#The First Meeting of the League of Nations (1920)

[seashorepics]

10th January

Here’s a notable historical event from January 10th: The First Meeting of the League of Nations (1920) On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations held its inaugural meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. Established after World War I, the League was the first international organization dedicated to maintaining peace and resolving conflicts through diplomacy. Though it eventually dissolved and was…

[whencyclopedia]

League of Nations

The League of Nations was founded in January 1920 to promote world peace and welfare. Created by the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the First World War (1914-18), the League provided a forum where nations promised to resolve international disputes peacefully. Any state that attacked another would be subjected to the collective action of all the other members, first in the form of economic sanctions, and if necessary, military action.

The League's members met annually in Geneva, Switzerland, in a general assembly and, for the most powerful members only, more regularly in meetings of an executive council. Although some progress was made in terms of limiting armaments and promoting citizen welfare, the League proved ineffective against acts of aggression by Italy, Japan, and Germany. The weaknesses of the League were one of several causes of WWII (1939-45), but the idea of international cooperation survived the conflict to be reborn in the form of the United Nations.

Foundation

The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, imposed peace terms on Germany and formally ended WWI. The treaty limited Germany's armaments, redistributed important areas of German territory and colonies, and stipulated that Germany must pay war reparations and accept responsibility for WWI. The treaty also formed a new international body to facilitate global diplomacy and help foster a lasting peace: the League of Nations.

After the horrors of WWI, when 7 million people were killed and 21 million seriously injured, the victors – Britain, France, the United States, and Italy – sought to guarantee no such global conflict ever happened again.

Signing the Treaty of Versailles, 1919

William Orpen (Public Domain)

The prime mover for the establishment of the League was US President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924). Wilson had come up with 14 points for a new world in the summer of 1918. The president identified certain causes of WWI he wanted never to replicate: self-interested and secretive diplomacy, the repression of minority groups within empires and larger states, and autocratic regimes ignoring their own people's wishes. A new international organization was required that would eradicate these three diseases of world diplomacy and champion instead democracy, self-determination, and openness. Although Wilson's emphasis on self-determination was not applied to WWI's losers or the nationals caught up in a massive redrawing of the maps of Europe, Africa, and East Asia, the League of Nations became a reality in January 1920.

Continue reading...

[mannlibrary]

Mend and  Make New

Featured in the photographs above is some remarkable hand and sewing-machine stitching done in 1893 by Dorothea Beach, a 6th grader at a public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The sample is from the archives of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences housed at Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Above: Title page, Lake Placid Conference of Home Economics Proceedings;  photo of Flora Rose (l) and Martha van Rensselaer (r) at a League of Women Voters meeting, Hyde Park, NY, 1920 (from Human Ecology Historical Photographs

The AAFCS was founded as the American Home Economics Association at the Lake Placid Conference of 1909. Participants at the annual conference, who had been meeting annually for 10 years,  were passionate about turning the formerly invisible work of women into vibrant arenas for building creative expertise. For the early pioneers of the field, Cornell’s Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose among them, home economics (also known as domestic science and, later, family and consumer sciences) would be a force for liberation. As a newly emerging field of study in land-grant colleges and other educational institutions, it would help women transform practical skills into creative capacity for finding innovative solutions problems that affect both individuals and society as a whole. A key area for this work was the challenge women faced keeping themselves and their families well clothed, despite the hardships of poverty and crises in the national economy.

Above from top:  Display of garments made from men's shirts arranged by Cornell home economics faculty for Farmers Week, 1919; Display of conserved hats prepared for an exhibit at the New York State Fair, 1918.(Both photos from the Human Ecology Historical Photographs collection). 

Through community workshops, live demonstrations at county fairs, and free publications, home economists have sought over the years to help their communities take on the issue of making, maintaining, and repurposing clothing. Teaching children good stitch work was an important start, but the ultimate goal was to grow this basic skill into a nimble ability to refashion unlikely resources, lean household budgets and thread bare clothes included, into fresh elements of a pleasing wardrobe.

“Keeping Clothes Wearable”, by Gladys L. Butt. Cornell Extension Bulletin 536, October 1942, in the archives of the Cornell Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University; also viewable online.  

“Mending Clothes and Household Fabrics,” by Gladys L. Butt. Cornell Extension Bulletin 871, 1954; in the archives of the Cornell Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University; also viewable online. 

“First Lessons in Sewing: A Manual for Junior Extension Workers in Clothing,” Cornell Junior Extension Bulletin No. 1, 1918, in the archives of the Cornell Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University; also viewable online. 

Page from the handout “Restitch and Renew to Keep Clothes in Use,” by Bernetta Kahabka, Extension Specialist, Cornell University, 1974, in the home economics archives of the Rare and Manuscript Division of Cornell University Library. 

Most of the guides to sewing and stitching shown here are available as part of Mann Library’s online Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, History (HEARTH) ,  the Cornell Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA), and the Hathi Trust Digital Library. These online repositories offer valuable (yet free!) resources for anyone interested in re-learning the art of making new from old.  “Upcycling,” a term first coined in the early 1990s, has become a common word as awareness of more sustainable “slow fashion” principles has grown. What does it mean exactly? According to merriam-webster.com, to upcycle is “to recycle (something) in such a way that the resulting product is of a higher value than the original item : to create an object of greater value from (a discarded object of lesser value).” For (happily) growing numbers of us, upcycling has become a fine craft that combines old traditions and techniques with contemporary style to create uniquely personalized wearable art that also signals a conscious effort to avoid harmful waste and use resources sustainably. With a little bit of mindfulness and maybe some handy “how-to’s found in digitized, freely available historical materials, the old can indeed become some bright new for one and all.

Excerpted from Mann Library’s spring 2023 exhibit, Sustaining Style: Towards Responsible Fashion

Display in Mann Library exhibit, Sustaining Style:Towards Responsible Fashion (March 23 - September 15, 2023)

[rubecso]

I've been on one of my regular excursions down a JSTOR rabbit hole lately, mostly researching 1920s psychiatric medicine for a character. Sometimes when you're reading a bunch of papers about a narrow topic, you'll find yourself encountering specific names more than once.

In this case, it's Sir Maurice Craig.

I first encountered this guy when I read a bunch of letters back and forth to the British Medical Journal. It starts with Maurice writing in saying "Barbiturates are totally not addictive, I give them to all my patients with no problems."

Now you might be tempted to say "Oh well they probably all thought that back then, they didn't know better."

Nope! There follows a flurry of responses from other doctors saying “Uhhh, I don't think so mate.” One of them sarcastically points out that if Sir Craig has never tried reducing his patients’ doses, he might not have realised they were addicted. 

This is met by response after response from Maurice telling them they were wrong. 

I then later spot his name mentioned in a conference on treating insomnia, where he said “Look guys, even if barbiturates are addictive, insomnia is way worse.”

And then today, I find him again, speaking at a meeting of (wait for it) the National Temperance League. 

Maurice: “Alcohol is bad cause it's addictive.”

Uh huh, yes that tracks. 

Maurice: “Which is why everyone should take barbiturates instead!”

Okay Maurice, you lost me there. 

And just to confirm that this was very much not the universal medical opinion at the time, there's another doctor at the same meeting who's recorded as saying pretty much that.

I can't tell if he was just really stubborn or getting some kind of kickback from the drugs manufacturers,but either way wherever he went Sir Maurice Craig was saying “THESE DRUGS ARE AWESOME”, followed by a small crowd of his peers doing their best to correct him.

[helendamnationx]

Mary Barbour (1875 – 1958), nee Mary Rough, was one of Glasgow's first women councillors. She stood as the Labour candidate for Fairfield ward in Govan in 1920, and retired from the council in 1931 but continued serving on committees and with other activist work.

Her first step into politic was becoming an active member of the Kinning Park Women’s Co-operative Guild, an organisation in which women discussed politic with each other, and which offered its members training in organisation, and running and chairing meetings.

She became an activist during the 1915 Glasgow rent strike, where she organised tenant committees and eviction resistance. The strikers became known as Mrs Barbour's Army.

She worked tirelessly for the working class during her political career, both generally and specifically for working class women. She campaigned for maternity benefit, education, the vote, a national minimum wage, free school milk, children’s playparks, municipal wash-houses and Glasgow’s first family planning clinic.

In 1926 she engaged in cross-party co-operation with another woman councillor, Violet Roberton, in order to open the Elder Park Child Welfare Association. The association also taught parenting - for both mothers and fathers.

She campaigned against the first world war in the Women's International League and was a founder of the Women's Peace Crusade.

She was Glasgow's first woman Baillie and magistrate, and became a Justice of the Peace in 1928. Signs point to her not being excessively punitive; as the Glasgow Herald reported on her first session:

“The calendar was a light one. Two men who admitted having been intoxicated were dismissed with no admonition, while a woman whose offence was similar was advised to go home and attend to her family and household duties.”

(main sources are:

https://paisley.is/stories-from-renfrewshire/mary-barbour/ https://remembermarybarbour.wordpress.com/about-mary-barbour/)

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 2.20

1339 – The Milanese army and the St. George's (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clash in the Battle of Parabiago; Visconti is defeated. 1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark. 1521 – Juan Ponce de León sets out from Spain for Florida with about 200 prospective colonists. 1547 – Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. 1685 – René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas. 1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington. 1798 – Louis-Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power. 1813 – Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Pío de Tristán during the Battle of Salta. 1816 – Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. 1835 – The 1835 Concepción earthquake destroys Concepción, Chile. 1846 – Polish insurgents lead an uprising in Kraków to incite a fight for national independence. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Olustee: The largest battle fought in Florida during the war. 1865 – End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance. 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City. 1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. 1901 – The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time. 1905 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. 1909 – Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro. 1913 – King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra. 1920 – An earthquake kills between 114 and 130 in Georgia and heavily damages the town of Gori. 1931 – The U.S. Congress approves the construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California. 1931 – An anarchist uprising in Encarnación briefly transforms the city into a revolutionary commune. 1933 – The U.S. Congress approves the Blaine Act to repeal federal Prohibition in the United States, sending the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to state ratifying conventions for approval. 1933 – Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign. 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica. 1942 – WW2: Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace. 1943 –Propaganda in ww2: American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies. 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms. 1944 – World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers. 1944 – World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Atoll. 1952 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League. 1956 – The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy. 1959 – The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate. 1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes. 1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts. 1968 – The China Academy of Space Technology, China's main arm for the research, development, and creation of space satellites, is established in Beijing. 1971 – The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert. 1979 – An earthquake cracks open the Sinila volcanic crater on the Dieng Plateau, releasing poisonous H2S gas and killing 149 villagers in the Indonesian province of Central Java. 1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years. 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. 1991 – In the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down by mobs of angry protesters. 1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski, at the age of 15, becomes the youngest Olympic figure skating gold-medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. 2003 – During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the Station nightclub ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others. 2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout. 2009 – Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze style attack. 2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago. 2014 – Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers. 2015 – Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services. 2016 – Six people are killed and two injured in multiple shooting incidents in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.

[uniquejellyfishqueen]

WOODVALE

Folklore was recorded at a total of 5 studios:

Conway- LA (1989 also recorded here)

Kitty Committee- LA (1989 also recorded here)

Electric Lady- NY

Long Pond- NY

Rough Customer- NY

NY-3 LA-2

Exile ends in 3..2.. does exile end in LA? I too am one of the ones that expects an announcement for a last stop in LA.

3rd letter of the alphabet is C 2nd letter is B. Mirrored that is BC.. British Columbia? I wonder who’s gonna be there? Okay I’ll tell you tswizzle will be in Vancouver which is the largest city in BC for her 1st of 2 stops in Canada. 11/14-11/23. There is a break in between those shows as well. This is also the last stop of the tour prior to her next announced release.

Kansas City hosts LA on 12/8… the last day of the eras tour.

Kansas City to Toronto is 1,610.9 miles (8.9)

…I’m gonna have to join a fantasy league next year..

The Chargers-Chiefs first meeting was 9/10/1960 latest meeting was 9/29/2024. They have had a total of 129 meetings. I don’t like that meeting sounds like they are discussing stock prices, but i suppose saying played with each other is inappropriate. So like why don’t they just say games? Is it a game if it isn’t fun anymore?

Anywho in 2010 the chargers kicked the chiefs ass with a score of 31-0. And back in 1964 the chiefs kicked the chargers asses 49-6.

These two teams are now the farthest apart pair of teams in the same division

*there was speculation that after the release of both Folklore and Evermore that there was going to be a third to make it a trilogy.

There were 8 special editions of Folklore (album 8) on vinyl and cd. On the Hide and Seek variant of Folklore on the top right in a barely there print says Woodvale. And on the bottom left it says Taylor Swift.

Okay 1st letter from each of those words are: WTS. Rearrange WST. She did say that she forgot how the west was won.. E is the missing letter to make that word WEST E is the 5th letter of the alphabet and it is also the 1989 album. WEST each letter added together = 22 which then = 4 the 4th track on 1989 is OOTW. This song was made available from Big Machine for download on 10/14/2014 as a promotional single (13 days before the release of 1989 on 10/27/2014.). She then premiered the music video at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on 12/31/2015. Then the song was released to US pop and hot adult contemporary radio as the album’s 6th single on 1/19/2016.

-1/11 is “No Longer New Years Day” this is 8 days after that.

-1/19 is:

National archery day -> The Archer

National Lucy Day -> BS character name in CrossRoads.

Robert E Lee’s Birthday (state of FL)

Confederate Memorial Day (Texas) *this and the one above are the two states mentioned in the song Florida!!!

1/19-1/25 is national handwriting analysis week. Irish coffee week. World Kiwanis week.

The North American International Auto Show is scheduled for 1/10-1/20/25. Oh shut up the last day of that is Inauguration Day.. thats a whole other post

Pro-Life Day

World Snow Day -> Snow on the Beach

1809 Edgar Allan Poe

1943 Janis Joplin

1946 Dolly Parton

1954 Katey Sagan

1992 Shawn Johnson

1/19/1861 Georgia becomes the 5th state to secede during the American Civil War

1/19/1883 the first electrical lighting system employing overhead lights built by Thomas Edison begins service in Roselle, New Jersey. -> in the karma video there are 5 Taylor’s in 5 light bulbs. 5th album 5th track is All You Had To Do Was Stay. But also 5+5=10 which according to swifties is Midnights but according to Forbes that is Fearless TV. “This ain’t Hollywood this is a small town.” Holly-Christmas plant. Wood-vale. Out of the woods? Out of Hollywood? Post Malone tried to warn you it was bleeding.

1/19/1920 The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.

1/19/1937

1/19/1953 Lucille Ball gave birth on TV. It was filmed on 11/14/1952. This episode was one of the most watched in television history reaching 44 million Americans. It was also the first time that pregnancy and childbirth were depicted on national television.

1/19/1955 1st presidential news conference filmed for TV (Eisenhower)

1/19/1971 The Beatles, Helter Skelter, is played at the Charles Manson trial

1/19/1977 Snow falls in Miami, Florida. The only time in history it has snowed there. -> Snow on the Beach.

1/19/1981 The Iran Hostage Crisis US and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American Hostages after 14 months in captivity.

1/19/1983 Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia.

1/19/1983 The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse is announced.

1/19/1986 The first IBM PC computer virus (c)Brain

1/19/19991 Gulf War: Iraq fires a second Scud missile into Israel causing 15 injuries.

1/19/1997 Madonna won best actress for Evita at the Golden Globes

1/19/1997 The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.

Woodvale

She said in an interview she “was afraid to unveil the real title so she made a mock up one and then forgot about it.” Right… The TC Maserati had an issue with a mock up or something? Wait it’s a trident, like Little Mermaid?

*The Woodvale historic District is a national historic district that encompasses multiplee historic properties that are located in Broad top Township (area code is 814=13), Bedford County, Wells Township, Fulton County, Wood Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 7/24/1992. This district included 79 buildings. Woodvale was also a mine-ing community

Woodvale & Glendale both are 8 letter places. In this instance there are 3 in this post.

Show #1 of the Eras Tour was in Glendale, AZ. Which is home to the Global HQ of the KKK/Aryan Nations. *5/23/2016 an article on Vice.com states that Nazis and members of the “alt-right” have labeled TS as an “Aryan Goddess.” They claim that her songs “red pilled” America into believing a conservative, racist agenda… hm you try reading that without laughing, let me know.

OR

we have Glendale, California (20 miles away from Sofi Stadium) which was referred to as “sundown town” and has a dark history of anti-semitism and racial discrimination. From Nazi rallies in the 1930s to the presence of the KKK.

Train from glendale to Sofi is 1h 45. Minutes. Show #145 is 11/22/2024 N5/6 in Toronto. (This is my reminder that LA had NO TY Post)

N1 in LA was show #48 (12) N6 in LA was show #53 (8).

12/8 is the last Eras Show. Show #149 (14 which can be reduced to 5) but 5/14/23 was show #22 N3/3 Philadelphia, PA. The SS were both from Fearless (2nd album) tracks 4 and 12. -> -> 412 is the area code for Pittsburgh, PA which is 4hr and 37 minutes (319.5 miles) to Philadelphia via US-22 E and I-76 E. -> -> -> Pittsburgh on the Eras Tour was 6/16/2023 and 6/17/2023 show #32 and #33. ->*->*-> the previous 2 shows before Pittsburgh were in Detroit where the 1st surprise song was Speak Now “Haunted” track #12. The last surprise song played in Pittsburgh was Speak Now “The Story Of Us” track #7. 12/7/24 is the 2nd to last show of the tour #148 (13)… this would be labeled as a reach but its not because on her merch site she has Fearless bookends available for purchase, they are White Horses. Two of them, just liked the #2 she has been holding up. Also this makes the “exile ends in 3…2” the bookends songs between the two cities are album 3 and the physical book ends are album 2. **Also White Horse was released as a single for Fearless on 12/8/2024, which is the last night of the Eras Tour as I stated as the beginning of this paragraph. (So many of her eggs have lead me to the last night, which holy shit is that a play on words for the band Our Last Night? They have covered her 25x in performances since 2017, Anti-Hero and Blank Space. Yes I do think it is a play on that because I just found an unreleased 2004 TS cover of “Our Last Night” by Better Than Ezra) I’m calling it Our Last Night now, omg cause it’s Ours? Omg that was released on 12/5/2011 as a single. 12/5/24 is the night before N1 in Vancouver. 12/5 is a mirror of 5/12 which was the #87 show N4/4 in Paris. The surprise songs didn’t have matcha bookends they had matching songs in the middle, the 2nd guitar song was Red (album 4) (track 3) is 34 backwards and she turns 35 this year. The 1st piano song was Red (album 4) (track 16) 416 is the area code for Toronto. -> The Toronto Maple Leafs (like Maple Latte? The hidden message from “All Too Well”?) have a 3 peat in their Stanley Cup history 1947, 1948, and 1949 in which 48 and 49 they sweeped the Red Wings back to back. (Sweep.. like she was sweeping the yellow brick road in the Karma music video?) the Maple Leafs also rank #2 in the list of most Stanley Cup wins with them having 13 wins.

*The Vancouver Canucks, along with the Sabres, are the two oldest teams in the NHL to have never won the Stanley Cup.

**11/13/2013: TS (while dressed like the British Flag in the most Spice Girls way possible) has her first performance at a VS Fashion Show NYC “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up) with FOB. During this performance Karlie Kloss and Cara Delevingne (1989 World Tour 6/12/2015, 6/27/2015, 7/11/2015 guests) were the Angels on Stage (OMG are they the ones that rolled their eyes?!?) and also performed “IKYWT” while this song was happening fake snow was falling on the stage -> The Pittsburgh Penguins used the FOB song in their 4/13/2013 commercial (11 years ago). -> flash forward to 2024 on 11/13/2024 the Pittsburgh Penguins host the Detroit Red Wings. The most recent game was the Red Wings home opener at Little Caesar’s Arena on 10/10/2024 where the Penguins beat the Red wings 6-3. -> The Red Wings have won 11 Stanley Cups. The Penguins have won 5 Stanley Cups, they are 1 of the 2 teams with 5 wins the other being Edmonton. (11/5 was Election Day.. hmmm)

*** “the greatest of luxuries is your secrets” Like Victoria Secrets?

[bobmccullochny]

History

January 10, 1776 - Common Sense, a fifty page pamphlet by Thomas Paine, was published. It sold over 500,000 copies in America and Europe, influencing, among others, the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

January 10, 1861 - Florida became the third state to secede from the Union in events leading up to the American Civil War.

January 10, 1863 - The world's first underground railway service opened in London, the Metropolitan line between Paddington and Farringdon.

January 10, 1878 - An Amendment granting women the right to vote was introduced in Congress by Senator A.A. Sargent of California. The amendment didn't pass until 1920, forty-two years later.

January 10, 1912 - The flying boat airplane, invented by Glenn Curtiss, made its first flight at Hammondsport, New York.

January 10, 1920 - The League of Nations officially came into existence with the goal of resolving international disputes, reducing armaments, and preventing future wars. The first Assembly gathered in Geneva ten months later with 41 nations represented. More than 20 nations later joined, however, the U.S. did not join due to a lack of support for the League in Congress.

January 10, 1922 - Arthur Griffith was elected president of the newly formed Irish Free State.

January 10, 1946 - The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place in London with delegates from 51 countries. The U.N. superseded its predecessor, the League of Nations.

January 10, 1984 - The U.S. and Vatican established full diplomatic relations after a break of 116 years.

[bloodbenderz]

Can I ask what your season 1 Lok reboot looks like?

this is about 3k words i checked lmfao dont say i didnt warn u

a key part of the whole thing is that korra gets way more perspectives and more experiences representative of like, normal people in republic city bc i think something that really defined what a good avatar aang was was how many people he met and got to know and how he didnt exclusively or even mostly associate w cops and bureaucrats and leaders. so mako and bolin. well first of all their backstories are a little more fleshed out and we get a less black and white view of the “triads” (lol) and mako and bolin’s experiences w them. cuz the show very much does the whole thing of like Criminals Bad but dont worry even tho mako and bolin did commit crimes theyre not Criminals!! so just a little more nuance on the alleged gang problem and the poverty in the city

korra does start out very naive w very black and white ideas (ex. “you guys are CRIMINALS?”) i think a really good way of developing her away from her sheltered naive worldview is putting her in whats clearly an incredibly complicated city w an absolute cesspool of political conflicts, ethnic tensions, the lasting effects of colonization, etc and having her try and understand the needs of “the people” in a more complicated way than “i have to save the good guys from the bad guys” ykwim? and i think the absolute WORST way to do that is what they did. bc we get mako and bolin who could contribute genuinely compelling thematic elements to the story: one parent who was indigenous and one who was from a colonizer background in the decades directly following the end of the war, kids who grew up in poverty apparently without any familial support, and who now are trying to be “respectable” members of society (especially mako). and then most of that is pretty much tossed aside bc asami swoops in w her capitalist dad and her piles of money and the class issue is just never talked about again.

so the way i’d fix all that is like. introducing more, like, normal people. some nonbenders, more workers, more immigrants, etc, to show what daily life is actually like for people. because. we dont know! we dont have any context about whether the nonbender oppression thing is actually an issue bc we dont KNOW any nonbenders with normal lives! and spoiler: the nonbender oppression thing is not an issue. bc it doesnt make historical sense. lok is set 7 decades after the end of the war. that is not by ANY stretch of the imagination long enough to heal from the scars of imperialism, ESPECIALLY not when lok is also set in a settler colonial state. like that fact should have featured PROMINENTLY in the political and social setting! realistically, nonbenders arent an oppressed class, earth and water nation people are, regardless of bending status! as in all settler colonial states, the colonizers and their descendants (in this case fire nation people) retain most of the financial and political capital, leaving the colonized and racialized immigrants (in this case earth kingdom and water tribe people respectively) generally impoverished and politically suppressed. like aside from the fact that theres no way toph would have become a cop, it’s so ridiculous to think that an established privileged class of fire nation colonizers would EVER accept being policed by earthbenders!

imagine how much more nuanced and interesting it would be to set republic city as a remnant of a colonial past still fraught w the violence and tension that colonialism and the associated ideology imposed?? instead of some vague ideas of criminal who wear 1920s outfits and harass shopkeepers think about why extralegal and violent groups like that might form! earth kingdom people trying to push for the reclamation of their land? ethnic groups protecting themselves against corrupt cops? ESPECIALLY w the history that the fire nation has of SPECIFICALLY jailing and killing earthbenders and waterbenders BECAUSE of the potential they have to resist against fire nation imperialism like it just makes no sense at all that earthbenders would be privileged on land that, 70 years ago, they would have been imprisoned on! like these various paramilitary groups falling along these different ideological or ethnic lines, fire nation or earth kingdom or water tribe, pro colonization or anti colonization, pro cop or anti cop, pro immigrant or anti immigrant, and then you juxtapose that w depictions of a govt thats failing to keep this all under control w tenzin trying desperately to keep it together despite the fact that it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the state has no interest in taking the conflicts seriously and would rather just point vague fingers at criminals and gangs? and THEN you bring in korra, who has no idea about any of this and thinks that all its gonna take is kicking some ass every couple days, meeting normal people who offer all kinds of different opinions abt the efficacy of the state and the different violent or nonviolent groups and ideologies clashing in the city and the way all this shit is affecting people’s lives and livelihoods and relationships w other citizens??

theres so much good shit there so many incredible things u could do w that like Where do we go after colonial atrocities? is it possible for a settler colonial state to take revolutionary or indigenous ideas seriously? is liberal reform enough in a state like this? and then all the growth that korra could do going from a simple black and white life about mastering the elements to this messy complicated sociopolitical knot of a city? and all the different kinds of characters u could introduce in this city? like why would u EVER think that the most interesting characters that this story has to offer is a police chief a congressman and a billionaire????

but anyways. that’s what the Setting of my idealized version of lok is. as for the actual plot, it is as follows

it starts out similarly as the show. republic city is MUCH more fraught w political tension and violence and korra knows this but assumes that it’s just a matter of throwing a few gang leaders and corrupt officials in jail. tenzin manages to come see them in the south pole and intends give korra real lessons while he’s there but they receive news of a terrorist attack in republic city only a few days after he gets there so his family has to pack up and leave again.

korra stows away to republic city (katara catches her leaving and gives her blessing im a SUCKER for that moment). she does have a hard time adjusting but she doesn’t do what she did in the show lol the first person she meets in the city is this older woman who works on the docks, directs her to a place where she can eat and gives her a roof to sleep under for the first night. so korra’s first exposure to republic city is just about forming connections w ordinary people like ship workers and a family owned restaurant and people practicing their bending in the park. and by the time she reaches air temple island a day or so later her head is spinning w all this new information and the way that nothing is really what she expected it to be. tenzin gives her his own perspective on everything and pema gives her her own perspective on everything and even those two seem wildly different from all the people she’s already met. and so korra starts to get a kind of outline of the conflicts plaguing the city as extremely complex and a lot more influenced by older ideas of fire nation imperialism and earth kingdom land reclamation than she had any idea about.

mako and bolin are still pro benders but not like. super famous like they are in the show. korra’s picked up a couple friends by now and one of them takes her to a gym where a lot of amateur pro bending (is that an oxymoron? lol) matches happen and thats how she meets mako and bolin and joins their pro bending team. Unfortunately for korra, this gym is run by lin beifong, and also has the distinction of being one of the most notoriously anti settler state organizations in the country. lin beifong is NOT a cop but she runs this gym (and the pro bending league) as a way to offer support to local earth kingdom/water tribe youth, teach self defense skills, a center of community organizing, and sometimes to act as a front to hide revolutionary/combat organizing against the pro fire nation paramilitaries/police force. tenzin is DISTRAUGHT that korra does this and this is where the friction btwn them comes from bc (from tenzin’s perspective) she does things like this without thinking or even fully understanding the context behind them and tenzin will have to deal w the political fallout of the avatar openly aligning herself w a very divisive figure in the community and (from korra’s perspective) tenzin is too unwilling to take sides in a conflict that’s claiming lives and when the state is clearly not taking sufficient steps to protect people well then why the hell shouldnt she align herself w lin beifong, who IS taking steps to protect and support people?

as korra more fully integrates herself into the city and learns more abt how different people think abt everything going on this is where the real exposition abt the equalists begins. they’re a paramilitary group w an ideology thats gaining increasing support among middle/upper class fire nation people, esp nonbenders. on the face theyre abt putting checks on “bender oppression” but really it’s an excuse to persecute and surveil earthbenders waterbenders and airbenders, bc fire nation people have all this leftover fear about benders who arent fire nation Rising Up Against them and these people who r using their Savage Excuse for Bending to terrorize good innocent (fire nation) people. theres all too frequent terrorist attacks that the equalists claim credit for mostly against monuments to earth/water/air nation people and earth/water nation community centers (one like it was the event that forced tenzin back to republic city) but also like the govt doesnt take a lot of these seriously or if they do only a couple people are charged without doing damage to the entire organization

this is also around the time that they meet asami and she becomes part of their friend group. asami likes pro bending but her dad HATES it so she sneaks out to watch matches at lin beifong’s gym (korra says ironically like don’t u know how ~divisive~ that is and asami answers that the only reason its Not divisive is that gyms like beifongs are the only place where nobody recognizes her). and asami alongside korra is also kind of developing a more nuanced perspective on the city that she lives in cuz obviously the only worldview she’s ever been exposed to is her father’s right? and she keeps pushing it off making excuses not to bring mako and bolin and korra around to her house or even not to be seen w them in certain neighborhoods until they call her on it and she’s like Well honestly my dad might do something awful to u! and i dont wanna risk it!

and as time goes on we see more abt asami’s home life like her father’s hyper conservative politics and asami keeps these secrets abt her hobbies and her friends from him but she’s still clearly under his influence and mako bolin and korra r getting increasingly worried abt it cuz like...asami seems to tend to make excuses for him so that she wont have to be drawn into conflict and originally they think its just her being privileged and thats def part of it but the more they find out abt it the more they realize what a tight fucking grip he has on her and the way that like. asami sneaking out once or twice a week is the Only thing she does for herself. and it really starts freaking them out how influential this billionaire is and all the information theyre getting from asami abt what a piece of shit he clearly is. and so that whole plot thing comes about and shows us how deeply embedded these “equalist” ideas are in conservative republic city politics and how much influence theyre actually having in policy making and law enforcement.

asami suffers in the aftermath of this like being forced to truly confront the harm her father is doing both to the city and to herself. and she ends up leaving home when this discovery really breaks. but bc of the deep corruption in govt and police sato isn’t really....dealt with? like this big story breaks and everyones like Oh, My God! Hiroshi Sato Is Funding An Illegal Paramilitary Group! and theres all kinds of inane political discourse about it and he’s arrested but he bails himself out immediately and his finances are examined but he maintains control over them and after a few weeks the gang (bc they Have become close among all this w much less interpersonal drama lol) has to admit that this news story hasnt done what they thought it was going to it hasn’t dealt the equalists a real hit its just given them a very high profile ally

and this is when things really start to ramp up in terms of action like up until now korra’s daily activities are mostly like hanging around in the city w her friends  (which in part entails doing little avatar stuff that people dont feel comfortable going to police with, like Can you help me my ex husband wont pay child support or Please help i got robbed and i really needed that money for rent next month or Help my son keeps skipping school can you talk to him cuz im worried abt him being safe and doing well in school) and pro bending and airbending lessons (which i know ive neglected this part of the story in terms of her whole spiritual/physical conflict but it’s more of a subtle thing like it’s one of tenzin and korra’s more frequent arguments like tenzin says she needs to focus on spirituality and korra asks why she even needs to bc republic city is a sociopolitical problem not a spiritual one) but now the equalist threat seems to really be looming on every level of society like the storyline of equalists preventing pro bending matches happens here and everyones just at a total loss of what to do next. plus increasing and scary rhetoric about tenzin and his family that destroying the last airbenders is necessary to preserving the integrity of the united republic

and so theres the equalist takeover of the city. the people who are mostly resisting this are lin and ragtag group of people who have been resisting colonial rule for a long time (including suyin, who is part of a communist anti colonial community outside the city, because i said so and i think it would be fun), people who have been visiting her gym for years, members of her amateur pro bending league, plus asami and korra and tenzin. korra and tenzin have a sweet moment (bc they do genuinely care abt each other a lot even if their relationship has been marked w a lot of tension and arguing) where tenzin says like you know i think that ive lost focus on the kind of spirituality that might actually help you. korra says what do you mean? and tenzin kind of gestures to where theyre sitting with people buzzing around organizing to take care of innocents and civilians and to fight the equalists and he says this is a kind of spiritual too, isnt it?

and something something plot plot blah blah i havent decided on the details of the plot climax yet but that’s the climax of korra’s character development and what helps her connect w her spiritual side in order to protect the city: the realization that community is its own kind of spirituality. and it kind of represents the real development that i want her to have going from somebody who thinks that the world is divided into criminals and victims and she has to save the victims Into the kind of avatar who understands the people that she’s bound to serve. she becomes an avatar of the people!

and then happy ending lol korra and asami get together lin and tenzin reconcile after years of being at odds the show ends on a hopeful note that the inhabitants of republic city and the united republic as a whole Can move on from the scars of colonialism by reckoning w the remnants of fire nation colonial ideology and reparations to the earth kingdom people whose land this is and destruction of colonial systems that have maintained and enforced colonial violence all these years

[argumate]

I think if people are going to obsess over Nazi antisemitism but laugh off Catholic antisemitism then they should probably take a closer look at the timeline (mostly lifted from Wikipedia) before assuming that these things are entirely unrelated:

1806: French Catholic philosopher Louis de Bonald publishes Sur les juifs, one of the most venomous screeds of its era, which combined anti-liberalism, a defense of a rural society, traditional Christian antisemitism, and the identification of Jews with bankers and finance capital.

1826: Cayetano Ripoll is the last victim of the Spanish inquisition, executed for allegedly teaching Deism to school children.

1840s: The popular counter-revolutionary Catholic journalist Louis Veuillot propagated Bonald's arguments against the Jewish "financial aristocracy" along with vicious attacks against the Talmud and the Jews as a "deicidal people" driven by hatred to "enslave" Christians.

1850: In Italy the Jesuit priest Antonio Bresciani's highly popular novel The Jew of Verona shaped religious anti-Semitism for decades, as did his work for La Civiltà Cattolica, which he helped launch. The Jesuits banned candidates "who are descended from the Jewish race unless it is clear that their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have belonged to the Catholic Church" until 1946.

1858: Six year old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortara is kidnapped after allegations that he was secretly baptised by a servant as a baby and raised as a Catholic by Pope Pius IX despite the protestations of his family.

1869: Gougenot des Mousseaux's Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens argued that Jews had manipulated the ideals of the Enlightenment to subvert and destroy Catholic France, and held them responsible for the French Revolution. He maintained that Jews engaged in ritual murder and conspired with Freemasons to control the world, and that the French Revolution was wrong to grant them equal rights. Pope Pius IX blessed the work and Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg edited and published the first German edition in 1921.

1880s: French priests published twenty antisemitic books blaming France's ills on the Jews and urging the government to consign them back to the ghettos, expel them, or hang them from the gallows.

1889: Adolf Hitler is born.

1903: An antisemitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is published in Russia.

1912: Catholic priest Ernest Jouin founded the Ligue Franc-Catholique. The league's journal, the Revue internationale des sociétés secrètes, was one of the two main antisemitic tribunes of the interwar period (along with the paper of the Action Française). Revue often published right-wing antisemitic canards from Russian, such as hoaxes about blood libel, and claims that Bolshevism was a Judeo-Masonic plot. Describing the Protocols, Jouin wrote: "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity." Pope Benedict XV made Jouin an Honorary Prelate. Pope Pius XI praised Jouin for "combating our mortal [Jewish] enemy" and appointed him to high papal office as a protonotary apostolic.

1920: Hitler becomes chief of propaganda for the newly renamed Nazi Party (NSDAP) and begins making antisemitic speeches.

1933: While meeting a Catholic bishop, Hitler declares: “I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.”

now obviously Hitler was full of shit, but he chose his words based on what he thought his listener wanted to hear, and a Catholic bishop in 1933 was far more concerned about threats to the church than the threat of antisemitism that the church had stoked.

[gov-info]

(via Overview - Creative Space: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop | Exhibitions - Library of Congress)

Master printmaker Robert Blackburn (b. 1920, Summit, New Jersey; d. 2003 in New York City) changed the course of American art through his graphic work and the Printmaking Workshop, which he founded in New York City in 1948. His pioneering contributions to the technical and aesthetic development of abstract color lithography is as legendary as his generosity in encouraging and training thousands of diverse artists to experiment in the graphic medium.

Growing up in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, Blackburn was influenced by the intellectual and artistic legacies of the Harlem Renaissance as well as European abstraction and the artistic ideologies and political tendencies of both American social realism and Mexican modernism. He learned lithography as a teenager at a community center on 125th Street sponsored by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA). While in his twenties, he studied at the Art Students League for three years. Later, he did freelance artistic work for institutions such as the Harmon Foundation and began to forge his signature abstract style amidst the varied modernist currents he encountered. In 1948, he opened his own studio, the Printmaking Workshop, launching the oldest and largest non-profit print workshop in the United States.

After a period of travel and study in Europe, in 1957 Blackburn became the first master printer for the prestigious Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE). He printed the first seventy-nine editions for the seminal workshop, setting the standard by which ULAE exerted a powerful influence on modernist printmaking in America. His own complicated, varicolored abstractions prefigured or complemented more familiar ULAE works. In particular, his experiments in color lithography during the 1950s helped fuel the explosion of graphic art that occurred in the next decade.

In 1971, the Printmaking Workshop became a non-profit corporation, with a mission to maintain creative and artistic quality, support and encourage innovation, create opportunities for Third World and minority artists, and foster public appreciation of the fine art print. The Printmaking Workshop was renowned for its open, informal, and accommodating atmosphere. Through the workshop, Blackburn has been teacher and friend to thousands of artists—as master printer, technical advisor, fund raiser, diplomat, catalyst, and instigator.

Image: Antonio Frasconi (b. 1919), Untitled, 1948. Lithograph. © Antonio Frasconi/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

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Girl in Red is a pivotal work in Blackburn's development as he turned towards abstraction and away from figurative work. Using a rich color palette, Blackburn combines age-old artistic themes of still life, landscape, and portraiture. His subject, a young black girl, engages the viewer directly and wryly, her arms crossed. In 1951, Girl in Red was exhibited in the National Exhibition of Prints at the Library of Congress. The same year Blackburn was honored with a Purchase Award from the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

Robert Blackburn (1920–2003), Girl in Red, 1950. Lithograph. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Library of Congress

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Celebrated artist Romare Bearden was a longtime friend of Blackburn and one of the original trustees for the non-profit Printmaking Workshop, incorporated in 1971. The two first met around 1936 in Harlem, when both attended meetings at “306” (an informal artists' group) and produced work at the Harlem Community Art Center. Bearden's celebrated mastery of the collage and its layered, shape- and texture-driven aesthetic, carries over to this composition. The Train was printed at the Printmaking Workshop with master printer Kathy Caraccio and Emily Trevor.

Romare Bearden (1911–1988), The Train, ca. 1974–1976. Photoetching. © Romare Bearden Foundation /Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Historical parallels: France 1934 to United States 2021 or Potentional Lessons for Fighting Fascism' 1. The scene was eerily familiar. The setting was Paris; the date 6 February 1934. A demonstration of the ligues d'extrême droite (or far right leagues - they were just called 'ligues' in the 30s) including the monarchist Action Française, the Croix-de-Feu (which became France's first mass right wing party), Bonapartist, Boulangist and other right-wing populist groups (one founded by a perfume manufacturer, another by a middle class 'anti-political' taxpayer's federation) and multiple paramilitary groups turned into a riot at the gates of the legislature. Some of these ligues were explicitly anti-democratic or fascist, others such as the Jeunesses Patriotes were closely linked to mainstream right-wing parties. Some factions of the Parti Communiste were also present, though the Parti itself had not directly called for supporting the demonstration. Veterans of the Great War were also strongly represented - claiming that France had been 'stolen' from them. They had all been brought together in opposition to the scandal plagued Cartels des Gauches (a centre-left government), driven especially by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the financier and swindler Alexander Stavisky. Stavisky had died in January under mysterious circumstances, and it was assumed by the antisemites that he had been murdered by the government to hide the depth of government corruption - and the firing shortly after that of the Paris Prefet of Police Jean Chiappe (a notorious anticommunist who had turned a blind eye to fascist violence on the streets during his tenure) inflamed the conspiracy further. Ultimately, the anti-democratic insurgents failed to breach the Palais Bourbon (where the Chamber of Deputies was meeting) - they were fired upon and charged by mounted police and the riot lasted until early morning. 16 people died, and 2000 were injured. It was the worst night of this kind of political violence in France since the bloody suppression of the Commune in 1871. The ligues got their way, at first. The Daladier government fell, after failing to call a national emergency in response. It was replaced by a government headed by Gaston Doumergue, a favourite of the ligues whose cabinet included Philippe Petain and Pierre Laval, two men instrumental in later collaboration with the Nazis. But the popular response was swift: on February 9, separate socialist (SFIO) and communist (PCF) demonstrations filled Paris - nine were killed by police in this rioting. By 12 February, the major unions organized a massive, nationwide, general strike. Pushed from below by their rank and file members, the SFIO and PCF began the process of working together, the first time since the foundation of the latter party in 1920. Antifascist organizations, including ones dominated by syndicalists and anarchists, were set up for street fighting, self-defence and surveillance of the right. 2. This laid the groundwork for the Popular Front coalition, which took power in May 1936 under the leadership of socialist Léon Blum. This would have been impossible without the radicalization of ordinary people, of socialists and communists against their own parties, and of grassroots efforts across France to organize workplaces and communities, enroll new members in these political parties, and push the ligues from the streets. And of course the Front government implemented a raft of crucial reforms that still form the base of the French welfare state - such as the 40 hour week and recognition of collective bargaining. The Popular Front had an appreciable effect on fascist recruitment. The Action Française almost ceased to exist as a paramilitary group, others disintegrated into infighting, and the Croix-de-Feu tried to reform and committed itself to parliamentary politics. Phillipe Burrin, an expert on French fascism, points out that membership of most fascist groups fell during the Popular Front, and despite the deeply polarizing nature of the 1936 election and the hatred the far right had for Blum - "un Juif au cours de la patrie" - the new fascist groups founded in 1936 struggled to attract members. Some of this was simply because the SFIO and PCF were far better at recruiting during this period of mobilization, and the Blum government did little to block grassroots antifascist groups from their work of disrupting fascist groups. Indeed, the very fact that fascists had to wait until 1940, Nazi invasion, and the collapse of the Third Republic for their revenge was mostly because of the success of the Popular Front in putting them on the back foot. The most serious domestic fascist threat Blum's government faced was from the clandestine La Cagoule, or the Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire, funded by several industrialists, and supported in secret by members of the Army and police, whose terrorist attacks and assassinations of government ministers ended in police shootouts and prison sentences by late 1937. However, the example of La Cagaoule also shows how difficult it is to root out the hard core of fascism with just the policing of their criminal activities, especially when the police are sympathetic to the fascists. Because, despite being shot and imprisoned, the Cagoule stuck around until World War 2 - and most of the other fascist groups gained strength again by mid-1938, feeding off the eventual collapse of the Popular Front, continuing economic problems, and growing pacifism and anti-interventionism in response to the mounting Czech crisis. In key ways, France was simply ‘lucky’ with domestic fascism.  Fortunately, there were multiple fascist groups who failed to coalesce around a single charismatic leader, who often hated each other, and who disdained governmental participation in the 'corrupt' Republic to the extent that they never gained a foothold within its institutions despite the tacit support of parts of the bureaucracy and parliament. 3. Though it rode to power on a wave of popular support, the Popular Front’s demise has been linked to its timidity in pushing the progressive ideas it claimed to embody. This timidity ultimately cost the Front it's ability to stay in power. But more than that, the leaders of the Popular Front misjudged just how radical the situation had become — Daniel Guérin called it a “missed revolution” in the title of his memoir for a reason. Indeed, like many a social democrat party thrust into power since, the Blum government spent a great deal of time managing it's own base and reigning in their demands. Although Blum himself was prepared to pursue serious change, he was thoroughly committed to the SFIO (whose leadership otherwise embodied Trotsky's mocking ‘socialism of dentists’) and they in turn were dependent upon and deferred to the centrist parliamentary supporters of the Front - who were not much better than moderates are now (basically as afraid of antifa as fascists and committed to a defense of the status quo). Though the riot and the subsequent Popular Front had ushered in a newly urgent defense of the Republic and of France’s dedication to the revolutionary rights and values of 1789 - one popular 1937 May Day parade theme was 'Spirit of the Revolution' for instance - there was little interrogation of who the Republic was for and what values exactly were being defended (at least among the political and press classes). And the rhetoric of nationalism, with its emphasis on a unique French nation that must be protected, no matter how wedded to ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité,’ always leaves the door open for reactionaries and chauvinists.  Major planks of the Popular Front - like extending citizenship to some Algerians (a personal desire of Blum) or possibly giving the vote to some women - were never fulfilled or even attempted. Resistance to any sort of civic rights for  colonial subjects, especially in Algeria, was sharply rejected by the working class pied noirs who otherwise were all in for the Popular Front. Doing anything more than managing capitalism better was off the table, even though capitalist political organizing was explicitly anti-Popular Front when it wasn't also funding fascists directly. Although it took a much more conciliatory or ‘soft’ approach with labour negotiations, especially with some like the radical aircraft workers in government owned plants around Paris, it’s not like the government stopped sending in police to force workers during occupations out of their factories and mines, and the normal machinery of evictions, foreclosures, and the policing of poverty went on with only some modification. Indeed, the expansion of new technologies, forms and legal powers of policing - especially the control of imperial subjects in the Metropole and the expansion of mobile riot squads - were continued, and these would be used with alacrity against the left during the 1939-1940 war emergency and under Vichy. So too would the refugee camps set up to help Spaniards fleeing Franco, and the forced labour camps of the North African penal system - both were mobilized between 1939 and 1944 to punish (and after 1940, eliminate) enemies of the state. Very few people in power were going to dismantle or seriously reform the empire and it's attendant racism - though the Popular Front did try to end some of the worst abuses in the empire, this was very much imperialism with a gentle hand. As Arendt warned, fascism is partly the violence of empire deployed at home - an inability to grapple with the authoritarianism of empire is a defining characteristic of both France's and America's issues with fascism. Finally, one of the biggest foreign policy demands of the Front's supporters - solidarity with the Spanish Republic against Franco's rebels, as both countries had Popular Front governments that came to power at the same time - was not acted upon until it was too late, and even then the aid was too little. Although some of this ‘caution’ is explained by a realistic fear of confronting Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy without guaranteed British support (and the British establishment was far more pro-Franco at that moment), some of this was the same timidity and outsized respect for process and legitimacy that compromised the Front in other situations as well. More broadly, France was in serious crisis in the 1930s, a crisis that possibly no single government could hope to change without a radical rupture with the past. Repeated prognoses of decline, stagnation, failure, were urgently answered with calls for some kind of renovation, reform, revolution to resolve the crisis - but the causes of and solutions to this crisis were sharply delineated along party lines. The Popular Front was as caught up in this just as much as anyone. Conclusion. Ultimately, and thinking about today, a leftist coalition coming to power after an extreme-right coup attempt does itself no favors by hewing to moderation or ignoring the demands of its supporters, and any attempt to return to 'normalcy' or turning a blind eye to the structural problems that embolden fascists is not a solution.  Photo is 'Rioters attacking an automobile near the Chamber of Deputies, 1934.' Keystone K032022. [A lot of this is based on notes from a decade ago at this point, including from reading works by Serge Bernstein and Julian Jackson, by reading contemporary French magazines, and by a recent read through Guerin’s memoir and Bernard and Levy's recent republishing of memoirs from the February left-wing protests in 1934. Several French historians on Twitter raised similar points, and even Robert Paxton is finally mentioning this event. But ultimately this was my attempt to understand where we are at now, and my frustration with the way in which both popular and academic discourse around fascism has been dominated by Nazis! Nazis! Nazis! or totalitarianism as an unproblemitized analytic frame (looking at you Timothy Snyder) - while ignoring or downplaying that there are plenty of European, Latin American and, you know, U.S.-ian examples to learn from (it's important, for instance, to repeatedly point out, as smarter people than I have, that the death of Reconstruction by white supremacist terror is a much better analogy than the Beer Hall Putsch for Trump or the 2021 Capitol riot.)]

[petervintonjr]

Lesson 96: "It has been said, 'The Negro woman in politics would be a failure.' Let us make this statement false. Let us have a mind of our own and use it, make it do your own thinking, asking God for divine leadership, unselfish, untarnished and unbiased. Take a stand for the right, and stand anyhow, stand for the right if you must stand alone. Remember that God and one is a majority."

Meet orator and suffragist Ida M. Bowman Becks, one of the unsung heroes of the Urban League and an early voice in the still-coalescing National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Born in 1880 Armstrong, Mo., Ida graduated from Lincoln High School as class valedictorian in 1899, and then went on to the Chicago School of Elocution, where she honed her skills as a public speaker.

In 1908 she married and moved to Kansas City, where she co-founded that city's first YWCA for black women (Yates), and also traveled on behalf of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention. Her pro-suffrage speeches at numerous churches and clubs, were praised for their eloquence; audiences would describe Becks as "fearless and persuasive," and she was unafraid to engage in public debates. In 1916 she wrote and published a play, "Up From Slavery: Evening’s Entertainment in 8 Acts."

In the 1920s Becks served on the board of directors of Wheatley-Provident Hospitals. In 1921 she was one of five delegates from Kansas City to the 1921 NAACP convention in Detroit. That same year, the Negro Women’s National Republican League appointed Becks to organize a chapter in Kansas City, of which she eventually was elected chairman.

More info at: https://aahtkc.org/ida-m-bowman-becks

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.16 (after 1910)

1913 – Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan writes his first letter to G. H. Hardy at Cambridge, stating without proof various formulae involving integrals, infinite series, and continued fractions, beginning a long correspondence between the two as well as widespread recognition of Ramanujan's results. 1919 – Nebraska becomes the 36th state to approve the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. With the necessary three-quarters of the states approving the amendment, Prohibition is constitutionally mandated in the United States one year later. 1920 – The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France. 1921 – The Marxist Left in Slovakia and the Transcarpathian Ukraine holds its founding congress in Ľubochňa. 1942 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany begins deporting Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to Chełmno extermination camp. 1942 – Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard. 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker. 1959 – Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 205 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Astor Piazzolla International Airport in Mar del Plata, Argentina, killing 51. 1969 – Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before. 1969 – Space Race: Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of crewed spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk. 1979 – Iranian Revolution: The last Iranian Shah flees Iran with his family for good and relocates to Egypt. 1983 – Turkish Airlines Flight 158 crashes at Ankara Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, killing 47 and injuring 20. 1991 – Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War. 1992 – El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, Mexico ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives. 1995 – An avalanche hits the Icelandic village Súðavík, destroying 25 homes and burying 26 people, 14 of whom died. 2001 – Second Congo War: Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards in Kinshasa. 2001 – US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War. 2002 – War in Afghanistan: The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban. 2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry. 2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state. 2011 – Syrian civil war: The Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) is established with the stated goal of re-organizing Syria along the lines of democratic confederalism. 2012 – The Mali War begins when Tuareg militias start fighting the Malian government for independence. 2016 – Thirty-three out of 126 freed hostages are injured and 23 killed in terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on a hotel and a nearby restaurant. 2017 – Turkish Airlines Flight 6491 crashes into a residential area near Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan, killing 39 people. 2018 – Myanmar police open fire on a group of ethnic Rakhine protesters, killing seven and wounding twelve. 2020 – The first impeachment of Donald Trump formally moves into its trial phase in the United States Senate. 2020 – The United States Senate ratifies the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement as a replacement for NAFTA.

[stirringwinds]

Idk if this has been asked before but... when do you think world meetings started to take place? Or how/why did they became to be?

admittedly, in my headcanons, i completely do away with the idea of ‘world meetings’ being a separate concept from whatever real-life conferences/talks there were. so, ‘world meetings’? probably the first one (or closest to it) was probably in 1920, where the council of the league of nations met for the first time. ‘world meetings’ are just united nations general assembly meetings or any international conferences. i’m sorry if this may be a bit of a boring interpretation! but i like to enmesh them as closely as possible with our world and world history, and the 20th century is the first time we would have anything close to meetings with representatives from all corners of the globe (things like the berlin conference wouldn’t really meet that criterion). 

and of course, there are plenty of other meet ups. like the yalta conference in 1945? it’s alfred, arthur and ivan drinking and engaging in power struggles over the future of the world in Livadia Palace alongside their leaders. all the while plastering on smiles as good PR. the Grand Alliance, fraying? oh of course not. so these fuckers are there. like, you know, most people don’t know what they are. but if you know where to look—there are consequently snapshots of them in archival images throughout history. they’re there, and they’re always explained away by the humans in the know as an aide, advisor, military officer—whatever. but they’re there. fucking cryptids.

[today-in-wwi]

Harding Receives GOP Nomination on Tenth Ballot; Coolidge Nominated for VP

The 1920 RNC in the Chicago Coliseum, which had also hosted the previous four Republican National Conventions.

June 12 1920, Chicago--The Republican National Convention opened in Chicago on June 8, with no clear frontrunner for nominee and serious questions about the platform.  The major platform fight regarded the League of Nations; no faction wanted to ratify the Treaty of Versailles as written, but there were major divides between those who wanted mild reservations, those who wanted strict reservations, and the staunch isolationist “Irreconcilables,” led by Sen. Hiram Johnson of California and Sen. William Borah of Idaho.  Henry Cabot Lodge eventually drew up a compromise plank that strongly rejected Wilson’s treaty while pledging

the coming Republican Administration to such agreement with the other nations of the world as shall meet the full duty of America to civilization and humanity in accordance with American ideals and without surrendering the right of the American people to exercise its judgment and its power in favor of justice and peace.

The plank, adopted on June 10, was seen as a victory for Johnson and Borah.

The first ballot for the presidential nomination, taken on June 11, showed the deeply divided field.  In first, with 287.5 votes (29%), was General Leonard Wood, a long-time ally of the late President Roosevelt.  General Wood had been passed over for command in Europe due to his close ties to the Republicans, and instead had commanded Army garrisons in the Midwest during and after the war.  In second, with 211.5 (21%), was Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, favorite of the conservatives; we last saw Lowden during his inaction during the 1919 Red Summer in Chicago.  In third, with 133.5 (14%), was Hiram Johnson, who in addition to his isolationist sentiments, was also a noted progressive, and had been Roosevelt’s running mate in 1912.  Behind them were Pennsylvania Governor Sproul, on 84 votes, Columbia University President Butler, on 69.5 votes, and Ohio Senator Harding, on 65.5 votes.

By the time the fourth ballot concluded that evening, Wood had gained some support (but still only had 314.5 votes), Lowden had narrowed the gap considerably (to 289 votes), and Butler had lost most of his support (and was down to 20 votes).  The next day, four more ballots were held.  Lowden led Wood on the fifth and eighth ballots, and tied him on the fifth, but was still nearly 200 votes away from a majority.  The progressives would never accept Lowden, and the conservatives would never accept Wood.  Meanwhile, Harding began to attract votes as a compromise candidate, passing Sproul for fourth place on the sixth ballot and Johnson for third place on the seventh.  The convention recessed briefly, and Harding’s campaign managers were able to convince Lowden to release his delegates, and around 50 Wood votes were brought over as well.

On the ninth ballot, Harding claimed a commanding lead, with 374.5 votes, and was easily nominated on the tenth ballot.  Harding was not a particularly impressive candidate (Wilson dismissed him, saying “How can he lead when he does not know where he was going?”), but was able to unify the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican party.

Harding offered Johnson the Vice Presidential nomination, but he declined; Wisconsin Senator Lenroot, another progressive, was tapped instead.  However, the delegates had a different idea, and nominated Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, famous for firing over two-thirds of the Boston Police Department during the 1919 police strike.

Sources include: The New York Times; Patricia O’Toole, The Moralist.