Baltimore: ALL Confederate Statues Have Now Been Removed
I really like the idea of relocating the statues to confederate cemeteries.
Maybe we should have more traveling art pieces to put in place of some of these things. Then more viewpoints could be represented.
I'm not all that fussed either way.
I do have a problem with the way things are done here.
And I have a particular problem with "Barbarians".
Quite ironic, when you think that I am half German.
Asked at his daily press briefing if it was “time for” the statue, which stands on a 27-foot column in Columbus Circle, “to go,” Cuomo responded, “I understand the dialogue that’s been going on for a number of years, [but] the Christopher Columbus statue in some way represents the Italian American legacy in this country and the Italian American contribution in this country,” although he conceded that “some of his acts … nobody would support.”
“The statue has come to represent and signify an appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New York,” he added.
Columbus statues have been targeted in Richmond, Va., where protesters threw a statue into the lake in the city’s Byrd Park, and Boston, where they removed the statue’s head. The cultural celebration of the explorer has long been criticized by Native American advocacy groups, who point out contemporaneous documentation of him ordering the torture, enslavement and killing of natives on the island of Hispaniola. Several cities have replaced the Columbus Day holiday with Indigenous People’s Day as a result.
Simpsons predicted this:
Bad mannered,
Anti-establishment,
Emotional rather than rational.
Yup,
That's Bart.
BRITAIN : New Statue to Bomber Chief Raises German Ire
Old German and British war wounds have been reopened by a new controversy over a statue being erected in London to the officer whose bomber force rained explosives on Germany.
The statue commemorates Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, Britain’s top bomber commander during World War II, who masterminded the RAF’s night bombing campaign over Germany.
Known as “Bomber Harris” for his single-minded execution of strategic bombing--characterized by mass raids with widespread devastation of major cities such as Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Wuerzburg and Dresden--Harris was called “The Butcher” by the Germans.
An estimated half a million Germans were killed in night bombing by British planes and in daylight raids by American aircraft. The efficiency of strategic area bombing has long been a subject of dispute. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
Within months of a holocaust memorial being refused planning permission: Link to article (Jewish Chronicle)
I live in a very weird country don’t I?
I understand the left side of politics, in Britain, is considered broadly anti-semitic.
Could this have influenced the descision?
If not, any personal ideas why it would have been refused?
Westminster City Council is conservative majority, by a wide margin, and has been since it was first instituted in the 1960s.
The relevant planning committee is chaired by a conservative, and has nine conservative members including the chair, and four labour members.
So I suspect it would’ve rather hard for the decision to have been made under the auspices of left-wing antisemitism, even if all the labour members were to be guilty of holding such attitudes.
The details of the decision and the reasoning behind it have not been published (I’ve done a search for them on the councils website).
I think I should note that the campaign against the memorial has several Jewish members, and one of the witnesses against the application was a holocaust education specialist who’s surname leads me to suspect that they are either Jewish or of Jewish descent.
The focus of the campaign against the memorial seems to have been the desire to maintain the park as a happy outdoors space for the local residents and their children: something that the campaign asserts would no longer be possible were the park to contain a holocaust memorial.
I’m also going to note that Ed Balls, co-chair of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation referenced in the article, is a former labour mp: Indeed was the labour finance spokesman during Ed Milliband’s period (2010-15) as party leader.
So... I may get flamed for this...
Yes, there are definitely cluster of antisemitic attitudes and ideas on the British left.
This has come to public attention during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, himself guilty of several antisemitic speech act whilst he was leader of the party.
There was also an internal investigation which I personally regarded as a self-evident whitewash.
I also noticed that party members accused of antisemitism did not all get the same treatment: the accused who were opposed to Corbyn’s leadership were summarily dismissed, whilst his allies within the party were, at least initially, shielded and excused... even if some were unwillingly sacked later.
There was also the panorama documentary on the bbc which asserted that members of the disciplinary committee of the party who were trying to do their jobs in a competent non-partisan fashion were bullied out of the party by Corbyn’s aides: who also took to putting it about that the whole thing was a propaganda plot without foundation cooked up by the Board of Jewish Deputies to prevent Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister.
Which usage of an antisemitic conspiracy theory to deflect from accusations of antisemitism leaves my thinking that effectively the case is closed: Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite, as are many of his closest political allies.
However... I have some other observations:
When Ed Milliband was leader of the Labour Party two elements of the right-wing press criticism of him stick out in retrospect: the first was mocking him, a man of Jewish descent, for looking uncomfortable and ill at ease whilst eating a bacon sandwich for a photo-op.
The second was making much of his father having been born in Germany and questioning his loyalty and patriotism on that basis.
I also remember the rumour across the British press (both left and right) from when Tony Blair became Prime Minister that Peter Mandelson, also a man of Jewish descent, was secretly controlling the government and all it’s decisions from behind the scenes... they gave him a nickname: “The Dark Prince”.
Third observation: I’ve moved around a few times within this country, and I’ve noticed that amongst people of all ages and political persuasions jokes which play upon stock antisemitic characterisations of Jews go without challenge or confrontation...
So, I’m currently thinking that English, if not British, culture at large has an antisemitism problem... and the Labour Party has been the institution through which this has been made manifest.
I speculate that the British left’s tendency to focus on the banking industry as the main problem with capitalism, and their obsession with Palestine, make it all too easy for British leftists to succumb to antisemitic thinking without realising that they are doing so (my thinking is that if they were self-aware about it, they’d probably be more circumspect).
The British right seems to have more of a Germanophobia problem at present, what with all the fantasy talk of Brexit being easily sorted by one phone call to the Chancellery in Berlin and openly talking of the EU as the concealed fourth reich that’s keeping Britain down etc etc etc...
Can you tell I’m worried about where my country’s going?
Here,
Have an integrity star.
You have earned it.
Thank you!
Biscuitman
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BRITAIN : New Statue to Bomber Chief Raises German Ire
Old German and British war wounds have been reopened by a new controversy over a statue being erected in London to the officer whose bomber force rained explosives on Germany.
The statue commemorates Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, Britain’s top bomber commander during World War II, who masterminded the RAF’s night bombing campaign over Germany.
Known as “Bomber Harris” for his single-minded execution of strategic bombing--characterized by mass raids with widespread devastation of major cities such as Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Wuerzburg and Dresden--Harris was called “The Butcher” by the Germans.
An estimated half a million Germans were killed in night bombing by British planes and in daylight raids by American aircraft. The efficiency of strategic area bombing has long been a subject of dispute. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
Within months of a holocaust memorial being refused planning permission: Link to article (Jewish Chronicle)
I live in a very weird country don’t I?
I understand the left side of politics, in Britain, is considered broadly anti-semitic.
Could this have influenced the descision?
If not, any personal ideas why it would have been refused?
Westminster City Council is conservative majority, by a wide margin, and has been since it was first instituted in the 1960s.
The relevant planning committee is chaired by a conservative, and has nine conservative members including the chair, and four labour members.
So I suspect it would’ve rather hard for the decision to have been made under the auspices of left-wing antisemitism, even if all the labour members were to be guilty of holding such attitudes.
The details of the decision and the reasoning behind it have not been published (I’ve done a search for them on the councils website).
I think I should note that the campaign against the memorial has several Jewish members, and one of the witnesses against the application was a holocaust education specialist who’s surname leads me to suspect that they are either Jewish or of Jewish descent.
The focus of the campaign against the memorial seems to have been the desire to maintain the park as a happy outdoors space for the local residents and their children: something that the campaign asserts would no longer be possible were the park to contain a holocaust memorial.
I’m also going to note that Ed Balls, co-chair of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation referenced in the article, is a former labour mp: Indeed was the labour finance spokesman during Ed Milliband’s period (2010-15) as party leader.
So... I may get flamed for this...
Yes, there are definitely cluster of antisemitic attitudes and ideas on the British left.
This has come to public attention during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, himself guilty of several antisemitic speech act whilst he was leader of the party.
There was also an internal investigation which I personally regarded as a self-evident whitewash.
I also noticed that party members accused of antisemitism did not all get the same treatment: the accused who were opposed to Corbyn’s leadership were summarily dismissed, whilst his allies within the party were, at least initially, shielded and excused... even if some were unwillingly sacked later.
There was also the panorama documentary on the bbc which asserted that members of the disciplinary committee of the party who were trying to do their jobs in a competent non-partisan fashion were bullied out of the party by Corbyn’s aides: who also took to putting it about that the whole thing was a propaganda plot without foundation cooked up by the Board of Jewish Deputies to prevent Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister.
Which usage of an antisemitic conspiracy theory to deflect from accusations of antisemitism leaves my thinking that effectively the case is closed: Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite, as are many of his closest political allies.
However... I have some other observations:
When Ed Milliband was leader of the Labour Party two elements of the right-wing press criticism of him stick out in retrospect: the first was mocking him, a man of Jewish descent, for looking uncomfortable and ill at ease whilst eating a bacon sandwich for a photo-op.
The second was making much of his father having been born in Germany and questioning his loyalty and patriotism on that basis.
I also remember the rumour across the British press (both left and right) from when Tony Blair became Prime Minister that Peter Mandelson, also a man of Jewish descent, was secretly controlling the government and all it’s decisions from behind the scenes... they gave him a nickname: “The Dark Prince”.
Third observation: I’ve moved around a few times within this country, and I’ve noticed that amongst people of all ages and political persuasions jokes which play upon stock antisemitic characterisations of Jews go without challenge or confrontation...
So, I’m currently thinking that English, if not British, culture at large has an antisemitism problem... and the Labour Party has been the institution through which this has been made manifest.
I speculate that the British left’s tendency to focus on the banking industry as the main problem with capitalism, and their obsession with Palestine, make it all too easy for British leftists to succumb to antisemitic thinking without realising that they are doing so (my thinking is that if they were self-aware about it, they’d probably be more circumspect).
The British right seems to have more of a Germanophobia problem at present, what with all the fantasy talk of Brexit being easily sorted by one phone call to the Chancellery in Berlin and openly talking of the EU as the concealed fourth reich that’s keeping Britain down etc etc etc...
Can you tell I’m worried about where my country’s going?
Here,
Have an integrity star.
You have earned it.
Thank you!
There is more where that came from,
But you have to focus.
I work on a demerit system, also.
^ sounds fair.
Yes, I did spend two hours planning that post whilst digging out unwanted agapanthus for a customer.
Those things have deep roots that fragment easily and regrow from surprisingly small pieces...
...Appropriate synchronicity of physical task and subject of thought, no?
ASPartOfMe
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Gender: Male
Posts: 34,465
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Baltimore protesters toppled a Christopher Columbus statue and threw it in a harbor
Louis Krauss, who shared video of the toppling, said there were at least 300 people gathered at the scene.
"After it toppled over the statue broke into several pieces, which were then dragged across the plaza and dumped into the Inner Harbor," Krauss told CNN.
The statue has stood by Little Italy for more than 30 years and is the latest to come down in recent weeks amid protests.
Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott said in a statement he had previously suggested the statue be removed, according to WBAL.
Christopher Columbus statue in Connecticut is beheaded
A Christopher Columbus statue outside City Hall in Waterbury, Conn., was discovered decapitated Saturday morning, and cops were investigating, The Hartford Courant reported.
After the monument to the explorer was beheaded, the local chapter of Unico, an Italian American service organization, offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the gray statue’s executioner.
The statue was the site of a minor clash Thursday between Black Lives Matter protesters who want it removed, and members of a local motorcycle club who rallied for it to stay.
The Connecticut cities of Hartford, New Haven and New London recently opted to remove their Christopher Columbus statues.
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DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
ASPartOfMe
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Charlottesville: Confederate soldier statue removed
Crowds cheered as a crane removed the bronze figure, known as "At Ready", early on Saturday.
The bronze statue was taken down from its plinth in front of the Albemarle County courthouse, where it had stood since 1909, early on Saturday.
People gathered nearby danced to music as the monument, along with a cannon, were removed.
Albemarle County voted to dismantle the statue in August, the first decision to be made under a new law for removing Civil War monuments in Virginia introduced earlier this year.
In Key West, there’s a push to rename — not tear down — a Confederate monument
The memorial, a white pavilion with twin columns at each corner, was installed at Bayview Park in 1924 by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
If the Key West City Commission approves a proposal on its Sept. 16 meeting agenda, the pavilion and a nearby bandstand will become the “One Human Family Pavilion.”
At a time when cities in the United States are removing Confederate war monuments, this proposal only seeks to rename the structure.
“It reclaims the space in an appropriate way,” said Vice Mayor Sam Kaufman, who has been studying the history of the memorial and how it inspired a few Ku Klux Klan events in Key West over the years, including a parade in 1924 and a rally in 1992.
“It’s a place the Ku Klux Klan identified as their space, even up until 1992,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman said he isn’t calling to tear it down, noting it would be different if it were a statue of a Confederate leader.
He isn’t even asking that the memorial’s dedication plaques be removed.
“This is just a four-column structure,” Kaufman said. “Naming it the ‘One Human Pavilion,’ that accomplishes what we all want, to say hate is not accepted here. But it’s a good reminder we have to be vigilant.”
The 1992 Klan event at Bayview drew 200 protesters and a half-dozen Klan members from out of town, according to a report in Florida Today.
The Klan fared far better in 1924, though, after the Confederate monument went up, with a parade that drew hundreds of onlookers and 75 Klan members in white robes, the Key West Citizen wrote in February 1924.
The Citizen also reported that the Klan in Key West at the time had received 690 applications for membership.
The memorial was dedicated in 1924 on Jan. 19 — in honor of the birthday of Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“This one is almost benign,” said Commissioner Clayton Lopez, of the Confederate memorial at Bayview. “If it were a statue hailing some person that was supposed to have been a war hero in the Civil War, then I would be tremendously against it.”
Lopez, who said he is pleased by Kaufman’s proposal, said the Confederate memorial tells the whole story of American history.
“It’s a dark part of Civil Rights history as well,” said Lopez, who is Black. “We know the Daughters of the Confederacy, that whole movement, was put in place to ‘remind’ Blacks of their station and their status.”
Instead of calling to tear it down, the two commissioners support renaming it after the city’s motto, which was created by local artist J.T. Thompson.
“One Human Family” was declared the island’s official philosophy in October 2000, in a proclamation signed by then-Mayor Jimmy Weekley.
Key West had the Confederate memorial restored in 2015.
A year later, the city authorized a sculpture of a Black Union soldier to go up at Bayview to honor Black Key West residents who fought for the Union.
The Black soldier sculpture is steps away from the Confederate memorial.
Key West was in the Union’s hands throughout the Civil War.
ou have to look carefully to find the Confederate memorial’s dedication plaques. One, which reads, “To the soldiers and the sailors of the Confederacy,” is partially blocked by some rogue plant roots.
“It was put there as a memorial,” said Tom Hambright, a revered Key West historian who works out of the Monroe County Public Library branch on Fleming Street. “I don’t consider memorials to glorify the people. People died. Some people think anything that mentions the Confederacy is glorifying slavery.”
Bayview Park is home to a number of war memorials, including one dedicated to those who fought and died in the Vietnam War. It was dedicated in 2015.
Also at Bayview is another monument that honors soldiers from New York stationed during the Civil War in Key West and who died of yellow fever and other diseases.
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DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 13 Sep 2020, 11:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
ASPartOfMe
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Portland protesters topple statues of Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln in ‘Day of Rage’
Protest organizers had promoted the event on social media as an “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage.
People in the crowd were repeatedly admonished not to film. Passersby who happened upon the group were ordered by demonstrators to stop filming or delete photographs, including an apartment resident who had lasers shined at his eyes and a liquid thrown in his face as he appeared to shoot video of the scene from his terrace.
As the crowd reached the South Park Blocks, some threw chains on ropes on the Roosevelt statue, a bronze sculpture officially titled “Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider,” as others took a blowtorch to its base and splattered it with red paint.
They began to pull until the statue rocked from side to side before falling down at 8:51 p.m. The crowd erupted in cheers as dance music played on a large portable speaker.
Over the course of his life, Roosevelt expressed hostility toward Native Americans, as Indian Country Today wrote in an accounting of his attitudes and policies. He pushed policies that promoted assimilation into white culture including the allotment system, by which Native American land was allotted to those who became U.S. citizens and the remainder was made available to white settlers. The policy also weakened tribal governments, an effect reportedly cheered by Roosevelt.
The group then turned to the nearby Abraham Lincoln statue, pulling it to the ground at 8:59 p.m. Spray-painted on the base of the statue was “Dakota 38,” a reference to 38 Dakota men executed after the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862 in the largest mass execution in a single day in American history. (Lincoln commuted the same sentence, handed down by a military tribunal, for 265 others.)
After toppling the statues, some protesters began smashing windows at the Oregon Historical Society, unfurling a banner that read, “Stop honoring racist colonizer murderers.” A mural on the attached Sovereign Hotel building depicting the Lewis & Clark expedition was splattered with red paint.
Kerry Tymchuk, the historical society’s executive director, told a KOIN News reporter that no exhibits had been damaged.
Protests condemn death of Utica teen, Columbus statue
Other protesters chanted "Columbus is a murderer!", "Black Lives Matter" and "Native Lives Matter."
Christopher Columbus statue in Pueblo vandalized
Christopher Columbus statue in Pittsburgh covered while city looks for new location
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It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
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Confederate Statues Come Down Around U.S., But Not Everywhere
Since George Floyd's death in May that sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice, there have been votes or decisions to protect 28 monuments, according to an NPR count.
These monuments — from Tallahassee, Fla., to Stone Mountain, Ga., to Cochise County, Ariz. — are among the nearly 700 Confederate memorials that remain on public land, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
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Mississippi voters replace Confederate-themed flag with new design
The new state flag will feature the magnolia flower and the phrase “In God We Trust." The flag was selected by a state commission in September to be put on the November ballot.
"This will be the new state flag of Mississippi. Voters overwhelmingly approved it. This is a great day for the state as we move forward from a divisive emblem that now rests in the past," tweeted resident Sam Hall
A majority of voters chose to keep the flag in a 2001 election, but several cities and counties and all of Mississippi’s public universities had stopped flying it because of the Confederate symbol.
The magnolia was chosen by a state commission out of nearly 3,000 entries for the new flag’s design, including the “Great River Flag,” which featured a shield, reports said.
A law retiring the old flag specified the new design couldn't include the Confederate battle flag and must have the phrase, “In God We Trust.”
Requiring the religious phrase helped persuade some conservative legislators to let go of the old flag.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman