History Is A Weapon (and a blog)

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noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:07:00 +0000

Our mourning continues for the loss of Howard Zinn. A lot of people clearly got a chance to meet and interact with him and it's been comforting that so many people have expressed such positive recollections. He really wasn't just the author of an amazing book, but a living inspiration and guide on how one can live their life. While National Public Radio shamed themselves with an embarrassing interview with a right wing loser*, others, including a surprising Bob Herbert in the New York Times, really strove to capture what we all lost with Zinn's passing and what we gained in his lifetime of contributions.

In totally unrelated news, a number of you wrote to complain about the scrolling favicon that we used to have. We replaced it with a static one. We listen.

We couldn't help but notice that Meredith Tax, a recommended author in our reading list, has a new website. We'd suggest the cooler amongst you go check it out.

*there is so much good independent media out there that needs your help, this was one more reason not to give to NPR

Howard Zinn Rest In Peace

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:43:00 +0000

It is with the greatest sadness that we mark the passing of Howard Zinn.
History Is A Weapon is an anonymous project and will always remain so, but Zinn's life, his work, and his words have played a big part of my life, to such an extent, that I can't possibly do justice to his memory and legacy just yet.

It almost hurts to type this, but as he quoted Joe Hill in Voices of a People's History of the United States, "Don't waste time mourning. Organize!"

History Is A Weapon wants a logo

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:37:00 +0000

Yo, graphic designers! We need a sick logo, one good enough to convey history is a weapon and get on ffffound. If you, or someone you know, can make us it* on the free, we'd love to hear from you. Of course, we'll send you awesome presents that'll make your parents proud and school children follow you singing. Contact info us at: "the directorate at history is a weapon dot com," except translated into emailese.

*it meaning a scalable vector in EPS, SVG, or AI document. Preferable with a Black and White and color option, but at least a black and white option. We really will mail you something awesome.

EDIT: We received these two in the comment section. Keep working, people, we need a logo!

The People Speak

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:44:00 +0000

The People Speak is premiering tonight and, though we've already seen it, we are pretty excited. It's on at 8pm Eastern, on the History Channel and it is going to knock socks. Set up the TIVO, email your friends, prepare to see the best thing the History Channel has ever done.

The People Speak has its own site, but don't forget your good friends at History Is A Weapon:

Of course, we have much more than that; start exploring and congrats to Arnove and Zinn and everyone who worked on it.
[EDIT]
How excited were we? We added: People Have The Power by Patti Smith, Letter from Palestine by Rachel Corrie, Organizing in Our Communities Post-September 11th by Monami Maulik, "You Have to Fight for Freedom" by Sylvia Woods, 'Be Down with the Brown!' by Elizabeth ("Betita") Martinez, Surviving the Storm: Lessons from Nature by Julia Butterfly Hill, Organizing the Unemployed in the Bronx in the 1930s by Rose Chernin, Why we Fight by Vito Russo, "Who Will Revere the Black Woman?" by Abbey Lincoln, Women, Power, and Revolution by Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich, Stonewall by Martin Duberman, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne moody, Abortion Is a Woman's Right by Susan Brownmiller, and "Back of the Yards" by Vicky Starr ("Stella Nowicki"). Maybe even one more that we forgot about...

Ten Years

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:45:00 +0000

It's been ten years since the last time we kicked off some real capitalism scaring. Check out the real history of Seattle 99.

The People Speak

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:58:00 +0000

We made some additions to the site, but we have some even more interesting news first. History Is A Weapon is an anonymous site, but one of our participants had the honor of going to the premiere of The People Speak, a new film based on Voices of a People's History by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.

It's going to air on The History Channel and, these are words we thought we'd never type on the History Is A Weapon website, there will actually be something worth watching on the History channel. The comments from the History Channel CEO were kind of embarrassing and the director was a little squeamish about the advertisers when it was done, but the film itself is a real piece of work. Combining a Who's Who of progressive movie stars and musicians with documentary footage and Zinn himself speaking, it's a real treat. History teachers, activists, and everyone else should basically set their TIVO for The People Speak. You won't be disappointed. One note, it was definitely weird watching this with the glitterati at Jazz at Lincoln Center, but you know how History Is A Weapon rolls: we're everywhere.

Okay, keep an eye out. You heard it here first.
We made a few new additions on the spurring of said ~~delinquent~~ History Is A Weapon operative, and added Marge Piercy's The Low Road (which was apparently delivered by a magnetic Stacyann Chin in the movie), as well as Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddam. We also corrected a few errors throughout the site and updated the Start Page.
Remember, if you come across any typos on our site, please send us an email letting us know (info in the FAQ). Now go link to us. The more you link to us, the more random people have a shot at realizing that HISTORY IS A WEAPON

1 Million Visitors!

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:10:00 +0000

This year is officially our first one with one million visitors. Thanks everybody for linking to us, sending us the kind notes, and just spreading the word. And, obviously, keep it up.

Mobile History Is A Weapon

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:16:00 +0000

History Is A Weapon does have a small portal to the mobile world. It's at www.historyisaweapon.com/mobilehiaw.html and if you have a small screen, or just no taste and dislike our awesome book-style table of contents, then you can browse to your heart's content.

Irving Kristol has Died.

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:39:00 +0000

Good.

New Howard Zinn Front Page

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:33:00 +0000

A People's History Of The United States of America's main page at History Is A Weapon was re-designed today. It looks great. You should go tell people about it.

Alan Berkman Presente

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:39:00 +0000

We wrote about this only a few entries ago, but we didn't realize we'd have to follow it up so soon with such a bummer entry. I didn't know Berkman well, spoke to him on the phone only a few times because of a project I was working on, but he just seemed like a really decent accessible guy.

This got posted online and here it is.

Michael Steven Smith on rembering Dr. Alan Berkman, People's Doctor
After battling recurrent cancers for half his life, Alan Berkman died in Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City around seven o'clock in the evening of June 5, 2009. He was under a death sentence with a cancer that was going to kill him. He chose to try a risky stem cell transplant procedure where he first had to have chemo-therapy to knock out his own stem cells and then replace them with the stem cells of a donor. Even finding the donor was difficult, the holocaust having significantly narrowed the gene pool of persons who might have a match. One was found. Alan entered the hospital knowing he might not get out. He understood what his doctor's were telling him. He himself was a doctor, a sixties graduate of Columbia's school for physicians and surgeons and now a professor there in the school of public health.
Alan's first was struck by cancer when he was in prison. He did eight years, four of them in solitary. He diagnosed himself. But to no avail. The authorities would do nothing, as if they wanted him to die. They must have hated Alan. A communist. A Jew. A doctor. A supporter of blacks and latinos and native Americans at the second battle of Wounded Knee. They knew his history. It was quite a dossier. A sixties radical. SDS. Active in the anti-war movement. A practising doctor in New York's poor neighborhoods. Forced underground for years because he wouldn't give up the name of a woman he treated for a gunshot wound she got in a failed Brinks truck robbery that killed two cops and a security guard in Rockland County. Then arrested and convicted and doing hard time in a maximum security prison. He helped a cop killer. And now he is in our hands. But Alan was unbent and unbowed. He was tough.
Finally his family and attorneys got him medical attention. He told me they operated on him while handcuffed to a gurney. Deep stomach surgery where the muscles need to be cut. When he awoke from anesthesia they took the handcuffs off and made him get up off the gurney and walk. He got cancer again before getting out on parol. Amazingly Bill Kunstler and Ron Kuby prevented the State from taking away his medical license. He started working as an AIDS doctor in the South Bronx.
That's when I met him. About twenty years ago. He helped me on a case. We drove out to Brooklyn to see the client and then had dinner, the first of many. A steak and a martini. Alan and Barbara, Debby and me. We four. Good friends and comrades.
We went back to that restaurant a couple of weeks ago, just before Alan checked into Memorial. We thought we would see him the next week at the event honoring him and Dr. David Hoos for co- founding HEALTH GAP. But that was not to be. His doctors couldn't give him the time and he was whisked into the hospital for first the chemo and then the transplant. Alan got the new cells but died before they could take root.
When HEALTH GAP was formed with the help of ACT UP and HOUSING WORKS the anti-viral aids medicine "cocktail" cost ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year. Big pharma controlled manufacturing and distribution with their intellectual property rights. Alan helped change that , not having the requisite respect for private property. Now the drugs cost about eight-seven dollars a year and some four million people are taking the medicine, prolonging their lives.
Alan wasn't religious. Religion to him was superstition. Being part of a sect was too narrow and confining for Alan. The Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition. The historian Isaac Deutscher had a phrase for it, "the non-Jewish Jew." Alan was in line with the great Jewish heretics, rebels, and revolutionaries of modern thought; Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Freud, and Einstein. They too went beyond the boundaries of Judaism, finding it too narrow, archaic, constricting.
I don't wish to stretch the comparison. Alan was not so much a radical thinker as a man of action. But his intellectual understanding - and he was well educated and widely read - powered his activity. He had in common with these great thinkers the idea that for knowledge to be real it must be acted upon. As Marx observed: "Hitherto philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it."
Like his intellectual predecessors Alan saw reality in a state of flux, as dynamic not static, and he was aware of the constantly changing and contradictory nature of society. Alan was essentially an optimist and shared with the great Jewish revolutionaries and optimistic belief in humanity and a belief in the solidarity of humankind.
The stem cell procedure failed to save him. Alan Berkman has passed, but his work and his example have taken root. Goodbye dear friend. We all remember you with the two best words in our language: Love and Solidarity.

by Michael Steven Smith

Grassroots Media Conference

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:44:00 +0000

A friend of History Is A Weapon will be speaking at the Grassroots Media Conference. The panel will be on Movement Building and Media Making. If you go and are nice, you might get an ultra rare History Is A Weapon sticker.

Documentary Is Never Neutral

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:28:00 +0000

The always awesome Documentary Is Never Neutral updated. If you love docs, we know you'll love it. Anyone got a spare copy of Peter Davis's Middletown or an invite to ffffound?

Alan Berkman is Awesome

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:07:00 +0000

Word has come that Alan Berkman is preparing for a medical ordeal. We ask that people keep him in your thoughts and prayers. Why? Because Alan Berkman is awesome.

Dot org is back

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:14:00 +0000

Friends,

History is a weapon can be found at history is a weapon dot org, dot com, and one other brief spot, but it should always be open for business. Last week, the dot org went down, and it took us a few days to get it off a junk site, but we're alive and well and will be forever. If you love us, please feel free to post up that historyisaweapon.org is back and alive. Maybe you'll help people who thought we mysteriously died, maybe you'll send new people our way. Either way, we'd totally appreciate it.

History Is A Weapon

Open Call

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:30:00 +0000

So, if you've been following the History Is A Weapon Blog, and who isn't?, you'll notice that we're up to an update a month or so. So while we're thinking of some new stuff to post, and we have been inspired by skimming Meredith Tax's "The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict 1880-1917" (if you haven't read her Rivington Street and its sequel, Union Square, do so. They're simply awesome), don't forget that History Is A Weapon does accept submissions from the larger internet world. Definitely talk to us before you start scanning and typing, but if you think you have something that'll add to the collection, we might just add it to the collection.

Mark Rudd

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:29:00 +0000

I'm reading Mark Rudd's new book, Underground, and went to his site where I came across this wonderful essay by Peter Marin:

Gloria:

The important thing, I think, in considering the Weathermen, is that we remember what America was like in the days when the Weathermen began. Hysterical days, to be sure, but I have a hunch that many of us saw our own nation more clearly then than we have since. Certainly it was clear back then that, in relation to other nations and to large segments of our own population, we acted as a nation in ways destructive and sometimes genocidal, and also that the myths and mystifications with which we surrounded our own activities kept, and would go on keeping, most Americans from realizing what their nation was or did.

I mean to say that groups like the Weathermen and the Panthers saw America quite clearly. But they were so unprepared for what they saw, and were so clearly lacking in any sense of viable strategies for dealing with what they saw, that they slid quickly and tragically into modes of reaction which were almost always hysterical, self-destructive, and self-defeating--to say nothing of their ineffectuality.

Yet as easy as it is to say that, one must remember that the tactics the Weathermen adopted were nothing at all compared to the brutality to which they were reacting. This is what we tend to forget. I was down in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, spending some time among unemployed and pauperized blacks: women with children and no money at all; men without hope, or work, or dignity. What one saw was an inexcusable part of American life so familiar and pervasive that none with any power--and certainly none of our current presidential candidates--makes any move to do anything about it. If you look carefully to (re)discover in our own South what you can see in dozens of other spots in the country (you know Detroit particularly well) or in impoverished foreign nations: the continuous and inexcusable violence done to millions of people in the name of "freedom" and "democracy." That, I suppose, is what the Weathermen understood.

Does this justify or explain their tactics? Maybe not. But remember this: Few of those who criticize the Weathermen or counsel other tactics actually practice other tactics or effect change in other ways. I know (as you do) all the criticisms of the Weathermen, and I can recite, also, the tactics for change that all agree are superior to their violence: patience, politics, reason, passive disobedience, peaceful protest, education, exhortation, etc. But we also know (though we pretend we do not) that none of these approaches has accomplished very much, save in the area of civil rights. And meanwhile lives end and bodies pile up, and how is it possible to be fully aware of this, and not be tempted to violence against those responsible or complicitous?

The violence of the Weathermen is evidence of two things: first that they saw their nation and its evils clearly, and, secondly, that they had no adequate response to what they saw, and so were driven to ends which partook perhaps too much of the evils they discovered. But how could they have avoided that? They had no readily available political traditions of patient resistence and dissidence to fall back on, and the political left by then had been decimated and divided by the Stalin Pact, the World War, factionalism, and old age. Nor had they any religious or secular moral framework into which they could put the evil they saw, or which would dictate or suggest an adequate response.

They were not, I think, essentially political, no matter how political their rhetoric got. They were moral apocalyptists, violent Anabaptists of a kind, godless in their response and yet driven by their discovery of evil as surely as those in the past for whom God was (I say this, remember, as a purely secular man) the only adequate force or value to pit against evil. And they were, finally, quintessentially American, partiaking, ironically and yet unavoidably, of precisely the values (or the absence of values) they abhorred. They had discovered the moral void at the heart of American life; they were shocked, astonished, transformed,; but they had nowhere to go with their vision of the void but straight into it, and in they went, losing themselves, perhaps, in what they feared and opposed. It could not--given the nature of the nature of the nation and age--have been otherwise.

The Jews, you know, have a tradition, a law: that to study the Cabala, and to see God's hidden truths, you must be of a certain age, and have around you a community of others capable of sustaining you, keeping you sane (such is the supposed power of God's law and face). But the young in the Sixties looked at power, evil and greed and had nothing around them--no tradition, no community--to guide them; they created their response out of thin air and nerve, out of sympathy and the anger of betrayed children. They tried, as best they could, through violence, to topple or simply nudge the weight, the rock, of what it was they had discovered, and the fact that it moved not an inch is not necessarily what proves their tactics false. It may, indeed, be precisely what proves them necessary.

I say all this reluctantly, simply trying to follow the thought through. I am by nature pacific--I can afford to be. But I do not know whether that is evidence of superior "wisdom" (compared, say, to the Weathermen) or merely the fact that my sense of immediacy and the presence of evil is not as sharp as their. Nor may my heart be quite as exposed or vulnerable to human suffering. Too much of our present day wisdom is simply exhaustion, complicity, and a taste for comfort. Had the Weathermen existed in other nations, we might have understood them better. But because they were Americans, their behavior called into question the whole issue of what the rest of us, as Americans, should be doing; and I suspect that there is something self-justifying and self-indulgent in the way we see the Weathermen today. What we say about them may be true, but we do not say it because it is true, if you see what I mean.

Peter

Carol Chomsky

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:21:00 +0000

It is with regret that we note the passing of Carol Chomsky. Though her own linguistic work is less familiar to us, like Roslyn Zinn, her presence at the edges of stories casts a long shadow. My parents had dinner with her and her husband a few years ago. They reported that Noam was interesting and very smart, but she was funny and "a real firecracker." Our condolences to the family.

Documentary Is Never Neutral

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:04:00 +0000

We just put online our major redesign of Documentary Is Never Neutral. We're totally proud of it, thankful of re-designer Anna over at Left Palate, and slowly adding new content to it. If you're a radical documentary filmmaker type, interested in it, or know someone who is, come on down, the price is right, and check it out.

William Ayers

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:39:00 +0000

Reading any nonsense against Bill Ayers is frustrating, but in the context of a bomber of children, John McCain, being the leveler, the whole thing has heightened to the empire's usual level of absurdity. Well, Bill Ayers is great (true story: all this nonsense about Obama having a coffee at Ayer's house, and everyone else saying they've had coffee with Ayers, reminded me that I met Ayers at a conference years ago and we got to talking and he took me out to Starbucks. Maybe Ayers just really likes coffee.) and I think the only good thing to come out of listening to an empire's whining, that is literally this instant violently forcing its claws on the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, is that more people will read go check out Ayers's blog. I'm not such a fan of Obama, and every time I listen to people distance Obama from Ayers, I just recall Ayers being really friendly, not romanticizing the Weather Underground stuff (this was at an event with about thirty guys silently sizing him up while clearly getting their radical man-crush on and he just wasn't interested in catering to that), and trying to navigate a progressive radical path. On one hand, he's living a chaptered life and he's doing great work in education and people who want to demonize him need to go read some of his books on education and see who he is these last twenty five years beyond combating republican talking points. On the other hand, he supposedly* bombed the place where they orchestrate mass campaigns of murder, pillage and rape, and I'm supposed to root against him?!

*He was part of the WUO; I have no clue if he was involved with the Pentagon bombing.

We don't know either, but we'll be there.

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:52:00 +0000

This is being forwarded around. Forward it some more and show up.

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THURSDAY’S PROTEST

When: 4pm Thursday, September 25!
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout

Everyone,

This week the White House is going to try to push through the biggest
robbery in world history with nary a stitch of debate to bail out the Wall
Street bastards who created this economic apocalypse in the first place.

This is the financial equivalent of September 11. They think, just like
with the Patriot Act, they can use the shock to force through the
“therapy,” and we’ll just roll over!

Think about it: They said providing healthcare for 9 million children,
perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s
evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street
pigs. If this passes, forget about any money for environmental protection,
to counter global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to
rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.

This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the
debate. Let’s demonstrate this Thursday at 4pm in Wall Street (see below).
We know the congressional Democrats will peep meekly before caving in like
they have on everything else, from FISA to the Iraq War.

With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this
omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from
the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top.

This whole mess gives lie to the free market. The Feds are propping up
stock prices, directing buyouts, subsidizing crooks and swindlers who
already made a killing off the mortgage bubble.

Worst of all, even before any details have been hashed out, The New York
Times admits that “Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it,”
and its chief financial correspondent writes that the Bush administration
wants “Congress to give them a blank check to do whatever they want,
whatever the cost, with no one able to watch them closely.”

It’s socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us.
Let’s take it to the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this
Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park,
which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the
northern tip.

By having it later in the day we can show these thieves, as they leave
work, we’re not their suckers. Plus, anyone who can’t get off work can
still join us downtown as soon as they are able.

There is no agenda, no leaders, no organizing group, nothing to endorse
other than we’re not going to pay! Let the bondholders pay, let the banks
pay, let those who brought the “toxic” mortgage-backed securities pay!

On this list are many key organizers and activists. We have a huge amount of
connections – we all know many other organizations, activists and
community groups. We know P.R. folk who can quickly write up and
distribute press releases, those who can contact legal observers, media
activists who can spread the word, the videographers who can film the
event, etc.

Do whatever you can – make and distribute your own flyers, contact all
your groups and friends. This crime is without precedence and we can’t be
silent! What’s the point of waiting for someone else to organize a protest
two months from now, long after the crime has been perpetrated?

We have everything we need to create a large, peaceful, loud
demonstration. Millions of others must feel the same way; they just don’t
know what to do. Let’s take the lead and make this the start!

News from the Police Raid and Detainment of journalists at the RNC

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Breaking: Amy Goodman and producers arrested in St. Paul

The following is a release from Democracy Now!

ST. PAUL, MN -- Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time.

Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfuly detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman's crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

An earlier video about harassment of journalists there:

The Zinn Education Project

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:33:00 +0000

We've come across a few pieces from the people behind "Rethinking Schools" (their great Rethinking Globalization) and "Teaching for Change" (their inspiring "Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching" featuring Roz Payne photos), but of course when the two got together to make the Zinn Education Project, we had to share. They've put together a great PDF packet that's packed with over a hundred pages of material for teachers who want to us Zinn's work in the classroom. We looked through it and it looks great. So if you're a teacher or a student, or you know someone who is, check it out at http://www.zinnedproject.org/.

The 2000 Election and the "War on Terrorism"

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:06:00 +0000

So until today, the last two chapters of the most recent A People's History of the United States were never typed up. But now it's just one chapter that remains, because The 2000 Election and the "War on Terrorism" is online.

Where are the other updates? We've got stuff on the stove, kids, and you'll see it unleashed when it's good and ready.

HAPPY 4th OF JULY! JESSE HELMS HAS DIED!

noreply@blogger.com (History Is A Weapon) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:58:00 +0000

Anti-integrationist
Opposed Martin Luther King day
Name is on the Helms-Burton act, the centerpiece of the embargo against Cuba
against ALL Affirmative Action programs
voted to bail out the savings and loan industry AND to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families
absolutely hated all gay people
supported apartheid in South Africa
From a Mother Jones article
a staunch ally of right-wing military rulers like Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Raoul Cedras in Haiti, and Roberto D'Aubuisson in El Salvador. Confronted with evidence that D'Aubuisson directed death squads to murder civilians, Helms made it clear that some things are more important than human life. "All I know," he replied, "is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."
Routinely fought against AIDS research from the beginning, blaming people suffering from the disease for it.
In 1993, sang Dixie to the first african american senator, Carol Mosely-Braun, and promised to make her "cry."
Hell burns hotter tonight!