Fire Walk With Me

invisiblelad:

covenesque:

zuky:

thesmithian:

…[some] may not remember what made Iran-Contra such an extraordinary scandal. The Reagan administration “raised money privately” by selling weapons to a sworn enemy of the United States. Why? Because it wanted to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. And when I say “illegal war,” I mean that quite literally—Congress told the Reagan administration, in no uncertain terms, that Reagan could not send money to the Contras. Period. The Reagan administration, unrestrained by laws and the Constitution, did so anyway, and much of the president’s national security team ended up under indictment.

more.

Reagan knew everything. However, I bet this Time magazine piece doesn’t get into the juiciest part of Iran-Contra, which is that in the 1980s the CIA put into operation a crack cocaine pipeline to import narcotics from Central and South America and distribute it in US inner cities. This is not a “conspiracy theory”, this is a documented conspiracy, most rigorously researched and reported by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gary Webb, whose series in the San Jose Mercury News and subsequent book “Dark Alliance” literally got him killed. To me, that’s the story of Iran-Contra: not that Reagan sold weapons to Iran, but that the US government imported and sold crack to Black America, as part of an arms and drugs trade which funded war in the Third World and which devastated lives and filled prisons in the USA.

I’m old enough to remember this and it’s depressing that everyone forgot.

This conflicts with the neo-con narrative fiction that Reagan was the best president ever…so of course its been filed out of sight and mind. If a democrat had done it though, the outrage would be heard to the high heavens…

(via sanityscraps)

nezua:

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Today in history: February 2, 1848 - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed between the U.S. and Mexico, ending the Mexican-American War (1846–48). With the defeat of its army and the fall of the capital, Mexico entered into negotiations to end the war. Mexico was forced to give the U.S. 55% of its land – the Mexican territories of Alta California and Santa Fé de Nuevo México – which now are the U.S. states of California, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona as well as Texas. This unfair treaty paved the way for the national oppression of the Chicano people in what had been the top half of Mexico and is now the Southwestern U.S.

(image: map of Mexico and the U.S. before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo)

Via Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!)

What a nonsense name: “The Mexican American War.” It was the Invasion del Norte, an illegal provocation by the US because Polk had already decided to invade and needed a pretext. Gold was first discovered in Placerita Canyon (CA) on March 9, 1842, by Jose Francisco de Gracia—who was looking for a spot to take a siesta. So, a Mexican found gold on Mexican land, but a few years later, the US invades and the “war” ends in 1848: which coincidentally happens to be the year that John A. Sutter and James Marshal announce that *they* have discovered gold in California. I’m sure they drew up many flowery documents proclaiming as much, too.

As we know, this gold rush financed much development of the (now-)USA, made many people rich, and started fortunes that continue down family lines today. It was stolen, all of it. Like so much of the USA’s power today. Stolen, borrowed, built on billions of bones.

And the dumbed-down “Patriots” today wonder why so much comes back to haunt the USA, with its rich history of theft, lies, and slavery.

freedominwickedness:

eccecorinna:

hotelsongs:

carecub | xekstrin | wrathofprawn:

for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. the planes were also so noisy that to stop germans from hearing them combing and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.

their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.

how the fuck is this not taught in every single history class ever

pretty sure I’ve reblogged this before but it can happen again

This is laughably incorrect.

Although technologically obsolete as of WWII, the Polikarpov Po-2 “Kukuruznik” biplanes flown by the 588th Night Bomber Regiment were in no way ” the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world.”

Fact 1: The Po-2 was first flown in 1929 and remained in production until 1953 due to its low cost and extreme reliability. It is, in fact, the second most produced aircraft in history, and the most produced biplane in history. The night bombers flew brand new, specially modified Po-2s fitted with bomb racks and machine guns.

Fact 2: The Po-2 was extremely quiet; Germans nicknamed it the Nähmaschine (“sewing machine”) due to the muted rattling sound its tiny little 99-horsepower radial engine made. The night bombers would fly these quiet, sneaky little planes just a few meters off the ground, then climb to higher altitude, cut the engine, and glide to the attack point so that the Germans would have no warning of an incoming attack other than the ghostly whistle of wind through the wing bracing-wires.

Fact 3: Saying “their leader flew over 200 missions” is both inaccurate and damning with faint praise. All of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment pilots flew multiple missions every night, with the record being eighteen missions flown back-to-back-to-back-to-back in a single night. By the end of the war, most of the “Night Witches” had around a thousand combat sorties under their belts.

The Night Witches were THAT fucking badass, and it pisses me off when people get it all wrong because they’re too damn lazy to do their homework.

(via imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway)

While some have called the 21st century the end of segregation in American society, new research comes to a very different conclusion.

Researchers at Dartmouth, the University of Georgia, and the University of Washington decided to look at neighborhood data from the U.S. Census in 1990, 2000, and 2010 to compare trends in racial diversity. They then created “cartographic visualizations” of 53 large metropolitan areas and every state in the United States. What they found might–or might not–surprise you.

While the census data did show an increase in racial diversity in the country’s largest cities over the past 20 years, several other trends are also evident–African-Americans remain concentrated in segregated neighborhoods; highly diverse neighborhoods are actually rare; and newly arrived immigrants continue to settle in concentrated racial residential patterns.

Read More

(via kadalkavithaigal)

nerdinista:

redheadpowers:

platinumpixels:

volpesvolpes:

unseilie:

sarahvonkrolock:

gaysexagainstawall:

them-days-was-olden-as-fuck:

The spread of the black death.

Poland

Poland, tell us your secret.

Poland is the old new Madagascar. 

If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there. 

Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.

Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it. 

I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.

Damn Italy, you scary.

I’m purebred Polish and I never knew this. No wonder we’re so anal with cleaning.

(via thirddeadlysin)

youngbadmanbrown:

White History Month, Day 2: Calvin Coolidge and American Homogenity:

On May 26, 1924, Calvin Coolidge signed into law the Immigration Act of 1924, a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, according to the Census of 1890. 

The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, mainly Jews fleeing persecution in Poland and Russia, who were immigrating in large numbers starting in the 1890s, as well as prohibiting the immigration of Middle Easterners, East Asians and Asian Indians.

According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, “In all its parts, the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity.” Congressional opposition was minimal.

The 1924 Act also established the “consular control system” of immigration, which divided responsibility for immigration between the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It mandated that no alien should be allowed to enter the United States without a valid immigration visa issued by an American consular officer abroad.

It provided that no alien ineligible to become a citizen could be admitted to the United States as an immigrant. This was aimed primarily at Japanese and Chinese aliens.

 Congressman Albert Johnson and Senator David Reedwere the two main architects. In the wake of intense lobbying, the Act passed with strong congressional support. 

Proponents of the Act sought to establish a distinct American identity by favoring native-born Americans over Southern and Eastern Europeans in order to “maintain the racial preponderance of the basic strain on our people and thereby to stabilize the ethnic composition of the population”. Reed told the Senate that earlier legislation “disregards entirely those of us who are interested in keeping American stock up to the highest standard – that is, the people who were born here”

Some of the law’s strongest supporters were influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race. Grant was a eugenicist and an advocate of the racial hygiene theory. His data purported to show the superiority of the founding Northern European races. Most proponents of the law were rather concerned with upholding an ethnic status quo and avoiding competition with foreign workers.

The Act barred specific origins from the Asia–Pacific Triangle, which included Japan, China, the Philippines (then under U.S. control), Siam (Thailand), French Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia), Singapore (then a British colony), Korea, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Burma, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Malaya (mainland part of Malaysia). Based on the Naturalization Act of 1790, these immigrants, being non-white, were not eligible for naturalization, and the Act forbade further immigration of any persons ineligible to be naturalized. The Act set no limits on immigration from the Latin American countries

Source

talldarkbishoujo:

wretchedoftheearth:

I’ve never seen a GIF of this.

I was just reading about this during a wiki binge on Olympics incidents and did a little research on it. I never knew how deep the message was that Smith and Carlos were trying to send. Just about everything they wore and how they wore it had symbolism attached to it. (unzipped tracksuits for solidarity with blue collar workers, necklace of beads for lynching victims, etc) Calling it a “black power salute” is really reductive and it’s a shame (and predictable) that if it’s taught at all, that’s what it’s boiled down to.

Another thing I didn’t know: the Australian guy who came in second wore a patch for solidarity with them, he was protesting racist Australian immigration policies. When he passed away, Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral.

(via bmoburns)

nevver:

Paradise lost

thartist72:

crookedindifference:

The ‘Original’ Inventor of Algebra

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, earlier transliterated as Algoritmi or Algaurizin, (c. 780, Khwārizm – c. 850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer, a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

In the twelfth century, Latin translations of his work on the Indian numerals introduced the decimal positional number system to the Western world. His Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations in Arabic. In Renaissance Europe, he was considered the original inventor of algebra, although we now know that his work is based on older Indian or Greek sources. He revised Ptolemy’s Geography (systematized and corrected Ptolemy’s data for Africa and the Middle east) and wrote on astronomy and astrology.

Some words reflect the importance of al-Khwarizmi’s contributions to mathematics. “Algebra” is derived from al-jabr, one of the two operations he used to solve quadratic equations. Algorism and algorithm stem from Algoritmi, the Latin form of his name. His name is also the origin of (Spanish) guarismo and of (Portuguese) algarismo, both meaning digit.

I’m not even surprised that we weren’t taught this in school or even college.