This is a completely different video than the one I posted before. I am sorry that I posted that one. I hated the glitches in it. So I trashed it. I did it before I looked to see if It had comments. If you left comments please put them on this one. This one is longer and more in depth, but done with a higher resolution and done at 3 am this morning so I sound better and more coherent. There are no glitches of either video or audio that I could see / hear. I hope you will enjoy it. Today I am going to dump both computers starting at 12:30 pm. I have the laptop running if I need it. Hugs. Scottie
I read a bunch of headlines I have in open tabs and I talk about the stories they pertain to briefly. Nothing in depth, just generalized information in the public sphere of information. If there is a topic you wish me to cover in more detail please mention it in the comments. Hugs
It is OK and great to stop the video at the 8:30 mark. After that it gets seriously stupid. But before that it has a lot to say that is true and said in a semi comedic way. Hugs
Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo on his bicep that’s associated with white supremacist groups.
Hegseth, who has downplayed the role of military members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and railed against the Pentagon’s subsequent efforts to address extremism in the ranks, has said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest.
This week, however, a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time, shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to the unit’s leadership flagging a different tattoo reading “Deus Vult” that’s been used by white supremacists, concerned it was an indication of an “Insider Threat.”
Read the full article. Last month Hegseth sat for an interview with anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist Kirk Cameron.
"This falls along the line of Insider Threat and this is what we as members of the U.S. Army, District of Columbia National Guard and the Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection Team strive to prevent," Gaither warned of Hegseth's assignment at @JoeBiden inauguration. AP obtained the… pic.twitter.com/8rJRN8N2dg
BREAKING: Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, was flagged as a possible "Insider Threat" by a fellow service member due to a tattoo he has that’s associated with white supremacists. -AP pic.twitter.com/m5AWjKYbQt
November 18, 1910 Hundreds of suffragists marched on the House of Commons in London, England, with reinforcements arriving to replace the “fallen” and arrested. Protesting government inaction on the Conciliation Bill, which would have enfranchised about a million women, they were brutally forced back by London police, leading to a public outcry. Read more
November 18, 1964 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover publicly characterized Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as “the most notorious liar in the country.” King replied that Hoover “has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities, and responsibilities of his office.” The FBI vs. Martin Luther King Democracy Now
November 18, 1970 President Richard Nixon asked Congress for supplemental appropriations for the Cambodian government of Premier Lon Nol. Nixon requested $155 million in new funds for Cambodia — $85 million of which would be for military assistance, mainly in the form of ammunition.
November 18, 1989 More than 50,000 people took to the streets of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, demanding political reform. In the biggest demonstration in the country’s post-war history, protesters held up banners and chanted: “We want democracy now.” Read more
November 18, 1993 South Africa’s ruling National Party, and leaders of 20 other parties representing both blacks and whites, approved a new national constitution that provided fundamental rights to blacks and other non-whites, ending the apartheid system. South Africa held its first democratic multi-racial election on April 26, 1994.From the preamble: “WHEREAS there is a need to create a new order in which all South Africans will be entitled to a common South African citizenship in a sovereign and democratic constitutional state in which there is equality between men and women and people of all races so that all citizens shall be able to enjoy and exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms….” South African citizens in line to vote. Constitutional history of South Africa (2 separate pages)
November 18, 2001 In London, 100,000 marched against the U.S. and British attacks against Afghanistan.
Russia has been doing this, dealing out pain to the people of Ukraine while Biden refused to let him use the weapons to hit Russia making them feel the same pain. Biden now says OK when it looks like in three months there will be no choice but to give Russia what it wants or fight to the last person and lose anyway. It is sick, but tRump is a Russian / Putin toady. We failed to live up to a promise we made to Ukraine because of Biden’s out of touch fears from the 1950s. Hugs
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of a northern Ukraine city, killing 11 people including two children and injuring 84 others, officials said Monday.
The two children killed in the strike on Sumy late Sunday were a 9-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Six injured children are in critical condition, it said.
The attack damaged 15 buildings, including two educational facilities, the prosecutor’s office said. A search and rescue operation continued Monday, on the eve of the war’s 1,000-day milestone.
Sumy lies 40 kilometers (24 miles) from the Russian border.
Also Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden authorized for the first time the use of U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles by Ukraine to strike inside Russia, after extensive lobbying by Ukrainian officials.
The weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea’s decision to send thousands of troops to support Russia in the Kursk region where Ukraine mounted a military incursion over the summer.
It is the second time the U.S. has permitted the use of Western weapons inside Russian territory within limits after permitting the use of HIMARS systems, a shorter-range weapon, to stem Russia’s advance in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in May.
The first reaction from Ukraine to the long-awaited decision from the U.S. was notably restrained.
“Today, much is being said in the media about us receiving permission for the relevant actions. But strikes are not made with words. Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
Earlier, Zelenskyy said that Russia had launched a total of 120 missiles and 90 drones in a large-scale attack across Ukraine, including Sumy. Russia deployed various types of drones, he said, including Iranian-made Shaheds, as well as cruise, ballistic and aircraft-launched ballistic missiles.
The attack, which targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, came as fears are mounting about Moscow’s intentions to devastate Ukraine’s power generation capacity ahead of the winter.
Ukrainian defenses shot down 144 out of a total of 210 air targets, Ukraine’s air force reported.
“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine. Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris. In Mykolaiv, as a result of a drone attack, two people were killed and six others were injured, including two children,” Zelenskyy said.
Two more people were killed in the Odesa region, where the attack damaged energy infrastructure and disrupted power and water supplies, said local Gov. Oleh Kiper. Both victims were employees of Ukraine’s state-owned power grid operator, Ukrenergo, the company said hours later.
The combined drone and missile attack was the most powerful in three months, according to the head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration, Serhii Popko.
One person was injured after the roof of a five-story residential building caught fire in Kyiv’s historic center, according to Popko.
A thermal power plant operated by private energy company DTEK was “seriously damaged,” the company said.
Russian strikes have hammered Ukraine’s power infrastructure since Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, prompting repeated emergency power shutdowns and nationwide rolling blackouts. Ukrainian officials have routinely urged Western allies to bolster the country’s air defenses to counter assaults and allow for repairs.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday acknowledged carrying out a “mass” missile and drone attack on “critical energy infrastructure” in Ukraine, but claimed all targeted facilities were tied to Kyiv’s military industry.
Although Ukraine’s nuclear plants were not directly impacted, several electrical substations on which they depend suffered further damage, the U.N.’s nuclear energy watchdog said in a statement Sunday. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, only two of Ukraine’s nine operational reactors continue to generate power at full capacity.
The Russian military said Monday it intercepted and destroyed 59 Ukrainian drones overnight over several Russian regions. Two were downed over the Moscow region that surrounds the Russian capital, and three others over the neighboring Tula region. A total of 54 drones were destroyed over the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions on the border with Ukraine, according to a statement by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drones shot down outside of Moscow were heading toward the capital.
Kullab is an Associated Press reporter covering Ukraine since June 2023. Before that, she covered Iraq and the wider Middle East from her base in Baghdad since joining the AP in 2019.
November 16, 1928 An obscenity trial began for Radclyffe Hall’s novel, “The Well of Loneliness.” Great Britain banned it for its treatment of lesbianism, though it contained no explicit sexual references. A U.S. court in 1929 ruled similarly, for its sympathetic portrait of homosexuality, and because it “pleads for tolerance on the part of society.” Radclyffe Hall Read more
November 16, 1989 Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained and -supported death squads in El Salvador.In 1995 the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador linked the slayings to 19 members of the armed forces who were graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), a facility run by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia. Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. The graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. The Truth Commission’s report More on the School of the Americas
November 16, 1990 President George H. W. Bush issued Executive Order 12735 which found the spread of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) to constitute an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” He declared a state of national emergency to deal with this threat. The order reiterated U.S. policy to lead and seek multilaterally coordinated efforts to control the spread of CW and BW and directed the secretaries of State and Commerce to adopt a variety of export controls.
November 16, 1994 After receiving assurances from the United States, Britain, and France, the Ukrainian Parliament approved Ukraine’s agreement to follow the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapons state.
November 17, 1973 President Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” Read more
November 17, 1980 Hundreds were arrested at the Women’s Pentagon Action protest of patriarchy and its war-making. Read more
November 17, 1989 Riot police in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, arrested hundreds of people demanding the resignation of the leader of the Communist-led government. More than 15,000 people, mostly students, took part in the demonstration demanding democratic rights. [see November 18, 1989 below]
November 17, 2000 The Florida Supreme Court froze the tallying of the state’s presidential election returns, forbidding Secretary of State Katherine Harris to certify results of the vote count in the presidential race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
Mehdi Hasan then joins, first touching on the already-advancing relationship between the Trump and Netanyahu administrations as Israel prepares an annexation of Northern Gaza, before shifting back to the still-developing numbers from Tuesday’s blowout win by Trump and the GOP, looking at Trump’s wins among minority voters (particularly Latin men), and unpacking why his vision was able to appeal to groups he actively seeks to discriminate against. After expanding on the major role misogyny and racism played in grounding Trump’s campaign against Harris, Hasan and Emma parse through the divide between blaming the campaign and blaming the voters, discussing the complete gap in perception and reality around border crossings, crime, and inflation and the failure of messaging behind, before wrapping up the interview with what Democrats have to change about the way they do politics. Emma also touches on a note on fighting fascism from a French Leftist.
I talk about tRump’s new Sec Of Defense being a Christian nationalist fundamentalist fanatic, a white supremacist, and a hater of the LGBTQ+. I talk about how he wants to purge the ones he doesn’t like from the military and how tRump hopes to use him to purge the military of anyone not cis straight white Christian and totally loyalist to tRump, the Dear Leader.
November 15, 1917 About 20 women peacefully picketing for universal suffrage (right to vote), who had been arrested in front of the White House a few days earlier, were subjected to beatings and torture at Occoquan workhouse in Virginia. The National Women’s Party and other organizations had been picketing the White House and President WoodrowWilson as he traveled around the country eversince the inauguration of his second term.
Mary Winsor The incident became known as the “night of terror.” Wilson had led the country into the European war (later called World War I), by characterizing the U.S. mission as “making the world safe for democracy.” The women demonstrating outside in Lafayette Square called attention to the need for complete democracy at home, where half of its citizens lacked complete voting rights.Many women, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, had been arrested several times, usually for obstructing the sidewalk, and imprisoned before. When a judge learned of the abuse he freed the women. Public outrage over their treatment increased sympathy for the suffrage movement. left: Lucy Burns in Occoquan Workhouse, Washington, DC. right: Alice Paul, New Jersey, National Chairman, Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; Member, Ex-Officio, National Executive Committee, Woman’s Party, ca 1915.
November 15, 1940 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under the first peacetime conscription. Draft inductees leaving Wilmington, Delaware in November, 1941
November 15, 1943 Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler’s head of the SS (Schutzstaffel or protective rank), Gestapo, the Waffen SS and the Death’s Head units that ran the concentration camps, made public an order that Gypsies (more properly the Roma) and those of mixed Roma blood were to be put on “the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.” Gypsy prisoners arriving at a Concentration Camp
Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazi racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories of all races deemed “inferior,” as well as “asocial” types, such as hardcore criminals. Gypsies fell into both categories according to the thinking of Nazi ideologues and had been executed in droves both in Poland and the Soviet Union. The order of November 15 was merely a more comprehensive program, as it included the deportation to the Auschwitz death camp of Gypsies already in labor camps. The Gypsies in Germany Gypsies: Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust
November 15, 1957 U.S. Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) was founded. Thirty years later on November 20, SANE merged with the Nuclear Freeze organization (dedicated to freezing all nuclear weapons testing worldwide) at a joint convention in Cleveland to form SANE/FREEZE. Its successor is known as Peace Action, the largest U.S. peace organization. Sane Nuclear Policy poster, 1960 SANE history Peace Action
November 15, 1969 Following a symbolic three-day “March Against Death,” the second national “moratorium” against the Vietnam War opened with massive and peaceful demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (“New Mobe”), an estimated 500,000 demonstrators participated as part of the largest such gathering to date. It began with a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House (while Pres. Nixon watched the Purdue-Ohio State football game on TV) to the Washington Monument, where a mass rally with speeches was held.
Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Peter, Paul and Mary, and four different touring casts of the musical “Hair” entertained the demonstrators. The rally concluded with nearly 40 hours of continuous reading of known U.S. deaths (to that date) in the Vietnam War.
November 15, 1986 A government tribunal in Nicaragua convicted American Eugene Hasenfus, a CIA operative, of delivering arms to Contra rebels and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. He had been arrested when his plane was shot down by Sandanista troops. He was pardoned a month after his conviction (his last name means “rabbit’s foot” in German). Hasenfus under arrest
On Monday, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore honored one of his state’s most beloved military veterans, Harriet Tubman, by promoting Tubman posthumously to the rank of brigadier general in the state National Guard. Why yes, that’s General Harriet Tubman, who in addition to being a famous abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad was also the first woman to lead a US military operation during wartime.
Tubman’s history of military service doesn’t get the same attention as her activities as an abolitionist and helper of those who freed themselves from enslavement, which was already plenty enough to make her a hero. But after her final expedition to guide escapees from slavery North, she put her skills of disguise, concealment, and familiarity with Southern territory to use for the US Army when the Civil War broke out in 1861, serving as a spy, scout, and eventually, as the joint leader of an 1863 Army raid on plantations in South Carolina, which freed nearly 800 enslaved people and burned several of the plantations.
Here’s a cool thing: A 2022 CIA website article acknowledges that well before she formally became a military operative, her work for the Underground Railroad “applied sophisticated tradecraft including the use of disguises, clandestine communication, and assets and allies, who provided safe houses, transportation, and funding” — genuine praise for an intelligence operative.
Tubman was recruited for the Union cause by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and sent to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where she was assigned to work under Major General David Hunter, the head of Union operations there and in Georgia and Florida. As the CIA explains, she was trained as a nurse, and worked as one, but that also gave her the documents and funding necessary for her secret work, recruiting a spy ring of Black volunteers in the area, who gathered intelligence on plantations, commerce, Confederate troop positions, and the locations of “torpedoes” — barrels of gunpowder in rivers that could blow up any Union boats. Tubman was unable to read or write, but had an outstanding memory, making her a valuable spy without leaving any notes behind, encrypted or otherwise.
In 1863, Tubman moved from spying and reconnaissance to actually commanding Union troops in a raid on plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina’s “Lowcountry” region. Although she was not a commissioned officer, she planned and shared leadership duties with Col. James Montgomery, an abolitionist in charge of a Black Army regiment, the Second Carolina Volunteers. The goal of the raid was to rescue enslaved people, recruit the freed men to join the Union Army if they were willing, and to wipe out the rice plantations in the area.
Montgomery commanded about 300 men, and to prepare for the raid, Tubman was in charge of a group of eight scouts who made maps of the area and helped her get news of the coming raid to enslaved people so they could be ready to run for the Union gunboats from which the attack would be launched.
“She was fearless and she was courageous,” said Kate Clifford Larson, historian and author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. “She had a sensibility. She could get Black people to trust her and the Union officers knew that they were not trusted by the local people.”
On the night of June 1, 1863, Tubman, Montgomery, and the troops boarded three Union gunboats to head up the river; on the way, however, one of the steamboats ran aground and the troops had to transfer to the remaining vessels. Tubman’s reconnaissance of the area proved invaluable in avoiding torpedoes in the river, and for guiding the ships close to shore, where they launched smaller boats full of raiders to attack the plantations.
Just before the raid got underway, the gunboats broke formation and headed to different parts of the river, with Montgomery commanding one, the Harriet A. Weed, and Tubman leading the 150 soldiers on the John Adams. Just want to underline this: Tubman wasn’t serving as an adjunct to Montgomery, she was in charge of half the attacking force. In the wee hours of June 2, they attacked their assigned plantations.
Tubman later recalled that when the signal to attack was given, she saw enslaved people running to escape toward the Union boats at the riverside, with women carrying their babies and children and whatever supplies they could take along, including chickens, pigs, and pots of rice. The enslavers tried to chase them down, firing guns on them, reportedly killing one girl. We’ll hand off the narrative here to History.com, and add that we’d watch this movie:
As the escapees ran to the shore, Black troops in rowboats transported them to the ships, but chaos ensued in the process. Tubman, who didn’t speak the region’s Gullah dialect, reportedly went on deck and sang a popular song from the abolitionist movement that calmed the group down.
More than 700 escaped slavery and made it onto the gunboats. Troops also disembarked near Field’s Point, torching plantations, fields, mills, warehouses and mansions, causing a humiliating defeat for the Confederacy, including the loss of a pontoon bridge shot to pieces by the gunboats.
After the raiding gunboats docked in Beaufort, South Carolina, the first press report of the raid didn’t name Tubman, but it did say that the raid was led by a “She-Moses” under the command of Montgomery, and that the raid came off without a single injury to the Union forces. A later report in a Boston newspaper named Tubman as the hero; the editor was a friend of hers. At least 100 men freed during the raid joined the US Army.
Illustration via Library of Congress.
For all the news the story made at the time, Tubman didn’t get paid, and even after the war her petitions to receive a soldier’s pay for the raid were turned down, because women simply weren’t allowed in the Army, you silly goose. She later received a military pension on behalf of her late husband, a Union soldier, but not for herself. But when she died in 1913, she was buried with military honors; the US Army’s Military Intelligence Corps also inducted Tubman into its Hall of Fame in 2021.
Prior to the war, in 1858, abolitionist and eventual insurrectionist John Brown met Tubman and nicknamed her “General” for her courage. That was made official by Gov. Moore’s Veteran’s Day proclamation Monday, naming her a one-star general in the Maryland National Guard.
After Moore read the official order promoting Tubman, he presented the proclamation to Ernestine “Tina” Martin Wyatt, Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece, as a representative of Tubman’s family.
Thank you again for your service, General Tubman. Now if we can just get you on the $20 bill to replace that racist fuck-knuckle Andrew Jackson. (Snip)
Mary Winsor
Scottie's Playtime 