Category: Crime

Peace & Justice History for 11/4:

November 4, 1811
A group of men in Bulwell, near Nottingham, England, armed with hammers, axes and pistols in the dark of night, broke into the workshop of a master weaver named Hollingsworth and smashed six weaving machines the men thought threatened their jobs. They and their supporters opposed the industrialization that had turned home-based sustainable textile work into factory work with significant loss of jobs through mechanization (and those at much lower wages), as well as the attendant air and water pollution.
Luddites smashing loom.
They called themselves followers of the probably fictional General Ludd and continued their attacks for months, with over a thousand knitting machines destroyed. In response, thousands of troops were sent to stop the rebellion, and Parliament passed a law making destruction of weaving machines a hanging offense.
Luddites has since become a term used for those who oppose technology.
November 4, 1956
Two hundred thousand Russian troops with 1000 tanks stopped an
anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and installed a new pro-Soviet government. Although civilians had set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest, the Soviet air force bombed the capital and troops poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive.
Hungarian Army and National Guard troops participated in the resistance; only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought alongside the Warsaw Pact troops. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came.
20,000 Hungarians ultimately died as a result (as well as 4000 troops), and ten times that many left the country permanently.
Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops.

Soviet tanks in Budapest.
Pictorial history of the Hungarian Uprising 
November 4, 1984
The first free elections in Nicaraguan history were held. Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Front claimed a decisive victory (70%), defeating six other parties, in the country’s first elections since the revolution the Sandanistas had led five years previous. The high-turnout election (83%) was monitored by 400 independent election observers who said the election had been fair.

Read more 
November 4, 1995
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot minutes after speaking at a peace rally held in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square in Israel.

The rally in Kings of Israel Square
  Yitzhak Rabin
Read more 
November 4, 2008
The first African American ever nominated by a major political party as candidate for president went before the electorate. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and his Democratic vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, faced Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; independent candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez; Green Party candidates former Representative Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente; and former Repepresentatives Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november4

Peace & Justice History for 11/3:

November 3, 1883
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were ultimately subject to U.S. law, “not in the sense of citizens, but . . . as wards subject to a guardian . . . as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.”
However, the Court acknowledged the sovereignty of tribal authority in the particular case at hand. The Congress, however, essentially overturned the Court’s decision two years later.
Chief Crow Dog, 1898
More on Ex Parte Crow Dog 
November 3, 1917
Bolsheviks, the followers of Vladimir Lenin, took control of the capital, Moscow, and the Kremlin, the fortress-like grouping of government buildings and churches at the center of the capital city, as the Russian revolution succeeded.
November 3, 1969

President Nixon announced the “Vietnamization” program to shift fighting by U.S. troops to U.S.-trained Vietnamese troops. “We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.”
The last U.S. troops didn’t return home until 1975.
November 3, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

Read more about the occupation: 
Read the Indian Manifesto: 
November 3, 1979
Five members of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Communist Workers Party) which had organized a “Death to the Klan” rally, were murdered and ten others injured when the rally was attacked by 40 Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina. The political organization had been joined in the march by a group of local African-American mill workers. At the time of the shootings, not one police officer was present.
Two all-white juries acquitted the murderers despite the fact that the whole incident was on videotape. But in 1985 a federal jury found two policemen, a police informant/Klan leader, and five Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators.
November 3, 1985
The Rainbow Warrior bombed
Two French agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) dramatically changed their pleas on charges related to the bombing and sinking of the Greenpeace’s ship, Rainbow Warrior, and pled guilty. The ship was attacked in Auckland (New Zealand) harbor in anticipation of sailing to Moruroa Atoll to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing. It was the first act of terror ever committed in New Zealand.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november3

Return the SCOTUS to law and order-

(I don’t know if this is gonna work; I’m not on Instagram, but I went there, and could see, hear, read, and got the embed link. MomsRising is asking for shares, so if anyone cares to share, thank you!)

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Lots of links here;

I’ve read 5 of them. One I clicked in particular is most excellent, and easy to read. Link below; there are fine pieces on Ten Bears’s page.

Fey Fickle Today …

https://www.popsci.com/america-before-epa-photos/

Taking Filosofa’s Advice, and

and reblogging this one from Keith. I hate giving the Don any time at all, but the bottom line of this is that the young people are seeing this, some for the first time, as they were in middle and high school in 2016.

Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging on serial sexual assault resurfaces

Peace & Justice History for 11/1:

November 1, 1872

Susan B. Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set up in a barbershop.  They were part of a group of fifty women Anthony had organized to register in her home town of Rochester.  Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would later testify, “demanded that we register them as voters.”
The election inspectors refused, but she persisted, quoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship provision and the article from the New York Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. She persisted: “If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages!”
The inspectors sought the advice of the Supervisor of elections: “Young men,” he said, “do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register these names?” Registering the women, the registrars were advised, “would put the entire onus of the affair on them.” The inspectors voted to allow Anthony and her three sisters to register.   In all, fourteen Rochester women successfully registered that day. But the Rochester Union and Advertiser editorialized: “Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon . . . if these women in the Eighth Ward offer to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
November 1, 1929
Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.
November 1, 1954
A war of independence to end French colonial rule over the north African nation of Algeria began when 60 bombs were set off on this day in Algiers, the capital. Over the next eight years 1.5 million Algerians would die, along with about 30,000 French. The French had dominated the country since 1830.

French troops clash with Algerian civilians 
Read more 
November 1, 1954
The U.S. produced the biggest ever man-made explosion in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. The hydrogen bomb, equivalent of 20 million tons of TNT was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
It overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. One of the atolls was totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide, dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fallout.
November 1, 1961
50,000-100,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to the founding of Women Strike for Peace. Their slogan: “End the Arms Race – Not the Human Race.”
See Photos from Swarthmore College Peace Collection 
 
“Women’s Strike for Peace” storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam.

Bella Abzug demonstrating with WSP
photo: Dorothy Marder
November 1, 1970
Detroit’s Common Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.
November 1, 1983
A senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz about intelligence reports that showed Iraqi troops resorting to “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” against the Iranians.

Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980.

But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president’s recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
November 1, 1990
As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. nor Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of U.S. federal law.
More on the Law of the Sea 
November 1, 2003
The Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”Yitzhak was right, and his path just,” said Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace accords with Mr Rabin. “His views today are clear and enduring. There will be no retreat; we will continue.”

Read more

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november1

hecatedemeter’s Samhain Prayer

This Is a Prayer for Samhain. This Is a Prayer for Resistance.

An Ask for Facebook Users

I’m not on Facebook; never have been. I do order from Penzey’s, and because of that, I get their emails, which are awesome. Here is the body of today’s email with links, and another shout-out to any Facebook users who are called to help out with this. And, I think anyone in a position to share in some fashion is welcome to do so!

(Here should be a photo of a veteran who may be the subject of this. I’m sorry it won’t post.)
 
 This really isn’t a standard email, it’s a Facebook post sent by email. But with one week to go and everything seemingly all tied up, sharing a glimpse of our past that’s at risk of becoming our future seems right. Please read and share.Thanks.

October 25, 2024 George Mullins voted. June 6, 1944 George came ashore in Normandy. He voted by mail. He insisted that the ballot needed to be taken to the post office and handed directly to the postal worker. “Can’t take any chances in these times.”

It was LST #311 that brought him 100 yards from the shore of Utah Beach on D-Day. The water was cold and up to his neck. He kept an eye on the shorter soldiers to make sure their heavy packs would not drag them under. Together they all made it ashore. So many of those George went ashore with never made it home.

George Mullins lived through the unfathomable violence it took to face down fascism. He made it home but left so much behind. Forever since he has had to carry a hurt and a loss that thankfully most of us have never known.

His experience has left him with thoughts on this election and about those who would once again intentionally unleash the unspeakable horrors he had hoped were forever in the past.

Two weeks ago George posted his thoughts on his Facebook page for the book he wrote of his WWII experience, Foxhole.

Buy his book, I highly recommend it.

As is the nature of Facebook, and social media, and the times we live in, one of the most valuable pieces that will ever be written about this election now sits there with just 72 likes.

George’s daughter and longtime Penzeys customer, Sheila, wrote hinting that maybe I could bring more attention to his words. Yes. A very big Yes. Coincidentally enough (if there are coincidences) his were exactly the words I was then searching for.

Not eight hours before Sheila’s email arrived I had just finished rewatching Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. I’m convinced it is in the unspeakable sacrifice of so many Americans eighty years ago where the key to understanding just how much is at stake on 11.5.24 lives or dies.

But where to find the words? I looked to Saving Private Ryan because Spielberg has good words, and there are good words there but his, like mine, are of an outsider looking in. Where could I find the words I needed? And as fate would have it they arrived all tied neatly with a bow and accompanied by a breathtaking photo.

And I won’t give away all George Mullins’s words, please read all of them for yourself. But in short, today he is deeply troubled by the direction he sees our country heading.

“I didn’t fight in World War II, standing on the front lines of history, so that we could one day find our country on the brink of dictatorship or authoritarian rule. The freedoms I defended, and believe in, the sacrifices my comrades and I made, were for the preservation of democracy—of freedom, fairness, and the right to live without fear of tyranny.”

There’s so much we take for granted, but all that George and those he fought alongside achieved came at a terrible cost. And as much as we know words like fascism, and Nazi, and even freedom, how much do we really understand this is about the difference between living free and having to live in fear of your government?

By 1944 everyone understood, but today it’s something we’ve forgotten, something we take for granted. George Mullins went ashore shoulder to shoulder with men like him willing to give their lives so that others may live free. Let that sink in.

And now the leaders of the Republican party are not only throwing that sacrifice away, they are forcing our children to relive it. Why? Because they don’t have the strength to stand up to Donald Trump’s never-ending need for ever greater power. We must do better. We must share George Mullins’s warning. (snip; an offer I’m not sure is appropriate to include here, but I can put it in comments if someone’s interested. I’m trying to stay on topic, without appearing to advertise, though advertisement is not the author’s intent. -A)

And two outstanding Steven Spielberg words. I’ve seen Saving Private Ryan several times since its release. Each time I’ve seen something new in it. This time I was struck by Tom Hanks’s Captain Miller’s words to Matt Damon’s Ryan. “Earn this.”

This time against the backdrop of this election it hit home more than before that these two words weren’t between two people but between all those who gave so much and all of us who have lived our lives with the gifts their terrible sacrifice brought. Earn this. We truly do owe them that much.

And I did ask George’s daughter Sheila about what was going through his mind as he cast his vote in this election. She asked him over dinner. He told her this:
“When I voted I felt happy to place my signature on a ballot against the Dictator. I was hoping more people wake up and check the right box.”

That one of those white men struggling ashore on the 6th of June so many years ago should live to vote for America’s first Black woman President is a testament to this country and to all who serve.

And I admit that at first I felt uncomfortable with George’s word Dictator. It felt over the top. But then it set in that he is the one who knows, not me.

He is the one with the knowledge, and the experience, and the words we all must learn if we are to go through what his generation went through and re-emerge once again as America on the other side.

So much to earn. So much at stake. Please help us help George Mullins’s message reach everyone while it can still make a difference.

And please visit George’s Facebook page and share a like, a hug, or even a heart. He has already earned it and so much more. What a life.

Time for us to be worthy,
Bill
bill@penzeys.com 

Only The Decent People Can Save Us (Again) by Oliver Willis

Decency Is On The Ballot Read on Substack

(Plus Kal El bonus at the bottom.-A)

In the last few decades, we have been witness to systematic failures in American life. Time and time again the guardrails we believed existed turned out to be illusions, or at best, guardrails without any teeth. The courts, the financial institutions, the legislators, and especially the media – entrusted as the watchdogs of democracy – have absolutely failed.

There is only one group that, more often than not, has been up to the task: The people. The people keep showing up and at the very least, voting to put people in charge to clean up the messes. Of course, once those people are in office they too often respond with timidity and reluctance and don’t go as far as necessary to exercise the mandate they have been given, but the people did their jobs.

In every presidential election since 1988, with the exception of 2004, a plurality or majority of the public voted for the Democratic candidate. That is a data point you rarely see repeated and I am quite certain that if it was Republicans with such a popular vote winning streak both the party and the media would never shut up about it. That is a triumph of decency. It would be easy for voters to be snowed under by the right’s avalanche of lies and hate, ably amplified by their buck-chasing friends in the press, but the voters keep seeing through it.

To be certain, there are structural barriers. Neither Al Gore nor Hillary Clinton became president even though the will of the American people said they should have been. And the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden have had too many missed opportunities to push the ball forward, even though all three of these men had mandates to go quite far.

But what matters is that enough voters saw through the haze of absolute bullshit to send a message to do the right thing.

Here we are again. The Republican Party has always glowed bright with a hateful intensity, but Trump has allowed them to move that hate from Mitt Romney’s “quiet rooms” to spotlights like Madison Square Garden. The press and the oligarchs that own it at institutions like The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN and others, are quite happy to make billions of dollars from GOP fueled hate, as long as they can make a buck. They just don’t care about the consequences.

Voters still care. It may be naïve or cringe, or corny, but they believe. Voters have shown us that a majority of them are opposed to hate, opposed to racism, opposed to misogyny, opposed to treating people as second class based on their orientation. And a majority of them are pro-decency.

Yes, most of the pro-decency vote has a liberal ideology but it is more than that. There are people who just don’t like being crude bigots that spend all of their time shoving the faces of the vulnerable into the dirt. There are more of us than there are of them, and they have to effectively cheat or rig the rules to overcome our numbers.

Decency is on the march, but we are at a breaking point, again. Election day or week is not a “fever break” moment. No matter the outcome, but especially if decency is victorious again, we cannot go to sleep. The bad boss at the end of the game has not been defeated. 2004 showed us that. 2008 showed us that. 2012. 2016. 2020. The forces of darkness and depravity do not respect the will of the people and if you retreat, expecting that everyone will finally accept the supremacy of decency – the other side will see that as an opening.

The decent people need to stand up for what they believe in and then keep standing, keep pushing back, until the other people are broken – and then decency most continue to advance and remain forever vigilant.

I voted for decency, and I always will. I know I’m not alone.

If you like this newsletter, please consider becoming a paying subscriber by clicking here to join. I won’t be putting any of my regular columns behind a paywall and they will always be free. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far!

— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

Exclusive Kal-El Photo

Kal once again shows how excited he is to work by my side.

Let’s talk about giving North Carolina’s electoral votes to Trump….