History
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How the anticommunists killed President Salvador Allende
mronline.org Chile: This is how they killed Allende | MR OnlineFor the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile against the then president, Salvador Allende, analysis and publications are flourishing.
>In fact, according to the review of Allende’s autopsy report of September 1973, which remained unknown until the year 2000 and which journalist Monica Gonzalez inserted as an annex in her book La Conjura. The Thousand and One Days of the Coup, it was found that Allende’s skull showed two bullet wounds from two different weapons. > >The first of them is associated with a shot from a short gun that leaves a perfect hole in the back of the cranial vault and a second wound, with a high-powered weapon that causes skull bursting, applied in the submental area. The apparent purpose of the latter is to simulate suicide. This report caused worldwide impact and brought the issue of the causes of Allende’s death back into the public debate. > >This first inquiry by Dr. Ravanal has never been scientifically disputed and, in fact, this forensic physician was awarded at the World Congress of Forensic Medicine (Seoul, October 2014) as the best speaker for his report on the causes of Allende’s death. Unfortunately, this distinction, the highest that can be awarded by forensic science worldwide, was never highlighted by the Chilean and international press, as it has happened with all the antecedents that point to prove that Allende did not commit suicide.
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Anticommunist racism at the thermoelectric plant of the world’s largest copper mine (Tocopilla, Chile, 1948–1958)
>In addition to the suppression of their right to strike and access trade union benefits, the workers on the coast of the Atacama Desert were accused of being both ‘communists’ (without it being the case), and ‘Indians’. In this context of racialization, ‘communist’ and ‘Indian’ were practically synonymous in the mining semantics. Accusations were thus used to stop workers’ mobilizations to improve working conditions. The derogatory labelling of ‘communist Indians’ in the context of mining colonization can be understood as a ‘phobic and obsessive figure’1 (Mbembe, 2013, p. 37). > >[…] > >The imprisoned trade unionists and thermoelectric workers were sent to the coastal town of Pisagua, located 400 kilometres north of Tocopilla. Pisagua was an ‘unhappy, abandoned, narrow and dirty port. Ruinous, dead . . . ’ (Bucat, 2016, p. 221). According to González Videla himself, Pisagua, being surrounded by the ocean and the desert, ‘made it easier for the Armed Forces to control the surveillance of the relegated communists’ (González Videla, 1975, p. 1273). > >The processes of brutalization reached their maximum expression through a policy of death, a barbarism applied to workers’ bodies. In Mbembe’s words, an articulation emerged between the ‘state of exception and the relationship of enmity’ (Mbembe, 2011, p. 21), resulting in the regulation of a certain right to imprison, to torture and to kill. A military prison complex was created to not affect the company’s productivity rates.
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Terrorizing the Soviets, not defeating the Axis, was the real reason for bombing the Japanese on August 1945
>Before the Cold War (perhaps even as early as the late 1930s), capitalists were interested in possessing nuclear weapons for anticommunist purposes, and by late 1945 they devised their first formal plans for committing nuclear strikes against the U.S.S.R.[156] After four decades, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project finally admitted this in 1985: >>During one such conversation Groves said that, of course, the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets. (Whatever his exact words, his real meaning was clear.) […] Until then I had thought that our work was to prevent [an Axis] victory, and now I was told that the weapon [that] we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim. […] When it became evident, toward the end of 1944, that the [Axis] had abandoned their bomb project, […] I asked for permission to leave and return to Britain. >> >>—Joseph Rotblat, [157] > >A former military analyst and the U.S.’s highest‐ranking civilian with a military equivalency rank, somebody who had more access to war plans than even the head of state, confirmed this in the 2010s: >>* The basic elements of American readiness for nuclear war remain today what they were almost sixty years ago: Thousands of nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert, aimed mainly at Russian military targets including command and control, many in or near cities. The declared official rationale for such a system has always been primarily the supposed need to deter—or if necessary respond to—an aggressive Russian nuclear first strike against the United States. That widely believed public rationale is a deliberate deception. Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack—or responding to such an attack—has never been the only or even the primary purpose of our nuclear plans and preparations. The nature, scale, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the requirements of quite different purposes: to attempt to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a U.S. first strike against the USSR or Russia. This capability is, in particular, intended to strengthen the credibility of U.S. threats to initiate limited nuclear attacks, or escalate them—U.S. threats of “first use”—to prevail in regional, initially non-nuclear conflicts involving Soviet or Russian forces or their allies. >>* The required U.S. strategic capabilities have always been for a first-strike force: not, under any president, for a U.S. surprise attack, unprovoked or “a bolt out of the blue,” but not, either, with an aim of striking “second” under any circumstances, if that can be avoided by preemption. Though officially denied, preemptive “launch on warning” (LOW)—either on tactical warning of an incoming attack or strategic warning that nuclear escalation is probably impending—has always been at the heart of our strategic alert. >> >>—Daniel Ellsberg (emphasis original), [158] > >Simply put, first the anticommunists launch, and then their missile defense mops up any retaliation from the few surviving launch sites. Missile defense could not stop a first strike from the U.S.S.R., therefore a highly capable missile defense system in the hands of the anticommunists was a first strike weapon. A common misconception is that the Soviets’ own work on atomic weapons would have been impossible had they not stolen from the Anglosphere. This is an exaggeration. > >When a couple of Berlin’s scientists discovered nuclear fission in December 1938, the Soviets were as quick to react as the liberal states were, but the Soviets were too busy catching up with modernity to prioritize their own nuclear research. When four million anticommunists reinvaded Soviet Eurasia, the Soviets had to temporarily suspend all of their atomic research until a Soviet physicist persuaded Moscow otherwise in 1942, having noticed the extreme secrecy of the Anglosphere’s own atomic research.[159] Then the Soviets witnessed what their Western allies did to Hiroshima: >>[T]he news had an acutely depressing effect on everybody. It was clearly realized that this was a New Fact in the world’s power politics, that the bomb constituted a threat to [the Soviet Union], and some Russian pessimists I talked to that day dismally remarked that the [Soviet Union]’s desperately hard victory over the [Third Reich] was now “as good as wasted”. >> >>—Alexander Werth, [160]
Of course, these are by no means the only arguments against the myth that the atomic bombings were military necessities, but one could argue that they are the strongest.
- www.africanhistoryextra.com Ancient Ife and its masterpieces of African art: transforming glass, copper and terracotta into sculptural symbols of power and ritual
Towards an understanding of naturalist (realistic) art in the African context
- www.smithsonianmag.com How Third-Century China Saw Rome, a Land Ruled by “Minor Kings”
Translations of a 3rd century Chinese text describe Roman life
alt link if it doesn't work.
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Histories of Everyday Violence in British India
>On 29 June 1893, Sir Charles Addis, the Rangoon agent for the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, witnessed a grotesque act of colonial violence in the city. Following a riot the previous day between the indigenous Burmese and Indian migrant labourers, the bodies of the dead were being gathered from the streets of Rangoon by British soldiers and taken to the dead house. The body of one Hindu man, with a swollen stomach, killed during the riots, was followed by a group of mourners, one of whose number touched the corpse against the orders of a British soldier. In response the soldier took his bayonet and plunged it into the belly of the deceased man, covering his mourning followers with blood. This brutal and public violation of an Indian body by a low-ranking British soldier was one of many instances of mundane violence that occurred throughout the duration of British rule in India. > >Small episodes like this have been of only passing interest to historians of colonialism and imperialism, until recently.
- multipolarista.com British empire killed 165 million Indians in 40 years: How colonialism inspired fascism
A scholarly study found that British colonialism caused approximately 165 million deaths in India from 1880 to 1920, while stealing trillions of dollars of wealth. The global capitalist system was founded on European imperial genocides, which inspired Adolf Hitler and led to fascism.
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The Great Railroad Strike of 1877: A militant legacy of workers’ struggle
www.liberationschool.org The Great Railroad Strike of 1877: A militant legacy of workers’ struggle – Liberation SchoolThe largest strike of workers until that time, the railroad strike quickly spread across the country, leading to militant street battles and the dissemination of socialist ideas throughout the labor movement.
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Civics class for radicals: the Supreme Court
www.liberationnews.org Civics class for radicals: The Supreme Court - Liberation NewsEvery young person in America is taught in school about the wonders of the U.S. system of government
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Of, by, and for the elite: The class character of the U.S. Constitution
www.liberationschool.org Of, by, and for the elite: The class character of the U.S. Constitution – Liberation SchoolThe U.S. Constitution reflects the founding fathers' fear and hatred of democracy—which they derisively referred to as "tyranny of the majority."
- www.medievalists.net Hidden Hands: The Secret Lives of Manuscript Makers and Owners - Medievalists.net
Mary Wellesley will trace the stories of the people who made, loved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, which are some of the most engaging artefacts ever made by human hands.
Damn!
I would like to make my own manuscripts like that or something similar!
😊
Oh yeah, and thoughts?
- mronline.org Ukrainian Nationalists have long history of anti-semitism which the Soviet Union tried to combat | MR Online
While Ivy League professors equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, the Soviets fought the Nazis and ended violent anti-Jewish pogroms—which now threaten to return.
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The US-Dakota War of 1862 & the Fort Snelling Concentration Camp
>The Dakota non-combatants arrived at Fort Snelling on November 13, 1862, and encamped on the bluff of the Minnesota River about a mile west of the fort. Shortly after, Marshall and his soldiers moved the Dakota to the river bottom directly below the fort. In December soldiers built a concentration camp, a wooden stockade more than 12 feet high enclosing an area of two or three acres, on the river bottom. More than 1,600 Dakota people were moved inside. A warehouse just outside the camp was used as a hospital and mission station. Throughout the camp's existence, soldiers of the Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiments guarded the stockade, controlling movement in and out. It is estimated that between 130 and 300 Dakota people died over the winter of 1862–63, mainly due to measles, other diseases, and harsh conditions. > >The concentration camp at Fort Snelling was not a death camp, and Dakota people were not systematically exterminated there. The camp was, however, a part of the genocidal policies pursued against Indigenous people throughout the US. Colonists and soldiers hunted down and killed Dakota people, abused them physically and mentally, imprisoned them, and subjected them to a campaign calculated to make them stop being Dakota.
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The Ishango Bone could potentially be the oldest mathematical device in history.
The markings suggest that the bone was used for counting; though the same logic could be applied to the Lebombo bone, an older artifact with 29 markings.
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The U.S. state and the U.S. revolution
www.liberationschool.org The U.S. state and the U.S. revolution – Liberation SchoolIt is no exaggeration to say that the principal disputes between activists, organizations and political trends in U.S. social movements have hinged on different understandings of, and attitudes toward, the state. What distinguishes a revolutionary communist perspective from a reformist perspective i...
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A Buffet of Black Food History
YouTube Video
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A survey of african american food history from about the 1600's to the present day
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The Extremely Violent History Behind Tokyo's Narita International Airport
YouTube Video
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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9204
> Additional footage on the [fort] they built and the attack upon it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAPC1wI08IM
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Very interesting. I'd definitely bookmark this and give it a read when you have the time.
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Unsung Black heroes: South Carolina’s 1968 Orangeburg Massacre
www.liberationnews.org Unsung Black heroes: South Carolina’s 1968 Orangeburg Massacre - Liberation NewsDelano Middleton. Henry Smith. Samuel Hammond Jr. These were the names of the three Black victims ki
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Fascist plots in the U.S.: Contemporary lessons from the 1934 “Business Plot”
www.liberationschool.org Fascist plots in the U.S.: Contemporary lessons from the 1934 “Business Plot” – Liberation SchoolRockhill details the defeated fascist attempt to overthrow FDR and the New Deal in 1934.
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I'm reading The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics, 184) by Jonathan Haslam
And it basically says what communists have said all this time: Great Britain used Nazi Germany has a buffer to the Soviet Union and found them preferable to work with than the Soviets themselves.
They were hoping to press them into war with the Soviet Union and they did at that.
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Enemy on the doorstep: China's involvement in the Korean War
YouTube Video
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Watching rn. Thanks to @[email protected] for originally posting this.
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Hungary 1956 - 'the first color revolution'? - Democracy Digest
www.demdigest.org Hungary 1956 - 'the first color revolution'? - Democracy Digest Democracy DigestHungary’s Foreign Ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador over reportedly disparaging remarks on Russian state media about Hungary’s 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, AP reports: The ministry said Tuesday it wants to [...]
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‘Dispatch Hitler to Hell’: 80 years since the Nazi invasion of the USSR
www.peoplesworld.org ‘Dispatch Hitler to Hell’: Anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the USSRThis article originally appeared in World Magazine, a People's World publication, on Feb. 28, 1985. It was reprinted on June 22, 2021, for the 80th anniversary of Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.
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The Long Crusades of Western Imperialism
www.midwesternmarx.com The Long Crusades of Western Imperialism. By: Yanis IqbalIn late April 2021, US President Joe Biden announced a withdrawal from Afghanistan. In other words, the US has been trounced in Afghanistan by its very own jihadist Frankenstein, the Taliban ....
A nice primer on the Crusades.
- inthesetimes.com The Forgotten History of the Jewish, Anti-Zionist Left
A conversation with scholar Benjamin Balthaser about Jewish, working-class anti-Zionism in the 1930s and '40s.
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Anti-Rent War - Wikipedia (I know, I know...)
I just read the beginning part, but I mean, the whole idea is... pretty based, ngl.
I mean, where is this in Hollywood?
lol Who am I kidding? Hollywood is too busy making the same war movies and CIA movies that I sometimes see whenever the channels on TV are being flipped through.
- cvltnation.com Rebellion of the Damned: Witchcraft as Social Revolt in Early Modern France
The Age of Enlightenment had yet to begin and it would be well over a century until revolution touched off in France. Ruled by a traditionalist monarchy and a corrupt state church, the country was still very much stuck in the dark ages throughout the Early Modern period. The Catholic Church dominate...
I'm going to start reading this right now.
Shout out to @[email protected] who made a mini-audio "book" about this article.
👍👍
- www.sltrib.com Utah wants your help in preserving the historical records around the 1915 execution of labor icon Joe Hill
The Utah Division of Archives is hoping to shed more light on the 1915 execution of labor icon Joe Hill and is asking for the public’s help in transcribing and indexing thousands of documents.
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Martin Luther King Jr., the radical
www.liberationnews.org Martin Luther King Jr., the radical - Liberation News[Originally posted January 16, 2011, we repost this week in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of
- historicly.substack.com Tibet, China, and the violent reaction of a wealthy elite
Too many westerners supplant their fantasy instead of dealing with reality in Tibet
- theconversation.com Archaeologists have a lot of dates wrong for North American indigenous history – but we're using new techniques to get it right
Modern dating techniques are providing new time frames for indigenous settlements in Northeast North America, free from the Eurocentric bias that previously led to incorrect assumptions.
Reading this right now; it's a subject that I'm deeply interested in.
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Molotov, an anti-revitionist until the end
he also believe in his words " China’s our only hope. Only they have kept alive the revolutionary spirit "
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Abolitionist solidarity — Black and white — in the struggle against slavery
www.liberationnews.org Abolitionist solidarity — Black and white — in the struggle against slavery - Liberation NewsThe full story of the struggle to end chattel slavery in the U.S. has yet to be fully told. History
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100 Years of Universal Suffrage, a history of struggle
www.liberationnews.org 100 Years of Universal Suffrage, a history of struggle - Liberation NewsReposted from Breaking the Chains magazine Over a hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment to the U.S.
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1848: Marx’s school of revolution
mronline.org 1848: Marx’s school of revolution | MR OnlineThe revolutionary wave of 1848 began with a joyous struggle for democracy. But it ended with violent struggles between workers and capitalists, liberals and socialists, revolutionaries and reformers. The experience was a decisive influence on the development of Marx's theory of revolution.
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Revolutionary Black resistance has a long tradition
www.liberationnews.org Revolutionary Black resistance has a long tradition - Liberation NewsEditors’ note: this article is adapted from a talk given by Michaela Warnsley at the NYC virtual org
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Why the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
www.liberationnews.org Why the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Liberation NewsThe following article first appeared in the August 2005 issue of Socialism and Liberation magazine.