I’m just an ordinary Catholic, but I’m thinking that Jesus probably wouldn’t come down for a man found liable by a jury for sexual assault.
And since Jesus invented the laws of the universe, including math, He would certify that Trump lost California. And GA, NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA. https://t.co/NVfVyr1bVh
Paul Robeson, scholar, athlete, musician and leader, defying a racist and red-baiting mob, sang to 15,000 at a Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York.
Paul Robeson (at microphone) singing to the Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York
September 4, 1954 The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against the H-Bomb in London’s Trafalgar Square. The PPU dates back to October 1934. Young Peace Pledge Union members today. The PPU today
September 4, 1957 Elizabeth Eckford and eight other young Negroes were blocked from becoming the first black student at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus had called out the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of the public schools in the state’s capital. President Dwight Eisenhower eventually sent in federal troops to guarantee the law was enforced. Elizabeth Eckford Read moreElizabeth Eckford followed and taunted by mob, 1957. A very interesting related story:
September 4, 1970 Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Over the following three days more than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion of small rural hamlets along the way. Operation Rapid American Withdrawal 1970-2005: An Exhibition:
September 4, 1978 Simultaneous demonstrations in Moscow’s Red Square and in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. were organized by the War Resisters League, calling for nuclear disarmament.
I forgot to shut off the A/C in the room. Let me know if it causes too much background noise. Also we had a thunderstorm during this recording, so you might hear some of it. Hugs. Scottie
My morning, my day trying to find sneakers, a few news articles such as Kennedy and chem trails, red states block methane regulations, Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and kill them, steal their homes / land, and think genocide is not a problem.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Tens of thousands of grieving and angry Israelis surged into the streets Sunday night after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza, chanting “Now! Now!” as they demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach a cease-fire with Hamas to bring the remaining captives home.
The mass outpouring appeared to be the largest such demonstration in 11 months of war and protesters said it felt like a possible turning point, although the country is deeply divided.
Israel’s largest trade union, the Histadrut, further pressured the government by calling a general strike for Monday, the first since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the war. It aims to shut down or disrupt major sectors of the economy, including banking, health care and the country’s main airport. (snip-MORE)
(Meanwhile, democracy in Israel doesn’t seem to be the system anymore, US Republicans’s statements regardless-) (This narrative runs current to the top. There’s a good feature at the bottom here.)
Arnon Bar-David, the chair of Histadrut Labour Federation, Israel’s main trade union which launched the strike, said he respects the decision by the labour court to end the strike at 14:30 (local time) 12.30 BST, according to the Times of Israel.
It reports him saying in a statement:
It is important to emphasise that the solidarity strike was a significant measure and I stand behind it. Despite the attempts to paint solidarity as political, hundreds of thousands of citizens voted with their feet.
I thank every one of you – you proved that the fate of the hostages is not right-wing or left-wing, there is only life or death, and we won’t allow life to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, the newspaper reports that the Hostages and Missing Families Forum encourages the public to continue the demonstrations despite the ruling. “This is not about a strike, this is about rescuing the 101 hostages that were abandoned by [prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu with the cabinet decision last Thursday,” the forum says, referring to the vote by ministers backing the IDF’s continued presence on the Philadelphi Corridor.Share
The labour court’s ruling that today’s strike must end was welcomed by Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.
In a post on X, Smotrich praised the decision to end what he called a “political and illegal strike.”
The Times of Israel reports he said in his statement that Israelis went to work today “in droves,” proving they are no longer slaves to “political needs.”
He added: “We won’t allow harm to the Israeli economy and thereby serve the interests of [Yahya] Sinwar and Hamas.”
‘Strike was not as powerful as people expected’ – dispatch from Tel Aviv
Julian Borger
Julian Borger is the Guardian’s world affairs editor
Tel Aviv this morning did not feel like a society about to bring its government down.
The debris had been removed from last night’s demonstration on the Ayalon Highway, the motorway which passes through the city centre, and traffic was moving normally.
Protesters stopped traffic at a couple of junctions around the city but for the most part, the traffic flowed. The national rail line was working, though some buses and light railway lines stopped.
Private companies gave their staff the day off, but it was more in the spirit of some sombre holiday rather than the start of an existential struggle with the government.
Ben Gurion airport only closed for a few hours, and it was announced that the whole general strike would end at 6pm. It is not government-ending stuff.
Travellers line up at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv. Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
The mood can best be described as bitterly realistic on Hostages Square, the name given to the plaza between the national library and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where hostage families and their supporters gather every day.
“I’m not sure the strike was as powerful as people expected,” said Debbie Mason, a social worker for the Eshkol regional council, the area of southern Israel abutting Gaza.
She made a distinction between what she hoped would happen and what she believed would happen, the latter being that nothing would change for the hostages.
“Unfortunately, there are too many things that are going to obstruct a deal, whether it’s on our side, whether it’s on Hamas’ side, it just doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest, that something should happen,” Mason said.
Hostage Square, established in the plaza between the National Library, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Tel Aviv District Court. Buses arrive here daily with youth groups from the kibbutzes, moshavs and towns from the area of southern Israel invaded by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Photograph: Julian Borger/The Guardian
Rayah Karmin, who comes from Mabu’im, a village near Netivot, near the Gaza border, agreed that a one-day strike would change little.
“Only a longer strike will make the people in government understand that the economy of Israel is going to go down,” Karmin, a vitamin supplement salesperson, said.
She pointed out that all the demonstrations and strikes were up against an immovable political fact. If a ceasefire is agreed, the far-right members of the coalition, notably Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, will walk out and the government will fall.
“Smotrich and Ben-Gvir will leave Netanyahu, and then he will be without a coalition, and he will have to go home,” Karmin said. “And he knows that next time he won’t be elected, so he wants to stay as long as he can.”
“Bibi is a magician, a really big fucking magician,” Aaron, a 28-year-old legal adviser in a pharmaceutical corporation, said. He had been out on the streets for Sunday’s mass protests, but he had no illusions about who they were up against.
“If there’s a hostage deal, the government will fall, so they are not interested in a deal,” Aaron said. “What Ben-Gvir wants and what Smotrich wants, they get, because Bibi doesn’t want to go to jail. He doesn’t want to lose power, because Bibi will be voted out in the first election if the government falls.”
This is what the fundamentalist religious / maga right want to do in the US notice the reason why they feel they need to pass this law. Because it is changing tradition. Tradition is peer pressure from dead people. The right wing straight cis people like the way things are and don’t want to include other ideas or ways. Just a warning. Hugs. Scottie
The legislation would ban LGBTQ+ rights on multiple fronts, including adoption, marriage, and civil IDs.
TBILISI, GEORGIA – MAY 17, 2018: Family day. People attend a rally marking the Day of Family Purity and opposing the International Day Against Homophobia and TransphobiaPhoto: Shutterstock
Georgia’s parliament on Thursday pushed ahead a sweeping package of bills that would effectively outlaw LGBTQ+ identity in the former Soviet republic.
The set of bills proposed by the ruling pro-Putin Georgian Dream party bans depictions of same-sex relationships in the media, outlaws gender-affirming surgery, and will make Pride events and the public display of the Pride flag in Georgia a thing of the past.
Parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili describes the bills as necessary to control “LGBT propaganda,” which he said was “altering traditional relations.”
The first reading of the bill titled “On the Protection of Family Values and Minors,” which draws heavily from Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ “propaganda” law passed last year, drew widespread support among Georgia Parliament deputies. The bill is scheduled for second and third readings in the fall.
In addition to outlawing public gatherings “promoting” same-sex relationships, the legislation would also limit adoption to heterosexuals, ban gender changes on official identification, and outlaw “LGBT propaganda” in education.
Georgian Dream MPs have also proposed introducing “genetic” requirements in establishing legal marriage, whereby marriage would be a union of a “genetic woman” and a “genetic man.”
The Constitution already bans same-sex marriage in Georgia, where the deeply conservative Orthodox Church holds outsized influence in the government and public sphere.
Georgia enjoyed decades of progress on human and LGBTQ+ rights following the Rose Revolution in 2003, as a majority of citizens supported a pro-Western turn and integration into the European Union and NATO.
The rise of the Georgian Dream party in the last ten years, however, has seen the government reorienting toward Russia, with the Church encouraging the rapprochement.
Georgia’s version of Putin’s draconian “LGBT propaganda” law seems designed not only to roll back progress on LGBTQ+ rights but to scuttle any hope of Georgia entering the European Union, with its strict requirements upholding civil liberties and personal freedoms.
The introduction of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation follows the Georgia Parliament’s passage of another Russian-inspired law to label Western NGOs “foreign agents,” teeing up a harassment campaign aimed at expelling human rights and other groups that far-right conservatives and the Orthodox Church have accused of infecting Georgia and other countries with “degeneracy.”
Speaking of opponents of the nascent legislation in March, Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of the Georgian Dream parliamentary majority, said, “Even if they brand the law against LGBT ‘propaganda’ not Russian, but Soviet, we will follow it through, given that it is the biggest challenge of modern times.”
Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment runs high among extremists in the onetime Soviet vassal. In 2021 and 2023, violent mobs shut down Pride marches in the capital Tbilisi.
Organizers say foreign agents, delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, joined far-right fascist political gangs and members of the Georgian Orthodox church to sabotage the peaceful demonstration. Hundreds were injured in the two incidents.
Rights groups and supporters described the attacks as “pogroms.”
September 2, 1885 A mob of white coal miners, led by the Knights of Labor, violently attacked their Chinese co-workers in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killing 28 and burning the homes of 75 Chinese families. The white miners wanted the Chinese barred from working in the mine. The mine owners and operators had brought in the Chinese ten years earlier to keep labor costs down and to suppress strikes.Chinese fleeing Rock Springs The unfortunate story and illustrations of the scene (scroll down)
September 2, 1945 Revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam a republic and independent from France (National Day). Half a million people gathered in the capital of Hanoi to hear him read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which was modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. note: Ho Chi Minh translates to ‘He Who Enlightens’ Read about how it was influenced by the U.S. Declaration
September 2, 1966 On what was supposed to be the first day of school in Grenada, Mississippi—and the first day in an integrated school for 450 Negro children—the school board postponed opening of school for 10 days because of “paperwork.” Nevertheless, the high school played its first football game that night. Some of the Negro kids who had registered for that school tried to attend the game but were beaten, and their car windows smashed.
September 2, 1969 Vietnamese revolutionary and national leader Nguyen Tat Thanh (aka Ho Chi Minh), 79, died of natural causes in Hanoi. Uncle Ho, Ho Chi Minh Ho and his struggle for Vietnamese independence
Palestinian villages in the West Bank are seeing an increase in illegal settler attacks since October 7, 2023, the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Some of the settlers are attacking farms and killing livestock. NBC News’ Hala Gorani has more on the increase in violence.
Young Peace Pledge Union members today.
Elizabeth Eckford 
TBILISI, GEORGIA – MAY 17, 2018: Family day. People attend a rally marking the Day of Family Purity and opposing the International Day Against Homophobia and TransphobiaPhoto: Shutterstock
Chinese fleeing Rock Springs
Uncle Ho, Ho Chi Minh
