House slammed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’ comments as “sheer ignorance” and said the president “has repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms.”