As Israel expands its ground assault into Khan Younis, a surgeon at the European Hospital in the city describes desperately trying to treat a relentless stream of wounded children as critical supplies run out
An Israeli airstrike on the Osama bin Zaid School in the Al-Saftawi neighbourhood in north Gaza City killed at least 20 and wounded 30 in the second massacre against civilians in less than five hours on Friday....
On this day in history. This is the upper end of Glen Coe, a glen infamous for the massacre of the Glen Coe MacDonalds carried out by government troops who were billeting with them 332 years ago today on 13 February 1692. More pics and info: https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/glencoe/glencoe/index.html
Euro-Med Monitor has documented shocking testimonies of the Israeli army killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians on Thursday 11 January 2024 on Al-Rashid Street, in the west of Gaza City, who were trying to receive humanitarian aid. The human rights organization demanded that the involved United Nations agencies be held...
Over the past months, the #LakotaLaw team has spent many hours in #Nevada at Peehee Mu'Huh — #ThackerPass — where construction has begun on a mine to exploit the largest known lithium deposit on #TurtleIsland.
Find out more about the Indigenous-led #resistance, the total disregard by both government and mining interests for an historic #massacre site with great biological #diversity and sensitivity, and the police raid on and dismantling of the #OxSam prayer camp.
Today in Labor History November 21, 1921: The original Columbine Massacre occurred in Serine, Colorado. State police and company thugs used machine guns against the unarmed miners, slaughtering six striking IWW members, all of whom were unarmed. Dozens more were injured.
Today in Labor History November 21, 1831: Silk workers went on strike in Lyon, France. However, when the National Guard killed several workers, the entire city soon rose up in an insurrection known as the First Canut Revolt. Workers captured the police barracks and stole the weapons. They set up barricades and hoisted the black flag. The military guard attempted to stop them, but had to retreat under a hail of bullets. National Guardsmen switched sides and joined the rebels. After a bloody battle with the military guard, in which over 170 died, the rebels captured the town. The authorities ultimately subdued the uprising when a much larger military force was sent in from Paris.
Today in Labor History December 5, 1928: The Colombian military slaughtered up to 2,000 people in the Banana Massacre. Workers had been on strike against United Fruit Company since November 12. They were participating in a peaceful demonstration, with their wives and children. The Columbian troops set up machine guns on the rooftops near the demonstration and closed off the access streets so no one could escape. The soldiers threw the dead into mass graves or dumped them in the sea. U.S. officials in Colombia had portrayed the workers as communists and subversives and even threatened to invade if the Colombian government didn’t protect United Fruit’s interests. Gabriel García Márquez depicted the massacre in his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” as did Álvaro Cepeda Samudio in his “La Casa Grande.”
United Fruit, which is now called Chiquita, controlled vast quantities of territory in Central America, and the Caribbean, maintained a near monopoly in many of the banana republics in which it operated (e.g., Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica). By 1930, it was the largest employer in Central America and the largest land owner. In 1952, the government of Jacobo Arbenz, in Guatemala, began giving away unused land, owned by United Fruit, to landless peasants. In 1954, the CIA deposed the Arbenz government, leading to decades of brutal dictatorship and genocide of Guatemala’s indigenous population. The head of the CIA at that time was former board member of United Fruit, Allen Dulles, who also oversaw the over throw of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the MK Ultra LSD mind control experiments.
Today in Labor History January 18, 1934: The anarchist General Confederation of Labor launched a General Strike in Portugal after the government banned unions, strikes and collective bargaining. The government put it down, killing 100, deporting 600 and outlawing of the labor union. Some members of the union blamed the strike’s failure on Communists, who they believe ratted out their plans to the government in advance, resulting in the arrest of several strike leaders the night before the strike took place.
Today in Labor History September 2, 1921: The Battle of Blair Mountain ended on this date in 1921, with the U.S. government bombing striking coal miners by plane, the second time the U.S. government used planes to bomb its own citizens (the first was in the Tulsa riots, earlier that year). The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in U.S. history and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. The uprising lasted 5 days and involved 10,000-15,000 coal miners confronting an army of scabs and police. The battle came as mine owners tried to crush attempts by coal miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. From the late 1800s, mine owners forced workers to live in company towns, where rent was deducted from their wages and they were paid in scrip, which was accepted only at the overpriced company stores and was worthless everywhere else. The work was very dangerous and safety equipment and precautions were minimal. The mine owners had a long tradition of using private detectives and goons to spy on workers, infiltrate their meetings, rough them up, and block any attempts to unionize. The battle began after Sheriff Sid Hatfield (an ally of the miners and hero from the Battle of Matewan) was assassinated by Baldwin-Felts agents. Much of the region was still under martial law as a result of the Battle of Matewan. Miners began to leave the mountains armed and ready for battle. Mother Jones tried to dissuade them from marching into Logan and Mingo Counties, fearing a bloodbath. Many accused her of losing her nerve. The miners ignored her and a battle ensued between miners and cops, private detectives, scabs and eventually the U.S. military.
Today in Labor History November 5, 1916: The Everett Massacre occurred in Everett, Washington. 300 IWW members arrived by boat in Everett to help support the shingle workers’ strike that had been going on for the past 5 months. Prior attempts to support the strikers were met with vigilante beatings with axe handles. As the boat pulled in, Sheriff McRae called out, “Who’s your leader?” The Wobblies answered, “We’re all leaders!” The sheriff pulled his gun and said, “You can’t land.” A Wobbly yelled back, “Like hell we can’t.” Gunfire erupted, most of it from the 200 vigilantes on the dock. When the smoke cleared, two of the sheriff’s deputies were dead, shot in the back by their own men, along with 5-12 Wobblies on the boat. Dozens more were wounded. The authorities arrested 74 Wobblies. After a trial, all charges were dropped against the IWW members. The event was mentioned in John Dos Passos’s “USA Trilogy.”
Today in Labor History October 22, 1956: Hungarian workers refused to obey their managers, calling instead for workers' self-management. The next day, the Hungarian Revolution began against the authoritarian government and subservience to the Soviet Union. The uprising last 12 days, before being crushed by Soviet Tanks. Up to 3,000 workers and revolutionaries were killed. 13,000 were wounded. 200,000 were exiled. Hundreds of Hungarian and Soviet troops also died putting down the uprising.
Today in Labor History September 24, 1906: The Atlanta massacre ended on this day. Rioting by white mobs began on September 22 after newspapers published several luridly detailed and unsubstantiated reports of black men allegedly raping 4 local women. The racist mobs destroyed black businesses and homes, killing at least 25 African Americans (official reports). However, the actual death toll may be closer to 100. Black men, including university professors, met to organize defense committees and began arming themselves. However, police and state militias raided their meetings and disarmed them. One cop was killed in the fight. W. E. B. Du Bois, who was teaching at Atlanta University at the time, purchased a shotgun when rioting broke out. "I bought a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot. If a white mob had stepped on the campus where I lived I would without hesitation have sprayed their guts over the grass." The massacre was not publicly marked in Georgia until 2006, its 100th anniversary, nor made part of state's curriculum for public schools until 2007.
“We are watching as #hospitals are turned into #morgues. These supposedly protected facilities are being bombed, are being shot at by tanks and guns, encircled and raided, killing patients and medical staff World Health Organization has documented 181 attacks on health care that have led to 22 fatalities and 59 injuries of health workers on duty. Medical staff, including our own, are utterly exhausted and in despair
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember the Orangeburg Massacre, which occurred on February 8, 1968 in South Carolina, when highway patrolmen opened fire on black student protesters from South Carolina State, who were trying to integrate a bowling alley. They killed 3 African American students and wounded 33. They were the first student demonstrators killed by the police in the 1960s.
Today in Labor History September 10, 1897: A sheriff and deputies killed 19 striking miners and wounded 40 others in Lattimer mine, near Hazelton, Pennsylvania during a peaceful mining protest. Many of those killed were originally brought in as strikebreakers, but then later organized and joined the strike. The miners were mostly Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak and German. The massacre was a turning point for the UMW. Working and safety conditions were terrible. 32,000 miners had died from 1870-1897, just in the northeastern coalfields of Pennsylvania. Wages had dropped 17% since the mid-1890s.
The strike began in mid-August, when teenage mule drivers walked off the job to protest the consolidation of stables, which had forced them to walk much further just to get to work. After a scuffle between drivers and supervisors, two thousand men walked out, as well. Soon, all the mines in the region had joined the strike. Most of the men who weren’t already members of the UMW quickly joined the union. Up to 10,000 miners were now on strike. The mine owners’ private police, known as the Coal & Iron Police (miners called them Cossacks, for their brutality), was too small to quash the strike, so they called on the sheriff to intervene. He mustered a posse of 100 Irish and English immigrants, who confronted the miners as they marched toward Latimer, on Sep 10. Along the way, they joked about how many miners they were going to kill.
The massacre provoked a near uprising. The sheriff called for the deployment of the National Guard, which sent 2,500 troops to quell the unrest. 10 days later, a group of Slavic women, armed with fire pokers and rolling pins, led 150 men and boys to shut down the McAdoo coal works, but were stopped by the National Guards. The sheriff, and 73 deputized vigilantes, were put on trial. However, despite evidence clearly showing that most of the miners had been shot in the back, and none had been armed, they were all acquitted.
From Brasil: Netanyahu's plan this week is to carry out a massacre in the #Rafah region of #Gaza. The White House attempted to engage in dialogue with him, but he remained adamant. The President of France called Netanyahu, but he ignored the call. Lula's statement aimed to prevent this #massacre.
As many as 180,000 people would gather to light candles in #Victoria#Park to remember June 4th 1989,
when China’s army brought a bloody end to weeks of peaceful pro-democracy protests in Beijing.
(China has never put a figure on the number who died in what it terms a counter-revolutionary incident.)
Hong Kong’s vigils became a symbol of #defiance of mainland authority
and an ardent evocation of the city’s #independence.
“It was magnificent,” says one resident. “We wanted to make [the massacre] known, not just in Hong Kong, but throughout the world.”
🔥 Organising such a vigil would be unthinkable now.
The commemoration was #banned in 2020, ostensibly because of covid-19.
Some 20,000 people gathered anyway.
The following month the central government in Beijing imposed a draconian national-security law on the territory,
a response to large pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The authorities have since snuffed out memories of Tiananmen.
Memorials have been removed.
The commemoration’s organisers have been jailed;
-- in March they lost a bid to overturn their conviction.
Wearing black or lighting candles near Victoria Park on June 4th may now be considered criminal activity.
This year, like the last, the park is filled with food trucks instead of candles.
Pro-Beijing groups have organised a carnival in the vigil’s stead.
Inside a southern Gaza hospital: Screaming orphaned children, amputee toddlers and the stench of rotting flesh (www.independent.co.uk)
As Israel expands its ground assault into Khan Younis, a surgeon at the European Hospital in the city describes desperately trying to treat a relentless stream of wounded children as critical supplies run out
20 killed & tens injured in a back-to-back Israeli massacre as jetfighters strike Gaza school sheltering displaced Palestinians (NSFL Video) (english.ahram.org.eg)
An Israeli airstrike on the Osama bin Zaid School in the Al-Saftawi neighbourhood in north Gaza City killed at least 20 and wounded 30 in the second massacre against civilians in less than five hours on Friday....
AEW: FIGHT FOR THE FALLEN! DISCUSSION THREAD 08/16/23
💥💥 IT’S WEDNESDAY, YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! 💥💥...
Dozens killed as Israeli forces attack al-Fakhoora School in northern Gaza (Warning: NSFL Video) (www.aljazeera.com)
Many hundreds of people are believed to have taken shelter at the UN-run school.
Israel not only prevents entry of aid into Gaza, but also kills those who try to receive it (euromedmonitor.org)
Euro-Med Monitor has documented shocking testimonies of the Israeli army killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians on Thursday 11 January 2024 on Al-Rashid Street, in the west of Gaza City, who were trying to receive humanitarian aid. The human rights organization demanded that the involved United Nations agencies be held...