I horrid situation is developing in Afghanistan over food. Today I read that Biden has decided to funnel some of the funds to 9-11 first responders families, including their legal expenses and not let the (now-Taliban) government use it.
I recently read the books mentioned here, found them to be essential reads, and also find it amazing how the UK and US seem to have an infinite ability to whitewash our own recent past and the implications of same.
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Thursday March 15, 1906
From The New York Times: "The Children of the Poor," Part I
In its March 3rd edition, the Times published an in-depth review of the newly published book by John Spargo which documents the suffering of the millions of children who are born and reared in poverty within our great American prosperity. Today we present part one of that review, entitled "Children of the Poor." We will concluded with part two in tomorrow's edition of the Hellraisers Journal.
Advertisement from The New York Times of February 17th:
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Monday March 6, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: Comrade Debs on the Fantines of Our Day
From this month's edition of the Review, Comrade Debs urges class solidarity and human compassion for the "girls, women who have walked the path of thorns and briers with bare and bleeding feet; who know the ways of agony and tears, and who move in melancholy procession as capitalist society's sacrificial offering to nameless and dishonored graves."
FANTINE IN OUR DAY
By EUGENE V. DEBS
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THE reader of "Les Miserables" can never forget the ill-starred Fantine, the mournful heroine of Hugo's immortal classic. The very name of Fantine, the gay, guileless, trusting girl, the innocent, betrayed, self-immolating young mother, the despoiled, bedraggled, hunted and holy martyr to motherhood, to the infinite love of her child, touches to tears and haunts the memory like a melancholy dream.
Jean Valjean, noblest of heroes, was possible only because of Fantine, sublimest of martyrs.
Fantine—child of poverty and starvation—the ruined girl, the abandoned mother, the hounded prostitute, remained to the very hour of her tragic death chaste as a virgin, spotless as a saint in the holy sanctuary of her own pure and undefiled soul. It was of such as Fantine that Heine wrote: "I have seen women on whose cheeks red vice was painted and in whose hearts dwelt heavenly purity."
This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Otis Rush. Enjoy!
Otis Rush - I`Cant Quit You Baby
Every now and then one of our "representative" leaders lets the mask slip and Americans get a peek at the monster behind the mask. The monsters that represent us are well-known elsewhere in the world by the people who are variously invaded, bombed, incinerated by flying death robots, disappeared, held in gulags, tortured, sanctioned, starved, treated to heaping helpings of depleted uranium, attacked with banned weapons like white phosphorus, brutalized by authoritarian dictators and puppets that our monsters support with weapons Made in America(tm). I could go on, but you get the picture.
