Category: Death

Austrian CO Executed, Fatman Dropped, Rocky Flats, & More in Peace & Justice History for 8/9

August 9, 1943

Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector who reported for induction but refused to serve in the army of the Third Reich, was executed by guillotine at Brandenburg-Gorden prison. An American, Gordon Zahn, wrote about Jägerstätter while researching the subject of German Roman Catholics’ response to Hitler.
Zahn’s book, In Solitary Witness, influenced Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to stand against the Vietnam War by bringing the previously secret Pentagon Papers to public attention.
Against the Stream by Erna Putz, the story of the courage of Franz Jägerstätter
August 9, 1945
The second atomic bomb, “Fatman,” was dropped on the arms-manufacturing and key port city of Nagasaki. The plan to drop a second bomb was to test a different design rather than one of military necessity. The Hiroshima weapon was a gun type, the Nagasaki weapon an implosion type, and the War Department wanted to know which was the more effective design.
Responsibility for the timing of the second bombing had been delegated by President Harry Truman before the Hiroshima attack to Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group on Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific.

Scheduled for August 11 against Kokura, the raid was moved forward to avoid a five-day period of bad weather forecast to begin on August 10. English translation of leaflet air-dropped over Japan after the first bomb [excerpt]: “We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.”
Of the 195,00 population of the city (many of its children had been evacuated due to bombing in the days just prior), 39,000 died and 25,000 were injured, and 40% of all residences were damaged or destroyed.“
What on earth has happened?” said my mother, holding her baby tightly in her arms. “Is it the end of the world?”
Hear an eyewitness account of this terrrible event
 Photographic exhibit of the aftermath
August 9, 1956

20,000 women demonstrated against the pass laws in Pretoria, South Africa. Pass laws required that Africans carry identity documents with them at all times. These books had to contain stamps providing official proof the person in question had permission to be in a particular town at a given time. Initially, only men were forced to carry these books, but soon the law also compelled women to carry the documents.
August 9, 1966
Two hundred people sat in at the New York City offices of Dow Chemical Company to protest the widespread use in Vietnam of Dow’s flammable defoliant Napalm
.
Napalm in use in Vietnam
Read more about Dow Chemical and the use of napalm 
August 9, 1987
Hundreds were arrested in an all-day blockade of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Golden, Colorado. Protests at Rocky Flats had been going on for some years.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august9

7 clips from The Majority Report. They cover everything from ICE staging photo ops to tRump’s lies being corrected on TV, to vote blue no …. not for Zohran Mamdani and then the genocide in Gaza

 

Odie walked the Rainbow bridge about 4:20 pm on 8-5-2025

The weekend before this last one Odie started throwing up and he was not eating as well as he normally did.  On Monday last week Ron took him to the vet.  After 800 dollars the vet said she felt he had no blockage and most likely he had an ulcer.  She gave us several medications and told us to get him some over the counter Pepcid.  We managed to give him his medications in a syringe. 

But on Thursday we took him back to the vet for a bolus of fluid because he still was not eating nor drinking.   We increased his new make him hungry ear rub.   All weekend we tried hard to entice him to eat or drink.  On Monday I had a doctor’s appointment.  When I got home I suggested that Ron call the vet.  He told me he got Odie to drink something and said he heard cats can make huge turn a round after not eating or drinking for days.  I felt what it really was a cry for more time.  As Odie seemed stable and not in pain I let things be, after all Ron watches a lot of animal vet shows and I hoped he was correct.   

For the first time since Odie got ill he did not leave his safe space which is Ron’s closet that day.  Ron tried hard to get him to drink or eat.   This morning (Tuesday 8-5-2025) I told Ron he needed to call the vet and he agreed, he had faced the fact of Odie’s situation and realized that Odie was passing and not able to get better. 

The vet told us to bring him in around 4 pm or 1600 for those on a 24 hour clock.  All day both Ron and I checked on him and Ron kept trying to get him to eat or drink.  The veterinarian hospital is only like five or 7 minutes away from us.   At about 3:50 pm Ron set the carrier on the counter and put a fresh blanket in it.  I picked Odie up from the closet and realized he had no strength to even support himself anymore.  Once I got him in the carrier he did not even try to turn around and we struggled to get his tail completely in the carrier.  I ended up having to reach around him to pull the blanket further in so we could secure the door.  

I needed Ron to carry the carrier to the vet’s office, but while I had been with every furry family member when they walked the rainbow bridge, Ron has not joined me during the procedure as his feelings are so strong and he has struggled with the death of each one.  I feel it is the last act of love I can do for them.  My last duty for them.  

The vet asked if we both wanted to stay and I said yes.  I was surprised Ron did also.  The vet assistant took Odie to have an IV inserted.  I asked Ron if he was sure he wanted to stay instead of going to the waiting room or the car.  He wanted to stay.  When they brought Odie back we petted him until the doctor came in to do the finial step.  As first the sedative and then the last medication was injected Ron sat near him and talked to him.  I stood next to him and gently rubbed his head and neck fur.  I said a few things verbally and a lot more mentally.  I could see Ron was doing the same.  I was proud of how he handle a very painful experience.  The one who was crying the most was the vet, she said that her cat was a ginger and she really liked Odie when he was visiting them.  

I have included a few pictures of Odie below.   Best wishes, Purrs, and Hugs for all who want them.  

Odie as a Kitten

 

Odie older.

Odie in his favorite spot to get my love and attention.   My desk.

 

 

 

 

 

Four clips from The Majority Report. One on Gaza war crimes committed by Israel, one on ICE, one on tRump’s attacks on schools, and one on the jobs numbers.

VRA, 1st Electrocution, Hiroshima, & More In Peace & Justice History for 8/6

August 6, 1890
At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison.
William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes.

As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead.
——————————————————————————-
August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA
The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan.

Hiroshima ruins
An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops.
The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets.
Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings
  <Hiroshima survivor 
Found watch stopped at the time of explosion>
Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb
On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
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August 6, 1957
Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.
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August 6, 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states.
The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times.
Introduction to the Voting Rights Act
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August 6, 1990

George Galloway
The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions  “ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .”
When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes 
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August 6, 1998
Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon.
The headlines when it happened
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August 6, 1998
Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.


Sachio Ko-Yin and Daniel Sicken
Read about the Minuteman III Plowshares action 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august6

Whistleblower: 10-year-old Palestinian boy ‘gunned down’ after receiving food aid

Former US Green Beret says Israel committed war crimes at Gaza food distribution site | BBC News

Peace Ribbons & More, In Peace & Justice History For 8/4

August 4, 1964
The Pentagon reported a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin [see August 2, 1964]. But there was no such activity reported at the time by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick.
One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who was later captured and held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992:
” I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there . . . There was nothing there but black water and American firepower.”
Nearly three decades later during the Gulf War, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget “our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
August 4, 1964
FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers buried deep in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York to heavily segregated Mississippi that year to help register voters with the support of CORE.

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman
At the time, fewer than 10% of eligible black Mississippians were registered to vote.
The three young men and many others were part of Freedom Summer, a massive voter registration and education project organized by the Council of Federated organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of major civil rights organizations.
Watch a video 
Here is a transcription of what was written on the chalkboard (photo below) this August day in 1964:
Yesterday – Negro woman arrested in Hattiesburg for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman.
• 400 attended mass meeting in Marks.
• Tallahatchie Co. – 24 people tried to register to vote in Charleston; at least one man told he would lose his job as a result.
Today – 6 youths arrested in Greenwood while singing in front of a store. One boy reported beaten.
• Local girl missing since Sunday in Natchez
• $200 each bond paid by 2 SNCC workers arrested in Anguilla (Sharkey Co.) yesterday for passing out vote leaflets.

This is a close-up of the chalk-board beside the front door of the COFO headquarters building in Jackson, Mississippi. (Transcript just above.)
Read more 
August 4, 1985
Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.


Maggie Wade, who traveled to Washington, DC from Indiana with her daughter,
sitting at the Pentagon with her embroidery panel of the Ribbon Project.
Photo © Ellen Shub

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august4

In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage

Doctor Gives Eyewitness Account Of Gaza Horrors| Dr. Ambereen Sleemi | TMR

And In Not What It Initially Appears To Be,

Charlotte Clymer with another interesting story about rightwingers.

Why Sydney Sweeney Needs to Be Canceled by Charlotte Clymer

Her career needs to end. Read on Substack

Actually, this has nothing to do with Sydney Sweeney.

I’ve seen some of her movies and shows. She’s a good actor. She seems nice. I have no real opinion of her beyond that.

The rightwing media ecosystem is currently obsessed with Ms. Sweeney, and per their usual outrage machine schtick, they’ve made her their latest vehicle for claiming Democrats are out-of-touch with America.

This week, Fox News and various other conservative outlets have spent considerable time claiming that Democrats are furious over a jeans advertisement featuring Ms. Sweeney—the details of their supposed outrage are too absurd to get into here, and I’d rather not insult your intelligence by pretending you should care.

But I figure tens of millions of Trump supporters are feverishly googling “Democrats” and “Sydney Sweeney” for that sweet, sweet hit of outrage to feed their addiction, and it occurred to me that a provocative headline could be a great opportunity to get them here and offer a read-out on what Democrats and progressives are currently, actually, passionately discussing.

I’m in approximately ~5,000 group chats with fellow Democrats (heavy sigh), give or take a few, and Sydney Sweeney has not come up once in any of them. Not a single one.

Here’s what we’ve really been talking about this week:

We’re pretty horrified by the ongoing horror in Gaza. Children there are starving-to-death, and the Israeli military has brutally slaughtered more than 1,000 innocent civilians attempting to get food assistance, almost all of which is being blocked by Netanyahu’s government.

All of our allies—including the United Kingdom—have been urgently pleading with Netanyahu to end the blockade and feed starving people in Gaza and please, oh please, stop shooting at them.

We’re wondering why Republican Christians in Congress would disregard Christ’s clear teachings on this matter. Pope Leo XIV condemned “the very grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, where the civilian population is crushed by hunger and remains exposed to violence and death.”

But hey, what the hell does he know?

We’re disgusted by the cover-up over the Epstein files, and it’s fairly obvious to everyone that Donald Trump is desperately attempting to conceal and distract from his involvement in a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children.

Remember when the Republican Party pretended to care about pedophiles and sex trafficking and the so-called “Deep State” and Trump pandered to them for votes by claiming he would released the Epstein files and then he didn’t?

We’ve been talking all month about the fall-out of Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill and the fact that upwards of 17 million Americans will lose their health care coverage and millions will lose food assistance and a ton of rural hospitals are about to close down.

We have no idea how we’re going to help all these people when that legislation is fully implemented, and in discussing how to get medical treatment for the sick and food for the hungry, we don’t really care who these vulnerable folks voted for last year.

We’re considerably worried about the country’s total unpreparedness for natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and flooding and earthquakes because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have gutted the NOAA and the National Weather Service and FEMA.

We imagine a lot of people are going to needlessly die in flood waters and devastating cyclones because of Republican incompetence and cruelty, and again: we have no idea how we’re going to help these folks when that happens.

We’ve been talking a lot about the accelerating erosion of constitutional protections and the Trump administration openly forcing colleges and corporations to pay him a bribe in order to avoid being targeted by his dictatorial madness.

We’ve been talking about Trump’s efforts to silence Stephen Colbert and his other most prominent critics in pop culture, except, of course, when he’s too chickenshit to take on the creators of South Park.

We wonder how the Constitution will survive this era. We wonder how the courts can resist threats of violence. We wonder how democracy can endure when even the most concerned Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, have largely given up on their oaths.

Sydney Sweeney and which endorsements she’s landed and what ads she’s appearing in and what products she’s hawking to the public — none of that matters to us.

If anything, in regards to Ms. Sweeney, we’re embarrassed for the shamelessness of Republicans who are attempting to exploit her as a distraction from the death and destruction they’re causing and enabling.

Maybe if we got a hungry or sick child in a rural part of the country to record a video talking shit about Ms. Sweeney, that would be enough for Trump and Republicans to pay attention to their suffering. (snip)