#houston texas join the protest

[lily778800]

Everybody please join me

Dati Join Now

My Join Now

[dreamy625]

Wild oats - one-shot

Words: 1620

Content: Inspired by make-me-your-animal’s chapter, I wanted to write a slutty Steve fic, but not a smutty one (though if anyone else fancies writing some slutty Steve smut I wouldn’t complain too much 👉👈) and this is what my brain delivered. So content warning for crude language and sexual references, but no actual smut. 

Grateful thanks to @thiswatch-lepparddef-werehi for language advice, and the aforementioned @make-me-your-animal whose ‘Who did Phil do?’ line I have slightly borrowed.

—-----------------------------

-8th May, Dallas, Texas-

Despite the 80-degree heat, Steve is wearing a scarf wrapped twice around his long skinny neck when he joins the rest of the band in the front lounge for a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and a carefully measured portion of their secret Heinz beans stash. No one else takes any notice but, after studying him curiously for a minute, Phil everso casually queries the reason for this sartorial statement.

“Just felt like it. Scarves are my thing,” mumbles his bandmate, not meeting his eye.

Phil doesn’t challenge it, but when he stands to put his plate in the sink, he reaches over Steve’s shoulder and, in a quick swirling motion, whips off the scarf before its wearer can catch hold of it. 

“Hey!” protests Steve, one hand grabbing at the fabric held just out of reach and the other pressed against the side of his neck. 

But he wasn’t quick enough.

“Love bite!” shriek Phil and Rick in unison, the other two guys craning around to see what they’re pointing at.

“Oh sod off! You’re like a bunch of teenage girls!”

“So, the woman you were chatting to in the bar last night?” 

“Lisa.”

“You got on well then?”

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” replies Steve primly.

-10th May, Houston, Texas-

When Steve arrives for soundcheck twenty minutes late, out of breath, and with his shirt buttoned up wrong, Phil needs only one word for his question:

“Lisa?”

And Steve needs only one word for his answer, “Yvonne.”

Phil grins and slaps him on the back.

-13th May, Biloxi, Mississippi-

Biloxi, Mississippi brings a night off and the rare treat of a hotel stay. Sav had left the rest of the guys after the third bar, dreaming of a long soak in the tub and a deep-conditioning treatment for his increasingly travel-worn coiffure. Thoroughly pampered, he’d finally settled into bed accompanied by Nightline and an acceptable gin and tonic from the minibar. A perfect evening, until he was jolted from sleep an hour or so later by the rhythmic banging of a headboard against the wall of the neighbouring room. He groaned - he knew it had been a mistake to take the room next to Phil’s. Mercifully, the pillow he clutches to his head muffles the worst of the gasps and moans, and proceedings seem to reach a crescendo relatively quickly, but after mere moments the blissful silence is broken once more by the squeak of bedsprings from the room on the opposite side. So that will be Steve then, and a companion who is either very religious or highly appreciative of the guitarist’s… talents. He switches the TV back on, but even MTV can’t entirely drown out the sounds of enthusiastic enjoyment from nextdoor. And then, when that finally seems to be quietening down, the amorous percussion on the other wall starts up again. Sav resolves to buy earplugs at the next rest stop. 

-16th May, Nashville, Tennessee-

“And where have you been hiding? You missed Malvin balancing a barstool on his head.”

“Oh, I just went back to the bus for a… nap.”

“Uh huh. And was it restful, this ‘nap’?” asks Phil, eyeing the smudge of something suspiciously like lipstick on the other man’s chin.

“It was… very refreshing,” answers Steve judiciously, downing the vodka placed in front of him and signalling the barman for a refill. 

-18th May, Chattanooga, Tennessee-

As Joe and Phil walk across the parking lot, the reason for Steve’s absence from another after-show party becomes clear - he is bidding a fond farewell to her on the steps of their bus. Phil slows his pace and grabs Joe’s arm to encourage him to do the same.

“What? Why are we…?” He follows Phil’s gaze to the scene ahead of them, “Really? Again? What’s got into him lately? He’s worse than you! It’s obscene!”

“Nah, he’s just finding himself, that’s all.”

“It’s not him finding himself that’s the problem, it’s him finding half the female population of the tri-state area and shagging them on our tour bus that I object to!”

“You’re just jealous,” accuses Phil jovially as they watch their guitarist’s latest conquest depart, blowing kisses back towards the bus as she totters unsteadily across the crumbling tarmac in four-inch heels, and Joe just growls in response. 

-20th May Hollywood, Florida-

“...so apparently it’s a very bad idea to mix Guinness and Creme de Menthe…”

“...and when the lift door opened, all these chickens burst out…”

“...he wasn’t laughing quite so much when the bra hit him in the face…”

Another hotel breakfast, another session of comparing war stories from the night before. Steve is silent, but his spectacular bedhead and the bags under his eyes tell their own tale.

“Do I even need to ask what you were doing last night?”

“More apropos to ask who he was doing!”

“Err…,” surreptitiously the sleep-deprived blond peers at some biro scribbles on the back of his hand, “Kathy? No, Katy.”

“I’m gonna have to get you a little black book to keep track of them all!”

-21st May, Jacksonville, Florida-

“Jesus, you look like a bus ran over you!”

Steve gives a sheepish smile and flops down in the nearest chair.

“And who was the lucky lady this time?”

“Err… Katy…”

“Again?”

“...and Jenny.”

Phil’s mouth drops open. “One after the other, or together?”

“Um, together.” He ducks his head bashfully, but doesn’t quite manage to hide a grin.

“And it didn’t occur to you to share with your poor lonesome mate?”

“They were… kind of particular about it.”

Shaking his head, Phil pushes his glass of orange juice across the table. “Here, you need the vitamins more than me.”

-22nd May, Lakeland, Florida-

After soundcheck, during which the band and crew all referred to Steve as ‘Casanova’, making it clear that tales of his adventures had now spread far and wide, the guys gathered around the newly-revealed lothario in the hopes of extracting some salacious details.

“I… don’t really know what’s happening? I’m not even really trying and I’ve doubled my lifetime total in two weeks!” he exclaims, his face displaying a mixture of embarrassment and just a touch of boyish glee.

Rick punches him on the shoulder, “Duh, you’re a rockstar now!”

“Also your lifetime total was seven,” notes Phil.

“Seven?” Sav’s expression is kind but pitying.

“Some of them were more than once!” retorts Steve defensively. He glares at his fellow guitarist, “Note to self, don’t divulge personal information to Radio Phil.”

-5th June, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-

“You are being careful, right?”

“Yes, Dad. After the number of times I’ve driven Rick to the clap clinic, I’m definitely a ‘no shirt no service’ kind of guy.”

“Good boy.”

“But… is it…”

Phil looks up from his cereal and catches the blush creeping up his friend’s cheeks. He makes what he hopes is a supportive and encouraging face.

“Is it possible to… wear it out?”

“Well, there was that singer in the seventies who said his exploded…” Steve’s expression has switched from discomfort to horror, so he hurries on, “but that was multiple times a day, probably without a rubber.” He scoots his chair closer and drops his voice, “Is it red or… sore… or anything?”

“No, I don’t think so. I just… wondered.”

Phil snickers, “Only you would be having the best time of your life and start worrying about that. Just think how much wanking you did as a kid…”

“Speak for yourself!”

“... and that didn’t break it, did it. Just relax and enjoy it while it lasts. I mean,” he adds doubtfully, “you can’t be irresistible forever?”

“You reckon?”

“Either that or you’ll run out of women! Come on, let’s get to that interview before any more fling themselves on your poor knackered todger!”

-13th June, Buffalo, New York-

“So what are you going to do with your two weeks off?”

“Sleep,” says Steve with a groan, laying his head on the table and covering his bloodshot eyes with his arm.

“Alone or accompanied?” asks Sav archly, and receives a raised middle finger as his only reply.

-27th June, Allentown, Pennsylvania-

As Steve emerges from the bunk area in boxers and a faded Aerosmith t shirt, yawning and scratching his armpit, Phil gives him an appraising look. Noting the new, livid purple bruise joining the fading collection on the side of his neck, the older man smiles indulgently and leans over to make another checkmark on the chart stuck to the fridge.

Steve considers the paper with a slight frown creasing his brow as he takes out milk for his coffee, before sitting down opposite his bandmate and sipping silently.

“Hangover?” enquires Phil sympathetically.

“No, not really.” He takes another gulp of coffee. “Phil? Am I… am I a slut?”

“Absolutely! And I could not be more proud!”

“Phiiil, I’m serious. I know groupies are part of the whole scene… it just feels a bit… I dunno… sleazy.”

“But you’re enjoying yourself, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And the ladies concerned, they’re having a good time too?”

“I guess so… I mean, it sounds like it. I haven’t asked for marks out of ten or anything…”

“No stalkers, no broken hearts, no angry husbands?”

Steve’s eyes widen - he had not considered those potential side-effects - but he shakes his head. 

“Then it’s all good. You gotta sow your wild oats while you have the chance. And if you think you’re a slut, man I could tell you some stories. When I was in Girl there was this one bird who…”

“Ugh, stop, I don’t want to know.”

“See, that’s because you’re still a nice boy really. Now go and take a shower, you smell like a bordello!”

[lboogie1906]

Kirk Whalum (born July 11, 1958) is an R&B and smooth jazz saxophonist and songwriter. He toured with Whitney Houston for more than seven years and soloed in her single “I Will Always Love You”. He was featured on many Luther Vandross albums, most often playing on the singer’s covers of older pop and R&B standards such as “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, “I (Who Have Nothing)”, and “Love Won’t Let Me Wait”.

His musical accomplishments have brought him a total of 12 Grammy nominations. He won his first Grammy award in 2011 for Best Gospel Song (“It’s What I Do”).

He was born in Memphis. He attended Melrose High School and Texas Southern University, where he was a member of the renowned Ocean of Soul Marching Band. He sang in his father’s church choir, he learned to love music from his grandmother and two uncles.

He performed at Rendez-Vous Houston and Rendez-Vous Lyon. He performed the track “Last Rendez-Vous,” known as “Ron’s Piece.” He recorded a duet with R&B singer, Jevetta Steele called “Love is a Losing Game”. He has worked on several film scores, including for The Prince of Tides, Boyz n the Hood, The Bodyguard, Grand Canyon, and Cousins.

He recorded the Babyface Songbook with R&B icon Babyface’s best songs of the past 15 years, including “Exhale (Shoop Shoop),” “I’ll Make Love to You,” “When Can I See You,” and others. He performed a cover “Any Love” on the album Forever, For Always, For Luther. He contributed to the documentary film Miss HIV.

He was the inaugural Jazz Legend honoree of the National Museum of African American Music. He joined the faculty of Visible Music College. He received the coveted honor of a Brass Note on Historic Beale Street.

He married Rubystyne (1980). They have four children, including musician and marathoner Kyle. He converted to Catholicism, after having served for years as a Protestant minister. He has been a volunteer barber at a Catholic Worker House in Memphis. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[dankusner]

Why don’t Rangers have a Pride Night?

They are only MLB team without such an event

All but one of the 30 of the Major League Baseball teams are hosting Pride Nights this season, most during Pride Month, which celebrates and supports LGBTQ culture and rights.

The Texas Rangers are the only team without a Pride Night.

They say they are committed to making everyone feel welcome at all games.

Have the Rangers ever hosted a Pride Night?

No.

In September 2003, two years after the Chicago Cubs hosted what is considered the first Pride game, the Rangers invited local LGBTQ groups to a game as part of a fundraising event, similar to what they do for all kinds of groups throughout each season.

There were some Rangers fans who expressed opposition through a website beforehand and, while not widespread, there were some protests outside the stadium before that game.

What do the Rangers say about not hosting a Pride Night?

The team has been consistent with its response when asked: “Our longstanding commitment remains the same: To make everyone feel welcome and included in Rangers baseball — in our ballpark, at every game, and in all we do — for both our fans and our employees. We deliver on that promise across our many programs to have a positive impact across our entire community.”

What role could Texas politics play in the decision?

Texas has been dominated by Republicans for a generation, and state lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott last year joined the push from many conservative states to limit LGBTQ rights.

The Legislature passed new laws expanding definitions of prohibited sexual content in public performances and in school books, and activists fear those measures will be used to target drag shows and ban LGBTQ literature from libraries and classrooms.

Texas became the most populous of what are now at least 25 states with laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

And Texas public universities have been directed to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion offices and training.

Abbott also signed into law the “Save Women’s Sports Act” that bars transgender college athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity.

Texas already had a similar law for high schools.

Amid that conservative political landscape, there is less outside resistance in their home market to the Rangers not having a Pride Night.

Rangers majority owner Ray Davis has donated at least $560,000 to Texans for Greg Abbott since 2013, which classifies the former energy executive as a “mid-tier” donor, according to state campaign finance records.

Why do the Houston Astros have a Pride Night, but the Rangers do not?

The Astros hosted their first Pride Night in 2021. Houston, the state’s most-populated city with about 2.3 million people in a metro area of about 6.7 million, is one of the biggest strongholds for Democrats in Texas.

Another is Dallas, not far from the Rangers’ home ballpark.

A majority of the elected officials in Houston and Dallas are Democrats.

The Rangers’ ballpark in Arlington is just off Interstate 30, halfway between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas.

What do the Rangers do to support the LGBTQ community?

The Rangers were a sponsor of the NAGAAA Gay Softball World Series in 2022 when the event took place in Dallas and Waxahachie.

The club participated in the opening ceremonies in Dallas and worked with the local organizers and NAGAAA officials on several initiatives for the event.

The team is working on initiatives with local groups, including the Pegasus Slow-Pitch Softball Association, which promotes quality amateur softball at all levels of play with a special emphasis on the participation of members of the LGBTQ community.

Pegasus has been invited by MLB and the Rangers to participate in a training program for inclusion on July 14 as part MLB’s All-Star Legacy Program initiatives. The Rangers are hosting the All-Star Game on July 16.

The Rangers have worked in the past with the Resource Center, which provides programs and assistance to LGBTQ communities and anyone impacted in North Dallas by HIV/AIDS through advocacy, health and education. Team employees volunteer and support Resource Center events.

An Inclusion and Community Impact Council was developed by the team to foster conversations, ideas and programs to support employees internally and the community externally.

Rangers employees participate in anti-harassment programs, and education programs offered by MLB.

The Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation focuses on anti-bullying messaging at the club's youth academy, and the staff works with outside agencies to ensure a welcoming environment for all athletes.

[texasobserver]

Above: A lightning strike crackles at the edge of a storm cloud above State Route 80 in Arizona.

Sergio Chapa’s photos and a portion of this text also appear in Frontera: A Journey Across the US-Mexico Border and are reprinted with permission from TCU Press. This excerpt originally appeared in the January/February 2024 issue of Texas Observer magazine.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera and I met when she was a political science professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville. She was studying drug cartel violence in the war-torn Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, and I was covering the same topic as a journalist for KGBT-TV in the Rio Grande Valley. We bonded over our work—and our mutual desire to “see the entire border.” 

We made our first border-to-border journey together in June 2013, stopping at each crossing between Brownsville and El Paso with jaunts into Mexico. And we kept on traveling together for much of the next decade pursuing a dream that became our book, Frontera: A Journey Across the US-Mexico Border (TCU Press, January 2024).

In our first days on the road in June 2013, we’d seen closed businesses and other bleak effects of cartel violence on Mexican border towns, before rolling into Big Bend National Park. We had heard about the park’s beauty but marveled over its mountains, colorful canyons, and unique micro-ecosystems.  

While driving along a rocky and mountainous stretch of the park, the Bible verse of Luke 19:40 sprang to mind, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.” The original verse had a distinct meaning, but for us, it meant that if we failed to acknowledge the beauty before our eyes, the rocks themselves might literally protest. After a few minutes, we shrugged it off as maybe stupor over the 90-degree-Fahrenheit day or exhaustion from the eight-hour drive. 

But after settling into our hotel in Terlingua, we joined other guests for dinner and live music on a rooftop patio where monsoon rains and lightning strikes could be seen in the distance. A couple of beers later, a solo guitarist sang these lyrics: “And the rocks will cry out.” We looked at each other wide-eyed in that moment of serendipity. After his set ended, we spoke to the musician, who told a story similar to our own. 

That night, we sat outside until millions of stars appeared, tracing the Milky Way above us. It was one of what we called momentos mágicos along the frontera. 

Despite the negative political rhetoric, the U.S.-Mexico border is a beautiful place, home to welcoming and warm people. It is also a land of contrast—austere landscapes and lush oases; thunderstorms and rainbows; robust industries and ghost towns; great wealth and aching poverty. The residents, known as borderlanders or fronterizos, are among the poorest in the United States. Those in Mexico inhabit cities that can be very unsafe. Nonetheless, these citizens often open their homes and pocketbooks to help stranded tourists as well as asylum seekers from Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia.

The Fiestas Mexicanas Parade in Matamoros, Tamaulipas draws participants from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Over the last decade, we have traveled different segments and made three different trips along the whole frontier, from Brownsville, Texas/Matamoros, Tamaulipas, to San Diego, California/Tijuana, Baja California. When we started, we were fronterizos, living and working in the Rio Grande Valley region. We still understand border dynamics, though we’ve both moved; I’m now a freelance writer and energy industry analyst in Houston and Correa-Cabrera teaches at a university in Fairfax, Virginia.

The border region is home to billions of dollars in trade and beautiful landscapes, including beaches, dense subtropical forests, deserts, and mountains. Its sprawling cities offer disparities of their own, with industrial parks and fashionable shopping malls, as well as immaculate country clubs and neglected colonias, where some earn a meager living scavenging recyclable items from landfills.

Its international boundaries were established by wars but people with family, friends, and businesses on both sides have often ignored dividing lines. Far from the capitals of Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, they created their own culture, which is distinct from their parent cultures. The result is a mixture where “Spanglish” has become its own language and where the music, food, binational economy, and resilience of the people reflect this bicultural blend.

Many books have been written about the U.S.-Mexico border, but none is like ours. Frontera offers a glimpse into every crossing community in all U.S.-Mexico border states. It includes notes and reflections by experts, academics and others about the border and about how the pandemic has changed places we visited—and thought we knew so well.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the partial closure of the U.S.-Mexico border transformed the region’s face and socioeconomic configuration. Although we do not know what the borderlands will look like in the future, we do know the border and fronterizos will quickly adapt.

Our last trip to complete this book took place in July 2021.

There was no cloud in the sky on that 100-degree day as we drove Mexico’s Federal Highway 3 between the resort town of Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, and the border city of San Luis Río Colorado. 

Neither of us had ever before visited this desolate desert highway along the Gulf of California, but we’d been warned: There is no cell phone service on the remote road, where numerous robberies had taken place and suspects had left victims stranded. 

We were traveling in a pack of cars, so things seemed safe at first. I dodged dozens of potholes and drove around dunes slowly creeping over the highway. 

We were amazed by views that few Americans ever see: Dunes, crystal blue water, and rugged canyons stretched out beside the highway. The finish line that day was supposed to be dinner with friends in Tijuana. 

But then, I couldn’t avoid a deep pothole in time. The impact sent my front passenger side tire flying into sand. Luckily, I was able to stop the car without any other damage. I saw that the side of the tire had split in half. It was unbearably hot and, as predicted, we had no signal. 

That’s when an old, beat-up car pulled up behind us. We couldn’t see the driver inside, and suddenly, those warnings flooded back. Panic briefly overcame us until we saw a man get out of the car with his wife and 6-year-old son. 

He didn’t waste any time. He had a spare tire, which wasn’t really the right size, but we somehow made it fit. He waited until we were sure the tire would work and refused any money. We made it to Yuma, Arizona where we got a proper-sized tire. We didn’t get that man’s name or number, but he saved our lives. He was our “border angel.”

We are forever grateful to that anonymous and humbleTGood Samaritan, who helped us tell the true story of the border. I still keep the spare tire he gave us in my trunk, ready for the next person who needs it. 

Don’t miss another issue, become a member today.

[speciesofleastconcern]

What would happen if the southern United States declared their secession from the union and created a Confederacy 2.0 in 2021 and they declared that Donald Trump was their president?

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE THIRTY HOURS’ WAR (slightly updated)

9:27 AM: Governor Greg Abbott announces a surprise press conference to be held at noon. The Texas State Capitol is a whirlwind of activity, but no one will explain. Journalists stationed in the capitol buildings of several other Southern states notice a sudden fever of activity, but again, no word on what is taking place.

12:07 PM: Abbott enters the press room, faces the cameras, and delivers a speech televised around the world—a speech that makes the assembled journalists gasp.

“I have been in private communication with the governors of several other Southern states for the past few weeks, and we have an announcement of great consequence. I may announce that we are of one accord, united in our purpose, not without sorrow, and yet filled with pride and determination at the step we are undertaking this day. We are a free people, we Texans, and we wish only to live according to our traditional laws and the laws of a just and righteous God. For too long have we put up with abuse and threats from the Federal government in Washington, that hotbed of liberal elites and so-called “experts” who believe that they know better than we know what freedom truly consists of. It has gone on for too long, and we shall not continue any further. President Trump fought for our rights; the lies of the liberal media brought him down; but when one man lets the stainless banner fall, other hands must take it up, as we have done this day.

“The Lone Star State is the first star in the heavens of a new constellation of freedom and liberty—the first of the New Confederated States of America. We hereby announce the severing of all ties to the Washington government, and ask only to be allowed to depart in peace to seek our own liberty and prosperity.

“We are the first, but not alone. Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida have joined with me in forming a new nation, conceived in liberty with God as our vindicator, with each State acting in its sovereign and independent character. The governors of Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina are considering our proposal now, but a great groundswell of support is coming from the citizens of these states. We trust that they will soon join us.

“We hereby announce that all Federal property within the boundaries of our state, including all national parks and forests, Indian reservations, and military bases, is forfeit to our state government. Orders have gone out to the Texas State Guard and State Police to secure these properties, and they are backed by thousands of citizen militia forces who have mobilized have taken up arms to secure what is rightfully ours. For freedom and justice for ourselves and our descendants, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

12:17 PM: The President of the United States is whisked from a routine meeting with the Department of Agriculture to an emergency meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

12:31 PM: Emergency orders are issued to cancel all civilian flights to the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi. All inbound flights are ordered to divert immediately, leading to crowded and difficult scenes at airports such as Wichita, Albuquerque, Denver, St. Louis, and Cleveland.

1:47 PM: Chaos reigns on Interstates 10 and 40 and smaller highways, as thousands of Texas motorists flee for the New Mexico border, only to be stopped by armored New Mexico National Guard units, reinforced by heavily armed troops from Fort Bliss. Motorists fleeing eastward are stopped by the Louisiana National Guard, backed up with troops from Fort Polk. Motorists heading north towards Kansas or east through Arkansas also report blockades.

3:12 PM: There are reports of rioting in Austin and Houston, as columns of unregulated militia march or ride through urban neighborhoods where protests are expected. No one knows or will admit who shot first, but neighborhoods are soon ablaze, and fire trucks that attempt to reach the fires report being shot at. In other cities and towns, a watchful, tense quiet prevails as everyone awaits the next announcement. Footage of the riots and attacks is widely disseminated on social media.

4:29 PM: A column of militia in assorted vehicles approaches Fort Hood to demand its surrender. Seeing the main gates deserted, the lead vehicle drives onto the fort, and the driver, 47-year-old Braxton Beauregard, hoists the Lone Star Confederate flag over the guardhouse.

4:29:17 PM: The guardhouse, the flag, and the first ten vehicles of the convoy are simultaneously obliterated by Hellfire missiles. The remaining vehicles beat a hasty retreat to Killeen, although not before seven more vehicles are wiped out. That evening at the local Whataburger, one of the traumatized survivors is heard to mumble, “well, shit, this may be tougher than we thought.”

5:25 PM: The President emerges from his meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and gives a brief address to the nation. It’s short on details. He says only that he has been fully briefed on the situation and is deeply troubled, but is considering his legal options, and will provide a full reply to Governor Abbott’s announcement tomorrow morning. He pleads for calm and prays for peace and unity. The country remains on edge.

1:37 AM: Fort Hood’s gates open.

2:12 AM: A lone C-17 Globemaster III makes a pass over Austin, Texas, at 30,000 feet. Similar aircraft pass over Little Rock, Arkansas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Jackson, Mississippi. Their flight paths are later traced to Fort Benning.

6:48 AM: Journalists based in Austin report seeing a huge column of tanks and trucks moving into the city on Interstate 35, as helicopters fly cover.

7:24 AM: Tanks have surrounded the Texas State Capitol. The skies are torn by noise as F-15s and F-18Es fly combat air patrols over the city; they hold their fire for now. Heavily armored infantry patrols deploy onto the streets, although they, too, hold their fire and simply observe.

7:37 AM: A unit of unorganized militia patrolling the streets of Austin encounters soldiers from III Corps Special Troops Battalion on the corner of 14th and Guadalupe Street. One of the militiamen raises his AR-15 and fires at the troops, slightly wounding one soldier.

7:37:15 AM: Six militia members are killed or wounded in the ensuing firefight. Survivors are spotted fleeing towards the 7–11 convenience store on 15th Street, where it seems their commander has set up his base.

7:42:37 AM: The 7–11 convenience store on 15th Street is struck by multiple Hellfire missiles. Scenes like this play out all day throughout the capital city, with minor variations. By noon, few militia are willing to advertise their presence; discarded weapons and body armor can be found on the streets as erstwhile militiamen try to blend back into the general population.

8:31 AM: A group of Army Rangers exit the Texas Governor’s Mansion, escorting a handcuffed Governor Greg Abbott to a waiting flight of HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters that have materialized on the lawn.

9:17 AM: Several other Texas state officials are removed from the State Capitol or other government buildings by Rangers and escorted to waiting helicopters. Similar scenes are playing out in Oklahoma City and Little Rock and Jackson.

9:19 AM: An emergency press conference is held in Houston. The Hon. Sherry Radack, Chief Justice for the 1st District Court of Appeals in Houston, announces that under the line of succession as spelled out in the Texas state constitution, it appears that she is now the governor. Choking back tears, she announces the immediate cessation of hostilities, pleads for citizens to put down their weapons, orders the surrender of all State Guard forces, and expresses eagerness to remain a part of the United States.

11:10 AM: The governors of Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee deny any knowledge of Texas's plan, announce that their states will not be joining Texas, and pledge their states’ loyalty to the Federal government. At about the same time, the governor of Florida announces that his state’s inclusion in the list of seceding states was entirely the fault of unnamed “liberal agitators,” that he never agreed to leave the Union, and that despite all their differences of opinion he has pledged his state’s loyalty to the Federal government. Rumors that Navy SEALS were aiming at him from concealed firing positions as he was making this profession of loyalty were never substantiated.

12:37 PM: The President appears again on TV, thanking the loyal units of the US military, who have executed “a textbook counterinsurgency mission with minimal loss of life and destruction of property.” He assures the people that order will be restored and life will return to normal as soon as possible, and states that steps are already underway to restore the state governments. He promises to bring the rebels who actually took up arms to justice, while proposing that Congress immediately establish a bipartisan Truth and Reconciliation Commission to reintegrate the rebel states into the US as smoothly as possible. (He does not say this, but commentators note that with the sudden disappearance of Congressional delegations from the rebel states, he should have the votes to get what he wants.) He ends his speech by pleading once again for peace, adding that “I understand the despair and anger and paranoia that many Americans feel—but this is not the way to express those. Let us come together as one nation, one people, united by our devotion to the principles of democracy and liberty, from sea to shining sea. God bless America!” (Fun fanfic from quora)

[gomfamli]

Kit Carson, my relative

Christopher Houston Carson was born in Madison County Kentucky near Richmond December 24, 1809.   He died in Colorado May 23, 1868 - what happened in those 58 years?   Kit is usually an abbreviation of the given names Christopher, Katherine and Kathleen.

His father, a Revolutionary War veteran, moved the family to the Bluegrass State from North Carolina. After a two-year stay in the commonwealth, they again continued westward to Boone's Lick, Howard County, Missouri, when Kit was about one year old . (Boone’s Lick to Kansas City is about 2 hours nowadays)

Cornelia was getting married to Dan Weinberg, about the time Kit was born, but they did have family get togethers before he turned 15, about 1814.  

Carson came from an impoverished family. After the death of his father, Carson apprenticed to become a saddler. Carson detested the work.   At 15 Carson ran away from his home in Missouri to join a caravan of traders bound for Santa Fe.   From experienced frontiersmen he learned fur trapping and trading, a career he pursued for 15 years.

New Mexico in 1826, he settled and married Singing Grass, a member of the Arapaho Tribe. Carson hunted and trapped in the West for the next decade. Upon the death of Singing Grass, Carson traveled to Missouri to place his daughter Adaline in the care of his family.

While travelling back from Missouri, Carson happened to meet with John C. Frémont.  In 1842, Carson served as a guide for Frémont as he explored the Oregon Trail.  In 1843 and 1845 he helped guide Frémont’s next two expeditions.

On his third Western expedition in 1845-46 military explorer  John C. Frémont and legendary scout Kit Carson led a raid on Klamath Lake Indian village in retaliation for a night ambush that had killed three expedition members.

Frémont ‘s memoirs say 10 raiders including 4 Delaware Indians attacked the village on May 10, 1846 killing 14 Indians and burning village huts and wooden scaffolds laden with drying fish.  Historians say possibly more were killed.

Later that day,  Frémont saved Kit’s life.   

Frémont wrote, “ … we came suddenly upon an Indian scout. He was drawing his arrow to its head … and Carson attempted to fire, but his rifle snapped, and as he swerved away the Indian was about to let his arrow go into him; I fired, … failed to kill the Indian, but [my horse] Sacramento … was not afraid of anything and I jumped him directly upon the Indian and threw him to the ground. His arrow went wild.” A Delaware clubbed him to death.

At day’s end  Frémont wrote, “I had now kept the promise I made to myself and had punished these people well for their treachery.”

Carson was perhaps the most famous trapper and guide in the West. He traveled with the expeditions of John C. Fremont in the 1840s, leading Fremont through the Great Basin. Fremont’s flattering portrayal of Carson made the mountain man a hero when the reports were published and widely read in the east. Later, Carson guided Stephen Watts Kearney to New Mexico during the Mexican-American War. In the 1850s he became the Indian agent for New Mexico, a position he left in 1861 to accept a commission as lieutenant colonel in the 1st New Mexico Volunteers.

He served under Major General James Henry Carleton in his campaign to subdue the Mescalero Apache.   Carson also led forces during the Indian Wars, suppressing the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, Kiowa and Comanche tribes by destroying their food sources.

Later, he was brevetted a Brigadier General and took command of Fort Garland, Colorado, until declining health forced him to retire from military Life.

After his death in 1868 from an aortic aneurysm, during the late 19th century, Kit Carson became a legendary symbol of America’s frontier experience.  Who were the Kit Carson wives? They include Arapaho woman Waa-Nibe, who died three years after their marriage; Cheyenne woman Making Out Road, who divorced Carson after 14 months; and Josefa Jaramillo, the fourteen year old daughter of a prominent Taos family and mother of Carson's seven children.

The Carson family, our relatives come from Scot Irish descent.  

  In the 17th century the British leaders decided to settle Protestants in the Northern Ireland province of Ulster. They chose to use the Presbyterians of Lowland Scotland. This migration started about 1605.   Scot-Irish are those  moved on to other lands in the 1700s when they would not succumb to the "Anglican ascendancy" or mix with "papish Catholics" in Ireland. 

More than 250,000 of these Scot-Irish emigrated to the American colonies between 1717 and the American Revolutionary War. These Presbyterian "Scot-Irish" were the majority of settlers who first moved over the Appalachians. Men such as Daniel Boone and Kit Carson. And they kept moving. To Kentucky. To Tennessee. To Missouri. And, eventually into Texas.

Returning to Ireland was never a thought.  The Catholic and Protestant tension was just too deadly.

[sleepysera]

Oct 17 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

India: At least 19 dead, dozens missing in Kerala floods (BBC)

"At least 19 people have been killed in floods in southern India after heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, cutting off towns and villages. Several houses were washed away and people became trapped in the district of Kottayam in Kerala state. Video from Kottayam showed bus passengers being rescued after their vehicle was inundated with floodwater. Days of heavy rainfall in Kerala has caused deadly landslides and the Indian military has joined rescue efforts."

Haiti: US religious group says 17 missionaries kidnapped (AP)

"A group of 17 missionaries including children was kidnapped by a gang in Haiti on Saturday, according to a voice message sent to various religious missions by an organization with direct knowledge of the incident. The missionaries were on their way home from building an orphanage, according to a message from Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries."

Sudan: Protesters demand military coup as crisis deepens (BBC)

"Opponents of Sudan's transition to democracy took to the streets of Khartoum on Saturday to call on the army to take control of the country. Several thousand demonstrators gathered outside the presidential palace as the country's political crisis deepens. Military and civilian groups have been sharing power since the toppling of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019. However, tensions have grown since a coup attempt attributed to followers of Mr Bashir was foiled in September."

US NEWS

Voting Rights: Texas GOP advances new maps that would tighten slipping grip (AP)

"But in a preview of legal challenges to come, Democrats spent hours blasting the maps as discriminatory and all but blind to the state’s surging number of Latino residents, who made up more than half of the nearly 4 million new Texans over the past decade. Many live around Dallas and Houston, where under the GOP-engineered maps, there would be no new districts that give Latinos a majority."

Entertainment Industry: Strike dodged with deal between film and TV crews, studios (AP)

"An 11th-hour deal was reached Saturday, averting a strike of film and television crews that would have seen some 60,000 behind-the-scenes workers walk off their jobs and would have frozen productions in Hollywood and across the U.S."

Gabby Petito: What happens if Brian Laundrie isn't found in the coming weeks (CNN)

"While a month may seem like a long time, an active, physical search for Laundrie could carry on for weeks if more information continues to come in, according to Paul Belli, a retired lieutenant of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and president of the International Homicide Investigators Association."

[newstfionline]

Saturday, February 20, 2021

One of Ten in U.S. May Have to Switch Occupations Post Pandemic (Bloomberg) One out of every ten U.S. workers—about 17 million, all told—will likely be forced to leave their jobs and take up new occupations by 2030 as Covid-19’s after-effects destroy huge swathes of low-paying positions in a labor market that was primed for disruption before the pandemic. “Covid is a big disruptor,” Susan Lund, a Washington-based partner at McKinsey Global Institute, the consultant’s research arm, said in an interview. The 17 million Americans are part of the more than 100 million people worldwide that the institute forecast will need to leave their jobs and enter new lines of work by the end of the decade. That will amount to about one in 16 workers in the eight leading economies covered by the study, which includes China, Japan, Germany and the U.K., as well as the U.S. In a more-than-130-page paper, the institute sees the pandemic accelerating three trends that will continue to upend the labor market in the years ahead: more remote work and working from home; increased e-commerce and a bigger “delivery economy;” and stepped-up business use of artificial intelligence and robots. The forces Covid-19 unleashed mean there could be a lot less demand for front line workers in food service, retail, hospitality, and entertainment.

Politics Is Seeping Into Our Daily Life and Ruining Everything (Reason) Is there anything that politics can’t ruin? The answer, it appears, is a resounding “no” as partisan conflict creeps into all areas of American life. Our political affiliations, researchers say, obstruct friendships, influence our purchases, affect the positions we take on seemingly apolitical matters, and limit our job choices. As a result, many people are poorer, lonelier, and less healthy than they would otherwise be. “Political polarization is having far-reaching impacts on American life, harming consumer welfare and creating challenges for people ranging from elected officials and policymakers to corporate executives and marketers,” according to a new paper in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing by researchers from Arizona State University, the University of Wyoming, and four other U.S. universities. People’s partisan identities influence the range of people with whom they are willing to have relationships, the brands they purchase, and the jobs they take. The finding that everything is becoming politicized builds on a growing mountain of data. Even before political tensions hit their current fever pitch, a 2018 survey found that “Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world will buy or boycott a brand solely because of its position on a social or political issue” (the number for the U.S. was 59 percent). In 2020, a separate survey reported that “83% of Millennials find it important for the companies they buy from to align with their values.”

Cracked Pipes, Frozen Wells, Offline Treatment Plants: A Texan Water Crisis (NYT) Power began to flicker back on across much of Texas on Thursday, but millions across the state confronted another dire crisis: a shortage of drinkable water as pipes cracked, wells froze and water treatment plants were knocked offline. The problems were especially acute at hospitals. One, in Austin, was forced to move some of its most critically ill patients to another building when its faucets ran nearly dry. Another in Houston had to haul in water on trucks to flush toilets. But for many of the state’s residents stuck at home, the emergency meant boiling the tap water that trickled through their faucets, scouring stores for bottled water or boiling icicles and dirty snow on their stoves. Major disruptions to the Texas power grid left more than four million households without power this week, but by Thursday evening, only about 347,000 lacked electricity. Much of the statewide concern had turned to water woes. More than 800 public water systems serving 162 of the state’s 254 counties had been disrupted as of Thursday, affecting 13.1 million people, according to a spokeswoman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Texas Good Samaritans Are Helping Out Those in Need Amid Deep Freeze (Newsweek) From owners turning their stores into warming centers, to a mystery man handing out $20 bills to shoppers in Houston, when faced with a crisis that has left 24 in the state dead, and millions without water and electricity, Texans have instinctively turned to helping others. One such figure is Raymond Garcia of Houston, Texas, who, upon realizing he had no power at home, decided to use his time helping others. He has been visiting people in his local community, helping with tasks such as fixing burst water pipes. "I'm just trying to help the Houston community," he told ABC13. "If I can help anyone else in my close range I will.” Garcia said he was inspired by the teaching of his mother, who died recently from COVID-19. "My mom always taught me, if you help and you give to people, God will always bless you," he said. "And you know what, I've been blessed." On Thursday, Jason Spenser, the Public Affairs Director for the Harris County Sheriff's Office tweeted about another remarkable character, a man dubbed a food 'angel'. When electricity outages meant the Foodarama near 18th Street and Ella Boulevard could no longer accept credit and debit card payments, the unidentified man began handing out $20 bills to people waiting in the line. Spenser estimated the man, who did not want to be photographed, handed out a total of $500. In Elgin, Texas, Monica Nava, owner of the Chemn Cafe, put in a big order just before the storm hit. Rather than see perishable items go to waste, she boxed them up with shelf-stable good into care packages estimated to have a value of $25 each. She gave the packages out to in-need members of the community and asked for those who could afford it to pay a donation.

Biden repudiates Trump on Iran, ready for talks on nuke deal (AP) The Biden administration said Thursday it’s ready to join talks with Iran and world powers to discuss a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, in a sharp repudiation of former President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” that sought to isolate the Islamic Republic. The administration also took two steps at the United Nations aimed at restoring policy to what it was before Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. The combined actions were immediately criticized by Iran hawks and are likely to draw concern from Israel and Gulf Arab states. The State Department announced the moves following discussions between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British, French and German counterparts, and as Biden prepares to participate, albeit virtually, in his first major international events with world leaders.

The Cuba bet (Foreign Policy) Cuba may still become Latin America’s first country to design a successful COVID-19 vaccine, with Phase 3 trials on one of its four vaccine candidates set to begin next month. If the shot performs well, it is expected to be exported to other Latin American nations. Cuba and Iran are partnering on Phase 3 trials of the Soberana 02 vaccine, and Mexico is exploring carrying out a Phase 3 trial as well.

It’s mud, mud everywhere in UK’s 3rd lockdown (AP) It’s apparently not enough for Britons to endure almost 120,000 COVID-19 deaths and face a new variant of the virus that scientists say is more contagious and more deadly. Not enough to struggle through a third lockdown in less than a year, a shutdown now in its ninth week in London with no end in sight. No, all of this has to come smack in the middle of Britain’s mud season, the time formally known as winter. While everyone in the U.K. is already lacking Vitamin D, the sun chooses to take a months-long work stoppage and named winter storms kept sweeping eastward across the Atlantic. Storm Bella marched in right after Christmas, bringing gusts up to 106 mph (92 kph) and rains that dumped 3.2 inches (80.2 mm) on a village in Scotland. A sodden, freezing version of a hurricane. Storm Darcy roared in last week from the opposite side, bringing an icy Arctic blast and the U.K.’s coldest temperature in 25 years. Unlike the southeastern U.S., which floods during the summer-fall hurricane season, Britain floods in the dead of winter, bringing hypothermia alongside germ-laden waters. Rivers across England and Scotland are bursting: 73 flood alerts were in effect on Friday alone. And this year, few gyms or schools are available for emergency housing for fear they will turn into COVID-19 factories. It’s a Dickensian time.

Spain arrests 80 in 3 nights of riots over rapper’s jailing (AP) Protests over the imprisonment of a rapper convicted of insulting the Spanish monarchy and praising terrorist violence were marred by rioting for the third night in a row Thursday. The plight of Pablo Hasél, who began this week to serve a 9-month sentence in a northeastern prison, has triggered a heated debate over the limits of free speech in Spain and a political storm over the use of violence by both the rapper’s supporters and the police. The rapper and his supporters say Hasél’s nine-month sentence for writing a critical song about former King Juan Carlos I, and for dozens of tweets that judges said glorified some of Spain’s defunct terrorist groups, violates free speech rights. Besides that case, the rapper has previously faced other charges or has pending trials for assault, praising armed extremist groups, breaking into private premises and insulting the monarchy.

Heating Up Culture Wars, France to Scour Universities for Ideas That ‘Corrupt Society’ (NYT) Stepping up its attacks on social science theories that it says threaten France, the French government announced this week that it would launch an investigation into academic research that it says feeds “Islamo-leftist” tendencies that “corrupt society.” While President Emmanuel Macron and some of his top ministers have spoken out forcefully against what they see as a destabilizing influence from American campuses in recent months, the announcement marked the first time that the government has moved to take action. It came as France’s lower house of Parliament passed a draft law against Islamism, an ideology it views as encouraging terrorist attacks, and as Mr. Macron tilts further to the right, anticipating nationalist challenges ahead of elections next year. Frédérique Vidal, the minister of higher education, said in Parliament on Tuesday that the state-run National Center for Scientific Research would oversee an investigation into the “totality of research underway in our country,” singling out post-colonialism. In an earlier television interview, Ms. Vidal said the investigation would focus on “Islamo-leftism”—a controversial term embraced by some of Mr. Macron’s leading ministers to accuse left-leaning intellectuals of justifying Islamism and even terrorism.

Myanmar protests stall fuel imports, drive up costs (Reuters) Myanmar’s refined fuel imports have stalled as protests over the Feb. 1 coup have shut the banks and government offices necessary for trade, while depreciation in the nation’s currency has driven up costs, four industry sources said. The economy of the Southeast Asian nation has been pulled up short by the biggest demonstrations since the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007, with protesters taking to the streets to denounce the military takeover and the unseating of a democratically elected government. Myanmar relies heavily on gasoline and diesel imports as its refineries are too small and old to meet its fuel needs. One of the sources said imports may make up as much as 98% of Myanmar’s fuel consumption. The ���economy is almost at a standstill. Almost all government ministries are closed,” the source said. “Fuel supply is running low. (The country) might run out of oil in two months.”

Jakarta’s poor fear landslides from overflowing waste mountains (Nikkei Asia) The stench is overpowering, and it only gets worse as you approach the biggest landfill site in Southeast Asia. The green grass on the embankments of the road leading into the Bantar Gebang landfill on the outskirts of Jakarta quickly gives way to trash—stacked in piles as far as the eye can see, reaching the height of a 15-story building in places. Plastic bags, food packages, rubber wheels, cardboard, drink cans, and everything else that Jakartans consume and throw away can be found here—much of which turn to sludge when it rains. The site that constantly threatens landslides is also home to thousands of impoverished families. Around 20,000 people, according to an estimate by locals, make a living from collecting trash in Southeast Asia’s largest dump. More than 100,000 live in the landfill and its surroundings. Authorities are struggling to dispose of the massive amount of waste created by the 35 million people estimated by Statistics Indonesia to live the Jakarta metropolitan area. Landslides often occur at such sites. In February 2005, heavy rains triggered a slide at the Leuwigajah landfill, which serves the cities of Cimahi and Bandung in West Java, killing 157 people and swallowing two villages, Greenpeace Indonesia said. The Bantar Gebang landfill has also taken lives.

Israel expands its nuclear facility (The Guardian) Israel is carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear arsenal. Construction work is evident in new satellite images published on Thursday by the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM), an independent expert group. The area being worked on is a few hundred meters across to the south and west of the domed reactor and reprocessing point at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, near the desert town of Dimona. Pavel Podvig, a researcher with the program on science and global security at Princeton University, said: “It appears that the construction started quite early in 2019, or late 2018, so it’s been under way for about two years, but that’s all we can say at this point.”

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

How Oceans Of Slumber went to the edge and back to make the most vital prog metal record of 2020

Oceans Of Slumber are redefining what it means to be a prog metal band in 2020. But the future remains uncertain for them

Between 2018 and 2019, all the original members of Oceans Of Slumber left, bar drummer/songwriter Dobber Beverly. He’d been the self-professed ‘shot caller’ of the band since they started in 2011, and later insisted they bring in female singer Cammie Gilbert, against two of his bandmates’ wishes (“there is a stigma in metal towards a boys’ club,” he notes). But with Cammie on board, they evolved from a loose, directionless project into a slick, soulful, progressive proposition that deftly incorporated extreme metal.

Dobber and Cammie are now the heart of the band, and are also engaged to be married. Together with keyboardist Mat Aleman (who joined in 2018) and new members Jessie Santos (guitar/backing vocals), Alexander Lucian (guitar/backing vocals) and Semir Ozerkan (bass), they are about to release their fourth album. Ambitious, honest and encompassing the personal and the political, it’s their best yet, ranging from thunderous black metal to gnarly death metal and powerful operatic drama. The fact that it’s self-titled surely stands as a statement about who they are in 2020.

“It’s to show this fresh start and this new generation, this new beginning of Oceans,” explains Dobber, speaking in a Southern drawl from his home in Houston, Texas. “We’ve made very confident strides in what we’re doing and the kind of music we’re making.”

Cammie met Dobber in 2015 when her then-band supported Oceans at a benefit show. She remembers seeing him in the middle of the crowd, glaring at her. In fact, Dobber was blown away by her voice and asked Oceans’ original vocalist, Ronnie Allen, to get her details. She duetted on some of Oceans’ songs, before graduating to frontperson when they ran into difficulties with Ronnie.

“Dobber is very serious; I found him quite intimidating,” she reveals today. “But watching him drum, then finding out he plays piano, then guitar, it was a cascade of my emotions falling into the band and my friendship with him. He’s one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met – he’s crazy musically talented, and he cooks amazing food! For me it was a pretty undeniable obsession that formed very quickly!”

Their friendship grew, but Dobber was married at the time. He calls it a “Walk The Line” moment, referring to the Johnny Cash biopic, where a mutual admiration and attraction developed between two musicians. He re-evaluated his life, ended his unhappy marriage, and the two got together.

“What Cammie and I fell into, was the fact that she had the same situation,” Dobber explains. “So when it became a friendship that was too interlinked, I was like, ‘I have to do the right thing to get out of the wrong situation.’ It was walking away from a long-term relationship that was shattered many, many years ago. And not repeating the things that I had done or gone through. There was an admiration for Cammie, and then the love that was between the two of us from respect and from everything else. It was very intense. I’m a very intense person…”

“He’s very driven and focused,” adds Cammie.

“To my own detriment,” Dobber shoots back.

“I can be very emotional and I have a lot of energy behind my emotions, and they’re not always focused,” confesses Cammie. “So it’s a good balance. It keeps me from being like a supernova.”

In the living-room-cum-studio of their farmhouse in the city, and at their studio an hour north, Dobber and Cammie crafted Oceans Of Slumber. Dobber, who also has extreme metal side-projects Malignant Altar and Necrofier, composes the songs before bringing in the other members for the finishing touches. He gives Cammie a title or writing prompt to focus her attention on the lyrics. There are immersive stories of grief, depression, womanhood and love, but arguably the most intense song is Pray For Fire, which inadvertently captured the zeitgeist. Starting off chilled enough, it peaks with a spoken-word monologue that sounds like an early Daenerys Targaryen issuing commands to free a city.

Dobber explains it’s meant to be an inspiring anthem about facing your fears and challenging the status quo, led by a figurehead who’s working for the greater good. While it was coming together, they watched a documentary on the ship-breaking industry in India, where impoverished workers salvage metal and wood from huge container ships under treacherous conditions.

“You look across history, and there are people that are held down, and it creates such anger, and we do the same thing over and over again,” says Cammie. “I wanted a song that was empowering to those people that felt forgotten or lesser-than or oppressed, whether by socio-economic standing, or race, or war. It’s a full call to arms and a call for flames. Obviously with how things changed, it feels like it’s become a bit more literal than the song was meant to be, but I don’t necessarily mind adding fuel to that fire.”

She’s talking about the upsurge of anger following the murder of George Floyd, and the subsequent momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, which transpired after the song was written. There have been protests downtown at Discovery Green, and for Cammie it’s meant a change in mindset as she comes to terms with current and historical injustices.

“My day-to-day life has not changed, but how I view things around me has changed quite a bit,” she explains. “I feel like the most impacting thing has been the amount of history I’ve learned about the US. I’m not surprised by the things I find out, but it’s very disheartening and it makes me really sad. It’s kind of a peculiar feeling, because you’re a modern person and you have this modern life, and then you find out this sad history that perpetuates so many things in your life now, and there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance.”

This examination of the past and the present has spurred her into action. “It’s taking on a responsibility that maybe I haven’t felt the need to do before, to not necessarily be an activist, but to make sure that I’m informed, and I speak correctly, and I give good information, and I show that I do care and that I do have opinions about these issues,” she says. “But above all else, we have a generation of younger people that are seeing this and growing up through this. I think it’s important that people in leadership roles are spreading positive messages.”

Another standout song with similar themes is the blastbeat-ridden The Adorned Fathomless Creation – a title from Dobber that describes the hypocritical and indefensible treatment of black people in America. He’d been thinking about how basketball player LeBron James pours money into education – he has established a school in his hometown, provided kids with school supplies and funded college places - yet faces racism in his own country.

“Adornment is the robing and the royalty, but to a big portion of America, he’s just some black person, some racial slur,” says Dobber. “I’d set on this idea with Cammie, and I’m like, you are one of these people. And on top of being heralded and lauded and loved and worshipped, simultaneously you are also some creation of America that America hates.”

Dobber credits touring the world with opening his mind to the issues endemic in The Land Of The Free, and as COVID-19 rises significantly in his conservative state, he’s concerned about whether the live shutdown could spell the end of the band. His former members quit due to family and financial concerns, and he doesn’t want the new line-up to be under strain.

“The worry is that something like this could make this virtually our last record, and by that I mean we could have half of the band drop out,” he frowns. “Because if we’re shut down in the States for a year or two years, that can fully dishearten a musician.”

Life is hard enough for bands in a country that prioritises profit over people, and Dobber has balanced music with his 20-year career in removals. “You’re always juggling trying to be alive here,” he explains. “We don’t have public transportation, so you have to have a reliable car. It’s hard, and I have a full-time job, I have a kid, I’ve got my band, I’ve got everything else, and it’s 90 to nothing, constantly. And the only way that we’re able to continue doing the things that we do is touring, and we can’t tour. This is going to be far more detrimental than venues closing in our cities, which they already are. It’s going to run off or have lasting effects on the people who populate this industry.”

Now is the time to support music, especially when it’s this crushing, tender and illuminating, not to mention slickly mixed by Swedish legend Dan Swanö. And Dobber has a closing message to people who are stuck in metal’s boys’ club. “For those hold-out stalwarts, it is OK for you to listen to a metal band with a woman in it,” he says. “It is OK for you to listen to a metal band with a black woman in it. So please do be open-minded and have these experiences, because bands like us want and need an audience.”

[creepingsharia]

A Month of Islam in America: August 2020

The jihad continues.

Vote wisely. And get involved in the election to prevent massive voting fraud here.

Click any link below for more details and a link to the original source (which is most often the DOJ/FBI website).

Jihad in America:

Texas: Muslim on FBI Ten Most Wanted List for ‘Honor Killing’ Two Daughters is Caught; Son and Brother Arrested for Harboring Fugutive

Texas: Family members arrested for hiding fugitive Muslim who (honor) killed his two daughters (for dating non-Muslims)

Minnesota: Muslim Woman Who Tried to Join al Qaeda and Burn Down St. Catherine Univ Pleads Guilty

Hawaii: Man who proclaimed allegiance to ISIS charged for threats to kill teachers and students, bomb police

California: Former Sacramento prison counselor arraigned, lied to FBI about fighting with jihadi group in Syria

New York: Muslim convert gets 15 years for material support of Pakistani jihad group (LeT)

North Carolina: Man who wanted to join Islamic State (ISIS), use girlfriend’s “Buddy Pass” to aid jihad, gets 5 year sentence

Massachusetts: Egyptian immigrant who stole classified national defense documents gets just 18 months prison

Wisconsin: Muslim Woman Sentenced to 90 Months for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Utah: Muslim arrested for providing support to Islamic State (ISIS) - complains about jail’s coronavirus testing

Muslim cleric extradited from Jamaica to NYC, held without bail for ‘trying to recruit NYPD cop’ to ISIS

New York: Man Who Disseminated ISIS Propaganda and Bomb-Making Instructions to Incite Jihad in New York City Pleads Guilty

Islamic - Black Lives Matter - Antifa-related Jihad in America

New York: Bosnian illegal immigrant’s ambush of cops during BLM riot, while shouting “allah akbar,” was Islamic jihad attack (VIDEOS)

Florida: St. Pete protester caught with Molotov cocktail, loaded gun, charged with terrorist activity

Maine: Muslim caught driving stolen car, spits on cops (possibly trying to spread coronavirus)

Previous monthly reports here.

Immigration Jihad also known as Hijra:

Refugee admissions to the US resumed on July 31st

Another Muslim enclave in U.S.:  Little Egypt - Astoria, Queens, New York (VIDEO)

Houston, Atlanta, Brooklyn, NYC, Michigan - Muslims in US celebrate el EID slaughtering animals, not social distancing (VIDEOS)

West Virginia: Illegal alien from Kuwait pleads guilty to dealing cocaine near WVU

Latin America too: Guyana elects Muslim as president, a first in South America

Rape Jihad:

Virginia: Rape suspect of “Middle Eastern descent” released from jail over covid concerns, KILLS accuser

Fraud for Jihad:

DC: Feds Dismantle 3 Islamic Terror Financing Cyber Campaigns

New Jersey: Owner of Car Dealership Admits Engaging in Large-Scale Fraud

DC: Two Muslims in U.S. Charged with Moving U.S. Currency to Iran

Mosque Jihad:

Boston Mosque Preaches Jihad with Weapons Not Established in America Because of “the weakness of the Muslims”

Michigan: Mega-mosque with 60-foot dome breaks ground in residential neighborhood home to Chaldean Christians (who fled Islamic tyranny)

Government collusion with and failure to prevent jihad:

Virginia: Another judge releases another jihadi - convicted and sentence to life - over coronavirus

Boston: Federal Judge Releases Muslim Ten Years Early Despite Guilty Plea in ISIS Plot to Behead Anti-Jihad Blogger!

Mass: US appeals court overturns death sentence for Muslim terrorist who killed 3 and injured 260+ at Boston Marathon

Canada: Muslim who joined ISIS in Syria arrested, then released on bail in Calgary

Joe Biden’s Jihad:

Democratic convention featured second imam - this one called for release of convicted cop-killer, defended al-Qaeda medic

Democratic National Convention hosts imam from Islamic extremist institution

Fact Check: The Travel Ban Is Neither a ‘Muslim Ban,’ Nor Unconstitutional [and it should be expanded]

Video: The Muslim (Brotherhood) operatives behind Joe Biden’s presidential campaign

Straight up Sharia in America

Paypal Bans Author of ‘Muslim Mafia’ After He Calls BLM Domestic Terrorists

U.S. Navy grants Muslim sailor special Islamic sharia grooming accommodation

  Wins or at least set backs for sharia?

New Jersey: Judge Orders New Election for Paterson Council Seat After Mail-in Voter Fraud Charges

New York: Palestinian immigrant convicted of funding terror-linked Muslim charities deported to Rwanda

Previous monthly reports here.

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[foreverlogical]

A New Hampshire police chief; a Philadelphia detective; two Seattle Police Department officers who traveled cross-country, to name just a few. In the aftermath of the historic insurrection that took place in Washington D.C. last week, which left five people—including a Capitol police officer—dead, police departments across the U.S. have begun reckoning with the likelihood that their sworn-in officers participated in the rallies and rioting.

According to a tracker on The Appeal, as of Jan. 14 a total of 28 law enforcement officers or officials are suspected of participating in President Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, and/or joining the crowds storming the U.S. Capitol later that day.

“[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘We’re doing this for you,'” one Capitol police officer told BuzzFeed News of encountering law enforcement-affiliated rioters. “Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘Well, you gotta be kidding.’”

“From my perspective, any police officer sworn to protect the constitution and the rule of law [who is] found to have engaged in the attack on the Capitol will be facing some very severe sanctions,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo tells TIME. “To think that there were police officers who participated in this plot against our country and this attack against our country, it’s heart-wrenching. It’s a fireable offense.”

“The nature of the threat is unprecedented. The threat is not just to the capitol or to the inauguration. The threat is to the government itself,” Chief Acevedo added of a recent warning from the FBI that further violent protests are also expected in D.C.—and across the U.S.—in the run-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration.

A day after Acevedo spoke with TIME, a Houston Police Department officer was identified among those entering the Capitol during the riots. He is expected to face federal charges and has resigned from duty.

Read more: Security Officials Face the Possibility of a Threat from the Inside on Inauguration Day

Acevedo, who is President of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a national organization of law enforcement leaders, says that officers are allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights—and to protest in support of the president—but notes that there is “a very distinct line between first protected protests and violence.”

“There’s First Amendment rights but anyone that was actually inside the Capitol… that’s enough for termination,” adds Lynda Garcia, director of the policing program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Garcia says she was “surprised” to see “law enforcement officials turn on their own and engage in an act of insurrection.”

Internal investigations are underway in police departments in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina and Washington; members of the Capitol police department have been suspended amid investigation into conduct ���that appear to be in violation of Department regulations and policies.” The FBI is also reportedly also involved in at least three investigations involving the Houston Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Bexar County Sheriff’s office in Texas. Two police officers from the Rocky Mount, Virginia police department have been charged with misdemeanors by federal authorities after being inside the Capitol during the riots. Those officers are currently “on leave.”

And as more rioters are identified on social media—in many cases due to social media updates they’d themselves shared from D.C. on Jan. 6— public calls for officers to be fired or held accountable for their alleged involvement are growing. Five public defenders in Kentucky are calling for an investigation into a Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy who posted on Facebook about how “epic” the day was going to be, for example. The deputy’s Facebook page has since been deleted.

Beyond those in attendance, multiple reports have highlighted law enforcement officials’ using social media or otherwise speaking out to express support for those who rallied and rioted. John Catanzara, President of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge, said he understood the participants’ frustrations. “There was no arson, there was no burning of anything, there was no looting, there was very little destruction of property,” Catanzara told WBEZ in an interview on Jan. 7. “It was a bunch of pissed-off people that feel an election was stolen, somehow, some way.”

Subsequent reports have revealed that the damage to the Capitol, which included instances of looting and vandalism, was far more extensive—as was the planning of many involved.

“If the worst crime here is trespassing, so be it,” Catanzara continued, saying that he believes the rioters were “entitled to voice their frustration” and get to do what they want.”

Read more: ‘White Supremacy in Action.’ Activists Who Protested at the Capitol in the Past Slam Light Police Treatment of the Pro-Trump Mob

While it’s unclear what “sanctions” or consequences any police officers confirmed to have participated in the riots will face, there is an expectation that police unions will consider fighting attempts to charge or file any of their members. In recent years, police unions at the city, state and even national level have become more aligned with partisan causes and the divisive “law and order” rhetoric espoused by President Trump. The New York City Police Benevolent Association (NYC PBA) endorsed Trump for re-election in 2020, as did the largest national police union in the U.S., the Fraternal Order of Police.

Attempts made by TIME to contact union representatives for many of the police departments currently investigating officers—including the NYC PBA, the Seattle Police Officers Guild and the Houston Police Officers’ Union—were unsuccessful.

(Seattle Police Officers Guild president Mike Solan publicly laid some blame for the attack on the Capitol on on Black Lives Matter activists last week, leading to calls for him to step down.)

“I would caution these unions to remember that they exists to protect officer’s rights but primarily to protect them from misconduct or allegations when they’re working,” Chief Acevedo says. While asserting that many unions are “thoughtful and deliberative in their actions,” Acevedo cautions that they now must “be careful not to defend the indefensible.”

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[reading-writing-revolution]

August 26, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

There is a profound disconnect between the reality of what is happening in America right now and what we are hearing from the White House.

Tonight, Hurricane Laura is barreling toward the coasts of Louisiana and Texas. The storm is on the verge of becoming a Category 5 hurricane, one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the continental U.S. Its winds have reached 150 miles per hour and the National Hurricane Center has warned of an “unsurvivable” storm surge of up to 20 feet, as well as anywhere from 5-10 inches of rain. Forecasters warn that half of Lake Charles, Louisiana, home to almost 80,000 people, might be submerged. More than half a million people have been ordered to evacuate the region, but this will be a tall order for the 23.3% of the population there that lives in poverty.

Iowa is trying to rebuild from the August 10 derecho which brought winds of up to 140 miles an hour, left more than 400,000 Iowans without power, and damaged homes, businesses, and more than ten million acres of crops. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds asked for about $4 billion to cover the cost of the damage; Trump approved the portion that covered federal buildings and utilities but not assistance to homeowners and farmers.

Western wildfires have burned more than 1.8 million acres in August—an area almost double the size of Rhode Island. Fourteen states, including California, Arizona, Oregon, and Colorado, have suffered from the extreme events. While firefighters are gaining control over many of the fires, red flag warnings are still in effect in Northern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Montana.

A disaster of a different sort is burning in America as coronavirus continues to spread. New CDC guidelines quietly put out on Monday no longer recommend testing for asymptomatic people even if they’ve been in contact with someone who has the coronavirus. This new rule appears to reflect Trump's frequent complaints that widespread testing is responsible for our climbing numbers of coronavirus cases. (He is incorrect.) He has repeatedly said we should slow the testing down. A White House spokesperson said the decision was science-based and not political; American Medical Association President Dr. Susan Bailey asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Department of Health and Human Services to "release the scientific justification" for the changes.

The spokesperson told reporters that the White House Coronavirus Task Force had signed off on the new guidelines, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the task force told CNN that he was not part of any such discussion. “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is,” he said. Other members of the task force also expressed alarm about the new rules.

And there is yet another kind of fire burning. On Sunday afternoon, August 23, a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rusten Sheskey, fired seven shots into Jacob Blake’s back as he opened his car door, leaving the 29-year-old father of five gravely wounded, likely paralyzed from the waist down.

Protests erupted in the wake of the shooting of yet another Black man, with the same pattern we saw in Portland: peaceful protests by day, riots by night. Armed militia members and counter protesters rushed to Kenosha and clashed with protesters, and after rioters looted and burned businesses, civilians armed with AR-15-style rifles took to the streets claiming they would back the police and restore order. Video shows police officers thanking the armed men for their help, despite the fact they are on the streets after the city’s curfew, and handing them water bottles.

Rather than restoring order, on Tuesday, a 17-year-old white man, Kyle Rittenhouse, from Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles southwest of Kenosha, shot and killed two people and wounded a third. Rittenhouse’s social media is full of support for “Blue Lives Matter,” and shows him posing with weapons. Video from January 30, shows him in the front row of a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa; video from Tuesday shows him trying to get the attention of law enforcement officers before the shooting.

This afternoon, the Milwaukee Bucks professional basketball team refused to play game five of their first-round playoff series against the Orlando Magic. This is what’s known as a “wildcat strike” because it does not have the approval of union leadership—the NBA collective bargaining agreement bans strikes. The Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder joined in, and by 5:00 the NBA postponed all the evening’s games. All the WNBA games were also called off, and several Major League Baseball teams have struck in solidarity.

In a statement, the Bucks said, “Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball.” They asked the Wisconsin legislature to reconvene and pass “meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform.” They also asked people to vote. Basketball superstar LeBron James was more straightforward: “F**K THIS MAN!!!!!” he tweeted. “WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT[.]”

In Washington, tonight, at the third night of the Republican National Convention, speakers painted an image of the nation that did not square with this reality. There was scarce mention of the natural disasters that, in any other administration, would be headline news. The sentence “May God bless and protect the Gulf states in the path of the hurricane," offered by Eric Trump's wife Lara, was about the extent of it.

There was scarce attention paid to the coronavirus, either, which has, to date, killed more than 180,000 Americans. Twenty-five percent of the world's deaths from Covid-19 come from the U.S., which has 4% of the world’s people. From Fort McHenry, Maryland, Vice President Mike Pence congratulated Trump for suspending travel from China and saving “untold American lives.” White House officials continue to talk of the virus in the past tense, as if it is over. Images from the RNC of attendees sitting together, unmasked, send a signal that things are back to normal, when they are decidedly not.

There was no mention of Jacob Blake or the Kenosha shootings of Tuesday tonight, although Trump appeared to take the part of the Kenosha police and the civilian militias when he tweeted today that he was sending federal troops to Kenosha to restore “LAW and ORDER!”. (Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, instead deployed 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha.)

From Fort McHenry, Maryland, Vice President Mike Pence talked of the “heroes” who have died in unrest around the country without mentioning the events that have sparked the unrest: the shootings of Black men and women at the hands of police officers, people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake. He lamented the death of federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood, “shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California,” implying he was killed by protesters. In fact, Officer Underwood died in a drive-by shooting by a Boogaloo supporter on a nearly empty street. And Pence claimed that Democratic nominee Joe Biden has said he would cut funding to law enforcement; this is a lie from a super PAC ad that spliced together video footage to change its meaning.

A million years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, a White House official dismissively told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community,” meaning that they believed solutions to the nation’s problems came from studying reality and finding answers. “That's not the way the world really works anymore,” the official told Suskind. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Creating their own reality might have worked for Bush’s people in 2004, but sixteen years later, with the country in conflagrations both natural and manmade, it seems that approach is no longer viable.

—-

Notes:

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/hurricane-laura-storm-track-path-forecast-today-2020-08-26/

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-misleading-biden-ad-defund/fact-check-political-ad-saying-biden-wants-to-defund-the-police-is-misleading-idUSKCN252248

Underwood: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gopers-keep-falsely-implying-a-protester-killed-a-federal-officer-in-oakland

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/live-blog/hurricane-laura-updates-news-live-hurricane-path-tracker-n1238184/ncrd1238314#liveBlogHeader

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/rnc-night-three-pence-conway-hatch-act

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/lakecharlescitylouisiana

Iowa: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/25/iowa-gov-kim-reynolds-holds-news-conference-cedar-rapids-schools-storm-derecho/5627303002/

https://www.kcrg.com/2020/08/18/trump-signs-only-a-portion-of-iowas-disaster-relief-request/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/25/us/california-fires-tuesday/index.html

wildcat strike:

Matt Pearce 🦅 @mattdpearceThe NBA collective bargaining agreement bans strikes, which means the Bucks are breaking their own contract to stop playing in protest of police violence. (But this is your reminder that there aren't really illegal strikes, just unsuccessful ones.)

cosmic-s3.imgix.net/3c7a0a50-8e11-…

August 26th 2020

2,026 Retweets5,544 Likes

https://www.thedailybeast.com/america-doesnt-deserve-sports-right-now

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/nba-teams-strike-for-black-lives.html

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/kenosha-suspect-kyle-rittenhouse-trump-rally

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/WIGOV/bulletins/29beffc

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-08-26/trump-pledges-to-restore-law-and-order-in-wisconsin-amid-jacob-blake-protests

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/testing-overview.html?referringSource=articleShare

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/26/politics/fauci-coronavirus-cdc-testing/index.html

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Houston Protest Against Trump's "Deal of the Century"

Saturday, February 1 - 3:00 p.m.

South Post Oak & Westheimer, Houston, Texas

Hosted by ‎‎Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)

Please join the Houston community on Saturday, February 1st at the corner of Westheimer and Post Oak as we voice our opposition to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's unilateral "Deal of the Century," which is meant to forfeit the Palestinian right to self-determination. We say no to the "Deal of the Century!" We say no to entrenchment of Apartheid! We say yes to ending occupation. We say yes to justice! If you would like to sponsor or endorse this protest, please reach out to us by Facebook message. Stay posted for more information, including details regarding the protest.

[antoine-roquentin]

The Vietnam War had a further pernicious effect: it helped make possible the paramilitary expression of racist sentiment. In the first half of the 20th century the American far right had conducted a campaign of violence against blacks and others, especially in the South. But while they could rely on the support of large sections of society for their cause, their main aim was to instil fear rather than to try to realise fantasies of extermination or separatism. The capacity for more directed violence among white power groups that became evident in the 1980s would not have been possible without their Vietnam training and access to weapons stolen from military bases. Faced with an economic recession exacerbated by the war’s vast expenditures, many veterans believed they would never find ordinary employment, which led some to gravitate toward the fringes of American society both left and right.

John Rambo, for his part, did both. In First Blood (1982), Sylvester Stallone’s character is a ‘half-German, half-Indian’ veteran, traumatised by the war, who arrives in a small town to pay his respects to a black comrade killed by exposure to Agent Orange. Mistaken for a hippie grafter, he is hounded by the local police and struggles to find work: ‘There [in Vietnam] I flew helicopters, drove tanks, had equipment worth millions. Here I can’t even work parking!’ But in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo turns right, fighting the Vietnam War all over again single-handed. ‘Sir,’ he asks, ‘do we get to win this time?’

‘Bring the war home’: what began as an anti-war slogan on the American left was appropriated by the extreme right as a proclamation of intent. Louis Beam – one of the major strategists of the paramilitary right and a central figure in Belew’s book – was a decorated veteran who had logged more than a thousand hours as a door-gunner on Huey choppers. Back home he promptly joined the Louisiana chapter of the KKK, beginning a career that seamlessly combined white power fanaticism with anti-communism. In 1977, Beam received a grant from the state of Texas to build a simulated Vietnamese rice paddy in swampland near Houston: here, he trained recruits as young as 13 to kill an imaginary enemy. Four years later a promising opportunity presented itself. A number of South Vietnamese refugees had been resettled on the other side of Galveston Bay, and local shrimp farmers didn’t want the competition. Beam seized on these fears and gave a speech to a crowd of 250 white farmers. Shortly afterwards a group of them set out and burned two Vietnamese boats, torched crosses on their lawns, and patrolled the bay on a ship equipped with a small cannon and a mannequin hanging from a noose. The campaign of intimidation was ended by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which won a court order to disband Beam’s group and close his training camps.

Crucially, as Belew shows, most American paramilitary groups in the years after Vietnam considered themselves vigilantes. They were taking up the fight themselves because they believed the state was too cowardly or too paralysed to defend itself against Judeo-communist usurpers: the liberal establishment was infiltrated, or naive, or merely weak, unable to contend with a communist agenda that sought to destroy white nativist values and identity. In this conspiracy, blacks often featured as unwitting pawns, but that did not spare them from being targeted. In 1979, nine vehicles carrying Klansmen and neo-Nazis – most of them veterans – drove to the site of a march in Greensboro, North Carolina, where members of the Communist Workers’ Party were protesting against the Klan’s attempt to sabotage their organising of black textile workers. Five of the protesters were killed in a shoot-out; 12 were wounded. The trial that followed resulted in acquittals for all of the accused, including the local police informants who had guided the assailants to the march.

Then, in 1980, Ronald Reagan arrived. Here was a president who quoted Rambo, referred to the Vietnam War as ‘the noble cause’ and told veterans that they had been ‘denied permission to win’. Reagan not only made it clear that he intended to open new fronts in the Cold War, he even appeared to some on the far right to be paying tribute to their tactics. In 1981 a motley group of a dozen mercenaries in Louisiana – Klansmen, neo-Nazis, arms smugglers – were caught by the FBI hatching a hare-brained scheme to topple the government of the Caribbean island of Dominica and restore a puppet dictator through whom they would launder funds to the KKK and prepare a staging ground to conquer Grenada. The press mocked their failure as ‘the Bayou of Pigs’ (the plan to collaborate with a splinter group of local Rastafarians to take down what was already a right-wing government strained credulity). But as Belew notes, the US invaded Grenada two years later and justified its coup with language remarkably similar to that of the Dominican plotters, who, like Reagan, referred to the island as a ‘Soviet-Cuban colony’.

The paramilitary right had a tense but ultimately productive relationship with Reagan. In 1979 the anti-communist Georgia congressman Larry McDonald established the Western Goals Foundation, a privately funded version of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which had been wound up four years earlier. Like HUAC, McDonald’s database stored files on thousands of Americans deemed ‘subversives’, especially those who – it was imagined – might be agitating on behalf of communist movements in Central America. The information the foundation gathered was shared with the FBI and other state agencies, along with the recommendation that the government outsource the work of counter-insurgency to the very same private security firms that were helping to fund the foundation. The increased privatisation of US state violence under the Reagan administration fitted neatly with the president’s more general anti-statist rhetoric.

Kyle Burke provides a guide to this dark underground territory of the Cold War. Just as the civil rights movement spanned the globe, so too did the reaction against it. In some regions it was the reaction that proved more enduring. Burke devotes space to the largely neglected World Anti-Communist League, founded in Taiwan in 1966. The league was remarkable for its fusion of Eastern and Western anti-communist funding and expertise. The US branch was organised by a gay ex-socialist from Brooklyn, Marvin Liebman, who had converted to anti-communism after reading Elinor Lipper’s Gulag memoir. Having recruited the US congressman Donald Judd and the Catholic priest Daniel Lyons, Liebman travelled to Taipei and helped draft the league’s agenda; at the league’s 1974 conference William F. Buckley gave the keynote address. And then there was John Singlaub, a retired general and another of the league’s main organisers, who thought the US government had fumbled the urban counter-insurgency against the Black Panthers and other radical groups, and that lessons should be learned from the admirable ruthlessness with which Latin American and East Asian authoritarians had crushed their leftist opponents.

In its early years the league stirred with impossible ambitions, such as winning back China for the Kuomintang. By the early 1970s, however, it had narrowed its focus. League affiliates in Chile and Argentina were considered to have helped score major successes – including Pinochet’s coup and the Dirty War. But as Burke shows, the league and its offshoots’ activities gradually became too radical for most of its American members: too many of those involved, such as the Ukrainian nationalist Yaroslav Stetsko, openly flaunted their fascist pedigrees, while groups such as Tecos in Mexico, which had once been recruited by the Nazis to fight on the US-Mexico border, waged an open campaign of terror against Castro-inspired rebels that included bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, all barely countered by the Mexican security forces.

One of the league’s main purposes was to serve as a headhunting and staffing agency for anti-communist operations. Liebman and Singlaub – whom Reagan commended for giving him ‘more material for my speeches than anybody else’ – became middlemen for right-wing networks that channelled millions of dollars from respectable sources (the beer magnate Joseph Coors was a major donor) to anti-communist causes and counter-insurgency operations around the world. Their largesse was spread wide. Liebman founded the Friends of Rhodesian Independence, which led tours for US government officials and professors, while Singlaub helped fund arms shipments to groups like the Contras in Nicaragua. Special interests sometimes clashed. In Angola, Chevron managed to forge an oil exploration agreement with the communist MPLA guerrillas, just as Singlaub and others – including a young consultant called Paul Manafort – successfully lobbied to get the Reagan administration to back their client, Jonas Savimbi. That the US government would hinder American companies from operating in South Africa, an anti-communist ally, but allow them to work with a communist regime in Angola outraged Singlaub and his colleagues. They soon called for a boycott of Chevron and encouraged Savimbi to attack the company’s Angolan properties.

In Rhodesia, the interests of American white power internationalism and American anti-communism dramatically converged. In 1965, Ian Smith’s white supremacist regime unilaterally declared Rhodesian independence from Britain, emboldened by support from across the US political establishment, from Dean Acheson to Bob Dole. When Reagan, as a presidential candidate, began flirting with the idea of backing white Rhodesians against Robert Mugabe’s growing insurgency, several hundred American mercenaries were already fighting there. Congressional attempts to establish the exact number – let alone stop them – made little progress. Not-so-covert action in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) continued even after Mugabe came to power in 1980. As late as 1999, three Americans from a right-wing church in Indiana were arrested at Harare airport while apparently engaged in a plot to assassinate Mugabe. (His paranoia wasn’t always unjustified.)

One lingering puzzle in the history of the paramilitary American right is why, in the early 1980s, a small but significant part of the movement began to rebel against the US state itself. During Reagan’s first term a few thousand members of the KKK and various ersatz militias started down a path that would eventually lead to serious clashes with federal authorities. In 1984, the white nationalist Robert Jay Mathews founded Brüder Schweigen, also known as The Order, a group that sought to bring down the US government. After robbing a series of banks to secure funds for the cause, Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with federal agents on Whidbey Island in Washington State, though his co-conspirators were acquitted of sedition by an all-white jury. Even if we grant Belew’s point that members of the American right had periodically risen up against the US government, Reagan’s election was in part an expression – and a vindication – of an explicitly anti-government creed. So why did elements of the paramilitary right turn against the government during his first term?

Part of the answer seems to be that Reagan was simply too little, too late. The most extreme wing of the radical right was already strongly critical of some of his appointments, especially of ‘internationalists’ such as George H.W. Bush, James Baker and Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger was one of the few figures in the administration to show concern about white extremism. Reagan only made matters worse by allying himself with Jewish neoconservatives, who his far-right critics believed controlled the ‘Zionist Occupation Government’. The spectre of the ZOG had emerged in mid-1970s American neo-Nazi literature, which updated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for a new generation. It was a case of badly dashed expectations: Reagan was surrounding himself with neoconservatives who purported to share the paramilitaries’ anti-communist passion while secretly they were scheming to divert American power to their own cabalistic hyper-capitalism. By elevating the identity-erasing power of the purely rational marketplace they were really instituting a form of communism under a different name.

So from the vantage point of white power, the Reagan ‘revolution’ was anything but. ‘We spent fifty years trying to elect a conservative and what have we got?’ Robert Weems, a former KKK chaplain, asked at a rally of paramilitaries in 1984. The Reagan administration, Weems declared, doesn’t ‘take on the international bankers and the Federal Reserve; they think that’s part of our glorious capitalist heritage … They don’t take on the Zionists at all because they are the Chosen and our Number One ally in the Middle East … [and they won’t] take any stand for the white race and its preservation either.’ The extremism of Weems’s anti-capitalism marks the point where antisemitic white power and the wider anti-communist movement parted ways on questions of principle. But this should not lead us to dismiss the wide areas of common cause between white power fellow-travellers – whom Belew estimates at around 450,000 Americans – and today’s most prominent inheritors of the anti-communist tradition: free-market internationalists, or ‘globalists’, as their enemies call them. The current US president’s appeal to white nativists – the manna raining daily from Twitter – is in this sense hardly contradicted by the fact that he surrounds himself with veterans of Wall Street.

How, then, could white nationalism further its aims in the post-Vietnam era? One possible avenue was through the democratic system. In 1984, the racialist lobbyist Willis Carto founded the Populist Party, which bundled together ideas of racial purity, anti-Jewish conspiracy thinking and concerns about the money supply – in particular any kind of inflationary monetary policy that might benefit the wrong kind of poor people. The party appeared on ballot papers in 14 states, yet Carto’s efforts amounted to little more than a publicity vehicle for figures such as the Klansman David Duke and Green Beret vigilante Bo Gritz. In a bout of white power infighting, the neo-Nazi factions of the white power movement hounded Carto as a swindler of right-wing funds, and a ‘swarthy’ man of questionable racial make-up.

The second seriously considered option was what became known as the Northwest Territorial Imperative, the aim being to consolidate the white race in the already very white Pacific Northwest, where an ‘Aryan homeland’ would be established. The ‘imperative’ appears today merely like an extreme form of gerrymandering. After years of infighting and lost lawsuits, its latter-day incarnation is the Northwest Front, which operates an innocuous-looking website that displays real-estate advice for white patriots and sells the Front’s tricolour flags: ‘The sky is the blue, and the land is the green. The white is for the people in between.’​2

There was, however, a third option for white power activists, originating with Louis Beam and William Pierce, a.k.a. Andrew Macdonald, the movement’s bard. Together they concocted the most influential and enduring of the white power projects. In Essays of a Klansman, published in 1983, Beam advocated an all-out race war. The civil rights battles, he argued, had already been lost. But the best response was not to make a bid for a return to segregation: that was far too moderate an ambition. What was called for instead was white national liberation of the entire US mainland. The real culprit was ‘communist-inspired racial mixing’ and the real enemies were the ‘white racial traitors’ who had allowed it to happen. Beam wanted to redirect the energies of white power against those elements of the federal government which he believed had betrayed its original constitutional mandate to protect the white race.

Beam’s most inspired innovation was his blueprint for ‘leaderless resistance’, a model of guerrilla warfare, borrowed from communist and anti-colonial partisans, in which small cells operate in concert but without knowing the leaders of the other cells, removing any chance of their informing on one another. The move away from bands of local vigilante groups to anonymous, spread-out terror cells marked a major shift in the white power movement – reflecting an understanding that it was no longer operating merely in local contexts. Beam himself, Belew stresses, was an early and ardent adopter of the internet, making use of codeword-accessible message boards, pen pal programs and online advertising to spread the word of white power.

If Beam was known as the ‘general’ of the white power movement, Pierce – who had taught physics at Oregon State – was the ‘strategist’. In 1978 he published The Turner Diaries, a novel that went on to sell half a million copies. The book purports to be the diary of a bygone racist revolutionary who helped to overthrow the US government; the civil war begins when Congress passes the ‘Cohen Act’, banning the use of all firearms. But a small patriotic ‘organisation’ eventually prevails against this tyranny. Blacks in the South are bombed into oblivion with nuclear weapons, the Jews experience another Holocaust and women become a servant class. The US dollar is abolished, the calendar is set back to zero and the federal government goes down in flames when a biplane with a sixty-kiloton warhead flies into the Pentagon.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 presented more favourable conditions for Beam and Pierce’s fantasies to be put into action. Their views were now echoed in mainstream culture. Pat Robertson’s bestselling The New World Order (1991) claimed to unveil a vast Jewish-capitalist conspiracy, while Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s pseudoscience blockbuster, The Bell Curve (1994), laboured to justify America’s racial hierarchy. In 1989, Beam had already put the question to his brethren: ‘Now that the threat of communist takeover in the United States is non-existent, who will be the enemy we all agree to hate?’ Highly publicised stand-offs in the 1990s seemed to confirm that his faction had been right to double down on the federal government as their enemy.​3 At Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992, the Vietnam veteran Randy Weaver and his family exchanged fire with federal forces; Weaver’s wife and son were killed in paradigmatic displays of white martyrdom. During the Waco siege of 1993, federal agents stormed the compound of the Branch Davidian religious sect and 76 people were killed. Despite the sect’s lack of connection to the white power movement, the siege became a rallying cause for paramilitary groups that feared state overreach.

One television viewer galvanised by the Waco raid was Timothy McVeigh, then 24 years old. A Gulf War veteran who had seen sustained combat and been exposed in training to the same cyanocarbon tear gas used by ATF agents at Waco, McVeigh was an ideal candidate for Beam’s ‘leaderless resistance’. In 1995, after he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City – until 9/11 the deadliest terrorist attack in US history – he was tried as a ‘lone wolf’ killer, despite his connections with wider paramilitary networks, such as the Michigan Militia and the ‘Viper’ militia of Arizona, and his stash of white power literature (he was a steady consumer of right-wing ‘zines’). In his case, the tactics of leaderless resistance paid off. Instead of hunting down the co-conspirators and publicising the networks, information and material that McVeigh had relied on, the media in general presented him as an isolated psychopath.

But McVeigh should interest us perhaps more for the person he became in prison. By the time of his execution, in 2001, he had begun to sound like a contributor to Counterpunch. Here he was, cogently, in 1998:

If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of ‘mass destruction’ – like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on [Iraqi] cities. The truth is, the US has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction.

The connections between American violence abroad and American violence at home seemed self-evident to McVeigh, but for the majority of Americans even to hint at such connections remains taboo.

Donald Trump has been the most significant beneficiary of the hypocrisy of American foreign policy as described by McVeigh. Before the last presidential election, no other candidate, Bernie Sanders included, was so savage in his reckoning of America’s recent foreign ventures. ‘A complete waste,’ he called the country’s longest war. ‘Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there.’ Nor has any other president in recent memory capitalised more on the humiliation of those who fight in, or traditionally support, America’s wars. Winning for the president pertains to more than trade. Whatever the ultimate fortunes of the combined forces of American reaction, the ‘leaderless resistance’ is likely to continue. It has rarely been clearer that those who cheer on American interventions abroad should be prepared for more ferocious nativist terror at home.

[animealsonwheelz]

Meet the Blog Team

To help spread the mission for Animeals on Wheels our goal as a blog is to bring attention to anything related to this initiative whether it be news, entertainment, or volunteer information. 

“The AniMeals on Wheels program was founded so that homebound clients on Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston’s Meals on Wheels for Greater Houston program would not feel compelled to share their limited food and resources with their four-legged friends.” 

By spreading awareness, we hope to bring volunteers and/or interest to the program in the hopes we can assist all current and future AniMeals on Wheels clients.

Fayth’s Bio

Fayth Booker is a Public Relations major at the University of Houston where she manages her communication classes and other studies as she works towards becoming a publicist in the future.

Fayth is a strong proponent of compartmentalization in order to become successful. She believes it allows people to establish mental barriers between one priority and another so that one can focus all of their energy into what's right in front of them. Fayth plans to contribute to Animeals on wheel through her creative flow and power to adapt to any given scenario. 

Fayth is a people’s person and delivers genuine interactions with the people around her. You can expect integrity, transparency and no messy surprises when working with Fayth

Erick’s Bio

Erick Morales is a Public Relations major at the University of Houston who believes his skills as a communicator separate himself from fellow peers because of the value he brings to every interaction. Since his birth in 1999 he has possessed a hard working mentality that shows through courageous efforts such as signing up for 18 credit hours in the 2020 spring semester.

Erick believes great communication, writing abilities, and a quick ability to adapt to newly given situations are vital to an aspiring PR practitioner and aims to spread his message to fellow UH students eager to listen. Eric has an ability to see life from different perspectives shown through his enthusiasm to compete in photography competitions in high school. 

Jonathan’s Bio

Jonathan Shyy is an Integrated Communications major with a Business Marketing minor at the University of Houston. Jonathan plans to graduate in 2021 and go into the field of sales in order to utilize his strengths in being able to work with people. He already has plans this summer to intern with a top pharmaceutical company up in New York. 

Jonathan prides himself in being a people’s person as well as a negotiator who always comes well prepared and with a solid plan in mind. His integrity as a student translates to his work ethic and as a volunteer for Animeals on wheels, he plans on giving the elderly and their furry friends lasting and memorable experiences. Jonathan’s strengths do not end short as he is also capable of speaking multiple languages. This gives him an ability to reach a much wider audience.

Kristian’s Bio

Born in Houston Texas with Venezuelan-Colombian roots, Kristian Mantilla is a Junior at the University of Houston majoring in Public Relations and minoring in sales. Mantilla’s long term goal following graduation from College is to work in the auto industry as he is a passionate car enthusiast and can communicate to an expert degree about the ins and outs of the auto industry, whether it be their design, production, similarities, and differences and really contribute a great to the industry with his knowledge. 

Mantilla has built up quite a rapport for himself that includes:Working in logistics for various companies, transporting equipment for the Mexican national team, working as a manager at a fitness place, at H.E.B and at a car shop alongside a friend.

Prior to transferring to the University of Houston, Mantilla attended

Lonestar College where he obtained his associate degree with a 3.8 GPA

Animeals on Wheels

“In 1955, the Houston Council of Churches launched IM’s predecessor organization, the Church Welfare Bureau, to organize the Protestant community to minister to those in need. In 1964, the Bureau was reorganized as Protestant Charities of Houston, a group that was joined and strengthened by the Jewish community. Officially chartered as Houston Metropolitan Ministries in 1969, IM has been a leading force in bringing together people of all faiths to serve people in need in the greater Houston area.

IM was renamed Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston in 1992 to reflect support from increasingly diverse faith traditions.”

Contacts

Interfaith Ministries (Animeals On Wheels)

Email:  volunteerinfo@imgh.org

Address:  3303 Main Street Houston, TX 77002

Ph: 713-533-4900

Fax: 713-520-4663