Category: History

Peace & Justice History for 8/14

It’s a busy date, but 3 cheers for Social Security!

August 14, 1935
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating unemployment compensation, old-age benefits and aid to dependent children.“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”
President Roosevelt signing Social Security Act of 1935 in the Cabinet Room of the White House.
Library of Congress photo
A comprehensive history: https://www.ssa.gov/history/
August 14, 1941
In the German Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, a group of prisoners had been chosen by the camp’s commander for death by starvation. Roman Catholic Fr. Maximilian Maria Kolbe offered himself for death instead of one of the condemned because the man had a family he needed to be alive to support. Fr. Kolbe was put to death on this day by lethal injection following two weeks of starvation.
Pope John Paul II declared him a Saint in 1982.
August 14, 1945
President Harry Truman announced that Japan, one week following the atomic bomb attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
August 14, 1959
The U.S.-launched Explorer VI satellite recorded the first photograph of Earth taken from space, at an altitude of 17,000 miles (27,400 km)
.
Read more: https://www.spaceanswers.com/solar-system/the-earth-from-afar-ten-incredible-images-of-our-planet-from-space/
August 14, 1966
Twenty people were arrested for trying to attend services at the white First Baptist Church in Grenada, Mississippi. They were charged with “disturbing divine worship.” Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) field staff member Jim Bulloch was arrested and his car fire-bombed while he was in jail.
August 14, 1968
400 anti-apartheid students occupied the university in Cape Town, South Africa, to protest its refusal to hire a black professor.
August 14, 1976
Majella O’Hare, a young Catholic girl, was shot dead by British soldiers while walking with other children to confession near her home in Ballymoyer, Whitecross, County Armagh.The soldiers, initially denying they had fired any weapons, claimed that the patrol had been fired upon by an unidentified gunman. But there were serious doubts about the army’s claim. Eyewitness reports failed to confirm it and, unofficially, police investigating the case referred to the army’s “phantom gunman.”
The same day 10,000 Northern Irish gathered at a demonstration in Andersontown, organized by the Women’s Peace Movement (later known as Peace People).Majella O’Hare
How it happened from people who were there: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/other/1976/murray76.htm
August 14, 1980

After months of labor turmoil, more than 16,000 Polish workers seized control of the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk. They helped form Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity), the first independent labor union anywhere in the Soviet bloc, as the Warsaw Pact nations were known. Under the leadership of Lech Valensa [lek va wen´suh] and others, it helped unite the broad political, social and religious opposition to the Communist government. Long-range look at Solidarity: https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/21746

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august141935

Egyptians of Old Could Have Used Hydraulic Lifts for Work

Ancient Egyptian Pyramids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

Why Does God Change?

For those of us who grew up on Sesame Street.

Please hit the link for a great song by one of my favorite singers… who we will soon, unfortunately lose. There is a bit of peace and a removal of all my adult worries when I hear that song, even if for just a moment.

I hit planet earth just a bit before Bert and Ernie, Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus. Just. And while my street didn’t look anything like Sesame Street, I was welcome there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deebKNI-dTE&list=RDdeebKNI-dTE&index=2

There in the midst of the Vietnam War lived this street where good things and some scary things happened, but at the end of the hour it was all alright. There was a world where little boys and girls lived safe lives, no one got hurt, no one was afraid, and no one ever cried alone. One day I grew up and left Sesame Street, thinking I was too old, too mature. Never would I have considered just how much I miss that quiet little community just waiting for me there on Channel 11.

Thank you Jim Henson.

Hugs all. Randy

Strangely Blogged: TWGB: The Thrill of the Crowd

More cogent commentary!

https://vixenstrangelymakesuncommonsense.blogspot.com/2024/08/twgb-thrill-of-crowd.html

(snip-embedded tweet of photos from various people at Harris-Walz rallies, on page)

There are a handful of stories percolating around TrumpWorld that are pretty fascinating to me–for starters, yesterday, we found out that the Trump Campaign had been HACKED! Possibly by foreign actors hostile to the United States, with the intent of influencing the election! 

To which my first reaction as a 2016 Clinton voter is:

 <<<<HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA>>>>

 But no, really, that is horrible. The details are a little funky, though. The hack seems to have been an exploit due to a phishing email–shouldn’t campaigns be totally training their people on how not to get “reeled in” by now? Also, Politico got a trove of docs from “Robert” from an AOL email address which included a dossier on JD Vance. 

So, let me get this straight: a hacker using a basic scammer skillset, with an AOL account, dumps docs on a Trump-friendly outfit that includes info on the Appalachian-adjacent Yale albatross that rumor has it some Trump advisors want to deep-six? And of course, having learned their lesson from eight years ago (and Trump being Republican) the very scrupulous media will not lend our enemies aid and comfort by divulging wrongfully obtained materials?

I’m just saying you could be forgiven if a little part of you wanted to believe this was an inside job. I mean, I don’t doubt the campaign could have been exploited But there is exploited, and then there is….

I don’t know what this is. 

Anyway– in other news Trump is obviously going batshit over Kamla Harris’ crowds: he’s claiming they aren’t real, but AI.

The “reflection of the mirror like finish” picture is something I saw on Twitter from D’Souza–obviously a recommended source for all your TrumpWorld bullshit needs. And cheating about CROWD SIZE is even worse than cheating about the ballot box, didn’t you know? 

But of course, obliging Trump sheeple forwarded actual AI-generated crowd pictures they themselves created to get mad at. 

There’s something dark here, of course: Trump always cared about crowd size. It’s the first humiliating lie he made Sean Spicer insist on–the Trump inauguration was the biggest, Period. It’s not the mere showman’s desire for grandiosity with him–it’s the narcissistic/strongman complex. The crowd size is one way to visually demonstrate strength. It’s a way of saying his is the voice of the people because the people are with him. This is why he now references that his crowd on 1/6 was so great. Compared to the historic March on Washington.

But by casting uncertainty on his opponent’s crowd size, he is making the game interesting again: it’s a conspiracy against him! The impeachments, the “STOLLEN” election, the various criminal indictments and other court cases, the attempted assassination by “them” (Crooks and who else, it is never clear and never going to be), a hack and now the media are conspiring to make his crowds look SMALL! (They always did–he always insisted they never panned their cameras to show his true crowd size. The lying press!) 

Appalling lies are his crutch. He claims no one knows Kamala Harris’ last name. She has been Kamala Devi Harris her whole life. Her last name comes from her Jamaican-born father of African descent. Maybe he is thinking of Shady Vance, his running mate, who is the real one with some authenticity questions. After all, he was never Trump, and called him “Hitler” and now he’s lovey-dovey?

Maybe I should just let everyone know that now that Vance is going out to parking lots and doing uncomfortable interviews like this Sunday, some MAGAs wonder how he would do at the top of the ticket. (Don’t worry Boss, he will get Fuentes back! But for whom?)

I’m just saying. People do wonder that. Since Trump doesn’t want to get his ass out there, I guess the crowds will decide. 

Doesn’t that make things interesting? (Watch for Trump to lie about the ballot box too. I hear he does that.)

DISCLAIMER: While I don’t claim any psychological expertise, Trump seems to me to be a person with a severe psychopathology with respects to his self-esteem, and is not just a sufferer, but a carrier. As Trump descends in fortune or feels cornered, he will encourage “his people” to feel the same way. It is not a healthy dynamic for our country. This is why his loss this time around needs to be fairly thorough. 

at August 12, 2024 

Peace & Justice History 8/12

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august12

August 12, 1953
The first Soviet hydrogen (thermonuclear or fusion) bomb, far more potentially damaging than those dropped on Japan, was exploded in the Kazakh desert, then part of the Soviet Union. Igor Vasziljevics Kurcsatov, head of the Soviet Uranium Committee, said to Josef Stalin at the time: “The atomic sword is in our hand. It is time to think about the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
 The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwpnprog.html
August 12, 1982
Open missile tubes on Trident sub
Twelve were arrested in an attempted blockade of the first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, entering the Hood Canal in the state of Washington. In motorboats, sailboats and small handmade wooden vessels, the demonstrators were objecting to the presence of nuclear weapons in Seattle. The Coast Guard overturned some of the vessels with water cannon.
August 12, 1995

Thousands demonstrated in Philadelphia and other cities in support of journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal (on death row for murder since 1982) in the largest anti-death-penalty demonstrations in the U.S. to date.
Who is Mumia Abu-Jamal? https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/amr510012000en.pdf

Peace & Justice History 8/11

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august111894

August 11, 1894
Federal troops forced some 1,200 jobless workers across the Potomac River and out of Washington, D.C.
  Jack London
Led by an unemployed activist, “General” Charles “Hobo” Kelly, the jobless group’s “soldiers” included young journalist Jack London, known for writing about social issues, and miner/cowboy William ”Big Bill” Haywood who later organized western miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). “Big Bill” Haywood 
Read about “Big Bill”: https://apwu.org/news/big-bill-haywood-wobbly-giant
August 11, 1958
A drugstore chain in Wichita, Kansas, agreed to serve all its customers after weeks of sit-ins at Dockum’s lunch counter by local African-Americans who wanted an end to segregation. On this day, as several black Wichitans were sitting at the counter even though the store refused to serve them, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at them for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager and said, simply, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” He was the owner, Robert Dockum. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the company and was told by the a vice president ”he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc., to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color,” statewide. This was the first success of the sit-in movement which soon spread to Oklahoma City and other towns in Kansas, but is often thought to have started in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960.
August 11, 1984 

Prior to his weekly radio address, unaware that the microphone was open and he was broadcasting, President Ronald Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Many Americans and others throughout the world were concerned about the President’s apparently flippant attitude towards nuclear war at a time of increasing tension between the two major nuclear powers.Among other things, the U.S. had begun a major strategic arms buildup, adding many thousands of additional nuclear warheads along with a broad range of new delivery systems: long-range bombers including 100 B-1B stealth bombers and MX (10-warhead) ICBMs, considered first-strike weapons; intermediate-range missiles to be deployed in Europe; 3000 cruise missiles; and Trident nuclear submarines with sea-launched cruise missiles.
Additionally, Reagan had proposed building the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative of anti-ballistic missiles, a destabilizing influence on the nuclear balance. The Nuclear Arms Control Legacy of Ronald Reagan: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004-07/arms-control-today/looking-back-nuclear-arms-control-legacy-ronald-reagan

Sunday toon

Wee Pals by Morrie Turner for August 11, 2024

Wee Pals Comic Strip for August 11, 2024

https://www.gocomics.com/weepals/2024/08/11

I keep forgetting to read these until Sundays.

Peace & Justice history for 8/10

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august10

August 10, 1883
Adrian “Cap” Anson refused to field his visiting Chicago White Stockings team in an exhibition baseball game if the Toledo Mud Hens included star catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker in their lineup. Chicago’s Captain Anson, who grew up in slaveholding Iowa, said he wouldn’t share the diamond with a non-white player. After more than an hour’s delay, Charlie Morton, the Toledo manager, insisted that if Chicago forfeited the game, it would also lose its share of the gate receipts; Anson relented.
Moses Fleetwood Walker
Morton had not planned to have Walker catch due to injury, but insisted on putting him in at centerfield, despite Cap Anson’s objections.

August 10, 1948

Gay rights activist Harry Hay organized what later became the Mattachine Society (originally ~ Foundation), a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went village-to-village advocating social justice.
Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation: https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Mattachine:_Radical_Roots_of_the_Gay_Movement

August 10, 1984
Two Plowshares activists, Barb Katt and John LaForge, damaged a guidance system for a Trident submarine with hammers at a Sperry plant in Minnesota. In sentencing them to six months’ probation, U.S. District Judge Miles W. Lord commented, “Why do we condemn and hang individual killers, while extolling the virtues of warmongers?“
“ Barb Katt
More plowshares actions: https://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue42/articles/a_history_of_direct_disarmament.htm

August 10, 1988
President George H.W. Bush signed legislation apologizing and compensating for the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.
President Franklin Roosevelt had authorized the round-up of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry, some of whom were American citizens, as security risks. Most lost all their property and were moved to relocation camps for the duration of the war (though not in Hawaii, then not yet a state, where public opposition would not allow it).


August 10, 1993
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

August 10, 2005
Mehmet Tarhan was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on two charges of “insubordination before command” and “insubordination before command for trying to escape from military service” because he refused to serve in the Turkish Army.
He would not sign any paper, put on a uniform, nor allow his hair and beard to be cut. He went on two extended hunger strikes to protest his arrest and abuse while in Sivas Military Prison. War Resisters International has supported his efforts throughout his ordeal. He was released unexpectedly from prison after one year.
Read more: https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2005/turkey-conscientious-objector-mehmet-tarhan-hunger-strike-more-32-days

Harris Campaign: Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference

August 8, 2024, 3:56 pm | in

This is quite good:

Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference
Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was (No photo on the page.)
Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ public meltdown. We have a lot to say about it. Here are some initial thoughts – with more to come.

He hasn’t campaigned all week. He isn’t going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds.The facts were hard to track and harder to find in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meltdown this afternoon. He lied. He attacked the media. He made excuses for why he’s off the campaign trail. We’re here to help because his staff clearly isn’t.

But first, an important reminder on the question Donald didn’t answer: how he will vote on the Florida abortion referendum. (He has been ducking this question since April.) We worked to pin down reality so Donald Trump, bless his heart, doesn’t have to. Here are the facts:

We had 12,000 and 15,000 people in Wisconsin and Michigan yesterday, respectively (Not 2,000.)

The ABC debate is September 10th. Not the 25th.

People have spoken to bigger crowds than Donald Trump. (Obama, Clinton, literally anyone at Lollapalooza, Coachella, the World Cup…)

January 6th was decidedly nothing like MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And Trump did not get a bigger crowd than Martin Luther King Jr. on that historic day.

There was famously not a “peaceful transfer” of power after the 2020 election, which Donald Trump fought to overturn. (Famously.) Five police officers died because of January 6th.

Donald Trump said he was off the trail this week because of the Democratic convention. (That convention is not happening this week.)

Trump said they have commercials at a level no one else does. (He is being drastically outspent on the airwaves.)

Governor Josh Shapiro is actually a great guy.

Project 2025 author Tom Homan, the “father” of Trump’s cruel child separation policy, is not a person to praise.

Jewish people should not “have their head examined” for not supporting him. (That’s actually antisemitic.)

Trump said he was not complaining. He in fact very much was.

Trump does not know the difference between asylum seekers and an insane asylum.

Donald Trump does not “cherish” the Constitution.

Abortion is not “less of an issue” for voters. It is not “subdued.” It is not a “small issue” for voters, despite how much Donald Trump wants it to be. Donald Trump did not answer the abortion question “very well in the debate.”

Everybody did not want Roe v. Wade overturned. The American people do not support states banning abortion.

After-birth abortion does not exist.

Minnesota and Virginia are not the same.

Donald Trump doesn’t know what progressive means.

Kamala Harris does not want to take away everyone’s guns. Tim Walz is a gun owner.

Vice President Harris does not support an arms embargo on Israel.

Donald Trump could not remember Tim Walz’s name.

Donald Trump’s tax cuts are not the biggest in history.

We don’t know what “the transgender became such a big thing” is supposed to mean.

Donald Trump will cut Social Security – just like he proposed every year he was in office.

Government was not weaponized against Trump and Steve Bannon.

Mail ballots are secure.

We agree – Elon IS a different kind of guy.

There are no polls that say Donald Trump is going to win in a landslide.

The MAGA base is not 75% of the country.

https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/harris-campaign-donald-trumps-very-good-very-normal-press-conference/