HEY! It's the International Day of Non-Violence, ain't that a giggle? Anybody try to hold a large scale non-violent demonstration lately? Did it stay that way for over an hour? Internationally? Bwahahaha. I ws born in 1946. Four years and 5 days later, the Korean War broke out. I don't know exactly when we got into Viet Nam, I do know that the CIA was covertly doing resupply and logistics runs for the French at Dien Bien Phu in March of 1954 and that we took over the grand war to prevent free elections in Viet Nam from the French when they left. In the meantime, we also teamed up with the British to instigate and assist in the coup d'etat that overthrew Mossadegh on 19 August 1953. Then there was the Laotian Civil War and the Lebanon Crises and we're still not out of the fifties. And so it went, armed interventions and invasions, proxy wars, coups, color revolutions and regime change operations, drone strikes and economic warfare, right on up to today. And that's just the US. We're not unique and we're definitely not alone. Face it:
People always make war when they say they love peace.
~~ D. H. Lawrence This was all pretty damn obvious by at least 1958:
On this day in history:
1187 -- Saladin captured Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader control.
1789 -- George Washington sent The Bill of Rights to the States for ratification.
1835 -- The Texas Revolution began
1864 – During the US Civil War Confederates defeated a Union attack on Saltville, Virginia. A massacre of wounded Union prisoners ensued
1919 -- Woodrow Wilson was partially paralyzed by a stroke
1925 -- The first test of a working TV system
1937 – Rafael Trujillo orders the execution of Haitians living in the border region of the Dominican Republic.
1944 -- The end of the Warsaw Uprising.
1949 -- The Soviet Union recognised the People's Republic of China
1958 – Guinea declared its independence from France
1967 -- Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court.
1980 -- Michael Myers (Abscam) was expelled from Congress
2007 -- South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun met with Kim Jong-il in the second Inter-Korean Summit.
2018 – The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey
Some people who were born on this day:
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
~~ Mahatma Gandhi
1452 -- Richard III of England (A man ill shaped, crooked backed, lame armed ... ~Anon.) ***
1800 -- Nat Turner, enslaved, led Nat Turner's Rebellion
1852 -- William Ramsay, chemist who discovered the Noble (Inert) Gases
1869 -- Mahatma Gandhi, freedom fighter, activist and philosopher 1
871 -- Cordell Hull, politician, drafted the UN Charter
1871 -- Martha Brookes Hutcheson, landscape architect
1875 – Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, suffragist
1879 -- Wallace Stevens, poet 1
890 -- Groucho Marx, comedian, wit, actor
1895 -- Ruth Cheney Streeter, colonel, first director of the USMCWR
1897 -- Bud Abbott, comedian and actor
1904 -- Graham Greene, author
1909 -- Alex Raymond, cartoonist, creator of Flash Gordon
1921 – Edmund Crispin, writer and composer
1911 -- Jack Finney, author
1933 – Dave Somerville, singer
1937 -- Johnnie Cochran, attorney
1938 -- Nick Gravenites, singer, songwriter and guitarist 1
941 – Ron Meagher, rock bass player
1945 – Martin Hellman, cryptographer and academic
1945 -- Don McLean, singer, guitarist, and songwriter
1947 -- Ward Churchill, author and activist
1949 -- Annie Leibovitz, photographer
1950 – Mike Rutherford, guitarist
1951 -- Coco Montoya, singer, songwriter, guitarist, bluesbreaker
1951 -- Sting, singer, songwriter, bassist
1960 – Django Bates, musician and composer
1967 -- Gillian Welch, singer, songwriter, guitarist
1978 – Ayumi Hamasaki, singer, songwriter, actress, empress of J-pop
1988 – Brittany Howard, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
*** Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York ... (Big Willy Shakes)
Some people who died on this day:
It is not infrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty - to oppress without control, or the restraint of laws, all who are poorer and weaker than themselves.
~~ Samuel Adams
1803 -- Samuel Adams, politician
1804 – Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, engineer, built first automobile
1927 -- Svante Arrhenius, physical chemist, did computations for the Arrhenius effect
1947 -- P. D. Ouspensky, follower of Gurdjieff and "the fourth way"
1968 -- Marcel Duchamp, painter, sculptor, dadaist
1973 -- Paavo Nurmi, the Flying Finn
1981 -- Harry Golden, journalist and author
1998 -- Gene Autry, actor, singer, guitarist
2006 – Paul Halmos, mathematician
2015 – Coleridge Goode, bassist and composer
2016 -- Neville Marriner, conductor.
2017 – Tom Petty, musician
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such: International Day of Non-Violence
Audiophile Day
Day of Unity World Architecture Day
Child Health Day
Today's Tunes
Saladin
Groucho
Nick Gravenites
Ron Meagher
Don McLean
Mike Rutherford
Coco Montoya
Sting
Django Bates
Gillian Welch
Brittany Howard
Gene Autry
Sir Nevile Marriner
Tom Petty
Bonus:
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com Open Thread, Saladin, Thurgood Marshall, Don McLean, Groucho, Nick Gravenites, Tom Petty, Sting, Marcel Duchamp