Peace & Justice History for 9/4:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september4

September 4, 1949
Paul Robeson, scholar, athlete, musician and leader, defying a racist and red-baiting mob, sang to 15,000 at a Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York.
 
Paul Robeson (at microphone) singing to the Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York
The story and photographs of what happened 
Film from that day narrated by Sidney Poitier 
September 4, 1954
The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against the H-Bomb in London’s Trafalgar Square.
The PPU dates back to October 1934.

Young Peace Pledge Union members today.
The PPU today
September 4, 1957
Elizabeth Eckford and eight other young Negroes were blocked from becoming the first black student at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Governor Orval Faubus had called out the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of the public schools in the state’s capital.
President Dwight Eisenhower eventually sent in federal troops to guarantee the law was enforced.

Elizabeth Eckford
Read more Elizabeth Eckford followed and taunted by mob, 1957.
A very interesting related story: 
September 4, 1970
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Over the following three days more than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion of small rural hamlets along the way.

Operation Rapid American Withdrawal 1970-2005: An Exhibition: 
September 4, 1978
Simultaneous demonstrations in Moscow’s Red Square and in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. were organized by the War Resisters League, calling for nuclear disarmament.

Letters from an American-September 3, 2024

So much information today!

September 3, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson Read on Substack

Last night the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top volunteer with the Trump campaign, former Massachusetts Republican Party vice chair Tom Mountain, telling volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. He urged volunteers to turn their attention instead to Pennsylvania. After the story dropped, the Trump campaign cut ties with Mountain. 

Stephen Collinson of CNN and Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post reported today that Trump’s team has given up on trying to get Trump to talk about the economy and other issues voters care about. The former president has decided to spend the rest of the campaign attacking Vice President Harris to destroy her popularity and drive voters away from her, rather than trying to attract them to himself. The Washington Post reporters noted that likely voters view Trump unfavorably and his team has concluded that while he can’t improve his own standing, he can damage hers. 

Collinson dubbed Trump’s plans a “feral political offensive.”

It is not clear that this will work. As Collinson notes, Harris has refused to get dragged into the gutter with Trump, and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, notes that voters appear to want to put the nastiness of the past several years behind them. Still, the media-tracking company AdImpact reported that between August 23 and August 29, 57% of the total television spending for political ads was on Republican attacks on Harris.

Trump also continues to demand that Republicans support his attempt to suppress voting. Having failed to pass any of the necessary appropriations bills before going on August recess, Congress will be in a rush when it comes back into session next week. It needs to fund the government before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 in order to prevent a partial shutdown. Last Thursday, Trump told right-wing podcast host Monica Crowley that he would “shut down the government in a heartbeat” unless the government funding package includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—which would give credence to the idea that noncitizens are voting in national elections despite the fact it is already illegal—and a bill restricting legal immigration.

Zeeshan Aleem of MSNBC today took public notice of Trump’s “deteriorating ability to clearly communicate.” His speeches “seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day,” Aleem wrote. “Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters.” A reporter for The Guardian pointed out that attendees at Trump’s rallies are leaving as he rambles for nearly two hours, and complaining that he is “babbling.”

For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

Aleem notes that this less-focused, less-capable Trump would be exceptionally dangerous in office a second time. And yet, he was dangerous enough the first time. Today Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security released a study showing at least twelve times that Trump used the power of the presidency to retaliate against his political enemies. They note that there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone else at the Biden White House ever took similar actions.  

John McCain’s son Jimmy today announced that he has switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat and will work to elect Vice President Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in 2024. The younger McCain enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and is now an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona Army National Guard. He said he is speaking out because Trump’s conduct at Arlington National Cemetery was a “violation.” 

Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Trump announced that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would essentially enshrine in the Florida state constitution the abortion rights formerly protected by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. When Trump had bowed to popular support for abortion rights and expressed uneasiness at the state’s current six-week ban—a cutoff reached before most women know they’re pregnant—antiabortion activists launched fierce attacks on him. So, on Friday, Trump switched his position and announced he would vote against restoring access to abortion in Florida. 

That announcement has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights. It did not help the Republicans that more videos have been unearthed in which Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said that “a childless elite” is ruling the country. He went on to excoriate this elite for what he claimed was their pride that they didn’t have children and that they had abortions, and said “they look down on people who invest their time and their future in their children. And that is a dangerous place to live as a country.” Even a right-wing Newsmax interviewer suggested that he was “painting this group with perhaps a broad brush?”

On October 1, in Louisiana, a law will go into effect that reclassified the drug misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. Misoprostol can be used for abortion. It is also used for routine reproductive care and during medical emergencies to treat postpartum hemorrhage. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, a list containing those medications that are the most effective and safe to meet a health care system’s most important needs. After antiabortion activists targeted the drug, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed a law reclassifying it as a controlled dangerous substance. The reclassification means that the drug will no longer be easily available on obstetric hemorrhage carts. 

“Take it off the carts?” one doctor said to Lorena O’Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. “That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”

The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”

Vice President Harris’s campaign started its “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour today in Palm Beach, Florida, where it drove past the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago club. The bus will make at least 50 stops across the country. 

Pollster Tom Bonier today continued his examination of new registrants to vote. This time his focus was North Carolina. The pattern he has found across the country continues: “surges in registration are being driven by women.” In North Carolina, he writes, the number of registrants was almost 50% higher during the week of July 21 than in the same week in 2020, and the gender gap was +12 women, compared to +6 women in 2020. The new registrants were +6 Democratic, and 43% were younger than 30. 

The Harris-Walz campaign today joined the Democratic National Committee in announcing a transfer of nearly $25 million to support Democratic candidates in down-ballot state and federal races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get $10 million each in hopes of supporting a Democratic majority in each chamber of Congress in the new administration. 

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the organization devoted to winning state legislatures, will receive $2.5 million. The Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will get $1 million each. 

Finally, today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump campaign from playing the song he likes to dance to at his rallies: “Hold On, I’m Coming.” The estate of Isaac Hayes Jr., the artist who co-wrote the song, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign, and a number of his allies, noting that they have never obtained a public performance license for the song although they have used it at least 133 times.

—

Notes:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-campaign-new-hampshire-battleground-state-volunteer-email-b2606104.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/politics/trump-quest-destroy-harris-momentum/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/02/trump-strategy-campaign-harris/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-government-shutdown_n_66d21e56e4b013957161cd53

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-age-harris-ramble-rcna168979

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/politics/jimmy-mccain-decries-trump-arlington-appearance/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/unearthed-video-jd-vance-said-childless-elites-make-us-dangerous-it-was-too-much-newsmax

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-damage-control-abortion-backlash-conservatives-rcna168922

https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/politics/national-politics/kamala-harris-campaign-bus-will-tour-florida-this-week-heres-what-cities-it-will-travel-to/77-1dbe6154-e2c5-4acc-8352-4b876e377136

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/09/03/harris-25-million-transfer/

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/29/g-s1-20187/trump-abortion-amendment-4-florida-ivf-funding-reproductive-rights

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-isaac-hayes-hold-on-im-coming-lawsuit/

https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/essential-medicines-list-includes-misoprostol-tablets-for-use-during-pregnancy-childbirth-and-postpartum-care

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/03/mccain-trump-arlington-democrat

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Peace & Justice History for 8/30

August 30, 1963
A “hotline” telephone link was installed between the Kremlin in Moscow and the White House in Washington, D.C. The intention was to allow direct communication in the event of a crisis between the U.S. president and the leader of the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). It had been agreed to following the Cuban Missile Crisis.
August 30, 1964
The Democratic Party National Convention refused to seat any delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The Credentials Committee chose to seat the all-white delegation from Mississippi’s regular Democratic Party despite overwhelming evidence of the state party’s efforts to disenfranchise Mississippi’s Negro citizens.
A proposed compromise of two non-voting guest delegates from MFDP was rejected by its leaders.

The dispute, the political intrigue, and the long-term effects 
August 30, 1967
The Senate confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first Supreme Court Justice of African-American descent. Marshall had been counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and had been the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He was appointed to the Court by President Lyndon Johnson after having served as Solicitor General of the U.S. for two years, and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for four.
Thurgood Marshall
Who was Thurgood Marshall?
August 30, 1971
Ten empty school busses were dynamited in Pontiac, Michigan, eight days before a school integration plan was to begin. Following Federal Judge Damon Keith’s finding that Pontiac’s school board had “intentionally” perpetuated segregation, a plan was developed by the board that included bussing of 8700 children.
The bombers were later identified as leaders and members of the Ku Klux Klan, arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned.
August 30, 1980
Striking Polish workers, their numbers approaching 150,000, won a sweeping victory in a battle with the Polish Communist government for the right to independent trade unions and the right to strike. Their lead negotiator was Lech Walesa, head of the union, Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity).

Lech Walesa announces the deal to cheering crowds of shipyard workers.
August 30, 1999
Residents of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia
in a U.N.-sponsored election.
More about the East Timor election 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august30

Peace & Justice History 8/28

August 28, 1833
The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed by the British Parliament. As early as 1787, members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), particularly Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, organized to end the slave trade.Since Quakers were barred from serving in the House of Commons, the cause was led by a member of the Evangelical Party, William Wilberforce, ending the international trade in slaves in 1807. By 1827 slaving was considered piracy and punishable by death. The complete ban on slavery itself through the British Empire didn’t happen until this day; Wilberforce was informed of the Act’s passage on his death-bed.

William Wilberforce
August 28, 1963
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of half a million gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They gathered there for jobs and freedom.
The speech: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety

  organizing to build the march
Film of the March and the speech: https://vimeo.com/2158959

1983:
Three hundred thousand marched in Washington on the 20th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech for the second “March on Washington for Jobs, Peace and Freedom.”

August 28, 1976
60,000 joined the Community of Peace People demonstrations in Belfast and Dublin, Ireland. Peace People was founded by two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan to decry the painful violence between Catholics and Protestants, between unionists and republicans, and to move the peace process forward in Northern Ireland.
Betty Williams
Mairead Corrigan
They jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976.
More about Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan
 
From the Declaration of the Peace People:
“ . . . We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society.
We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work and at play, to be lives of joy and peace.
We recognize that to build such a life demands of all of us, dedication, hard work and courage . . .
We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.”

The Peace People’s website: https://www.peacepeople.com/

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august28

Letters from An American for August 16, 2024

There is a lot in this one! I bolded a few areas; those are my own emphases, rather than Dr. Richardson’s.

Letters from An American for August 16, 2024

by Heather Cox Richardson

Read on Substack

The complaint of Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) last weekend on CNN that Democrats are bullying him by calling him weird has stuck with me. As I wrote at the time, Republicans have made punching down their stock in trade for decades, and Vance’s complaint suggests that the Democrats are finally pushing back. It strikes me that behind this shifting power dynamic is a huge story about American politics.

Since the 1950s, those determined to get rid of business regulation, social welfare programs, government infrastructure spending, and federal protection of civil rights have relied on a rhetorical structure that centers “real” Americans who allegedly want nothing from government and warns that un-American forces who want government handouts are undermining the country by bringing socialism or racial, gender, or religious equality. 

In 2024, that rhetoric is all the MAGA Republicans have left to attract voters, as their actual policies are unpopular. Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told reporters at his Bedminster availability that to win the 2024 election: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.” 

But it is not just Trump. A MAGA pundit has called Vice President Harris “Hitler and Stalin combined but times 200,” and on Wednesday, Republicans in Minnesota nominated Royce White as their candidate for the U.S. Senate. “We face an enemy that intends to bastardize our citizenship through an idea called globalism,” White has said. “We must begin to understand how the global affects the local and take a stand for God, Family, and Country.” White has also said that “women have become too mouthy,” and that “Donald Trump could get up on stage, pull his pants down, take a sh*t up at the podium, and I still would never vote for you f*cking Democrats again.”

The rhetorical strategy setting up Republicans against a dangerous “other” was behind Trump’s demand that Republicans in Congress kill a bipartisan border bill so that Trump could continue to demonize immigrants. You could see that demonization of immigrants today in Vance’s straight-up lie that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes.” In fact, Harris today called for Congress to expand plans already in place in the Biden administration, and none of those plans call for giving money to undocumented migrants.

Also in that vein today was the announcement of Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, that he is opening an investigation into Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s work in China. Walz is the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He went to China in 1989 as part of a teach-abroad program and went on to coordinate trips for students in China, becoming a vocal advocate for human rights in that country as leaders cracked down on opposition. But by suggesting this cultural exchange is nefarious, Comer can seed the idea that Walz is somehow operating against the interests of the United States.

This longstanding rhetoric that positions Republicans as true Americans defending the country against those who would destroy it has metastasized into the determination of MAGA Republicans to replace American democracy with a Christian nationalism that cements the power of white patriarchy. Vance has been in hot water for his derogatory remarks about “childless cat ladies”; interviews have resurfaced in the past few days in which he embraced the idea that the role of “the postmenopausal female” is to take care of grandchildren. 

The New College of Florida is in the news today for illustrating the logical progression of the idea that Republicans must protect the nation from those who would destroy it. The New College of Florida was at the center of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s program to get rid of traditional academic freedom. He stripped the New College of its independence and replaced officials with Christian loyalists who tried to build a school modeled after those that Viktor Orbán’s loyalists took over in Hungary. New College officials painted over student murals celebrating diversity, suppressed student support for civil rights, and voted to eliminate the diversity, equity, and inclusion office and the gender studies program. Faculty fled the New College, and more than a quarter of the students dropped out. To keep its numbers up, the school dropped its admission standards. 

Yesterday, Steven Walker of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the school cleared out the Gender and Diversity Center, throwing the books it had accumulated into a dumpster. Officials said the books are no longer serving the needs of the college: “gender studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory.” 

The image of piles of books in a dumpster in the United States of America is not easily forgettable. 

But the dominance rhetoric of the MAGA Republicans was never just about political power. Political power always went hand in hand with corruption. A new book by Joe Conason called The Longest Con notes that the modern right-wing movement has its roots in the promise of grifters after World War II to protect America against the communists they insisted were infiltrating the country. Their promises to defend true Americans against an enemy was always about getting cash out of the deal. 

Conason emphasizes how drumming up fears of an “other” was a deliberate grift to put money into the pockets of those who told small donors that their dollars were vital for defending the United States. The biggest prize for the extremists, though, was the control of government purse strings that allowed them to turn federal and state largesse toward their own cronies. Conason notes that under President Ronald Reagan, Republicans’ cuts to government oversight and reliance on the private sector to regulate itself, along with their belief that unfettered capitalism was a form of resistance to communism, led to a boom in corruption. 

That corruption has continued in the Republican Party, largely unaddressed as politicians insisted that those calling it out were simply un-American malcontents engaging in political hits against good, patriotic Americans. In contrast, as any corruption on the Democratic side can be expected to be sliced and diced in public, the Democrats have stayed relatively clean. 

And this is why Vance’s comment about Democrats bullying him jumped out at me. Republican dominance is cracking as Trump struggles and Vance offends people, and as that dominance falls away, the many things it covered are starting to get attention—among them, stories of Republican corruption. And they’re doozies.  

On Sunday, for example, Garrett Shanley of the Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper of the University of Florida, reported that when former senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) took over the presidency of the University of Florida, he “channeled millions” to his Republican allies and to secretive contracts. In 17 months he more than tripled spending from his office, with most of the money going to his former aides and political friends, most of whom continued to live and work outside the state. Sasse was appointed in November 2022 in an opaque hiring process and stepped down unexpectedly in July, citing family issues, although Vivienne Serret of The Independent Alligator reported that DeSantis allies on the Board of Trustees forced him out.

One of the biggest stories in the country these days is the corruption scandal in Ohio, in which dark money groups led by the FirstEnergy utility company worked with former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder to put into office politicians who, thanks to about $61 million in bribes, backed a $1.3 billion bailout for FirstEnergy paid for with tax dollars. 

On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost agreed to settle the scandal. FirstEnergy will pay a $20 million fine, an amount that Marty Schladen of the Ohio Capital Journal notes is less than one-third the amount FirstEnergy spent to bribe legislators, and a fraction of the money ratepayers have had to pay because of the corrupt legislation the bribes paid for. 

Nothing better illustrates the grift at the center of today’s MAGA Republicans than Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election and that it was stolen from him by those dangerous “others,” the Democrats. The Big Lie enabled the Trump team to continue soliciting donations in order to fight for the White House. According to Conason, Trump and his fellow election deniers pocketed $255.4 million between the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democratic candidate Joe Biden president. 

On Monday, jurors found former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters guilty on seven counts in relation to her compromising of her county’s election system. Peters was determined to get voter information to My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a key Trump ally, in order to prove the Big Lie. She is facing more than 22 years in prison.

—

Notes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8xqy0jv24o

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/16/tim-walz-james-comer-china-00174403

https://people.com/j-d-vance-post-menopausal-female-podcast-interview-8696246

https://newrepublic.com/post/184926/florida-new-college-ron-desantis-book-ban

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/sarasotacounty/new-college-florida-books-dumpster-gender-studies/67-749fb5d8-6269-4507-827f-209c3403f7a6

Joe Conason, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martins: 2024). 

https://www.comicsands.com/royce-white-resurfaced-women-mouthy-2668973149.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/royce-white-republican-nomination-us-senate/

https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/08/sasse-s-spending-spree-former-uf-president-channeled-millions-to-gop-allies-secretive-contracts

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/nate-monroe/2024/08/16/corcoran-trashes-books-to-stay-on-top-as-no-1-florida-goon-commentary/74824824007/

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2024/08/15/new-college-of-florida-throws-away-hundreds-of-library-books-diversity-lgbtq/74814756007/

https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/08/reason-behind-sasse-departure

https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/former-mesa-county-clerk-tina-peters-guilty-of-7-counts-in-election-security-breach-trial

https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2024/08/12/tina-peters-election-tampering-colorado-jury-verdict

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kamala-harris-maga-jezebel-apocalypse-rcna164922

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/06/trump-kamala-harris-presidential-election

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3 For Science

Stonehenge’s 6-tonne Altar Stone was transported from Scotland

August 15, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

How was Stonehenge built in ancient Britain 5,000 years ago?

New evidence suggests the Late Stone Age people who made the colossal structure would have to have used advanced transport methods to move the stones even further than previously thought.

Stonehenge at sunset
The Altar Stone at Stonehenge circled in black. Credit: English Heritage.

According to English Heritage, the largest stones – called sarsens and weighing up to 30 tonnes – are believed to have been transported from Marlborough Downs, about 32 kilometres away from the site.

The smaller stones weigh less than 10 tonnes. They were thought to have all come from the Preseli Hills in Wales more than 200km away. Transporting these gigantic stones this far would have been a monumental feat for ancient people in Britain.

But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that one stone, the 6-tonne Altar Stone, has its origins even further afield in Scotland.

Some stones at stonehenge
The Altar Stone, seen here underneath two bigger Sarsen stones. Credit: Professor Nick Pearce, Aberystwyth University. (snip-More)

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/stonehenge-altar-stone-scotland-transport/

=====

New liquids can safely extract nanoplastics from water

August 14, 2024 Ellen Phiddian Cosmos science journalist

Person in dark room looks at glowing vial
Gary Baker with the solvent. Credit: Sam O’Keefe/University of Missouri

US researchers have made substances that can extract nanoplastics from water.

The solvents, made from non-toxic components, could remove 98% of the tiny plastic particles from water in a lab environment.

The team has published its research in ACS Applied Engineering Materials.

 “Our strategy uses a small amount of designer solvent to absorb plastic particles from a large volume of water,” says corresponding author Gary Baker, an associate professor at the department of chemistry in the University of Missouri-Columbia. (snip-More)

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemistry/nanoplastic-solvent-extraction/

=====

Elite woman’s grave dates from before Genghis Khan’s Mongolian Empire

August 14, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

Scientists have made an unexpected discovery in a thousand-year-old abandoned fortress in Mongolia.

Buried in the walls of the fortress is the grave of an elite woman who pre-dates the rise of the founder of the Mongolian Empire, Genghis Khan (also known as Chinggis Khan). The frontier fortress is about 1.4 km west of Khar Nuur lake in eastern Dornod province of Mongolia, only kilometres from the Chinese border.

Mongolia, zavkhan province, khar nuur lake
Khar Nuur lake. Credit: Tuul & Bruno Morandi / The Image Bank / Getty Images Plus.

Genghis Khan rose to prominence in 1206 CE. Before that, the Kitan-Liao Empire controlled great swaths of land between 916 and 1125 CE.

The period between these great dynasties is poorly understood as very few records survive. (snip-More)

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/mongolia-elite-woman-grave/

Peace & Justice History 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: https://www.inicom.com/hibakusha/
  <Hiroshima survivor 

Found watch stopped at the time of explosion>
Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/online-collections/decision-to-drop-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.

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.

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: https://www.justice.gov/crt/introduction-federal-voting-rights-laws-0

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) 

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 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/6/newsid_3602000/3602189.stm

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.jonahhouse.org/archive/WMD

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august61965

Inside The Homes of Black History Legends

This is a slide show, on the page. I sometimes enjoy seeing bits of the lives of people I admire. Click through to see the slide show, here’s a snippet of the text:

-Almost everyone has been on those Victorian house tours where they give stories about the white people who lived there, potential ghosts sightings and whatnot.

-Well, allow us to take you on a trip through the homes of some of the most beloved Black history legends. Not everyone stops to think about the four walls Martin Luther King Jr. grew up in or the massive estate of Madame C.J. Walker, both of which are among other historic locations preserved for touring. The architecture, lofty details and machinery we wouldn’t even know how to operate today, but they keep alive the memory not only of our historical figures but also show us what Black life looked like through their lens.

-If you’re planning a trip to some of these historical sites, first take get a preview into the homes of some our favorite Black historical figures. (snip-photos on the page, with More)

https://www.theroot.com/inside-the-homes-of-our-black-history-legends-1851599161

What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons?