Category: Violence

Peace & Justice History for 8/18

I’ve been away from the computer a lot again today, and I apologize. I’ve had ideas, decided against them, maybe one or two will still make it but another day, you know how it goes. I would be unforgiveably remiss to not post this history for this date, though, so here it is!

August 18, 1914
In another step in the ethnic intimidation that led ultimately to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces. Under the guise of collecting war contributions (WWI had just begun), stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 shops and stalls owned by Armenians were burned at the Diyarbekir bazaar. Chronology of the Armenian Genocide
❎💃🥂⭐🥂💃❎
August 18, 1920
Women throughout the U.S. won the right to vote when the Tennessee legislature approved the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the last of 36 states then required to approve it). An amendment for universal suffrage was first introduced in Congress in 1878, and Wyoming had granted suffrage in state law by 1890.

This amendment to enfranchise all American women had been introduced annually for 41 years without passage; it had gotten two-thirds of both houses of Congress to approve it just the year before. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In the Tennessee House, 24-year-old Representative Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification.  At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage.
“
Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment (National Archives)
August 18, 1963
 James Meredith
James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment at “Ole Miss” a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards.
.
James Meredith being escorted to his classes by
U.S. marshals and the military.  Who was James Meredith
August 18, 1964
South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country’s refusal to reform its racially separatist apartheid system.
Read more 
August 18, 1977
Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He died while in custody from abuse during the weeks of interrogation that followed.

Steve Biko
“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.””The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Biko speech in Cape Town, 1971

How pit bulls got a bad reputation

Why do so many people think pit bulls are violent?

Peace & Justice History for 8/16

August 16, 1953
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the constitutional monarch of Iran, dismissed the elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq, without the approval of the parliament. In appointing Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi in his place, the Shah was following the coup plan, code-named TPAJAX, developed by the CIA under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore), and Great Britain’s intelligence service, MI6.
About Mohammad Mosaddeq:  https://www.iranchamber.com/history/mmosaddeq/mohammad_mosaddeq.php
The real story according to CIA records: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/ciacase/EXL.pdf

========================================================
August 16, 1963
Buddhists staged protests across South Vietnam against the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic who removed Buddhists from important government positions and replaced them with Catholics. Buddhist monks protested Diem’s intolerance of other religions and the methods he used to silence them. Several Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest of the war being waged against insurgents in the south, and against North Vietnam.
The Buddist monk Quang Duc became the first to kill himself in an anti-government protest in Vietnam in June, 1963 20,000 Buddhists in silent march for peace, Hue, South Vietnam. 1966

New data shows violent crime dropping sharply in major U.S. cities

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/12/violent-crime-harris-trump-election

Illustration of a downward arrow made of crime scene tape.

Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios

New preliminary data from major U.S. cities shows a sharp drop in violent crime in the first half of the year — more than 25% in some communities — as the COVID-era crime wave recedes.

Why it matters: The drop in violent crime puts a serious dent in one of the most frequently used lines of attack by former President Trump and his allies, who have sought to tie Democrats to the issue since 2020.

  • It also gives Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor in San Francisco and California attorney general, a potent defense against attacks from the right on crime.

By the numbers: An Axios analysis of data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found an overall 6% decline in violent crime among 69 cities during the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

  • 54 of the 69 major cities in the report saw drops in violent crime — defined as homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — in the first half of 2024, according to the Axios review.
  • Columbus, Ohio, experienced the largest percentage decline in violent crime in the nation, with a massive 41% drop so far in 2024. Omaha, Nebraska, was second with a 30% decrease.
  • Miami and Washington, D.C., so far, have seen 29% declines in violent crime.
  • Austin, Texas, saw a 28% drop, followed by New Orleans with a 26% decrease. Both cities have been under fire for rising crime rates in recent years.

The intrigue: The Axios review also found that the number of homicides in the 69 reported cities fell by more than 17% during the first half of 2024 compared to the last period last year.

  • Boston experienced a dramatic 78% drop in homicides.
  • Philadelphia was among others that saw a big fall in homicides, with a 42% decrease in 2024.

Between the lines: The Major Cities Chiefs Association’s preliminary data did not include New York City — the nation’s largest city — since it did not submit violent crime numbers to the organization for the first half of 2024.

  • Data from New York City, which is released on its own website, couldn’t be compared to other cities in this report.
  • The NYPD’s communications team — seeking to shape discourse around crime in New York — has taken a substantially more aggressive stance with politicians, the media and members of the public this year.
 

State of play: President Biden immediately seized on the new preliminary violent crime numbers showing a decline to tout the Our American Rescue Plan’s assistance to police and gun violence legislation.

  • “Americans are safer today than when Vice President Harris and I took office,” Biden said in a statement.
  • “I will continue to urge Congress to fund 100,000 additional police officers and crime prevention and community violence intervention programs, and make commonsense gun safety reforms such as a ban on assault weapons.”

The other side: Trump has repeatedly posted misleading claims on social media that Harris has helped free people the Trump campaign described as dangerous criminals, according to the Washington Post.

  • “Harris is a pro-criminal extremist,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Post.
  • Trump also has falsely claimed that many migrants who have or are trying to cross the border are coming from mental institutions and will commit violent crimes in large numbers.

Reality check: An Axios review of crime data along the U.S.-Mexico border found that those cities have some of the nation’s lowest violent crime rates.

The bottom line: Facts and data about crime are important, but history shows political campaigns can ignore the facts to exploit people’s fears about crime to change the narrative.

AP News: An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school kills at least 80 people, Palestinian health officials say

AP News: An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school kills at least 80 people, Palestinian health officials say

What If This God Thing Is All A Lie?

An Algerian Boxer vs Elon Musk, JK Rowling, and A Ton Of Hate

The Gunfighter | A Short Film by Eric Kissack (narrated by Nick Offerman)

In a small town in the old west, a lone and weary gunfighter enters a saloon. As he walks through the room surrounded by the people of the town, a voice begins narrating the scene, telling us exactly who this gunfighter is. But unlike every classic western to use the narrator trope, the characters in this film can hear the voice. This omniscient narrator quickly begins divulging the deepest, darkest secrets of the people in the saloon. He exposes infidelity, homosexuality, prejudice and even a bit of bestiality. As the story unfolds it becomes evident that the voice is a bloodthirsty bastard that wants nothing more than to see the people of the town kill each other in a needless gunfight.

Britain burns while liberals check facts

Stewart Lee

Traditional news outlets flagellate themselves when inaccurate. But the rightwing instigators of last week’s riots aren’t restricted by concepts such as truth

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/11/britain-burns-while-liberals-check-facts-riots-nigel-farage

(Seems like good commentary.)


Let’s get ready to rhumble! As heroic locals and beleaguered police battle to stop cocaine-fuelled hard-right rioters burning people to death, the laughing faces of ITV’s Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly hang suspended in the smoke shrouding buildings in Rotherham and Tamworth. Watch us wreck the mike!! Psyche!!!

The greatest trick Nigel Farage ever pulled, appearing in December’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, was looking normal to the ITV millions by eating a pizza covered with some penises. How Ant and Dec laughed as Nigel’s EU views were left un-factchecked by current affairs titans such as Britney Spears’s sister and a man from JLS. Psyche!

And now Britain burns in Farage-flavoured flames, minorities prepare escape packs, policemen are battered by cokehead patriots with swastika tattoos, and sausage rolls are looted from Greggs because blah blah blah Muslims. Are Ant and Dec proud? Straight up proovin’ we can getcha groovin’. This track’s boomin’! It ain’t no hype!

A 17-year-old boy, born and raised in Wales to parents from the safe country of Rwanda (which is largely Christian), has now been charged for last week’s horrendous murders. However, hysterical social media accounts had already claimed the perpetrator was a cross-channel Muslim from Syria, called Ali Al-Shakati, which translates as “I Have to Go to My Apartment”. I don’t know Arabic but I assume “Apartment” was his surname and “I Have to Go to My” was a string of unnecessary first names, like what those foreigners have.

Señor Apartment’s guilt was amplified online by Farage, bypassing the tedious opportunity of asking questions in the parliament he is paid to attend, who wondered, “Was this guy being monitored by the security services? … I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us,” having got his information from Andrew Tate, a misogynist influencer currently facing charges of human trafficking, and valid news source.

Farage works to the same schematic as lucratively rewarded libertarian Netflix standups. He’s not making a definitive statement that could get him in trouble. No. He’s just sayin’, just puttin’ it out there. And then he drops the mic and leaves his fans to get arrested. Ka-booom!

Stoking tension with speculation is stupid. But Farage isn’t stupid. Once broadcasters redubbed the barking of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams because he was considered too charismatic. But today Ant and Dec invite Farage to eat penises in a clearing, and he has his own show on GB News, which is the same thing. Let’s get ready to rhumble!

A BBC reporter described one riot as a ‘pro-British march’, which is like saying the Viking raid on Lindisfarne was a pro-Norse cruise

The Tory party blamed the incoming Labour administration for the fire they set. Their own adviser Dame Sara Khan said Tories’ “inflammatory language” had “undermined social cohesion”. The right spent 15 years training a fat dog to shit in our house and now that it’s finally done loads of massive shits everywhere, they tell us it’s Labour’s fault for not killing the shitting dog five weeks ago. Or something.

Gaza ceasefire demonstrations, none of which ended in attempted mass murder, were “hate marches”, but the commentariat initially called the current would-be pogroms “protests”. The Tory Hampshire police and crime commissioner Donna Jones said the riots were “upholding British values”. Do these include making toddlers chant the word “paki”, and stealing sausage rolls? A BBC reporter even went as far as to describe one riot as a “pro-British march”, which is a bit like saying the Viking raid on Lindisfarne was a pro-Norse cruise.

On Monday’s Good Morning Britain, a load of old white men, including the home secretary’s embarrassing husband Ed Balls and the Daily Mail hate-gonk Andrew Pierce, source of endless fudged front pages, repeatedly shouted down Zarah Sultana’s attempts to explain the Legitimate Grievance Riots as a British Asian. And then Jeremy Vine, the monstrous Belial from Basket Case to his benign brother Tim, invited Farage’s Reform sidekick Richard Tice, of all people, on to his show to explain the violence, as a bin full of entrails and flies was unavailable.

Farage’s falsehoods threaten lives. We have to do better. Liberal legacy media flagellates itself when inaccurate. The reason my last column didn’t mention the Legitimate Grievance Riots was because I’m now filing six days early so the legal department can protect me, and the paper, from my incoherent “jokes”, having recently received a request for correction from a former Tufton Street commentator, and wrangled over the wording of a complaint from Mumsnet. It’s only Monday. By the time you read this you might be on fire.

My main job is comedy on stage, and I can’t afford to be banned for my carelessness in print from every venue in the world, a fate that recently befell two comedians I admire enormously, neither of whom are Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle or Jerry Seinfeld. Two months back I wanted to quit this column, done in by dramas, but a chance encounter with the 70s actor Judy Matheson of The Flesh and Blood Show fame, declaring herself an avid reader in a King’s Cross cafe, appealed to my vanity.

But the rightwing instigators of the Legitimate Grievance Riots aren’t restricted by factchecking. Farage choses online agitation over parliamentary presence. The evil Elon Musk declared “civil war is inevitable”, and recently allowed the worst offenders back on his now lawless X. This is handy if you are black because Tommy Robinson announces the towns chosen for next week’s riots on Musk’s platform so you can avoid them.

In 2020, Farage broadcast himself entering identifiable hotels used to house unprocessed migrants on social media. Earlier this year, the newsreader Geeta Guru-Murthy, someone Farage fans would want deported, casually called the hard-right figurehead’s language “inflammatory”. The enfeebled BBC demanded her apology. Now those hotels are on fire. Is that inflammatory enough for you? Let’s get ready to rhumble!

 Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is streaming on Now TV. He previews 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with guests the mysterious Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)

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