New Additions

Added Black Hawk's Surrender Speech, 1832, Banneker's letter to Jefferson, "The Negro Should Not Enter the Army"Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E. Church, Eugene Debs' Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act, A selection from Black Bolshevik by Harry Haywood, The Revolution is At Hand The original speech John Lewis wrote to be delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, The Basis of Black Power: a SNCC position paper, The Freedom Schools: Concept And Organization by Staughton Lynd.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Howard!

"To put it briefly: the evidence is quite overwhelming on this matter. The Japanese had sent an envoy (Ambassador Sato) to Moscow (still officially a neutral) to work out a negotiated surrender. An instruction from Foreign Minister Togo came in a telegram (intercepted by American intelligence, which had broken the Japanese code early in the war), saying: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace... It is His Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war." The Japanese had one condition for surrender which the U.S. refused to meet -- recognizing the sanctity of the Emperor. It seemed the U.S. was determined to drop the bomb before the Japanese could surrender -- for a variety of reasons, none of them humanitarian. After the war, the official report of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, based on hundreds of interviews with Japanese decision-makers right after the war, concluded that the war would have ended in a few months by a Japanese surrender "even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

Brief Interview

Read a really interesting interview with the filmmaker Emile de Antonio.

Samora Machel

Slowly typing in Walter Rodney text and came across a quick reference to Samora Machel who led the revolutionary liberation of Mozambique and became their first president. He died, mysteriously, in a plane crash. He had this important quote:

"Of all the things we have done, the most important - the one that history will record as the principal contribution of our generation - is that we understand how to turn the armed struggle into a Revolution; that we realized that it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society."

Also entered in a brief anecdote about Robert Williams.

Additions

Just added the Six Pamphlets of the White Rose Society. Despite their various problems, it is still a good read. Before the Iraq war, there was a great poster that quoted the beginning of their pamphlet:

Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day?

Just finished read the excellent Walter Rodney speaks and am slowly a significant chunk of part two in. His discussion of Marxism, race, class, and the role of the intellectual is incredible. Below is a portrait: