Normal People: What was the civil war fought over?
White Supremacists: It was about states' rights.
Normal People: States' rights to do what exactly?
White Supremacists: To make and enforce their own laws.
Normal People: Laws regarding what?
White Supremacists: Property and theft.
Normal People: What kind of property? Theft of what?
White Supremacists: Well, people were stealing slaves and taking them to free states.
Normal People: Who was stealing slaves?
White Supremacists: The slaves were stealing themselves by running to the North and those damn Yankees didn't want to send them back.
Normal People: So what did the South do about it?
White Supremacists: They got a federal law passed in 1851, that forced the Northern states to ignore their own laws against slavery and recognize the South's right to have escaped slaves sent back. It was called the Fugitive Slave Act.
Normal People: So you pushed for a new federal law to force states to ignore their own state laws and constitutions in the name of "states' rights", is that correct?
White Supremacists: Yep,
Normal People: Then what happened?
White Supremacists: Those damn Yankees got control of the house and the senate and the presidency and tried to ban slavery nationwide.
Normal People: So they wanted to use a federal law to force Southern states to change their laws, kind of like with the Fugitive Slave Act you pushed for a decade earlier, right?
White Supremacists: No, this was different because this time it effected the South.
Normal People: So what happened as a result?
White Supremacists: We decided to commit treason against the USA and start our own country to keep slaves.
Normal People: So you admit the Civil War was about slavery.
White Supremacists: No it was about states' rights. States have rights to own slaves but no rights to refuse to recognize slavery.
On June 2, 1863, 160 years ago today, Harriet Tubman commanded 300 Black soldiers in the audacious Raid on Combahee Ferry. With the Union Army backing , The General, as she was called, liberated 800 people, destroyed supplies, and struck a blow against the Confederacy. She became the FIRST woman in U.S. history to plan and execute an armed expedition, inspiring joy and freedom among over 800 enslaved people.
Today is the 159th anniversary of Ulysses Grant's defeat of the US secessionist slavery movement's paramilitary arm. Please celebrate accordingly. #History#CivilWar#Histodons
Mary Edwards Walker worked as a surgeon for the Union Army during the Civil War. She was captured by Confederates after crossing enemy lines to treat wounded civilians & arrested as a spy. She's the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor - pictured here, wearing it.
The GOP refuses to allow US Border Patrol agents to patrol the border in Texas. They just forced a woman and two children to die there.
The official Texas GOP platform says "We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential Election, and we hold that acting President Joseph
Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States."
If someone says they're not voting, they're saying they're okay with this.
The US ambassador to the United Nations on Monday warned of an impending "large-scale massacre" in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, a humanitarian hub in the Darfur region.
We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live.
-Lucy Parsons
Today, In honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the life of Lucy Parsons (c. 1851 – 1942) an American anarchist born to an enslaved African American who then married a black freedman in Texas. She may also have had indigenous and Mexican heritage. She married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate officer, in Waco, Texas. After the war, he was shot in the leg for helping African Americans register to vote.
They moved to Chicago together around 1873 and their politics were radicalized by the violent repression of the Great Upheaval of 1877. Both members of the International Workingmen's Association, and the Knights of Labor, they participated in the strikes that would result in up to 30 deaths by cops and national guards, in Chicago, alone. Nationwide, the wave of wildcat strikes associated with the Great Upheaval would result in over 100 worker deaths. Because of his revolutionary street speeches, Albert was fired from his job at the Chicago Times and blacklisted. Albert Parsons was executed in 1887 as one of the Haymarket Martyrs who had been fighting for the eight-hour workday.
Lucy Parsons later set up the Chicago Working Women's Union with her friend Lizzie Swank and other women. Lucy would go on to cofound the IWW, in 1905, with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, James Connolly, and others. The IWW was and is a revolutionary union seeking not only better working conditions in the here and now, but the complete abolition of capitalism. The preamble to their constitution states, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” They advocate the General Strike and sabotage as two of many means to these ends. Lucy also edited radical newspapers and became a sought-after public speaker.
Mitch McConnell and 177 other congressional Republicans just signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot.
There's a myth that McConnell doesn't like Trump. It's bullshit. McConnell would literally die for Trump if necessary. And so would almost every other elected Republican.
There is no such thing as a "moderate" or "non-insurrectionist" member of a revolutionary fascist party.
"The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have looted everything: cars, lorries and tractors," laments a resident of a village in the state of al-Jazira, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the paramilitaries as they push southwards in war-torn Sudan......
On July 18, 1863, a soldier from the 54th Massachusetts, Sgt. William Harvey Carney, was near the front line battlefield, when he witnessed the deaths of his commanding officers, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and Sgt. John Wall, who carried the American flag. It was the battle of Fort Wagner.
President Abraham Lincoln received a gift of a cane, but he couldn't make out the signature on the letter accompanying the gift.
So he cut out that signature and pasted it onto his thank you note to use as the salutation.
I relate so much to Lincoln's anxious brain in July 1864 looping through: "Need to finish that proclamation for 500,000 more soldiers. Sherman needs supplies. Can I pardon this deserter? How in hell am I going to send this thank you letter?"
"The MAGA faction is not 'conservative,' and even calling it 'extremist' misses the point dangerously. Those advocating for conservative and even extreme policies should be welcome in a democratic polity. But those acting in ways that reject legitimately constituted authority are neither conservative nor extreme. They are criminal."
Ancient ruins, I love them. Stepping back in time, walking where others have walked but are no longer with us. Thought provoking #history. This is the Pecos ruins in New Mexico, adobe church or what is left of it. Fascinating history between the Pecos Indians and the Spanish.
Two days after rebel forces in Myanmar’s Chin state overran the junta’s two military bases close to the border with India, they have taken control of a border crossing point between the two countries across the tiny hilly Indian state of Mizoram....
Long before the days of #Churchill, especially during the #CivilWar, the water was often deemed “not fit to drink”. #Whiskey was used as a medicinal tonic and painkiller.
The International Organization for Migration warns that the number of internally displaced people in Sudan soon will top 10 million, as conflict and acute hunger spread throughout the country....
Time is running out to prevent starvation in Darfur, in western Sudan, a UN agency has warned, as escalating violence devastates the African nation. People have been forced to consume “grass and peanut shells,” the regional director for Eastern Africa of the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. “If assistance...
The European Union condemned Sunday (Nov. 12) "ethnic cleansing" of Darfur's Masalit people by the RSF paramilitary. The Masalit people are a non-Arab group who reside mainly in Chad and Darfur a region about the size of Spain.
A 91-year-old retired Guatemalan general went on trial Friday for genocide in the second such case linked to the massacre of Indigenous people during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war. Benedicto Lucas Garcia is accused of involvement in the killing of more than 1,200 Ixil Maya people between 1978 and 1982, when his brother was...
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville spent a month with revolutionary forces at jungle bases and on front lines in Myanmar....Two loudspeakers, as big as the men carrying them, are brought to the rocky hilltop. Some 800m below, in the town of Hpasang, lies a sprawling Myanmar army base....
After the House approved the $61 billion Ukraine aid package on Saturday, the hawkish former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, wrote on Telegram: “I cannot with all sincerity not wish the United States to plunge into a new civil war as quickly as possible.”
US warns of impending 'large-scale massacre' in capital of Sudan's North Darfur (www.france24.com)
The US ambassador to the United Nations on Monday warned of an impending "large-scale massacre" in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, a humanitarian hub in the Darfur region.
Sudan in 'total panic' as RSF paramilitaries move South (www.africanews.com)
"The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have looted everything: cars, lorries and tractors," laments a resident of a village in the state of al-Jazira, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the paramilitaries as they push southwards in war-torn Sudan......
After battle with junta, Myanmar rebels take control of border point with India (www.reuters.com)
Two days after rebel forces in Myanmar’s Chin state overran the junta’s two military bases close to the border with India, they have taken control of a border crossing point between the two countries across the tiny hilly Indian state of Mizoram....
Crisis unfolding in Sudan as internally displaced nears 10 million (www.voanews.com)
The International Organization for Migration warns that the number of internally displaced people in Sudan soon will top 10 million, as conflict and acute hunger spread throughout the country....
People eating ‘grass and peanut shells’ in Darfur, UN says, as hunger crisis engulfs war-ravaged Sudan (edition.cnn.com)
Time is running out to prevent starvation in Darfur, in western Sudan, a UN agency has warned, as escalating violence devastates the African nation. People have been forced to consume “grass and peanut shells,” the regional director for Eastern Africa of the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. “If assistance...
Sudan: Fears of ethnic cleansing mount in western region of Darfur (www.africanews.com)
The European Union condemned Sunday (Nov. 12) "ethnic cleansing" of Darfur's Masalit people by the RSF paramilitary. The Masalit people are a non-Arab group who reside mainly in Chad and Darfur a region about the size of Spain.
Ex-general stands trial for genocide of Indigenous Guatemalans (guardian.ng)
A 91-year-old retired Guatemalan general went on trial Friday for genocide in the second such case linked to the massacre of Indigenous people during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war. Benedicto Lucas Garcia is accused of involvement in the killing of more than 1,200 Ixil Maya people between 1978 and 1982, when his brother was...
Feature: Myanmar: Young insurgents changing the course of a forgotten war (www.bbc.com)
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville spent a month with revolutionary forces at jungle bases and on front lines in Myanmar....Two loudspeakers, as big as the men carrying them, are brought to the rocky hilltop. Some 800m below, in the town of Hpasang, lies a sprawling Myanmar army base....