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Spirituality & Religious Studies @spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com@spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com ·Apotheosis
This is also called divinization or deification. It’s from the Latin deificato, meaning “making divine.” This is the glorification of a subject to divine levels & commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.
The original sense of apotheosis relates to religion & is the subject of many works of art. Figuratively “apotheosis” may be used in almost any context for “the deification, glorification, or exaltation of a principle, practice, etc.” So normally attached to an abstraction of some sort.
In religion, apotheosis was a feature of many religions in the ancient world. Some that are active today. It requires a belief that there’s a possibility of newly created God’s, so a polytheistic belief system.
The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism don’t allow this. Though many recognize minor sacred categories such as saints. They’re created by a process called canonization. In Christian theology, there’s a concept of the faithful becoming god-like, called divinization or in Eastern Christianity theosis.
In Hinduism, there’s some range for new deities. A human may be deified by becoming regarded as an avatar of an established deity, usually a major one, or by being regarded as a new, independent deity (usually a minor one), or a mix of the 2.
In art, an apotheosis scene usually shows the subject in the Heavens or rising towards them. They’re often partnered by a number of angels, putti, personifications of virtues, or similar figures.
Especially from Baroque art onwards apotheosis scenes may show rulers, generals, or artists purely as an honorific symbol. In many cases, the “religious” context is classical Greco-Roman pagan religion, like The Apotheosis of Voltaire, which features Apollo. The Apotheosis of Washington (1865) sits high in the dome of the United States of America Capitol Building is another example. Personification of places or abstractions are also shown receiving an apotheosis. The classic composition was suited for artistic placement on ceilings or inside domes.
Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in ancient Egypt (pharaohs) & Mesopotamia (from Naran-Sin through Hammurabi). In the New Kingdom of Egypt, all deceased pharaohs were deified as the god Osiris, having been identified as Horus while on the throne. They were sometimes referred to as the “son” of other various deities.
The architect Imhotep was defied after his passing away. Though the process seems to have been gradual. This took over 1,000 years, by which time he had become associated with medicine. About a dozen non-royal ancient Egyptians became regarded as deities.
Ancient Greek & Roman religions have many characters who were born as humans but became gods. Like Disney’s Hercules. They’re usually made divine by 1 of the main deities, the 12 Olympians. In the Roman story of Cupid & Psyche, Zeus gave the ambrosia of the gods to the mortal Psyche. This transformed her into a goddess herself.
In the case of the Hellenistic queen Berenice II of Egypt was deified like other rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The court dispersed a myth that her hair, that was cut off to fulfill a vow, had its own apotheosis before becoming the Coma Berenices, a group of stars that still bear her name.
In the Greek world, the 1st leader who granted himself diving honors was Philip II of Macedon. At the wedding to his 6th wife, Philip’s enthroned image was carried in procession among the Olympian gods. Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to a status equal to the gods before death, like Alexander the Great, or afterwards, like members of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
A heroic cult status that’s similar to apotheosis was also an honor given to a few reversed artists of the distant past, such as Homer.
Up to the end of the Roman Republic, the god Quirinus was the only 1 the Romans accepted as having undergone apotheosis, for his identification/syncretism with Romulus. Syncretism is the practice of meshing together different beliefs & various schools of thought. Eventually apotheosis in Ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized as divine by their successors. This was usually done by a decree of the Senate & popular consent.
The 1st of these cases was the posthumous deification of the last Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 42 BC by his adopted son, the triumvir Caesar Octavian. In addition to showing respect, the present ruler often deified a popular predecessor to legitimize himself & gain popularity himself & gain popularity with the people.
A vote in the Roman Senate, in the later Empire confirming an imperial decree, was the normal official process. But this sometimes followed a period with the unofficial use of deific language or imagery for the individual. This was often done rather discreetly within the imperial circle.
There was then a public ceremony, called a consecratio, including the release of an eagle which flew high. This represents the ascent of the deified person’s soul to Heaven. Imagery featuring the ascent, sometimes using a chariot, was common on coins & in other art.
The largest & most famous example in art in a relief on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, showing the emperor & his wife, Faustina the Elder, being carried up by a much larger winged figure, described as representing “Eternity,” as the personifications of “Roma” & the Campus Martius sit below, & eagles fly above. The imperial couple are represented as Jupiter & Juno (or Zeus & Hera).
The historian Dio Cassius, who said he was present, gives a detailed description of the large, & lavish, public consecratio of Perinax, emperor for 3 months in 193, ordered by Septimius Severus.
At the height of the imperial cult during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperor’s deceased loved ones (heirs, empresses, or lovers) like Hadrian’s Antinous were deified as well.
Deified people were posthumously given the title ‘Divus’ for men & ‘Diva’ for women to their names to signify their divinity. Traditional Roman religion distinguished between a deus (god) & divus (a mortal who became divine or deified), though not consistently. Temple & columns were erected to provide a space for worship.
The imperial cult was mainly popular in the provinces. Especially in the Eastern Empire, where many cultures were well used to deified rulers, & less popular in Rome itself, & among traditionalists & intellectuals.
Some privately, & cautiously, ridiculed the apotheosis of inept & feeble emperors, as in the satire The Pumkinification of (the Divine) Claudius. This is usually attributed to Seneca.
Numerous mortals have been deified into the Taoist pantheon. Examples are Guan Yi, Iron-crutch Li, & Fan Kuai. Song dynasty general Yue Fei was deified during the Ming dynasty. He’s considered by some practitioners to be 1 of the 3 highest-ranking heavenly generals. The Ming dynasty epic Investiture of the Gods deals heavily with deification legends.
In the complicated, & variable, conceptions of deity in Buddhism, the achievement of Buddhahood may be regarded as an achievable goal for the faithful. Many significant deities are considered to have begun as normal people, from Gautama Buddha (the original Buddha & the creator of Buddhism) downwards. Most of these are seen as avatars or re-births of earlier figures.
Some significant Hindu deities, in particular Rama, were also born as humans. He’s seen as an avatar of Vishnu. In more modern times, Swaminarayan is an undoubted & well-documented historical figure, who’s regarded by some Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu, or as being a still more elevated deity. Bharat Mata (Mother India) began as a national personification devised by a group of Bengali intellectuals in the late 19th century. But now it receives some worship.
Various Hindu & Buddhist rulers in the past have been represented as deities, especially after death, from India to Indonesia. Jayavarman VII, King of the Khmer Empire the 1st Buddhist king of Cambodia, had his own features used for the many statues of Buddha/Avalokitevara he erected.
The extreme personality cult instituted by the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, has been to represent a deification. And continues to this day with the current leader. Even the nation is admittedly atheist.
In Christian theology, instead of the word “apotheosis,” they use the words “deification” or “divinization” or the Greek word “theosis.” Pre-Reformation, & mainstream theology, in both East & West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence. Not as a mortal being who attained divinity. A view known as adoptionism. Adoptionism is an early Christian non-Trinitarian doctrine that holds that Jesus was born a mere human being. But Jesus was later adopted by God as His son, usually at Jesus’ baptism or resurrection, rather than being divine from eternity.
It holds that he has made it possible for human beings to be raised to the level of sharing the divine nature as II Peter 1:4 states that he became human to make humans “partakers of the divine nature.”
In John 10:34, Jesus referenced Psalm 82:6 when he stated: “Is it not written in your Law, I have said you are gods?” Other authors stated: “For this is why the Word became man, & the Son of God became the Son of man: so that Man, by entering into communion with the Word & thus receiving divine sonship, might be made God.” Accusations of self deification to some degree may have been placed on heretical such as the Waldensians.
The language of II Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, “if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods.” It becomes the standard in Greek theology. In the 14th century, St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word. In the 5th century, St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons “by participation” (Greek methexis). Methexis is “group sharing,” where the audience actively participates in the performance.
Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor. For whom the doctrine is the result of the Incarnation: “Deification, briefly, is the encompassion & fulfillment of all times and ages.”
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t use the term “apotheosis” in its theology. This is equivalent to the Greek word theosis are Latin-derived words “divinization” & deification” used in the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church.
The concept has been given less prominence in Western theology than in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. But is present in the Latin Church’s liturgical prayer.
Despite the theological differences, in the Catholic church art depictions of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in art & the Ascension of Jesus in Christian art do share many similarities in composition to apotheosis subjects. As there are many images of saints being raised into Heaven.
Anthropolatry is the deification & worship of humans. It was practiced in ancient Japan towards their emperors. Followers of Socinianism were later accused of practicing anthropolatry.
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#1865 #193 #42BC #4thCentury #5thCentury #AbrahamicReligions #Adoptionism #AlexanderTheGreat #Ambrosia #AncientRome #Angels #Anthropolatry #Antinous #Apollo #Apotheosis #AscensionOfJesus #AssumptionOfTheVirginMary #Atheist #Avalokiteshvara #Avatar #Avatars #BaroqueArt #bengali #BereniceIIOfEgypt #BharatMata #Buddha #BuddhaGautama #Buddhahood #Buddhism #CaesarOctavian #Cambodia #CampusMartius #canonization #CatholicChurch #Christianity #ColumnOfAntoninusPius #ComaBerenices #Consecratio #Cupid #Deification #Deity #Deus #DioCassius #Disney #DIva #Divinization #Divus #EasternCatholicChurch #EasternChristianity #EasternEmpire #Egypt #Egyptians #Emperors #FanKuai #FaustinaTheElder #GrecoRoman #Greek #GuanYi #Hadrian #Hammurabi #Heaven #Hellenistic #Hera #Hercules #Hindu #Hinduism #Homer #Horus #IIPeter14 #Imhotep #ImperialCults #India #Indonesia #InvestitureOfTheGods #IronCrutchLi #Islam #Japan #JayavarmanVII #Jesus #John1034 #Judaism #JuliusCaesar #Juno #Jupiter #KhmerEmpire #KimIlSung #Krishna #Late19thCentury #Latin #LatinChurch #Mesopotamia #Methexis #MingDynasty #NaramSin #NewKingdom #NorthKorea #Olympians #Osiris #pagan #Pertinax #Pharaohs #PhilipIIOfMacedon #polytheistic #Psalm826 #Psyche #PtolemaicDynasty #Putti #Rama #Reformation #Roman #RomanCatholicChurch #RomanRepublic #RomanSenate #Romans #Romulus #Saints #Senate #Seneca #SeptimiusSeverus #Socinianism #StAthanasius #StCyrilOfAlexandria #StIrenaeus #StMaximusTheConfessor #Swaminarayan #Syncretism #Taoist #TaoistPantheon #Temple #ThePumpkinificationOfTheDivineClaudius #Theosis #Triumvir #USCapitolBuilding #Vishnu #Waldensians #YueFei #Zeus
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Spirituality & Religious Studies @spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com@spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com ·Apotheosis
This is also called divinization or deification. It’s from the Latin deificato, meaning “making divine.” This is the glorification of a subject to divine levels & commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.
The original sense of apotheosis relates to religion & is the subject of many works of art. Figuratively “apotheosis” may be used in almost any context for “the deification, glorification, or exaltation of a principle, practice, etc.” So normally attached to an abstraction of some sort.
In religion, apotheosis was a feature of many religions in the ancient world. Some that are active today. It requires a belief that there’s a possibility of newly created God’s, so a polytheistic belief system.
The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism don’t allow this. Though many recognize minor sacred categories such as saints. They’re created by a process called canonization. In Christian theology, there’s a concept of the faithful becoming god-like, called divinization or in Eastern Christianity theosis.
In Hinduism, there’s some range for new deities. A human may be deified by becoming regarded as an avatar of an established deity, usually a major one, or by being regarded as a new, independent deity (usually a minor one), or a mix of the 2.
In art, an apotheosis scene usually shows the subject in the Heavens or rising towards them. They’re often partnered by a number of angels, putti, personifications of virtues, or similar figures.
Especially from Baroque art onwards apotheosis scenes may show rulers, generals, or artists purely as an honorific symbol. In many cases, the “religious” context is classical Greco-Roman pagan religion, like The Apotheosis of Voltaire, which features Apollo. The Apotheosis of Washington (1865) sits high in the dome of the United States of America Capitol Building is another example. Personification of places or abstractions are also shown receiving an apotheosis. The classic composition was suited for artistic placement on ceilings or inside domes.
Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in ancient Egypt (pharaohs) & Mesopotamia (from Naran-Sin through Hammurabi). In the New Kingdom of Egypt, all deceased pharaohs were deified as the god Osiris, having been identified as Horus while on the throne. They were sometimes referred to as the “son” of other various deities.
The architect Imhotep was defied after his passing away. Though the process seems to have been gradual. This took over 1,000 years, by which time he had become associated with medicine. About a dozen non-royal ancient Egyptians became regarded as deities.
Ancient Greek & Roman religions have many characters who were born as humans but became gods. Like Disney’s Hercules. They’re usually made divine by 1 of the main deities, the 12 Olympians. In the Roman story of Cupid & Psyche, Zeus gave the ambrosia of the gods to the mortal Psyche. This transformed her into a goddess herself.
In the case of the Hellenistic queen Berenice II of Egypt was deified like other rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The court dispersed a myth that her hair, that was cut off to fulfill a vow, had its own apotheosis before becoming the Coma Berenices, a group of stars that still bear her name.
In the Greek world, the 1st leader who granted himself diving honors was Philip II of Macedon. At the wedding to his 6th wife, Philip’s enthroned image was carried in procession among the Olympian gods. Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to a status equal to the gods before death, like Alexander the Great, or afterwards, like members of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
A heroic cult status that’s similar to apotheosis was also an honor given to a few reversed artists of the distant past, such as Homer.
Up to the end of the Roman Republic, the god Quirinus was the only 1 the Romans accepted as having undergone apotheosis, for his identification/syncretism with Romulus. Syncretism is the practice of meshing together different beliefs & various schools of thought. Eventually apotheosis in Ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized as divine by their successors. This was usually done by a decree of the Senate & popular consent.
The 1st of these cases was the posthumous deification of the last Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 42 BC by his adopted son, the triumvir Caesar Octavian. In addition to showing respect, the present ruler often deified a popular predecessor to legitimize himself & gain popularity himself & gain popularity with the people.
A vote in the Roman Senate, in the later Empire confirming an imperial decree, was the normal official process. But this sometimes followed a period with the unofficial use of deific language or imagery for the individual. This was often done rather discreetly within the imperial circle.
There was then a public ceremony, called a consecratio, including the release of an eagle which flew high. This represents the ascent of the deified person’s soul to Heaven. Imagery featuring the ascent, sometimes using a chariot, was common on coins & in other art.
The largest & most famous example in art in a relief on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, showing the emperor & his wife, Faustina the Elder, being carried up by a much larger winged figure, described as representing “Eternity,” as the personifications of “Roma” & the Campus Martius sit below, & eagles fly above. The imperial couple are represented as Jupiter & Juno (or Zeus & Hera).
The historian Dio Cassius, who said he was present, gives a detailed description of the large, & lavish, public consecratio of Perinax, emperor for 3 months in 193, ordered by Septimius Severus.
At the height of the imperial cult during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperor’s deceased loved ones (heirs, empresses, or lovers) like Hadrian’s Antinous were deified as well.
Deified people were posthumously given the title ‘Divus’ for men & ‘Diva’ for women to their names to signify their divinity. Traditional Roman religion distinguished between a deus (god) & divus (a mortal who became divine or deified), though not consistently. Temple & columns were erected to provide a space for worship.
The imperial cult was mainly popular in the provinces. Especially in the Eastern Empire, where many cultures were well used to deified rulers, & less popular in Rome itself, & among traditionalists & intellectuals.
Some privately, & cautiously, ridiculed the apotheosis of inept & feeble emperors, as in the satire The Pumkinification of (the Divine) Claudius. This is usually attributed to Seneca.
Numerous mortals have been deified into the Taoist pantheon. Examples are Guan Yi, Iron-crutch Li, & Fan Kuai. Song dynasty general Yue Fei was deified during the Ming dynasty. He’s considered by some practitioners to be 1 of the 3 highest-ranking heavenly generals. The Ming dynasty epic Investiture of the Gods deals heavily with deification legends.
In the complicated, & variable, conceptions of deity in Buddhism, the achievement of Buddhahood may be regarded as an achievable goal for the faithful. Many significant deities are considered to have begun as normal people, from Gautama Buddha (the original Buddha & the creator of Buddhism) downwards. Most of these are seen as avatars or re-births of earlier figures.
Some significant Hindu deities, in particular Rama, were also born as humans. He’s seen as an avatar of Vishnu. In more modern times, Swaminarayan is an undoubted & well-documented historical figure, who’s regarded by some Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu, or as being a still more elevated deity. Bharat Mata (Mother India) began as a national personification devised by a group of Bengali intellectuals in the late 19th century. But now it receives some worship.
Various Hindu & Buddhist rulers in the past have been represented as deities, especially after death, from India to Indonesia. Jayavarman VII, King of the Khmer Empire the 1st Buddhist king of Cambodia, had his own features used for the many statues of Buddha/Avalokitevara he erected.
The extreme personality cult instituted by the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, has been to represent a deification. And continues to this day with the current leader. Even the nation is admittedly atheist.
In Christian theology, instead of the word “apotheosis,” they use the words “deification” or “divinization” or the Greek word “theosis.” Pre-Reformation, & mainstream theology, in both East & West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence. Not as a mortal being who attained divinity. A view known as adoptionism. Adoptionism is an early Christian non-Trinitarian doctrine that holds that Jesus was born a mere human being. But Jesus was later adopted by God as His son, usually at Jesus’ baptism or resurrection, rather than being divine from eternity.
It holds that he has made it possible for human beings to be raised to the level of sharing the divine nature as II Peter 1:4 states that he became human to make humans “partakers of the divine nature.”
In John 10:34, Jesus referenced Psalm 82:6 when he stated: “Is it not written in your Law, I have said you are gods?” Other authors stated: “For this is why the Word became man, & the Son of God became the Son of man: so that Man, by entering into communion with the Word & thus receiving divine sonship, might be made God.” Accusations of self deification to some degree may have been placed on heretical such as the Waldensians.
The language of II Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, “if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods.” It becomes the standard in Greek theology. In the 14th century, St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word. In the 5th century, St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons “by participation” (Greek methexis). Methexis is “group sharing,” where the audience actively participates in the performance.
Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor. For whom the doctrine is the result of the Incarnation: “Deification, briefly, is the encompassion & fulfillment of all times and ages.”
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t use the term “apotheosis” in its theology. This is equivalent to the Greek word theosis are Latin-derived words “divinization” & deification” used in the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church.
The concept has been given less prominence in Western theology than in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. But is present in the Latin Church’s liturgical prayer.
Despite the theological differences, in the Catholic church art depictions of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in art & the Ascension of Jesus in Christian art do share many similarities in composition to apotheosis subjects. As there are many images of saints being raised into Heaven.
Anthropolatry is the deification & worship of humans. It was practiced in ancient Japan towards their emperors. Followers of Socinianism were later accused of practicing anthropolatry.
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#1865 #193 #42BC #4thCentury #5thCentury #AbrahamicReligions #Adoptionism #AlexanderTheGreat #Ambrosia #AncientRome #Angels #Anthropolatry #Antinous #Apollo #Apotheosis #AscensionOfJesus #AssumptionOfTheVirginMary #Atheist #Avalokiteshvara #Avatar #Avatars #BaroqueArt #bengali #BereniceIIOfEgypt #BharatMata #Buddha #BuddhaGautama #Buddhahood #Buddhism #CaesarOctavian #Cambodia #CampusMartius #canonization #CatholicChurch #Christianity #ColumnOfAntoninusPius #ComaBerenices #Consecratio #Cupid #Deification #Deity #Deus #DioCassius #Disney #DIva #Divinization #Divus #EasternCatholicChurch #EasternChristianity #EasternEmpire #Egypt #Egyptians #Emperors #FanKuai #FaustinaTheElder #GrecoRoman #Greek #GuanYi #Hadrian #Hammurabi #Heaven #Hellenistic #Hera #Hercules #Hindu #Hinduism #Homer #Horus #IIPeter14 #Imhotep #ImperialCults #India #Indonesia #InvestitureOfTheGods #IronCrutchLi #Islam #Japan #JayavarmanVII #Jesus #John1034 #Judaism #JuliusCaesar #Juno #Jupiter #KhmerEmpire #KimIlSung #Krishna #Late19thCentury #Latin #LatinChurch #Mesopotamia #Methexis #MingDynasty #NaramSin #NewKingdom #NorthKorea #Olympians #Osiris #pagan #Pertinax #Pharaohs #PhilipIIOfMacedon #polytheistic #Psalm826 #Psyche #PtolemaicDynasty #Putti #Rama #Reformation #Roman #RomanCatholicChurch #RomanRepublic #RomanSenate #Romans #Romulus #Saints #Senate #Seneca #SeptimiusSeverus #Socinianism #StAthanasius #StCyrilOfAlexandria #StIrenaeus #StMaximusTheConfessor #Swaminarayan #Syncretism #Taoist #TaoistPantheon #Temple #ThePumpkinificationOfTheDivineClaudius #Theosis #Triumvir #USCapitolBuilding #Vishnu #Waldensians #YueFei #Zeus
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Spirituality & Religious Studies @spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com@spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com ·Apotheosis
This is also called divinization or deification. It’s from the Latin deificato, meaning “making divine.” This is the glorification of a subject to divine levels & commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.
The original sense of apotheosis relates to religion & is the subject of many works of art. Figuratively “apotheosis” may be used in almost any context for “the deification, glorification, or exaltation of a principle, practice, etc.” So normally attached to an abstraction of some sort.
In religion, apotheosis was a feature of many religions in the ancient world. Some that are active today. It requires a belief that there’s a possibility of newly created God’s, so a polytheistic belief system.
The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism don’t allow this. Though many recognize minor sacred categories such as saints. They’re created by a process called canonization. In Christian theology, there’s a concept of the faithful becoming god-like, called divinization or in Eastern Christianity theosis.
In Hinduism, there’s some range for new deities. A human may be deified by becoming regarded as an avatar of an established deity, usually a major one, or by being regarded as a new, independent deity (usually a minor one), or a mix of the 2.
In art, an apotheosis scene usually shows the subject in the Heavens or rising towards them. They’re often partnered by a number of angels, putti, personifications of virtues, or similar figures.
Especially from Baroque art onwards apotheosis scenes may show rulers, generals, or artists purely as an honorific symbol. In many cases, the “religious” context is classical Greco-Roman pagan religion, like The Apotheosis of Voltaire, which features Apollo. The Apotheosis of Washington (1865) sits high in the dome of the United States of America Capitol Building is another example. Personification of places or abstractions are also shown receiving an apotheosis. The classic composition was suited for artistic placement on ceilings or inside domes.
Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in ancient Egypt (pharaohs) & Mesopotamia (from Naran-Sin through Hammurabi). In the New Kingdom of Egypt, all deceased pharaohs were deified as the god Osiris, having been identified as Horus while on the throne. They were sometimes referred to as the “son” of other various deities.
The architect Imhotep was defied after his passing away. Though the process seems to have been gradual. This took over 1,000 years, by which time he had become associated with medicine. About a dozen non-royal ancient Egyptians became regarded as deities.
Ancient Greek & Roman religions have many characters who were born as humans but became gods. Like Disney’s Hercules. They’re usually made divine by 1 of the main deities, the 12 Olympians. In the Roman story of Cupid & Psyche, Zeus gave the ambrosia of the gods to the mortal Psyche. This transformed her into a goddess herself.
In the case of the Hellenistic queen Berenice II of Egypt was deified like other rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The court dispersed a myth that her hair, that was cut off to fulfill a vow, had its own apotheosis before becoming the Coma Berenices, a group of stars that still bear her name.
In the Greek world, the 1st leader who granted himself diving honors was Philip II of Macedon. At the wedding to his 6th wife, Philip’s enthroned image was carried in procession among the Olympian gods. Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to a status equal to the gods before death, like Alexander the Great, or afterwards, like members of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
A heroic cult status that’s similar to apotheosis was also an honor given to a few reversed artists of the distant past, such as Homer.
Up to the end of the Roman Republic, the god Quirinus was the only 1 the Romans accepted as having undergone apotheosis, for his identification/syncretism with Romulus. Syncretism is the practice of meshing together different beliefs & various schools of thought. Eventually apotheosis in Ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized as divine by their successors. This was usually done by a decree of the Senate & popular consent.
The 1st of these cases was the posthumous deification of the last Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 42 BC by his adopted son, the triumvir Caesar Octavian. In addition to showing respect, the present ruler often deified a popular predecessor to legitimize himself & gain popularity himself & gain popularity with the people.
A vote in the Roman Senate, in the later Empire confirming an imperial decree, was the normal official process. But this sometimes followed a period with the unofficial use of deific language or imagery for the individual. This was often done rather discreetly within the imperial circle.
There was then a public ceremony, called a consecratio, including the release of an eagle which flew high. This represents the ascent of the deified person’s soul to Heaven. Imagery featuring the ascent, sometimes using a chariot, was common on coins & in other art.
The largest & most famous example in art in a relief on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, showing the emperor & his wife, Faustina the Elder, being carried up by a much larger winged figure, described as representing “Eternity,” as the personifications of “Roma” & the Campus Martius sit below, & eagles fly above. The imperial couple are represented as Jupiter & Juno (or Zeus & Hera).
The historian Dio Cassius, who said he was present, gives a detailed description of the large, & lavish, public consecratio of Perinax, emperor for 3 months in 193, ordered by Septimius Severus.
At the height of the imperial cult during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperor’s deceased loved ones (heirs, empresses, or lovers) like Hadrian’s Antinous were deified as well.
Deified people were posthumously given the title ‘Divus’ for men & ‘Diva’ for women to their names to signify their divinity. Traditional Roman religion distinguished between a deus (god) & divus (a mortal who became divine or deified), though not consistently. Temple & columns were erected to provide a space for worship.
The imperial cult was mainly popular in the provinces. Especially in the Eastern Empire, where many cultures were well used to deified rulers, & less popular in Rome itself, & among traditionalists & intellectuals.
Some privately, & cautiously, ridiculed the apotheosis of inept & feeble emperors, as in the satire The Pumkinification of (the Divine) Claudius. This is usually attributed to Seneca.
Numerous mortals have been deified into the Taoist pantheon. Examples are Guan Yi, Iron-crutch Li, & Fan Kuai. Song dynasty general Yue Fei was deified during the Ming dynasty. He’s considered by some practitioners to be 1 of the 3 highest-ranking heavenly generals. The Ming dynasty epic Investiture of the Gods deals heavily with deification legends.
In the complicated, & variable, conceptions of deity in Buddhism, the achievement of Buddhahood may be regarded as an achievable goal for the faithful. Many significant deities are considered to have begun as normal people, from Gautama Buddha (the original Buddha & the creator of Buddhism) downwards. Most of these are seen as avatars or re-births of earlier figures.
Some significant Hindu deities, in particular Rama, were also born as humans. He’s seen as an avatar of Vishnu. In more modern times, Swaminarayan is an undoubted & well-documented historical figure, who’s regarded by some Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu, or as being a still more elevated deity. Bharat Mata (Mother India) began as a national personification devised by a group of Bengali intellectuals in the late 19th century. But now it receives some worship.
Various Hindu & Buddhist rulers in the past have been represented as deities, especially after death, from India to Indonesia. Jayavarman VII, King of the Khmer Empire the 1st Buddhist king of Cambodia, had his own features used for the many statues of Buddha/Avalokitevara he erected.
The extreme personality cult instituted by the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, has been to represent a deification. And continues to this day with the current leader. Even the nation is admittedly atheist.
In Christian theology, instead of the word “apotheosis,” they use the words “deification” or “divinization” or the Greek word “theosis.” Pre-Reformation, & mainstream theology, in both East & West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence. Not as a mortal being who attained divinity. A view known as adoptionism. Adoptionism is an early Christian non-Trinitarian doctrine that holds that Jesus was born a mere human being. But Jesus was later adopted by God as His son, usually at Jesus’ baptism or resurrection, rather than being divine from eternity.
It holds that he has made it possible for human beings to be raised to the level of sharing the divine nature as II Peter 1:4 states that he became human to make humans “partakers of the divine nature.”
In John 10:34, Jesus referenced Psalm 82:6 when he stated: “Is it not written in your Law, I have said you are gods?” Other authors stated: “For this is why the Word became man, & the Son of God became the Son of man: so that Man, by entering into communion with the Word & thus receiving divine sonship, might be made God.” Accusations of self deification to some degree may have been placed on heretical such as the Waldensians.
The language of II Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, “if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods.” It becomes the standard in Greek theology. In the 14th century, St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word. In the 5th century, St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons “by participation” (Greek methexis). Methexis is “group sharing,” where the audience actively participates in the performance.
Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor. For whom the doctrine is the result of the Incarnation: “Deification, briefly, is the encompassion & fulfillment of all times and ages.”
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t use the term “apotheosis” in its theology. This is equivalent to the Greek word theosis are Latin-derived words “divinization” & deification” used in the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church.
The concept has been given less prominence in Western theology than in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. But is present in the Latin Church’s liturgical prayer.
Despite the theological differences, in the Catholic church art depictions of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in art & the Ascension of Jesus in Christian art do share many similarities in composition to apotheosis subjects. As there are many images of saints being raised into Heaven.
Anthropolatry is the deification & worship of humans. It was practiced in ancient Japan towards their emperors. Followers of Socinianism were later accused of practicing anthropolatry.
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#1865 #193 #42BC #4thCentury #5thCentury #AbrahamicReligions #Adoptionism #AlexanderTheGreat #Ambrosia #AncientRome #Angels #Anthropolatry #Antinous #Apollo #Apotheosis #AscensionOfJesus #AssumptionOfTheVirginMary #Atheist #Avalokiteshvara #Avatar #Avatars #BaroqueArt #bengali #BereniceIIOfEgypt #BharatMata #Buddha #BuddhaGautama #Buddhahood #Buddhism #CaesarOctavian #Cambodia #CampusMartius #canonization #CatholicChurch #Christianity #ColumnOfAntoninusPius #ComaBerenices #Consecratio #Cupid #Deification #Deity #Deus #DioCassius #Disney #DIva #Divinization #Divus #EasternCatholicChurch #EasternChristianity #EasternEmpire #Egypt #Egyptians #Emperors #FanKuai #FaustinaTheElder #GrecoRoman #Greek #GuanYi #Hadrian #Hammurabi #Heaven #Hellenistic #Hera #Hercules #Hindu #Hinduism #Homer #Horus #IIPeter14 #Imhotep #ImperialCults #India #Indonesia #InvestitureOfTheGods #IronCrutchLi #Islam #Japan #JayavarmanVII #Jesus #John1034 #Judaism #JuliusCaesar #Juno #Jupiter #KhmerEmpire #KimIlSung #Krishna #Late19thCentury #Latin #LatinChurch #Mesopotamia #Methexis #MingDynasty #NaramSin #NewKingdom #NorthKorea #Olympians #Osiris #pagan #Pertinax #Pharaohs #PhilipIIOfMacedon #polytheistic #Psalm826 #Psyche #PtolemaicDynasty #Putti #Rama #Reformation #Roman #RomanCatholicChurch #RomanRepublic #RomanSenate #Romans #Romulus #Saints #Senate #Seneca #SeptimiusSeverus #Socinianism #StAthanasius #StCyrilOfAlexandria #StIrenaeus #StMaximusTheConfessor #Swaminarayan #Syncretism #Taoist #TaoistPantheon #Temple #ThePumpkinificationOfTheDivineClaudius #Theosis #Triumvir #USCapitolBuilding #Vishnu #Waldensians #YueFei #Zeus
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Spirituality & Religious Studies @spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com@spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com ·Apotheosis
This is also called divinization or deification. It’s from the Latin deificato, meaning “making divine.” This is the glorification of a subject to divine levels & commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.
The original sense of apotheosis relates to religion & is the subject of many works of art. Figuratively “apotheosis” may be used in almost any context for “the deification, glorification, or exaltation of a principle, practice, etc.” So normally attached to an abstraction of some sort.
In religion, apotheosis was a feature of many religions in the ancient world. Some that are active today. It requires a belief that there’s a possibility of newly created God’s, so a polytheistic belief system.
The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism don’t allow this. Though many recognize minor sacred categories such as saints. They’re created by a process called canonization. In Christian theology, there’s a concept of the faithful becoming god-like, called divinization or in Eastern Christianity theosis.
In Hinduism, there’s some range for new deities. A human may be deified by becoming regarded as an avatar of an established deity, usually a major one, or by being regarded as a new, independent deity (usually a minor one), or a mix of the 2.
In art, an apotheosis scene usually shows the subject in the Heavens or rising towards them. They’re often partnered by a number of angels, putti, personifications of virtues, or similar figures.
Especially from Baroque art onwards apotheosis scenes may show rulers, generals, or artists purely as an honorific symbol. In many cases, the “religious” context is classical Greco-Roman pagan religion, like The Apotheosis of Voltaire, which features Apollo. The Apotheosis of Washington (1865) sits high in the dome of the United States of America Capitol Building is another example. Personification of places or abstractions are also shown receiving an apotheosis. The classic composition was suited for artistic placement on ceilings or inside domes.
Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in ancient Egypt (pharaohs) & Mesopotamia (from Naran-Sin through Hammurabi). In the New Kingdom of Egypt, all deceased pharaohs were deified as the god Osiris, having been identified as Horus while on the throne. They were sometimes referred to as the “son” of other various deities.
The architect Imhotep was defied after his passing away. Though the process seems to have been gradual. This took over 1,000 years, by which time he had become associated with medicine. About a dozen non-royal ancient Egyptians became regarded as deities.
Ancient Greek & Roman religions have many characters who were born as humans but became gods. Like Disney’s Hercules. They’re usually made divine by 1 of the main deities, the 12 Olympians. In the Roman story of Cupid & Psyche, Zeus gave the ambrosia of the gods to the mortal Psyche. This transformed her into a goddess herself.
In the case of the Hellenistic queen Berenice II of Egypt was deified like other rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The court dispersed a myth that her hair, that was cut off to fulfill a vow, had its own apotheosis before becoming the Coma Berenices, a group of stars that still bear her name.
In the Greek world, the 1st leader who granted himself diving honors was Philip II of Macedon. At the wedding to his 6th wife, Philip’s enthroned image was carried in procession among the Olympian gods. Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to a status equal to the gods before death, like Alexander the Great, or afterwards, like members of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
A heroic cult status that’s similar to apotheosis was also an honor given to a few reversed artists of the distant past, such as Homer.
Up to the end of the Roman Republic, the god Quirinus was the only 1 the Romans accepted as having undergone apotheosis, for his identification/syncretism with Romulus. Syncretism is the practice of meshing together different beliefs & various schools of thought. Eventually apotheosis in Ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized as divine by their successors. This was usually done by a decree of the Senate & popular consent.
The 1st of these cases was the posthumous deification of the last Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 42 BC by his adopted son, the triumvir Caesar Octavian. In addition to showing respect, the present ruler often deified a popular predecessor to legitimize himself & gain popularity himself & gain popularity with the people.
A vote in the Roman Senate, in the later Empire confirming an imperial decree, was the normal official process. But this sometimes followed a period with the unofficial use of deific language or imagery for the individual. This was often done rather discreetly within the imperial circle.
There was then a public ceremony, called a consecratio, including the release of an eagle which flew high. This represents the ascent of the deified person’s soul to Heaven. Imagery featuring the ascent, sometimes using a chariot, was common on coins & in other art.
The largest & most famous example in art in a relief on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, showing the emperor & his wife, Faustina the Elder, being carried up by a much larger winged figure, described as representing “Eternity,” as the personifications of “Roma” & the Campus Martius sit below, & eagles fly above. The imperial couple are represented as Jupiter & Juno (or Zeus & Hera).
The historian Dio Cassius, who said he was present, gives a detailed description of the large, & lavish, public consecratio of Perinax, emperor for 3 months in 193, ordered by Septimius Severus.
At the height of the imperial cult during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperor’s deceased loved ones (heirs, empresses, or lovers) like Hadrian’s Antinous were deified as well.
Deified people were posthumously given the title ‘Divus’ for men & ‘Diva’ for women to their names to signify their divinity. Traditional Roman religion distinguished between a deus (god) & divus (a mortal who became divine or deified), though not consistently. Temple & columns were erected to provide a space for worship.
The imperial cult was mainly popular in the provinces. Especially in the Eastern Empire, where many cultures were well used to deified rulers, & less popular in Rome itself, & among traditionalists & intellectuals.
Some privately, & cautiously, ridiculed the apotheosis of inept & feeble emperors, as in the satire The Pumkinification of (the Divine) Claudius. This is usually attributed to Seneca.
Numerous mortals have been deified into the Taoist pantheon. Examples are Guan Yi, Iron-crutch Li, & Fan Kuai. Song dynasty general Yue Fei was deified during the Ming dynasty. He’s considered by some practitioners to be 1 of the 3 highest-ranking heavenly generals. The Ming dynasty epic Investiture of the Gods deals heavily with deification legends.
In the complicated, & variable, conceptions of deity in Buddhism, the achievement of Buddhahood may be regarded as an achievable goal for the faithful. Many significant deities are considered to have begun as normal people, from Gautama Buddha (the original Buddha & the creator of Buddhism) downwards. Most of these are seen as avatars or re-births of earlier figures.
Some significant Hindu deities, in particular Rama, were also born as humans. He’s seen as an avatar of Vishnu. In more modern times, Swaminarayan is an undoubted & well-documented historical figure, who’s regarded by some Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu, or as being a still more elevated deity. Bharat Mata (Mother India) began as a national personification devised by a group of Bengali intellectuals in the late 19th century. But now it receives some worship.
Various Hindu & Buddhist rulers in the past have been represented as deities, especially after death, from India to Indonesia. Jayavarman VII, King of the Khmer Empire the 1st Buddhist king of Cambodia, had his own features used for the many statues of Buddha/Avalokitevara he erected.
The extreme personality cult instituted by the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, has been to represent a deification. And continues to this day with the current leader. Even the nation is admittedly atheist.
In Christian theology, instead of the word “apotheosis,” they use the words “deification” or “divinization” or the Greek word “theosis.” Pre-Reformation, & mainstream theology, in both East & West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence. Not as a mortal being who attained divinity. A view known as adoptionism. Adoptionism is an early Christian non-Trinitarian doctrine that holds that Jesus was born a mere human being. But Jesus was later adopted by God as His son, usually at Jesus’ baptism or resurrection, rather than being divine from eternity.
It holds that he has made it possible for human beings to be raised to the level of sharing the divine nature as II Peter 1:4 states that he became human to make humans “partakers of the divine nature.”
In John 10:34, Jesus referenced Psalm 82:6 when he stated: “Is it not written in your Law, I have said you are gods?” Other authors stated: “For this is why the Word became man, & the Son of God became the Son of man: so that Man, by entering into communion with the Word & thus receiving divine sonship, might be made God.” Accusations of self deification to some degree may have been placed on heretical such as the Waldensians.
The language of II Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, “if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods.” It becomes the standard in Greek theology. In the 14th century, St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word. In the 5th century, St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons “by participation” (Greek methexis). Methexis is “group sharing,” where the audience actively participates in the performance.
Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor. For whom the doctrine is the result of the Incarnation: “Deification, briefly, is the encompassion & fulfillment of all times and ages.”
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t use the term “apotheosis” in its theology. This is equivalent to the Greek word theosis are Latin-derived words “divinization” & deification” used in the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church.
The concept has been given less prominence in Western theology than in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. But is present in the Latin Church’s liturgical prayer.
Despite the theological differences, in the Catholic church art depictions of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in art & the Ascension of Jesus in Christian art do share many similarities in composition to apotheosis subjects. As there are many images of saints being raised into Heaven.
Anthropolatry is the deification & worship of humans. It was practiced in ancient Japan towards their emperors. Followers of Socinianism were later accused of practicing anthropolatry.
Make a one-time donation
Your contribution is appreciated.
Donate
Make a monthly donation
Your contribution is appreciated.
Donate monthly
Make a yearly donation
Your contribution is appreciated.
Donate yearly
Rate this:
#1865 #193 #42BC #4thCentury #5thCentury #AbrahamicReligions #Adoptionism #AlexanderTheGreat #Ambrosia #AncientRome #Angels #Anthropolatry #Antinous #Apollo #Apotheosis #AscensionOfJesus #AssumptionOfTheVirginMary #Atheist #Avalokiteshvara #Avatar #Avatars #BaroqueArt #bengali #BereniceIIOfEgypt #BharatMata #Buddha #BuddhaGautama #Buddhahood #Buddhism #CaesarOctavian #Cambodia #CampusMartius #canonization #CatholicChurch #Christianity #ColumnOfAntoninusPius #ComaBerenices #Consecratio #Cupid #Deification #Deity #Deus #DioCassius #Disney #DIva #Divinization #Divus #EasternCatholicChurch #EasternChristianity #EasternEmpire #Egypt #Egyptians #Emperors #FanKuai #FaustinaTheElder #GrecoRoman #Greek #GuanYi #Hadrian #Hammurabi #Heaven #Hellenistic #Hera #Hercules #Hindu #Hinduism #Homer #Horus #IIPeter14 #Imhotep #ImperialCults #India #Indonesia #InvestitureOfTheGods #IronCrutchLi #Islam #Japan #JayavarmanVII #Jesus #John1034 #Judaism #JuliusCaesar #Juno #Jupiter #KhmerEmpire #KimIlSung #Krishna #Late19thCentury #Latin #LatinChurch #Mesopotamia #Methexis #MingDynasty #NaramSin #NewKingdom #NorthKorea #Olympians #Osiris #pagan #Pertinax #Pharaohs #PhilipIIOfMacedon #polytheistic #Psalm826 #Psyche #PtolemaicDynasty #Putti #Rama #Reformation #Roman #RomanCatholicChurch #RomanRepublic #RomanSenate #Romans #Romulus #Saints #Senate #Seneca #SeptimiusSeverus #Socinianism #StAthanasius #StCyrilOfAlexandria #StIrenaeus #StMaximusTheConfessor #Swaminarayan #Syncretism #Taoist #TaoistPantheon #Temple #ThePumpkinificationOfTheDivineClaudius #Theosis #Triumvir #USCapitolBuilding #Vishnu #Waldensians #YueFei #Zeus
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Spirituality & Religious Studies @spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com@spiritualityreligiousstudies.wordpress.com ·Apotheosis
This is also called divinization or deification. It’s from the Latin deificato, meaning “making divine.” This is the glorification of a subject to divine levels & commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.
The original sense of apotheosis relates to religion & is the subject of many works of art. Figuratively “apotheosis” may be used in almost any context for “the deification, glorification, or exaltation of a principle, practice, etc.” So normally attached to an abstraction of some sort.
In religion, apotheosis was a feature of many religions in the ancient world. Some that are active today. It requires a belief that there’s a possibility of newly created God’s, so a polytheistic belief system.
The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism don’t allow this. Though many recognize minor sacred categories such as saints. They’re created by a process called canonization. In Christian theology, there’s a concept of the faithful becoming god-like, called divinization or in Eastern Christianity theosis.
In Hinduism, there’s some range for new deities. A human may be deified by becoming regarded as an avatar of an established deity, usually a major one, or by being regarded as a new, independent deity (usually a minor one), or a mix of the 2.
In art, an apotheosis scene usually shows the subject in the Heavens or rising towards them. They’re often partnered by a number of angels, putti, personifications of virtues, or similar figures.
Especially from Baroque art onwards apotheosis scenes may show rulers, generals, or artists purely as an honorific symbol. In many cases, the “religious” context is classical Greco-Roman pagan religion, like The Apotheosis of Voltaire, which features Apollo. The Apotheosis of Washington (1865) sits high in the dome of the United States of America Capitol Building is another example. Personification of places or abstractions are also shown receiving an apotheosis. The classic composition was suited for artistic placement on ceilings or inside domes.
Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in ancient Egypt (pharaohs) & Mesopotamia (from Naran-Sin through Hammurabi). In the New Kingdom of Egypt, all deceased pharaohs were deified as the god Osiris, having been identified as Horus while on the throne. They were sometimes referred to as the “son” of other various deities.
The architect Imhotep was defied after his passing away. Though the process seems to have been gradual. This took over 1,000 years, by which time he had become associated with medicine. About a dozen non-royal ancient Egyptians became regarded as deities.
Ancient Greek & Roman religions have many characters who were born as humans but became gods. Like Disney’s Hercules. They’re usually made divine by 1 of the main deities, the 12 Olympians. In the Roman story of Cupid & Psyche, Zeus gave the ambrosia of the gods to the mortal Psyche. This transformed her into a goddess herself.
In the case of the Hellenistic queen Berenice II of Egypt was deified like other rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The court dispersed a myth that her hair, that was cut off to fulfill a vow, had its own apotheosis before becoming the Coma Berenices, a group of stars that still bear her name.
In the Greek world, the 1st leader who granted himself diving honors was Philip II of Macedon. At the wedding to his 6th wife, Philip’s enthroned image was carried in procession among the Olympian gods. Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to a status equal to the gods before death, like Alexander the Great, or afterwards, like members of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
A heroic cult status that’s similar to apotheosis was also an honor given to a few reversed artists of the distant past, such as Homer.
Up to the end of the Roman Republic, the god Quirinus was the only 1 the Romans accepted as having undergone apotheosis, for his identification/syncretism with Romulus. Syncretism is the practice of meshing together different beliefs & various schools of thought. Eventually apotheosis in Ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized as divine by their successors. This was usually done by a decree of the Senate & popular consent.
The 1st of these cases was the posthumous deification of the last Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 42 BC by his adopted son, the triumvir Caesar Octavian. In addition to showing respect, the present ruler often deified a popular predecessor to legitimize himself & gain popularity himself & gain popularity with the people.
A vote in the Roman Senate, in the later Empire confirming an imperial decree, was the normal official process. But this sometimes followed a period with the unofficial use of deific language or imagery for the individual. This was often done rather discreetly within the imperial circle.
There was then a public ceremony, called a consecratio, including the release of an eagle which flew high. This represents the ascent of the deified person’s soul to Heaven. Imagery featuring the ascent, sometimes using a chariot, was common on coins & in other art.
The largest & most famous example in art in a relief on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, showing the emperor & his wife, Faustina the Elder, being carried up by a much larger winged figure, described as representing “Eternity,” as the personifications of “Roma” & the Campus Martius sit below, & eagles fly above. The imperial couple are represented as Jupiter & Juno (or Zeus & Hera).
The historian Dio Cassius, who said he was present, gives a detailed description of the large, & lavish, public consecratio of Perinax, emperor for 3 months in 193, ordered by Septimius Severus.
At the height of the imperial cult during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperor’s deceased loved ones (heirs, empresses, or lovers) like Hadrian’s Antinous were deified as well.
Deified people were posthumously given the title ‘Divus’ for men & ‘Diva’ for women to their names to signify their divinity. Traditional Roman religion distinguished between a deus (god) & divus (a mortal who became divine or deified), though not consistently. Temple & columns were erected to provide a space for worship.
The imperial cult was mainly popular in the provinces. Especially in the Eastern Empire, where many cultures were well used to deified rulers, & less popular in Rome itself, & among traditionalists & intellectuals.
Some privately, & cautiously, ridiculed the apotheosis of inept & feeble emperors, as in the satire The Pumkinification of (the Divine) Claudius. This is usually attributed to Seneca.
Numerous mortals have been deified into the Taoist pantheon. Examples are Guan Yi, Iron-crutch Li, & Fan Kuai. Song dynasty general Yue Fei was deified during the Ming dynasty. He’s considered by some practitioners to be 1 of the 3 highest-ranking heavenly generals. The Ming dynasty epic Investiture of the Gods deals heavily with deification legends.
In the complicated, & variable, conceptions of deity in Buddhism, the achievement of Buddhahood may be regarded as an achievable goal for the faithful. Many significant deities are considered to have begun as normal people, from Gautama Buddha (the original Buddha & the creator of Buddhism) downwards. Most of these are seen as avatars or re-births of earlier figures.
Some significant Hindu deities, in particular Rama, were also born as humans. He’s seen as an avatar of Vishnu. In more modern times, Swaminarayan is an undoubted & well-documented historical figure, who’s regarded by some Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu, or as being a still more elevated deity. Bharat Mata (Mother India) began as a national personification devised by a group of Bengali intellectuals in the late 19th century. But now it receives some worship.
Various Hindu & Buddhist rulers in the past have been represented as deities, especially after death, from India to Indonesia. Jayavarman VII, King of the Khmer Empire the 1st Buddhist king of Cambodia, had his own features used for the many statues of Buddha/Avalokitevara he erected.
The extreme personality cult instituted by the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, has been to represent a deification. And continues to this day with the current leader. Even the nation is admittedly atheist.
In Christian theology, instead of the word “apotheosis,” they use the words “deification” or “divinization” or the Greek word “theosis.” Pre-Reformation, & mainstream theology, in both East & West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence. Not as a mortal being who attained divinity. A view known as adoptionism. Adoptionism is an early Christian non-Trinitarian doctrine that holds that Jesus was born a mere human being. But Jesus was later adopted by God as His son, usually at Jesus’ baptism or resurrection, rather than being divine from eternity.
It holds that he has made it possible for human beings to be raised to the level of sharing the divine nature as II Peter 1:4 states that he became human to make humans “partakers of the divine nature.”
In John 10:34, Jesus referenced Psalm 82:6 when he stated: “Is it not written in your Law, I have said you are gods?” Other authors stated: “For this is why the Word became man, & the Son of God became the Son of man: so that Man, by entering into communion with the Word & thus receiving divine sonship, might be made God.” Accusations of self deification to some degree may have been placed on heretical such as the Waldensians.
The language of II Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, “if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods.” It becomes the standard in Greek theology. In the 14th century, St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word. In the 5th century, St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons “by participation” (Greek methexis). Methexis is “group sharing,” where the audience actively participates in the performance.
Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor. For whom the doctrine is the result of the Incarnation: “Deification, briefly, is the encompassion & fulfillment of all times and ages.”
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t use the term “apotheosis” in its theology. This is equivalent to the Greek word theosis are Latin-derived words “divinization” & deification” used in the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church.
The concept has been given less prominence in Western theology than in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. But is present in the Latin Church’s liturgical prayer.
Despite the theological differences, in the Catholic church art depictions of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in art & the Ascension of Jesus in Christian art do share many similarities in composition to apotheosis subjects. As there are many images of saints being raised into Heaven.
Anthropolatry is the deification & worship of humans. It was practiced in ancient Japan towards their emperors. Followers of Socinianism were later accused of practicing anthropolatry.
Make a one-time donation
Your contribution is appreciated.
Donate
Make a monthly donation
Your contribution is appreciated.
Donate monthly
Make a yearly donation
Your contribution is appreciated.
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The Finnish Connection: the thread about William Crichton and the Trinity Chain Pier
The Old Chain Pier, on the sea wall at Trinity in the north of Edinburgh, is a nice little pub for a drink or some lunch with an uninterrupted view across the Firth of Forth to Fife. It takes its name from the Trinity Chain Pier, a rather fragile-looking structure opened nearby on August 14th 1821 to serve the east coast steamers. The pier is long gone, commemorated by the pub, but surprisingly you can fine many direct links to it in Finland of all places!
“Pier of Suspension. Erected at Trinity, near Newhaven, and within Three Short Miles of Edinburgh”. 1825 print by Charles Hulmandel. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.The pier was first proposed in 1820 by George Crichton, an entrepreneurial Leith businessman. George, the son of was the son of Alexander Crichton of Woodhouselee and Newington, came from money and had spent some time in the Royal Navy, rising to be a Lieutenant. But it was on land where he made his own fortune as a shipowner. He introduced one of the first steamships to Leith, the imaginatively named Tug of 1817, which plied the Forth coast. The Port of Leith at that time was not in a good state of upkeep and access was strictly tidal. His company, the London, Leith, Edinburgh and Glasgow Shipping Company – was granted permission to build his rival pier. They in turn transferred their interest to a new company backed by Crichton – the Trinity Pier Company – who would build, own and operated it.
Coloured lithograph by Jobbins & Chiffins, 1836, showing steamers at the Chain Pier from the sea, looking south towards Trinity. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.The final design of this “pier of suspension” was by Captain Samuel Brown RN and it was situated west of the old harbour of Newhaven. Its three spans projected 627 feet out into the sea and rose ten feet above high water, it was intended that it would be accessible to steamers at all states of the tide and would not have to compete with the Newhaven fishing fleet for space.
Close up of the end of the pier from the 1825 print by Charles Hulmandel, showing a small steamer berthed. There were stairs down to water level to allow embarkation. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.At the head of the pier was a small waiting room for steamer passengers and visitors could pay 1d at a toll booth to promenade along the slender deck. The pier however never really caught on with the steamer trade; a proper deep-water harbour at Granton would open in 1837, in 1850 the North British Railway bridged the Forth from there using Thomas Bouch’s “floating railway” system, and improvements to the docks at the Port of Leith all conspired to make it surplus to requirements.
Comparison of the 1849 OS Town Plan and the 1893 25 inch map of Edinburgh showing the Chain Pier. The original toll house has been replaced by a public house in the later view, and a tramway and waiting room to serve the steamers have gone, with new bathing shelters added instead. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandNot long after the pier was opened, a public house opened opposite called The Chain Pier Inn. This was sold in 1865 so that the portion of Trinity Crescent called Albert Terrace could be extended to the east and the pub transferred across the road, replacing the former pier toll house. It is this building, much modified over the years, that forms the core of the present-day Old Chain Pier.
Around 1910, already the Chain Pier Inn is the Old Chain Pier Bar. It features an ornamental cupola from its days as the ticket office for the pier. Old postcard.The last regular steamer from Trinity, the Helen McGregor, sailed its final season in 1850, leaving Largo on the east Fife coast at 6:45AM each morning with intermediate stops at Leven, Dysart and Kirkcaldy before arriving at the pier to meet the 9AM train from Edinburgh and make the return journey. Further departures were made to Fife at 1PM and 5PM.
“Newhaven Harbour and the Chain Pier, looking east” coloured print of an engraving by R. Brandard after W. H. Bartlett, originally published c. 1840.After that year, when the railway service was inaugurated from Granton to Burntisland, the steamer trade reduced to little more than the occasional summer visitor and the pier found itself without a purpose. In 1859 ownership was sold to the Colonial Life Assurance Company. In order to try and make some money out of the scheme, it was promoted as a swimming station, with changing huts erected at the end and served by special early morning bathers’ trains and later cable-hauled tramcars.
Bathing huts at the end of the chain pier in the 1890s. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.Advertising bill for the Chain Pier. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.In March 1898 the Chain Pier Inn burned down, the result of an overheated hearth stove, and a much more permanent disaster occured later in the year the pier was largely swept away in a great storm that culminated on the night of October 18th 1898. Sections of the sea wall at Newhaven and the sea wall and railway embankment at Wardie Bay were also swept away by the power of the waves.
After the storm in 1898. The remains of the pier would be demolished. From Old Leith by Guthrie Hutton.During the height of the storm, which lasted for thirty-six hours, the Norwegian sailing ship Kawe was wrecked ashore at Annfield, between Newhaven and Leith Docks, and the Swedish barque Bertha was wrecked between Cramond and Granton. Numerous other vessels were damaged, driven ashore or wrecked all along the Forth coast.
Evening News artist’s impression of the stranding of the Kawe at Annfield. Printed 19th October 1898The pub would be rebuilt – and survives to this day – but the pier was not and the remains were demolished. Within the pub you can find the older masonry walls of the original structure and other relics from the pier.
Relics from the Old Chain Pier within the pub of that name. © SelfGeorge Crichton however prospered, even if his pier did not; he was one of the Leith Docks Commissioners, a Commissioner of Police, councillor of the Royal Landing Club, a reformist and vocal defender of Leith’s political independence from Edinburgh. He died in September 1841, leaving behind the not insubstantial fortune of £8,167 (after his creditors were settled) – about £901k in today’s money.
In 1827, George Crichton’s third son – William – was born in the family home at John’s Place in South Leith. His mother was Margaret Gifford Allan, known as Gifford. William followed in his older brothers’ footsteps and went into a career in engineering. At the age of fourteen his father died and he finished school. His brother Alexander got him a position at Scott & Company of Greenock, one of Scotland’s most prestigious shipbuilders. After that his other brother Edward got him into the Shotts Iron Company, the name in iron founding in 19th century Scotland. He completed this practical education at Robert Napier & Sons in Govan, one of the names in the country for marine engine building. When he left in 1848 he was aged just 21 but already had a most impressive CV for an aspiring young engineer.
William Crichton in later lifeWilliam now went to sea to get practical experience, and served as engineer on one of the ships of his father’s old company – the London, Leith, Edinburgh & Glasgow Shipping Co. – where he still had relations on the board of directors. After a season on the Royal Victoria he spent a winter working on his draughtsmanship and design studies, before sailing the next season with the Napier-engined Isabella Napier of the Continental Steam Navigation Co. between Leith, London and Hamburg.
Post Office Directory advert showing the “Royal Victoria”William’s big break came unexpectedly in 1850 when a letter arrived from his fellow Scotsman, David Cowie of Cowie & Eriksson – marine engineers in Turku, the Grand Duchy of Finland (then a part of the Russian Empire). Cowie invited William to join his company on a three year contract as a supervisor. William jumped at the chance, Russia was then the place to be for an aspiring naval engineer to make his name and make money; the waning Imperial power was playing catchup with France and Britain and desperately trying to buy in the foreign expertise to expand and modernise its navy.
David CowieRussia held a further attaction for the aspiring William as he had connections in high places in the country. His uncle, Sir Alexander Crichton, was physician to the Czar and his cousin, Sir Archibald Crichton, was also in the service to the Czar’s family. His first job in Finland was to supervise the construction and installation of the steam engines of the new frigate Rurik then being built by Cowie & Errikson for the Russian Navy.
Launch of the “Rurik” in 1851Crichton however soon fell ill and needed to be nursed back to health by Cowie’s wife. It was during this time he met her brother, Samuel Owen (junior), whose father Samuel Senior had helped industrialise Sweden and through whom Eriksson and Cowie had come to work together and form their partnership. In turn through Samuel Junior he met Annie Elizabeth Owen and the two would be wed in 1854. They would ultimately have twelve children together but before he could marry, William had to finish his work on the Rurik, which dd not complete until 1853. This brought his contract with Cowie & Eriksson to a close and so William took up a new opportunity in Helsinki through the Owens with Fiskars (the company known for orange-handled scissors and who may have made your garden shears).
But before he could get started, the matter of the War in Crimea got in the way and he was arrested in St. Petersburg as a possible enemy agent. Fortunately he was able to drop the name of Sir Alexander Crichton to the chief of police and instead of being sent to Moscow, he was released into his uncle’s care. Put above suspicion through his connections, he instead was given a place with Izhorskiye Zavody, a state-owned engineering works in Kolpino, St. Petersburg. Here he was able to repay Samuel Owen Junior by getting him a place there too.
Soviet postage stamp celebrating 250 years of the Izhorskiye ZavodyWilliam set about his new job with enthusiasm and after the Crimean War was over travelled frequently back to England to appraise himself of the latest designs and technology, bringing them back to Russia to improve his own company’s engines. For his efforts in modernising their naval engineering the appreciative Russians presented him with a St Stanislaus Ribbon with a golden medal in 1860.
St. Stanislaus ribbon and silver medal, collection of the SmithsonianIn 1862, William was called back to Turku in Finland by a letter from one Erik Julin who had bought Eriksson’s shares of his old employer Cowie & Eriksson. Julin informed him that Cowie was ready to sell his share too and wanted William to consider buying it and entering into partnership with him, acting as the lead engineer. William agreed and bought Cowie’s share for 32,810 Silver Roubles. The new company became William Crichton & Co and it wasted no time in expanding from engineering into shipbuilding.
Erik Julin, Crichton’s partner in Crichton & Co.With solid finances, Julin’s business sense and William’s engineering prowess and Imperial connections the company prospered. By the 1870s their Turku yard employed 400 and was building small screw tugs, coastal vessels and auxiliary engines. The company expanded by taking control of the Turku Old Shipyard and modernising it to allow production of steel vessels. With greater liabilities at stake it was converted into a limited organisation, with tho-thirds of the shares owned by Crichton and one third by Julin.
Letterhead of William Crichton & Co,The company went from strength to strength and became the largest employer in Turku. To ensure Imperial orders it maintained a dedicated “commercial counsellor” in St. Petersburg, to handle the delicate negotiations and backhanders required to get state work. Crichton continued to modernise and enlarge the works until his death in 1889 aged 62. None of his many children wanted to take on the operation, so his shares were sold off to his deputy, John Eager and to Russian banks and nobility. The company continued to prosper and increasingly started to build small warships for the Russian navy. In 1898 it built twenty-six Sokol torpedo boats and took over a yard in Okhta, St. Petersburg. This investment would ultimately be their undoing as it incurred significant debts and its poor performance resulted in large penalty contract clauses.
Sokol torpedo boat of the Imperial Russian NavyIn 1906, tensions between Moscow and the Finnish Grand Duchy saw the Russian Navy cancel all contracts with Finnish yards. This hit Crichtons hard and they incurred further losses from which they never recovered. By 1913 they declared bankruptcy with enormous debts. But that was not the end for the Leith name of Crichton in Finnish shipbuilding – two of the company’s biggest creditors (and shareholders) were the Dahlström brothers, and they restarted the yard in Turku under the name Aktiebolaget (AB) Crichton in 1914.
AB Crichton letterheadThis new company got by on orders from the new Finnish state – including a pair of gunboats Karjala and Turunmaa which would go on to serve in Finland’s wars with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and into the 1950s. But the post-WW1, post-revolution, post-independence and post-civil war recession hit AB Crichton very hard and it built its last ship in 1924. But once again the name it was saved; a merger with its neighbour and rival AB Vulcan formed Crichton-Vulcan Oy. Thus it was that a company with a half-Scottish name and heritage would become Finland’s largest shipyard and was awarded orders in 1927 for two new 3,900 tonne coastal defence armoured ships for the Finnish navy, Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, the pride of the fleet
Väinämöinen in 1938, pride of the Finish NavyBoth of these ships served in the 1940s wars with the Soviet Union, Ilmarinen hit mines in September 1941 and sank with the loss of 271 men from a crew of 401. The survivors were sardonically termed “Ilmarisen uimaseura” (Ilmarinen‘s Swimming Club). Väinämöinen was a persistent thorn in the enemy side who expended great efforts to sink her. They succeeded in doing so in July 1944 only to find out that thanks to herculean camouflage efforts on the part of the Finns, they had actually sank the German anti-aircraft ship Niobe instead.
And this is why, to this day, there is a street in Turku on the waterfront called Crichtoninkatu or Crichtongatan (please feel free to send me a better picture if you find yourself on that street any time soon!)
Crichtoninkatu in TurkuNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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Reader’s Choice/Tom Top Tunes…Song #74/250: H.O.O.D. by Kneecap
I wouldn’t be much of a music blogger if I didn’t stop to offer a few words on a band that finds itself at the centre of the world’s musical and political attention the way Kneecap presently does. It is difficult to point to any current band or artist that is viewed in more polarizing terms than this relatively new Irish Hip Hop band out of Dublin. Fans of the band point to their political activism on stage and in print as being a heady tonic against what ails the world in terms of authoritarianism, censorship and cultural genocide. As faithful readers of this blog can attest, I have always maintained that in times of darkness, it is always the artists, the poets, the playwrights, the musicians of our world whose art will light the way forward. For fans of the band, Kneecap are seen to be leading the charge and lighting the way with clarity of purpose and, as such, their supporters are ardent that Kneecap are a band that matters greatly. Opponents and critics of the band not only claim that their song lyrics are vulgar and their musicianship is questionable but, far more importantly, that the band promotes hatred and terrorism and, as such, should be censored and even jailed. As I type these words, the band has been charged under the Terrorism Act in England for waving the flag of the officially sanctioned terrorist Palestinian group named Hezbollah. Kneecap’s long support of Palestinians in Gaza and their loud charges of genocide levelled against the government of Israel and those other nations and organizations around the world who support that country with financial aid and military hardware and munitions have earned the band swift and highly vociferous condemnation from pro-Israeli supporters. The debate swirling around a band that many people have never even heard of until recently has taken on epic proportions. It is essentially coming down to the right of artists to speak out in opposition to power versus state-sanctioned censorship of the Arts. I would like to say that this is a debate that is unique to the times in which we find ourselves but, sadly, this dispute is just the latest in a long line of instances where the ideals of an artist has clashed publicly with the politics of those in charge of local/national and international governments. How it all turns out this time remains to be seen. For now, let’s take a closer look at who Kneecap actually is as a band. This necessitates that we start with the seemingly benign topic of language.
In the research conducted for this post, I confirmed for myself the idea that the English language is the most spoken language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people as their first language but that language is mainly regionalized to China, itself, and the countries immediately surrounding it in Asia. English, on the other hand, is spoken everywhere throughout the world. It is the second-most spoken language by those who speak it as their first language. That would include people like me. This blog is written entirely in English. If you are a faithful reader of my words then, chances are, you understand the world via English as well. The key part of my research for me was that, while Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken first language in the world, very few people speak it as a second language outside of Asia. English, on the other hand, is the second language of over one billion others from all four corners of the planet. The use of English in the world of business, of travel, of entertainment is well documented and very pervasive. But have you ever stopped to think about why this is? Why is English found all over the world and yet a popular language such as Mandarin Chinese is not? Chances are great that you have never really given those questions much thought at all. The use of English around the world seems like it is just the way the world works. It has always been this way and probably always will. But how did the use of English become the de facto language of the world? The answer can be found in the annals of history which is where we find the wellspring of inspiration for a band called Kneecap, too.
The Indigenous Peoples of the land that we now call Canada did not speak English prior to first contact with European explorers. They communicated in a myriad of languages and dialects that they had established among themselves. These languages and dialects had served them all well for thousands of years. And then came the Europeans. Canada was established after many years of an intense rivalry between England and France over who would get to claim the land that makes up the modern day country of Canada. In the end, England got to claim the land and the resources found within. Canada exists today as a country that is officially bilingual, with French and English both being regarded as official languages. Ironically enough, none of the original languages spoken by the Indigenous Peoples of this land have been granted the same official consideration. In fact, one of the most contentious aspects of Canada’s history is how the Indigenous populations that had established themselves throughout the land were treated by their European colonizers. Whole books have been written about policies such as the establishment of the residential school system by the Canadian government led by Sir John A. MacDonald. The aim of those policies was to eradicate the language, customs and history of the Indigenous Peoples and force them to assimilate into the newly established Canadian lifestyle. The effects of this form of cultural genocide have been devastating. It is only recently that Canadians have begun to wrestle with the consequences of nation building that served to create a nation that is respected around the world by others, while doing so at the expense of the original inhabitants of this land. How many of you reading these words from Canada understand how to speak any form of Indigenous language fluently? I can’t do so. I suspect I would not be alone in that regard. And yet, we Canadians happily speak in English each and every day. Our worldview is understood through the lens of the English language words we know and use. Imagine how difficult it must be to speak the language of the oppressor when it comes to First Nations Peoples. Yet that is what our Indigenous Peoples are forced to do if they want to participate in the regular stream of life in this country. Each utterance in English is a reminder of the culture that has been lost or, at least, greatly diminished. In my mind, it has to be a tough pill to swallow.
There was a time in the not too distant annals of history where the phrase “The sun never sets on the British empire” rang true. England had extended its sphere of influence to countries around the world and had exerted their cultural, military, economic and political influence in such a forceful, pervasive manner that the language of the colonizers became the official languages of those colonized. Before the English came, the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia existed on the land and spoke their own languages and had their own customs and systems of governance. Now, those Aussies with their cute accents speak English. The Maori Peoples of New Zealand existed on their land long before the English arrived on their shores. Now English is the language of the Kiwis. Where the English arrived centuries ago, they left their stamp in the form of a language known as English. This fact is true in country after country after country that they colonized. One of those other countries that felt the impact of the English was Ireland. In a pattern that was successfully implemented all over the world, the English government imposed their will upon the original inhabitants of Ireland. As part of the process of anglicization, traditional customs and practices of the Irish were disallowed and, most importantly, their language was discouraged and, at times, forbidden to be used. Just like the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the Irish were forced to adopt the language of their colonizers. Needless to say, you don’t have to be a student of history to have, at least, a passing familiarity with the long fight by the Irish against the English. The presence of the English on Irish soil has been an irritant for many generations. This anger has manifested itself in the form of numerous uprisings, armed revolts, military-style bombing campaigns and formal hunger strikes. Political activism and cultural warfare has been a way of life in Ireland for as long as almost anyone can remember. It is hard to engage in any act, including the act of daily living, without it being somehow political. Thus the seeds of Kneecap’s birth were planted long before the band was out of their diapers. It was a lifestyle in which the Irish are constantly reminded that they are not ever fully in control of their own fate. It is a lifestyle that some grow up opposing as a matter of principle. This is where the story of a band called Kneecap begins.
Kneecap is an Irish Hip Hop trio. Before even uttering a single note, the mere choice of their band name was a political act. The term kneecapping is a term that describes shooting an opponent with a gun in their kneecap. This form of assault serves to physically cripple the victim. The band chose this term for their name not because they were advocating violence but, instead, because of how the policy of kneecapping came to exist in Irish culture. The most popular wave of kneecapping was said to have been when the Irish Republican Army was at the height of its powers during a time known as The Troubles. The I.R.A. was opposed to the presence of English soldiers on Irish soil. This group formed paramilitary-style units that engaged in armed resistance against the British. They also served as a local police force of sorts. The practice of kneecapping was aimed at local drug dealers mainly. The message to drug dealers was clear but, more than that, the message the I.R.A. intended to send was that they, the Irish, should be the ones to police Ireland. Irish people taking care of cleaning up Ireland’s problems was their mantra. Thus, when the band Kneecap chose that term for their name, they were advocating for a form of self-government in which it is the Irish, themselves, who determine their own way forward in life. Language matters. Words matter. For Kneecap, their band name has great meaning for themselves and for Ireland.
Part of that self-determination for Kneecap started with reclaiming their native Irish language. As such, all three band members have adopted stage names (Mo Chara, Moglai Bap and DJ Provai) that are translated from old Irish. As well, many of their song lyrics are sung completely and unapologetically in old Irish as well. If language is the foundation of national image then Kneecap has staked a claim to that language and is seeking to reshape the image of the Irish People in the eyes of the world. When I first began hearing about Kneecap a year or so ago, I was unaware that “Irish” was even a language. I first assumed that the band was referring to Gaelic, which I had heard about and which I grew up surrounded by on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. The fact that I had never heard of Irish as a language in its own right goes to prove how completely pervasive the colonization process of the English has been. At present, according to the latest figures, upwards of 74,000 people speak Irish as their first language in Ireland. These people tend to be found in isolated pockets, here and there, across the country but, for now, at least the native language of Ireland still exists and, as such, there is room for growth as Kneecap hopes to help Ireland reclaim its own language for all to use.
Mo Chara, Moglai Bap and DJ Provai of Kneecap.LIke I said, the band puts its money where its mouth is because they sing their songs using their native Irish language. The fact that they can do this and still be a headlining act around the world speaks highly of their penchant for showmanship and for songwriting. Kneecap have only been in existence for a few years. But right out of the gate, they announced their intention to be a political band. Their first single was a song called “C.E.A.R.T.A.”, which is old Irish for the word rights. The story is that just prior to the release of the debut single, one of the band members named Moglai Bap and a friend spray painted the word C.E.A.R.T.A. on a wall. The police soon found out. A chase ensued in which Moglai Bap’s friend was arrested, while he escaped into the night. Apparently the captured friend would only speak to the police in old Irish, which the officers could not understand. The friend was released the next day. That act of defiance has since become a foundational plank in the philosophical core of who Kneecap purports to be as people and as musicians. Needless to say, the band’s message to their fellow citizens of reclaiming their past and becoming authentic Irish citizens, free to chart their own course, has caught on within Ireland. It has also caught the attention of the politicians and media in England. Kneecap are not the first pro-Ireland band to exist. They are also not the first Irish band to sing anti-English songs. What has brought them to the centre of an international storm is how they have used their platform as rising music stars to advocate for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Kneecap are a loud Hip Hop trio. The band sings songs about drug use, drinking and other things that they feel are common aspects of life in the working class areas of various Irish towns and cities from which they are from. Not everyone will be drawn to their songs simply because of the profanity contained within. To not follow a band that sings of the darker aspects of life is the right of anyone who listens to music as a personal choice. However, the band’s reputation for brutally honest depictions of life for many Irish citizens is also something that they come by honestly. They are proudly Irish and are willing to satirize the circumstances they and their fellow Irish citizens often find themselves in. This willingness to go where few other bands go in terms of political and societal commentary has earned them labels such as vulgar and tasteless but also, bold and fearless. It has given them a sense of notoriety that not many newer bands are lucky enough to have. Thus, when they were recently booked to perform at the high profile Coachella Music Festival in California, it was a booking made in full acknowledgment of who the band was and what messages contained within their songs were all about. It was at this Coachella performance that Kneecap evolved from being a young up-and-coming Irish band who was known for tweaking the noses of the British establishment to a band at the centre of an international uproar.
During their set, the band flashed a message that was displayed on large screens positioned at the back of the stage. To paraphrase, the message accused the government of Israel of conducting a policy of genocide against the Palestinian civilans trapped in Gaza. It further accused the U.S. government of helping to fund this Israeli campaign and, by association, being complicit in genocide. The message ended with the phrase “Free Palestine!”, which the band encouraged the audience to chant along with them. As you may be aware, in the past year there has been a political movement in youth circles to organize public opinion campaigns on university campuses across America and the world. Many of these university protests have been aimed at supporting Palestinian refugees while, at the same time, targeting those organizations that help to fund the Israeli government. Needless to say, the pro-Israeli response has been swift and forceful by supporters who are well-organized, well-financed and well-connected with powerful people. The various student-led sit-ins have been cleared out at most, if not all university campuses, by soldiers and/or local police. The official response from various levels of government has been to unequivocally support the government of Israel. It was into this environment that Kneecap chose to make its stand at Coachella.
One of three messages that were displayed during Kneecap’s set at Coachella.Not long after they roused the global wrath of pro-Israeli supporters on line and in government circles, Mo Chara, one of the members of Kneecap, upped the ante by waving a flag on stage of a Palestinian organization known as Hezbollah. The problem with this is that the British government had previously declared Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and deemed any public support of terrorist organizations to be illegal. Thus, after Mo Chara waved the Hezbollah flag, he was charged under the Terrorism Act with supporting a terrorist group. He is to appear in court in the weeks to come. In the meantime, Kneecap has issued a counter statement that challenges the definition of what constitutes a terrorist act. They claim that waving a piece of cloth on a stage hardly equates with the government-sanctioned killing of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza. Kneecap further claimed that this lawsuit is merely a distraction from the actual crimes being committed and that the government is trying to censor and restrict the band’s right to speak out on matters that they deem to be important.
And here we stand.
Your views on the Kneecap situation will, no doubt, be coloured by many factors. How do you view your own colonial-inspired history? Do artists have the right to speak out beyond the constraints of the music business about issues affecting the larger world? Do elected governments have the right to determine what are politically acceptable forms of dissent? Is censorship in the face of vulgarity and profanity acceptable? Is the band Kneecap actually any good, musically speaking, or are they actually political operatives who disguise their intentions through music? These are just a few questions of importance I can think of off of the top of my head. Perhaps you have your own set.
The situation with regard to the effects of colonialism on Indigenous cultures is becoming well-documented. Much damage has been done. The negative consequences of expansionism on those under its bootheels is deep and long lasting. But history is a funny thing. I grew up being taught in school that people like Sir John A. MacDonald were great men because they helped my country of Canada to come into being. No mention was ever made to me as a young boy about the impact of expanding train travel from east to west on the Indigenous Peoples of the land. The moment when that last spike was ceremoniously driven into the soil was always viewed as a source of pride. History tends to be authored by the victors and many of the words used in their scripts are written in English. Funny how that happens.
Regardless of your views on the subject of colonialism, Gaza or whatever international conflict occipes your attention, know that I am first and foremost a proponent of peace and love. I am as bothered about what is going on in Gaza as I ever was about the Holocaust in WWII. One of the most impactful books I have ever read in my life was one called Shake Hands With the Devil written by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire about his experience in Rwanda as head of the United Nations mission there when genocide overwhelmed that country. My heart aches as well for those who suffered in the killing fields of Cambodia under the regime of Pol Pot. I am currently watching with trepidation how things are unfolding in the Ukraine. Warfare conducted by soldiers on the field of battle is one thing but campaigns focussed on killing innocent civilians and destroying local infrastructure is another thing entirely in my mind. I am not anti-semetic because I feel for the children in Gaza and how their lives must be. I am proudly anti-genocide. I am proudly pro-peace. If I could wave a magic wand and be granted one wish, it would be for everyone to simply get along with each other and for hatred to morph into love and friendship. I believe everyone has the right to exist in peace and security and safety. Everyone.
One of the single most impactful books I have ever read. Period.As for Kneecap, they have done a lot when it comes to having people rally around their cause. Today’s song is called “H.O.O.D” and it was written as a community building exercise. One of Kneecap’s philosophical planks is that colonizers or oppressors often employ the standard military and political tactic of dividing and conquering opponents. In Ireland, Kneecap believes that England actually enjoys the divisions created within Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, between Unionists and Republicans. Kneecap is seeking for all citizens of Ireland, regardless of which street you live on in which part of town, to come together over a common love of music. Thus, when they sing a song like “H.O.O.D.” they sing about common issues and experiences that all Irish citizens face, regardless of religious affiliation or political stripe. By uniting their fellow Irish citizens against who they perceive to be the real foe (England) instead of against each other, Kneecap is shining a light on what they claim is the real way forward. I will publish a lyrics-version of this song in the links below but be forewarned that most of the lyrics in this song are not in English. You will probably be better served by watching the live concert video. It clearly shows how popular this band is with their fans. It also shows the band (and Ireland’s) affinity for the Palestinian cause in Gaza…an affection borne from the similarity of their shared circumstances from battling seemingly bigger, stronger and powerful adversaries.
Regardless of your views about Kneecap, know that we are standing, once again, at a critical moment in time in our world. Listen to the song “H.O.O.D” and draw your own conclusions as to whether Kneecap is a band to be reckoned with in the future or if this is a lot of hooey that will amount to nothing with Kneecap soon returning to being a band concerned mostly with chart positions and record sales. How the story of it all ends up being written will tell the tale, in and of itself. Who will record the history of this moment? What language will it even be written in? Do most people even care about such things as colonialism and language and the opinions of artists? I guess we are about to find out.
The link to the video for the song “H.O.O.D.” by Kneecap can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website for Kneecap can be found here.
The link to the official website for Amnesty International (an agency that monitors the rights of people in conflict zones) can be found here. The link to the official website for Doctors Without Borders ( a medical relief organization that services victims of war and famine) can be found here. In both cases, they can provide a more impartial assessment of what is happening in conflict zones around the world (including Gaza and the Ukraine). Sometimes it is good to hear from other sources than simply the usual mainstream media sources. Just saying.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2025 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
#CEARTA #Coachella #Hood #Irish #Kneecap #Language #Music #ReadersChoiceTomsTopTunes
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Destroying Autocracy – July 17, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
We are back from holiday and brief respite from Fascism Friendly Florida.
Featured Item
Hamish Campbell writes:
Capitalism’s invisible hand has always relied on hidden data. In the digital age, that data is metadata the overlooked, under-the-hood information that tells us who, where, when, how often, and what next. It doesn’t matter what you say or do if someone else controls the context around it. That’s where the power lies. Let’s be clear: the battle for metadata is the battle for the future.
Capitalism: Metadata is hoarded by the dotcons. This is the tech-feudalism of today—soft fascism in algorithmic form.
Chinese Communism: Here, the state doesn’t outsource metadata – it owns it. Surveillance is centralised. Social credit systems reduce people to patterns and can be used to penalise deviation.
Liberalism: Wants to privatise metadata to the individual, to revive the mythical free market of rational actors with perfect information. But this is a fantasy—metadata’s power comes from aggregation, and no individual can match corporate or state capacity to hoard it. The liberal path leads to a slightly less abusive cage.
Anarchism and the Commons: A Fourth Way
What does anarchism want? It wants the social conditions for free association. It wants autonomy, not just individual, but community autonomy.
In commons vs. the market, capitalism uses metadata to target, extract, and sell. We use metadata to share, trust, and build. The Open Media Network proposes a radical shift to replace the market with metadata commons. In capitalism, knowledge is hoarded for advantage. In the commons, it is shared for coordination. The market’s “invisible hand” becomes the commons’ visible knowledge, messy, partial, human, but rooted in mutual aid, not profit.
Metadata and the OMN Path: Who Controls the Invisible Hand?
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery
TechCrunch reports:
Ukrainian hackers claim to have destroyed servers of Russian drone maker
The Kyiv Independent reports:
EU slaps new sanctions on Russia over hybrid threats, disinformation
BleepingComputer reports:
Europol disrupts pro-Russian NoName057(16) DDoS hacktivist group
ETH Zurich announces:
A language model built for the public good
Open Future reports on:
It’s FOSS reports:
Europe on a Roll: Plans Open Source Alternative to Confluence and Jira
OpenProject shares:
Empowering the Public Sector with OpenProject: An Open Source alternative for project management
Bloomberg Law reports:
States Target AI Hiring Tools as Federal Freeze Attempt Fails
404 Media has:
The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers
Immigration Raid Tracking App ‘ICE Block’ Keeps Your Data Private, Researcher Finds
Open Ice is a new resource:
TechPolicy reports:
States Are Fighting Back To Defend Medical Privacy and Safeguard Democracy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
Despite Supreme Court Setback, EFF Fights On Against Online Age Mandates
Neutral
TechPolicy reports:
How the EU’s Voluntary AI Code is Testing Industry and Regulators Alike
Making Media Pluralism Work in the Age of Algorithms
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
EFF’s Guide to Getting Records About Axon’s Draft One AI-Generated Police Reports
The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back
Platformer reports:
The campaign to make it illegal for ChatGPT to criticize Trump
Krebs on Security reports:
DOGE Denizen Marko Elez Leaked API Key for xAI
404 Media reports:
ICE Is Searching a Massive Insurance and Medical Bill Database to Find Deportation Target
TechPolicy reports:
The US Just Logged Off from Internet Freedom
ProPublica has:
The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE
A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers
Ars Technica reports:
Trump sues Corporation for Public Broadcasting directors who refused to be fired
Pariah States
BleepingComputer reports:
North Korean XORIndex malware hidden in 67 malicious npm packages
DarkReading reports:
China-Backed Salt Typhoon Hacks US National Guard for Nearly a Year
4 Chinese APTs Attack Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry
Noyb has:
How TikTok, AliExpress & WeChat ignore your GDPR rights
Big Media
404 Media reports:
The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work
TechPolicy reports:
Old Tricks, New Tech: How Legacy Media Capture Fuels Today’s Digital Authoritarianism
Mediations in an Emergency reports:
Please Shout Fire. This Theater Is Burning
Big Tech
Ars Technica reports:
New Grok AI model surprises experts by checking Elon Musk’s views before answering
TechCrunch reports:
Of course, Grok’s AI companions want to have sex and burn down schools
OpenAI and Anthropic researchers decry ‘reckless’ safety culture at Elon Musk’s xAI
The Verge asks:
Where are the iPhone’s WebKit-less browsers?
Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow has:
Where are the iPhone’s WebKit-less browsers?
404 Media reports:
a16z-Backed AI Site Civitai Is Mostly Porn, Despite Claiming Otherwise
The Markup reports:
AI is helping students be more independent, but the isolation could be career poison
This times 1,000.
Terror
404 Media reports:
3D Printing Patterns Might Make Ghost Guns More Traceable Than We Thought
Cybersecurity/Privacy
Bleeping Computer has:
Google Gemini flaw hijacks email summaries for phishing
Malicious VSCode extension in Cursor IDE led to $500K crypto theft
Sounds like a win-win.
Police disrupt “Diskstation” ransomware gang attacking NAS devices
Ars Technica reports:
Hackers exploit a blind spot by hiding malware inside DNS records
DarkReading reports:
Military Veterans May Be What Cybersecurity Is Looking For
Beats being in the National Guard.
Women Who ‘Hacked the Status Quo’ Aim to Inspire Cybersecurity Careers
The Next Web reports:
Whisper emerges from stealth with ‘God Mode’ to tackle cybercrime
Fediverse
Connected Places has:
Age Verification Laws: Are the New Social Networks Different, Or Not At All?
Steve Bate has:
ActivityPub Client API: A Way Forward
The Social Web Foundation has:
Seeking interop testing for geosocial ActivityPub client
Mastodon has:
Privacy Guides has:
Privacy and Security on Mastodon
Bandwagon has an update:
Elena Rossini has:
My adventures in self-hosting: day 211 (CDN edition)
Forgejo announces:
TechCrunch reports:
Meta appoints generative AI VP to run Threads
I guess it wasn’t shitty enough.
Slightly Federated Social Media
Connected Places has:
Reuters reports:
European project Eurosky aims to reduce reliance on US tech giants
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#125 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProto #Autocracy #Bandwagon #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Forgejo #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #Threads
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[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Disclaimer/Content Warning: The Gaza-Israel war has been my main preoccupation this month, and it still is, as i am sure for many of you as well. And as such it will be strongly featured in this link list. I will link to material, that some might deem controversial, as long as it (in my humble opinion) contains nuance and/or a perspective that helps us think through this scary clusterfuck of a situation. We need to keep an open mind, we need context, we need patience, we need to read diverse viewpoints and not jump to conclusions.
Of course the terrorist attacks by Hamas, their killing of way too many innocent civilians, needs to be condemned in the strongest of terms. But this did not “come out of nothing” as too many now claim, it does need to be looked at in its historical context. The reaction by the Israeli government and military after the Hamas attacks has started to look like an ethnic cleansing, or even a genocide. Some scholars already call it a textbook case of genocide, but it might be early to say so with conclusive certainty. Nevertheless it is important to take a clear stance against any form of ethnic cleansing or genocide, to condemn all war crimes, all forms of collective punishments.
We also need to remember that we find ourselves in a heavily propagandist environment (see: manufacturing consent video bellow or these guidelines on what “facts” to spread). All of the major players in this conflict can’t be trusted to be 100% reliable sources, Hamas (right wing, reactionary, terrorist), the current Israeli government (right wing, supremacist, settler-colonialist), the so-called US (are you kidding me?).
Early on in the conflict i wrote on Mastodon:
With these terrorist attacks, it sure sounds like Hamas is aiming for “The Extinction of the Grayzone”, a strategy we know from Daesh. Its goal is to push moderate people to pick a side. The Israeli government plays right into their hands with the siege, cutting of the water, electricity etc. for 2 Mio people, bombing mosques and calling the Palestinians savages*.
This article describes the strategy as used by Daesh/”ISIS”.
*small correction: “Savages” is how the Swiss news station RTS at first translated the statement by Gallant, since then translated as “we are fighting human animals”. Other than that, yes, i still think it is important, to stand “In defense of the Grayzone” as that article in roarmag (while talking about Daesh) explains. To stand in full solidarity with the civilian victims, there are way way way way way too many of them. To grieve for every single one of them. To condemn all war crimes. To take a stance against nationalism, state power, the international war machine. Now more than ever. To fight against all forms of antisemitism as well as all forms of hatred against Muslims (what is a better word for islamophobia, without the ableist phobia?).
This war must stop now. (Also the one in Ukraine and all the other wars as well!) Ceasefire now!
Just imagine, if we really are witnessing a genocide, and it sure looks like we do, but you supported the side that committed it.
Just imagine, this leads to a surge in antisemitic or anti-muslim hatred, and it sure looks like it does, but you participated in fueling the flames.][Videos]
The wolf pups of the Bug Creek Pack
[Music]
help fight fish farming in iceland
[Podcasts]
Elon Musk Unmasked: Origins of an Oligarch (Part 1) [tech won’t save us] – “Elon Musk wasn’t always the influential billionaire he is today. To begin our dive into the myth of Musk, we need to go back to his origins — to find out where he came from, what inspired him, and how he became the man he is today. Those details set the foundation for the three episodes to come.” Four part series on Musk by Paris Marx, “the left’s best Muskologist”, much better than that PBS documentary.
175: Diagonalism (w/William Callison and Quinn Slobodian) [conspirituality] – “Quinn Slobodian teaches Modern German History at Wellesley and William Callison teaches Political Theory and Human Geography at Uppsala. We first came across their work via Naomi Klein’s examination of the clusterf&cked politics that dominate the movements we cover. We dug out their paper, and they had us at this: “At the extreme end, diagonal movements share a conviction that all power is conspiracy.”” In reference to this paper:
Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol [boston review] – “Defying conventional political labels and capitalizing on widespread distrust, a range of new movements share the conviction that all power is conspiracy.” The paper from January 2021 was mentioned in Doppelgänger, the new book by Naomi Klein.
Decolonial Disability Politics and the Left [death panel podcast] – “In this session, “Decolonial Disability Politics and the Left” Death Panel podcast co-hosts, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Jules Gill-Peterson, are joined by theorist, Jasbir Puar, and Shira Hassan, who has spent decades building, documenting and participating in systems of change and support outside of the societal frameworks of oppression and exploitation. This session explores the links between disability, debility, and empire: how neoliberal framings of disability structurally exclude people disabled by ongoing colonialism and global/national/local schemes of extraction, and how to expand our conceptions of debility, disability, and capacity to include populations that don’t fit within tidy frameworks of pride and respectability.” The recording apparently had sound issues, so this actually is a transcript of the podcast.
[Toot Threads]
Eldan Goldenberg: “Israel & Palestine (long)” [mastodon] – “But not only am I a Jew, I am very publicly one. So I keep being invoked to defend and to attack. Israel claims to act in my name, under a flag that should be the symbol of my people, not one state. Zionist groups in the US & Canada claim to speak for all Jews, and smear dissenters like me as self-haters. Goyische allies shut down criticism of Zionism intending to keep me safe. And at the same time, actual antisemites frequently hijack pro-Palestinian activism.” Somehow i can’t embed this one.
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: October 26, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: October 19, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: October 12, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: October 5, 2023Thanks Violet Blue for the continued top quality roundups. If you can, please consider supporting them.
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
An Open Letter to our Anarchist, Socialist and Radical Leftist Comrades [rant.li] – “Together, we can create a world that includes everyone. If you still want to, that is. And you should want to, because being abled-bodied and healthy is a temporary state – it might quite possibly not last forever. Most people experience disability or illness at some point in their lives. Or at the very least, they will have loved ones with this experience.” COVID is not over, the radical left should lead the charge of still hosting inclusive events with protective measures. This open letter tells you why and how.
How junk science set a country’s health and welfare policy | Nate Bear [substack] – “As the nature of long covid continues to be contested, and as its burden grows, stories like this are crucial to remind us that health is never apolitical. Medical professionals are not always, perhaps not even mostly, neutral arbiters of the scientific truth. They have deep and often unwavering social and political ideologies that help determine how they treat (or don’t treat) people. And these ideologies can harm huge numbers of people. The large-scale, coordinated minimisation of covid should remind us of this.” For a much deeper analysis on this issue, i can’t recommend it highly enough to please read the book Inflamed by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel.
I Have Discovered That Giving Up on the World Can Set You Free [substack] – “I felt like a prison guard forcing children to sit still and learn shit they’ll never need just so their parents can both work full-time. They never see their child anyway; what is the fucking sense of having one? Please don’t tell me about the purpose of schools and all your noble bullshit. I have spent years in the system, I have seen the purpose they serve. Conditioning. Servitude. Obey, obey, obey, or else.” The entire rant is great, this part specifically resonated with me. I suffered so much in school as a pupil, and here, finally, a teacher admits what it means.
The year poverty began to end | Nate Bear [substack] – “Only when we realise what could have been can we see that a return to normal was contingent on erasing covid from the collective consciousness. Normal being poverty, hunger, homelessness. The necessity for a permanent and visible underclass to keep the working and middle classes on their toes. For the machine to keep running, we had to forget that poverty is a policy choice. We needed those visible examples of who we could be should bad luck strike, or if we stop grifting for the man. Homelessness and poverty is capitalism’s live stream, broadcast everywhere to ensure you can never fully escape the sense of precarity about what might be.” That is why i simply can’t reconcile with the fact that even the fucking radical left participated in the normalization process, even lead the way in some cases.
Covid deaths are on the rise again, so what happens? Mask-wearing in hospitals is scrapped | George Monbiot [the guardian] – “For some people, going to hospital may now be more dangerous than staying at home untreated. Many clinically vulnerable people fear, sometimes with good reason, that a visit to hospital or the doctors’ surgery could be the end of them. Of course, there have always been dangers where sick people gather. But, until now, health services have sought to minimise them. Astonishingly, this is often no longer the case.” Pretty good article, but why did Monbiot not include this (he knew about it):
Let Them Eat Old Vaccines [okdoomer.io] – “The UK government gave more than 2.3 million vulnerable and older people a Covid vaccine that isn’t matched to the currently dominant Covid strains. It wasn’t a mistake. They did it to save money.” What a scandal. And no one gives a shit. Not even Monbiot.
CW: [Gaza/Israel]
Why I’m Finally Leaving X and Probably All Social Media | Rushkoff [substack] – “Where’s the real information? The question of Egypt not being willing to open the gate for Palestinians at the southern border because they’re fighting their own insurgency, the fact that a majority of Israeli Jews are people of color, the pogroms committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, the cynical reasons why Netanyahu helped Hamas rise to power? There’s no room for these “three body problems” on a platform like X, which is handicapping real discussion in favor of terror and bullying. Musk models the behavior he’s encouraging: be the troll.” Douglas Rushkoff on why social media is not a good idea to get your information from in times like these. Well actually, and increasingly so, always. Thanks to Melon Husk et al. Here’s the podcast version of the monologue.
Interview with an Israeli anarchist [161 crew] – “Situation in Gaza Strip is getting more catastrophic every day. In our attempt to better understand the situation in the region , we made an interview with an Israeli anarchist. We talk about the modern anarchist movement, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, resistance against it and prospects for the future.” An opportunity to read the view of an Israeli anarchist on the entire situation.
How To Talk About Gaza (w/ Naomi Klein & Omar Baddar) [levernews] – “I heard from multiple congresspeople today that “ceasefire” is now seen as toxic. It’s seen as not “standing with Israel.” And I saw a lot of signs in the hallways, “Stand with Israel,” which is code for blank check. It’s the same thing that the U.S. did after 9/11. Are you with us or with the terrorists? It’s a straight-up loyalty test. It’s outrageous, because these U.S. congresspeople should not be standing with Israel, if that means that there are no strings attached to any of the weapons, any of the aid. They should be standing with international law.”
Have We Learned Nothing? | David Klion [n+1] – “There’s a pervasive censoriousness right now—conservatives denouncing liberals, liberals denouncing leftists, leftists denouncing other leftists—that’s immediately familiar from the days and weeks after 9/11. Somehow, the upshot of all the denunciations and condemnations is the right’s unchallenged hold over the discourse, and, more importantly, the ultimate facts on the ground.” Not fully convinced that the comparison with 9/11 is apt, but when looking at its outcome, it sure looks familiar.
Even Before the Israel-Hamas War, Being Palestinian Was Controversial [nyt] – “I don’t hesitate for a second to condemn the killing of any child, any massacre of civilians — this of course includes Jewish life. It is the easiest ask in the world. And it is not in spite of that but because of that I say: Condemn the brutalization of bodies. By all means, do. Condemn murder. Condemn violence, imprisonment, all forms of oppression. But if your shock and distress comes only at the sight of certain brutalized bodies? If you speak out but not when Palestinian bodies are besieged and murdered, abducted and imprisoned? Then it is worth asking yourself which brutalization is acceptable to you, even quietly, even subconsciously, and which is not.” Key point. All deaths of civilians are unacceptable.
Tectonic Shifts [thebaffler] – “Generally, most people on the left in the United States will treat the law with scrutiny: it’s the product of politics and of the powerful, and not an ethical framework. That’s all still true when it comes to the laws of nations and the laws of war, but we don’t have another mode of discourse. For the oppressed people of the world, those condemned by history, this is a real challenge. On October 9, I asked on X, “What is the ethical way to climb out of hell?” This wasn’t a rhetorical question. I really don’t know.” This is the article i hesitated longest to include here, some of points do seem controversial. But, big picture, they argue in a congruent way, i think.
Judith Butler · The Compass of Mourning [lbr] – “It should not be the case that ‘contextualisation’ is considered a morally problematic activity, even though there are forms of contextualisation that can be used to shift the blame or to exonerate. Can we distinguish between those two forms of contextualisation? Just because some think that contextualising hideous violence deflects from or, worse, rationalises the violence, that doesn’t mean we should capitulate to the claim that all forms of contextualisation are morally relativising in that way.” This article got criticized heavily. And i think unfairly. Because when decided to read it, i was surprised, in a positive way, on how careful and precise Butler argued. They are handling their reach and influence responsibly.
Practicing New Worlds in a Time of Collapse [truthout] – “The idea that, in the face of extreme grief and loss, or in moments when we feel horribly wronged, we should be spared any interrogation of the violence being done in our names, or with our tax dollars, is extraordinarily dangerous. We are living through an era of climate chaos. As the suffering the U.S. imposes militarily, and through the violence of capitalism continues to compound, crisis is outpacing our collective empathy. With regard to COVID, many people seem to feel they’ve been through enough, and should not have to worry about precautions to protect themselves, their communities, or the most vulnerable among us. We have also seen the steady normalization of the mass deaths of migrants who are often being left to die, whether in the Mediterranean or Sonoran Desert — and how the technology and ideology that supports such actions is exported by right-wing authoritarian countries like Israel. With regard to Gaza, many people have taken the stance that because Hamas committed extreme acts of violence, no one else can be blamed for any atrocities that are committed in response — as though one tragedy lets us all off the hook, and genocide is no longer unthinkable, but instead, a political inevitability that cannot be helped.” In the podcast they speak about many other topics, this excerpt to me offers the big picture view.
Doomsday Diaries | Sarah Aziza [baffler] – ““But what about Hamas?” I grew up with this question whipped at my face every time I declared my people’s right to survive. “What about Hamas?” It didn’t matter if I’d just asked for clean water or the right to return to our stolen land. “What about Hamas?” they’d ask, holding my humanity hostage. Their smug smiles at this question, which they saw as a rhetorical coup. I gave them hours, pages of my words. I filled rooms with my hot breath, panting, “We are not terrorists—Hamas is a symptom of oppression—yes of course I condemn extremism—this is a struggle for human rights—Israel propped up Hamas for years—please look at our children—please, don’t you see our helpless elders?—please, if you don’t respect us as humans, could you spare some pity?”” To read these diaries affected made me cry.
When Jewish Anti-Zionists Are Compared to White Supremacists | Kelly Hayes [substack] – “We should stand united in the fight against antisemitism and Islamophobia going forward, both hold us back from liberation and this is exactly the kind of division the Israeli state uses to drive their war machine. It’s important to remain clear that Israel’s actions are not in the name of, or in collaboration with, all diaspora Jews and to place the struggle for liberation in Palestine within the global justice movement that likewise sees liberation for all people, including Jews.” The interview with Shane Burley offers precise distinctions.
Israel und Palästina: Erkennen, was uns alle verbindet [woz] – “Für eine Linke mit menschlichem Gesicht sollte die Forderung klar sein: eine deutliche Positionierung gegen Antisemitismus genauso wie gegen Islamfeindlichkeit.* Solidarität mit den Opfern beider Seiten. Doch was ist eine solche Forderung wert, wenn sie in der Umsetzung unmöglich zu sein scheint?” That is the question. In this world, in this situation, bullying us pick a side, nuance is what is needed, not optional.
Israel is Committing Genocide – “arguments to go around” Peter Gelderloos made his mind up early on the genocide question. It’s still an interesting read, that offers a lot of historical context and an anti-statist view on the conflict.
“This is not simply between Israel and Hamas. It’s much bigger than that.” | Paris Marx [substack] – “An interview with Antony Loewenstein on the Hamas attack, the brutal Israeli response, and the wider context of the conflict.” Loewenstein being the author of the highly recommended book The Palestine Laboratory.
Israel, Palestine and the Contradictions of Nationalism [igd] – “One can, and I think must, be able to support a struggle against colonization while being critical of (or just outright against) specific forces and actors within that struggle whose aims or methods are reactionary. Hamas are a reactionary force, even when they are fighting for a cause that is very worthy of support. Their own violence towards their fellow Palestinians, their aims as fundamentalists, and their tactics including the targeting of civilians are all enough to put them outside of the circle of forces worth supporting. None of which is to excuse at ALL the Israeli state, which in this war is going to wreak horrific suffering and death on the people of Gaza far above and beyond the gut-wrenching suffering inflicted on Israeli civilians in the last several days.” Keep casting a critical look at all the actors.
How Does This End? [current affairs] – “The responsibility of the international community is clear: we have to push for a final negotiated end to the conflict, through the end of Israel’s apartheid and the granting of full rights of self-determination to Palestine. Ultimately, as Chomsky and Cassif point out, the subjugation of Palestine is not in the interests of ordinary Israelis, who themselves deserve to live in peace. It guarantees Israel’s perpetual insecurity. So long as there are Palestinians, there will be resistance, some of which will be violent, and it will become more violent when other avenues for expressing dissent are closed off. To predict what will happen is in no way to justify it, and while we can and should condemn Hamas’ counterproductive and hideous atrocities, we need to understand why they occurred and how to prevent more from happening in the future.” Exactly that.
An Anarchist from Jaffa on the Violence in Palestine and Israeli Repression [crimethinc] – “The context of struggle here is between a nuclear military superpower and a dispossessed people. Colonialism does not relent. Colonialism will not step back of its own accord, not even if you ask nicely. Decolonialism is a noble cause, but the path to achieve it is often ugly and tainted by violence. In the absence of any realistic alternative to achieve liberation, people are forced into carrying out unjustifiable acts. It’s a fundamental reality of the disparity of power. To demand that the oppressed always act in the purest of ways is to demand they remain forever in servitude.” The interview was recorded before or even during the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. It shows the perspective from a longer timeframe on how Israeli anarchists might view the situation.
[Articles English]
New Interview about Abolition and Infrastructure in Radical History Review [deanspade.net] – “Freshly published: Rachel Herzing, Bench Ansfield and I had a conversation about abolitionist questions of infrastructure, focusing on what transformative justice means, how abolitionists debate questions of state formation, and much more.”
The Best We Can Do? The Rise of Bullshit Research [okdoomer.io] – “They cite “studies” that suggest people with depression and chronic illness are just lazy. They make declarations about public health and call up one hack doctor willing to lie for 15 minutes of fame. Let’s call this bullshit research, the sibling of those bullshit jobs made famous by David Graeber. We are being fed trivia and bullshit about delighting listeners and smiling while the ecological foundations of our world are being destroyed. What happened to the great sense of inquiry that I’ve read used to exist in the world?” Nate Bear now crossposts his stuff to okdoomer.io. Saves you a visit to that horrible site called substack.
Brian Eno: why I sculpt sound [ft] – “The painter Philip Guston once said: “I paint what I want to see”. In my case, I compose the music I want to hear. I find myself discovering certain new feelings and trying to find out how I got to them, what in the music made them happen. I sometimes hear someone else’s music and imagine how I would improve it, or what I would leave out to make it better. Sometimes I hear something I dislike so much that I start imagining its exact opposite.” Eno seems to do the check-your-privilege-thing.
New research offers clues to what causes long COVID — fuelling hope for eventual treatments [cbc] News – “It’s still “early days” when it comes to answering that question, Schaffner added, because the latest published studies are fairly small and narrow in scope, based on researchers’ areas of expertise. “These various studies seem to complement each other,” he added, “even though they’re not exactly duplicative.” Schaffner and others are hopeful, however, that these kinds of emerging findings could eventually lead to a diagnostic test for long COVID, or to potential treatments.” Early days. And my fear as always, will this confirm all forms of LongCOVID or will it serve to triage the “real” cases from the “fake” ones, in order to save the state more money.
Toxic workplaces are the main reason women leave academic jobs [nature] – “Women feel driven out by problems with workplace culture more often than by lack of work–life balance.” This is confirmation what most women already knew.
Indigenous Groups Rally Against Lithium Extraction in Argentina [hyperallergic] – “Murals, flags, performance, and other artistic expressions define the ongoing struggle to protect lands threatened by rampant extraction of the so-called “white gold.”” Full solidarity.
Australians Vote Down Referendum to Recognize Indigenous Groups in Constitution [truthout] – “Aboriginal groups mourned the proposal, which would have created an advisory body to advocate for them in government.” So fucking awful to not even agree on such a minimal thing.
“That’s Never Going to Work.” How Futility Bias Keeps Us from Even Trying. [okdoomer.io] – “Futility bias tends to serve the status quo. It serves the affluent and the elite. It comes from a position of power and privilege. When someone leans on futility bias as a reason, they’re saying they’re too lazy or immature to do the right thing. They want everything to stay the same, no matter who’s getting hurt. It suits them. They’re saying they don’t care, and they’re counting on the idea that nobody else does.” For the next time someone tells you “it’s never gonna work”.
Fruit, wildflowers, insects: the people transforming disused land in England [the guardian] – “From community allotments to wildlife havens, guerilla gardeners are taking it upon themselves to create meaningful spaces” Guerilla gardening.
September 2023 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “The September global surface temperature was 1.44°C (2.59°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F), making it the warmest September on record. September 2023 marked the 49th-consecutive September and the 535th-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average. September 2023 was 0.46°C (0.83°F) above the previous record from September 2020, and marks the largest positive monthly global temperature anomaly of any month on record. The September 2023 global temperature anomaly surpassed the previous record-high monthly anomaly from March 2016 by 0.09°C (0.16°F). The past ten Septembers (2014–2023) have been the warmest Septembers on record.” This is normal.
The Coronavirus Still Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings [the nation] – “The Covid-19 pandemic is not a state of mind—and telling us not to panic isn’t healthcare.” Yet, the Coronavirus can affect your feelings, Long COVID often leads to depression and other mental health outcomes.
The Long Covid Reader: The Book About Covid Long Haulers by Mary Ladd – “An anthology amplifying the voices of 45 Long Haulers, sharing raw, powerful stories that shed light on the impact of Long Covid” A crowdfunded book written by people affected with Long COVID.
Covid Silence and How The Media Works [okdoomer.io] – “Covid doesn’t have a PR agency, and most studies are coming out of niche research labs or universities that have very limited or non-existent PR teams/agency support. And even when it’s coming out of a big university, the media teams at these unis are spread thin and often don’t see the humdrum science research as something to prioritise when it comes to media. It doesn’t raise money, it’s not that sexy etc.” Interesting thought, what of COVID had a lobby instead of the fucking pharma industry?
Plutocrats Forever | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “Empathy alone was never enough to get me through. Rage followed closely on its heels, because of how clearly it felt like we should be fighting back against those things, that maybe we don’t truly understand them, as empathy demands, if we can accept them with equanimity. Honestly, we should feel rage that we live in a world where those things are allowed to occur, again and again and again. And that the people most responsible for them get rewarded, and the people who look away, who pretend to be asleep, usually have the easiest time getting by in the aftermath.” Didn’t know there were two plutos in Rome.
Someone Infected Neil Gaiman with COVID-19, After Venues Refused to Enforce Audience Masking [okdoomer.io] – “The passive voice has served a macabre purpose in this pandemic. The passive voice, by erasing the subject of the sentence, neatly obscures accountability, and with it our own role in unmitigated infections. Moreover, it has prevented us from identifying the layers of responsibility in enabling infections on a mass scale. This mental block is the first obstacle to advocating for effective mitigations and constructive solutions. It stops us from preventing infections. But that is changing now. It is time to own the damage that we are causing by infecting others with COVID-19. I believe that we all know, deep inside, that we are causing harm. And many of us are suffering from the cognitive dissonance of pretending that we aren’t. Because, in a pandemic, this is serious and large-scale harm.” Helpful distinction. People spreading COVID have gotten easy so far.
Linton Kwesi Johnson Is a Revolutionary Poet for Our Times [jacobin] – “In our contemporary political landscape, increasingly characterized by reactionary onslaught and progressive retreat, Johnson stands out as that rarest of figures: a people’s poet and radical of radicals. In his work and in his person he keeps alive the many currents of struggle and resistance, suffering and solidarity, history and music, that made the emancipation movements of the global black proletariat as transformative as they have been in the decades since the mid-century wave of decolonial and anti-segregationist campaigns.” <3
Elon Musk is a racist | Paris Marx [disconnect] – “From demonizing migrants to pushing “white genocide,” he’s saying the silent part out loud” Also check out the podcast by Marx linked above.
Artist Shellyne Rodriguez Agrees to Plea Deal [hyperallergic] – “Her misdemeanor charge will be withdrawn upon completion of a minimum of six months of behavioral therapy and compliance with good behavior.” I so feel with this artist.
The 15-Minute City Conspiracy Theory Goes Mainstream [wired] – “The conspiracy has taken hold among right-wing audiences in the United States on social media, with psychologist turned right-wing conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson boosting it in a tweet late last year that has been viewed almost 8 million times.” Oh fuck you, JP.
The Collapse Will Not Be Televised | Jessica Wildfire [okdoomer.io] – “The spectacles will be the last thing to go. As society collapses, the rich will work overtime to supply everyone with a constant stream of distraction and entertainment. They’ll encourage everyone to keep eating out, shopping, and watching movies no matter what virus is spreading. A growing number of people will be too braindead and emotionally numb to resist. The concerts aren’t going to stop. The football games aren’t going to stop. The movies aren’t going to stop. The elite will keep all of that going as long as possible, no matter the cost. That’s what convinces everyone that everything’s okay. If that ended, people would have to stop and pay attention to what’s happening. They would actually feel how hot it is. They would feel the despair. They might do something.” Football, festivals, clubbing are what keeps us docile.
Fascism in America: a long history that predates Trump [the guardian] – “We don’t sufficiently teach civics or democratic awareness [in high schools], how fascism and far-right extremist movements have a long history in the US,” Rosenfeld said. “We think we’re an exception, that America fought ‘the good war’ to defeat fascism and Nazism. We patted ourselves on the back for many decades as ‘the greatest generation’ – a useful myth for American public life that blinded us to darker undercurrents in our society.” Might be a book to read.
[Articles German/French]
Abschreckungspolitik in der Postkartenidylle [daslamm] – “Nachdem Bayram Hasgül im Gurnigelbad an einem Herzinfarkt starb, steht die Asylunterkunft im ehemaligen Berner Kurhotel in der Kritik. Der Todesfall sei nur die Spitze des Eisbergs, sind sich Bewohnende und Aktivist*innen einig.” It is so goddamn awful how we treat refugees in this country.
Silvia Federici: «Die Nacht zu einem gefährlichen Ort zu machen, war im Interesse der Mächtigen» [woz] – “Sie zeigt, dass Hexenverfolgung und Entstehung des Kapitalismus eng zusammenhingen – und propagiert Gemeingüter als feministische Verteidigungsstrategie: Eine Begegnung mit Silvia Federici in Glarus, wo 1782 Europas letzte «Hexe» hingerichtet wurde.” This sadly is a remarkably uncritical interview, please also read the two older critiques of her work:
Caliban and the Witch: A critical analysis [1919]
“Critical analysis of Sylvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch demonstrates her lack of seriousness in dealing with an important issue: why was the last phase (from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century) of the multi-secular transition from feudalism to capitalism accompanied in Western Europe by a deterioration of the situation of women, from the top to the bottom of the social ladder?”Beyond the Periphery of the Skin – Silvia Federici [full stop]
“Silvia Federici’s Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism is a baffling work that slides from the academically indefensible to the ethically dubious with remarkable facility.”Überwachung: Die Predator Files [woz] – “Eine Welt ohne Skrupel: Wie die Intellexa-Allianz um den israelischen Exgeheimdienstler Tal Dilian Überwachungstrojaner an Despoten verkauft – und die Schweiz als sicheren Hafen zur Verschleierung ihrer Geschäfte nutzt. Die grosse internationale Recherche.” A research into not much new stuff.
[Older articles, still great]
The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber – Graeber of course says nothing about the current war in Israel, but his reflections still can be quite helpful now.
Manufacturing Consent Noam Chomsky and the Media (Documentary)
Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill, and How This Helps America’s Illegitimate Authorities Stay in Charge [brucelevine.net] – “Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized; but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will cause them existential death.” Context!
Letter to a Young Doctor | Johanna Hedva [triple canopy] – “I want it to be that trust is the most important thing a doctor and her patient can share, because trust is what keeps people from falling apart, and it’s what puts broken ones back together, and in the cases where the brokenness is all there is, trust can offer a small encouragement that the brokenness is bearable—that it can eventually, hopefully, ideally be reframed not as “brokenness” at all, but as the different parts that are there to work with.” The letter to a young poet of disability justice.
R.I.P.
Much much much much much too many civilians in Israel and Gaza.
[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow my diigo (feed: rss) for all of my saved links or mastodon for an edited choice of them]
Header Photo: A flock of Alpacas
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This week, we’re sharing words from anarchist, author, organizer and former participant in the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Ashanti Omowali Alston, in the keynote address at the 2024 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville. The presentation was entitled “Solidarity, Spirituality and Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back”. You can support Ashanti’s GoFundMe here.
From the ACAB website:
Trusting in solidarity, the mysterium of spirituality, and a promise from god knows where—a “where” that at this historical moment, might just be Palestine. What does it mean TO BE in the midst of all this right now? RIGHT NOW!
Ashanti Alston is a revolutionary Black nationalist, anarchist, abolitionist, speaker, writer, elder motivator. A long-time member of The Jericho Movement, he is presently an advisory board member of the National Jericho Movement and co-founding board member of the Center for Grassroots Organizing (Vermont land project). He continues giving talks and writing inspirational analyses concerning the dismantling of the myriad oppressive regimes in which we find ourselves enmeshed.
Ashanti is one of the few former members of the Black Panther Party who identifies as an anarchist in the tradition of ancestor Kuwasi Balagoon (BPP & BLA). He developed abolitionist politics in the early years of Critical Resistance. He has helped save the life of a baby pig with animal liberationists, learned depth-queer politics from being challenged, and wants to see non-ego eldership partaking through sincerely loving the younger generations who truly want to ‘CARRY IT ON.”
You can find other recordings from the 2024 ACABookfair at acabookfair.noblogs.org.
Transcription
Cindy Milstein: I’m Cindy. I want to really welcome everybody here on behalf of the ACAB Bookfair. It is such a joy and pleasure and delight for us to organize this and then have so many incredibly amazing people show up in one place. Why does this have to just be three days? It’s also beautiful how everybody has been really helping, so I want to thank everybody who’s done so much this weekend to make this weekend happen and to get here and to be here. Thank you, everyone, really. Welcome.
I wasn’t planning to introduce Ashanti, but I actually feel delighted. I used to see Ashanti a lot, and we used to be involved in anarchist summer schools together and other projects together. We did a lot together. We saw each other a lot and feel like dear friends. Then, I don’t think we’ve seen each other for 12 years or so, and it feels super powerful to be together again with friends and Ashanti. I’ve always really appreciated him. I keep saying “sweetheart, sweetheart.” I’m an older anarchist too, and It’s really nice to be around in this multi-generational space with someone who’s so humble and able to still see possibility, able to still see that we need to be in this for the long haul and be together no matter where we are with our anarchism.
Ashanti has had a long, illustrious career being a revolutionary and a radical, starting as a teenager with the Black Panthers, moving into the Black Liberation Army, with the State trying to contain and destroy Ashanti, and Ashanti not letting them do that, and coming out and being involved with the Jericho political prisoner support movement, among other things. And is also a parent. Okay, so enough of me. I’m gonna let Ashanti speak, and then we’ll do some Q&A afterward.
Ashanti: Okay, I’m not sure. I might sit down. I don’t know, man. I’m not used to the sitting down thing. Well, first of all, thank you for the introduction. It has been years, and it’s just been so good to reconnect. So a lot of times when you know that we’ve all been through so much, then you start seeing some of your old comrades, man, that kind of lifts your spirits up. Right on. But I need you to work with me right now, because I still got a few butterflies going here, right? So, back in them days, Black Panther Party, you know, when we said “Power to the people,” the response was always, “All power to the people.” All power to the people. So I want you to, like, help me to release these revolutionary butterflies out into your midst with your response: Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: One more time. Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: I see them. I see them. Alright. Now, it is clear. I said “to the people.” I did not say to the preachers, to the politicians, to them profiteers. To the people. That’s also my anarchist analysis of The Black Panther Party. It wasn’t an anarchist group, but there was so much about it that helped move me towards anarchism, anti-authoritarian thinkings and practices because the experience in the party taught me the dangers of authoritarianism, even when it was coming from good places. You know? We want to liberate our people. We want to help make a revolution in the United States, but then what happens when you got an ideology and a structure that so much resembles the ideology and structure of what you fighting, with just different words.
Then the FBI and the counterintelligence program and local police is able to feed in on your own internalized, colonial dynamics: the sexisms, the egos, and all them other things. Next thing you know we’re fighting each other. Movements are collapsing. There’s attacks on chapters. There’s comrades getting framed on charges. Others had to take off, going into exile. Others like Fred Hampton and those killed in their beds. It’s a dangerous struggle, but the fact is, that I and others have survived… And I’m 70 now, you know. My knees feel it more, so I accept the elder thing now, right? I’m an elder. So at least I have opportunities to share with you, those things that I hope will be helpful. In this particular case, when I say to you, because this is an anarchist gathering, and I’ve just been so excited since coming here Thursday to return to a spirit of “we going to make this happen.”
That’s, that’s an anarchist spirit to me, because the other folks I’m talking to are still trying to figure out “How are we going to indoctrinate people in the community to do the right thing?” You’re talking about, “How can we create the liberatory programs right now with the knowledges that we are learning right now, that we know we will learn more tomorrow, and put it into all kinds of experimental practices?” That’s where it’s at. That it is not the ideological approach that just says “We got this all laid out. We got it laid out. You just gotta follow this. No, they did it in China. No, they did it in Cuba. They did it in Africa.” No, they didn’t. No, they didn’t.
If anybody listening was at Modibo’s talk… and Modibo, I think, is my elder. Modibo is like in his early 80s? And just to say this about him, also, it was such an honor for me to finally meet him in person. He’s been around longer than I have been doing this, and still believes in his 80s that we can change the world in very anti-authoritarian ways. Every workshop that I was able to attend today just reaffirms for me the same thing. When I went to the harm reduction one, because I couldn’t get into yours, it was so packed [speaking to another presenter]This harm reduction is all new to me, because I feel like I’ve been out of it for a long time. I finally been able to say easily: depression. The depression comes when I feel like, “Man, is a generation going to take this, or are they going to get bamboozled and buy into this madness again?” And when I do that and isolate myself, I get depressed. I sit and do nothing. The years go by. The years go by. Then miraculous things happen. You know? One of them was Seattle, way back. Another one was the Zapatista movement, right? The latest one is what? Who would have thought with what’s going on in occupied Palestine, that the international resistance would be at this level? I’ve never seen anything like it in my 70 years. So it makes me feel like, “Well, Ashanti, you need to get back in there. Get back in there.” You know? And I feel like in the last year, there’s been things happening that have allowed me to feel like I can still be in there and just give it my best. You know? In the process, I am learning so much, from the social media stuff, which I always thought was quite crazy. But then I realize it also has us watching, by minute, the genocide going on over there. It’s allowing us to connect, to increase our resistance, the demonstrations, what we’re doing on the campuses. Oh my god, it’s not over. It’s. Not. Over. So I want to share that with you, because I’m like, “I’m back in. I am here,” and I thank you for the way you have invited me here.
All right. The title I chose was—I don’t know why I choose these. I try to do these fancy titles—“Solidarity, Spirituality and the Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back.” Y’all know what I’m talking about with a turtle, right? The Turtle? Turtle Island, right? I wanted us to think of images. So I would go on the internet and I would put in “on the back of the turtle”, and I put in “civilization on the back of a turtle.” I wanted the images that would show this turtle. Aang was a great help for me, I should tell you. And the particular scene where he’s talking to the lion turtle.
I wanted to imagine in my mind what it means for indigenous folks who have a certain mythology around Turtle Island, and what it meant for Aang to have this conversation with the turtle, to get this wisdom. What does it mean for those who… We can be so scientific. We can just lop that off as, oh, “That’s myths. That’s folk tales. That means nothing.” But what does it mean to those for who that is their culture, and they get their wisdom from these stories? What happened to the role of stories? You know, not everything has to be so scientific. For us, as it helps to focus on the plight of indigenous folks in this country, let’s look at what it means that Turtle Island, before the European conquest, had its ways of living. Then here comes the conquest, and they start building on top of the back of the turtle. Just moving, removing whatever was there, the villages, the agricultural scenes and whatever. Now, you are chopping down trees, you are blowing up mountains, you are digging deep into the earth, and you start to build the United States, or this North American empire, on the back.
I wanted to be able to envision our role as, “How can we get this empire off the back of the turtle?” It can only happen with mass social movements that we become that can opener that just starts cranking around this turtle. And at some point we just gonna flip this motherf*cker off into the galaxy. So that we might begin to really create them lives we know we deserve. We know. We want to live better. What I like about the fact that we are anarchists is that our visions tend to be that imaginative. Our practices tend to be that daring and risky. That’s why I think we have such an important role to play, because a lot of other folks are just dealing with such old ideas, not critiquing them. Old practices, not looking at them to see how destructive or poisonous they can be. Settler colonialism is one thing to say, but what happens when you look at internalized colonialism? What does it look like as we’ve been here and it has seeped all in our behaviors, our bodies? That means that we have got to fight this battle on different level. Different levels.
What happens in solidarity a lot of times, even just in a simple way, is how do we look at each other as we go down the street sometime or knock on the neighbor’s door? How do we look at each other? From saying, “Hey, neighbor, how you doing?” Was it last night or night before the neighbors where I’m staying had lost the cat. They lost the cat. So they’re like, “Well, let’s exchange numbers, and if we see the cat, we help you and return the cat.” Is that not solidarity? Mutual aid? You hear what happened to the indigenous folks—this was me with Wounded Knee—and you want to figure out, “Well, how do you help the folks in Wounded Knee?” Attica jumps off and being that I’m in New York/New Jersey at the time, there’s folks like, “Well, we got to figure out how to get up there and help them prisoners in rebellion.” The act of doing those things has the potential to not only really aid them but to change you in ways that you may not have even expected. That is amazing. It is an amazing way to be in the world where that kind of surprise is allowed to happen in your life.
There’s a story that some of you may know from reading Assata Shakur’s autobiography, when she talks about her grandmother. She had, I don’t know if it’s a phone conversation or a grandmother came to see her. Her grandmother’s this religious woman, and the grandmother is like—she called her Joanne, I’m sure. And she’s like, “Joanne, I had a dream last night, and in that dream, you had got free!” I’m sure Assata and them at the time was plotting anyhow, but that coming from grandma, from that place… I’m sure Assata ain’t trying to do no scientific analysis with her grandmama telling her. She knows her grandma’s a spiritual woman. Take it for what it’s worth. What happens eventually, maybe within the next month, is Assata is free. Those kind of acts of solidarity… because this was an integrated underground team. It was not only Black Liberation Army, it was Weather Underground and others, some with no organization, who came together in solidarity to free Assata Shakur. I bring that up so that it’s not just all in, “We’re going to change. We’re going to evolve. We’re going to become new.” Sometimes it’s in the very physical acts of freeing somebody from one of the most oppressive situations you can be in. In that process, every one of them involved in that process was affected by it in some really great, humanizing ways when it was successful. We in a struggle that we gotta be open to what we do on the every day in our organizing and how we how we relate to people, how we meet people, how we make love, how we talk to folk, how we get up, how we get down means something.
One of the most craziest things, I think, for people to get is that our oppression is really deep and on many levels, but one of the ways to deal with the internalized part is that you got to seek joy. Sometimes it sounds crazy. How can you seek joy when there’s so much suffering? Because that joy is the most powerful way to combat the internalized oppression that you’ve been carrying. And this is what I learned from the years in prison, from reading all the radical psychologies and the different things like that. You got to return to something that for many sounds, “Oh, that’s kind of wishy washy,” but no Martin Luther King said it’s the most powerful force in the universe, love. At first, when I read that from him in prison, I’m like, “Oh, Martin, you always talking that love.” But I’m also reading books on love, from Erich Fromm to others. And I’m like, oh, I get or at least I’m getting it. Looking at what we’ve been through, I’m like, I don’t want to repeat those same things when I get out, and I want to be with folks, like-minded and like-hearted folks, when I get out so that we are trying to create new ways of making this transformation of society happen, that includes our transformation in the process, that does not leave it up to some future time when we done overcame the capitalist class. That is such bullsh*t. I use bullsh*t because I heard my other comrades use bullsh*t. [Audience laughs]
But, those things become very, very important. So when I get the opportunities to share, those are things I want to share. When we was dealing with the Palestine presentation earlier, on the resistance, what lessons can we learn? I’m already feeling like, “oh man, this is a hard thing to convey to folks, that we may be in struggles where people are really going to get hurt.” I think of that young one, [Tortugita], who I’m sure did not have any idea [they were] going to end [their] life there, right? And many others who have been in or who go to jail for one day and get bailed out, but that might be the most traumatic experience they have ever had, and they’re going to need help. So in our formations, we have got to work into what we do, how we learn: collective care, community care, self-care. It is one of the most powerful ways for us to deal with the internalized stuff, as we’re dealing with these mega systems of oppression that we’re going to meet. How are we going to change with each other?I had one question yesterday around what happens when someone is physically or sexually harmed within the movement. It happens. I think I shared one example of back in our days when that has happened and we didn’t necessarily have the best methods, but it at least let me know that we need to have more understandings. Harm reduction, more understandings. When someone is hurt deep inside, there are folks now who can help us on them levels to help those individuals to kind of recover. Otherwise, we kind of push them to the side.
One of the new words I’ve learned this year is neurodivergency. [Audience cheers] Now for me, that is so exciting. For one, it’s like what the fu*k is neurodivergency? Because it came up in this gathering, so I know when I’m going home, I’m getting right on the laptop, and I’m looking it up. Looking it up gives me an understanding of something that can be so important in our movement so we stop isolating folks who don’t fit the norm. How do we do that? We’re the inclusive ones. We’re the ones who include. We’re the ones at least make them efforts. It’s always a struggle, but we make them efforts. For me to have that understanding also allowed me to look back on on folks who I may have avoided… because what? They sound a little crazy? They talked a little crazy? They moved a little crazy? Like “oh… oh, okay, I’m going to change that.” So I know that when I have times to talk, I want to bring that up. At least from me because I know that I got some social capital being Ashanti from the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army. I done did all this prison time. Nothing compared with what Mumia is doing now. I put all that perspective. It ain’t nothing. But the things that help us to change within, for me, is still primary.
The incident in the library. I’m just gonna be brief, but I’m like, “Oh, these my childrens here.” Okay. I know I could just sit back, because they got this. They got this. But it’s like, we’re the ones who are at least willing to stand and fight. Not in the macho sense that we just going to fight. We got an understanding with it. We know that everything we do has a much larger and deeper picture, because the world we want is much larger and deeper. It’s that Octavia Butlerian world. It’s them type of science fiction worlds, right? That’s why I think that imagination part becomes so important. We cannot be locked down. We don’t lock ourselves down, you know? Because in this struggle, we do need everything. We need everybody.As a Black revolutionary and one who, I’m very clear—I call myself a revolutionary nationalist, but I also say that you got to go beyond nationalism. One of the reasons for the “beyond” is because I know old school Black Nationalism excluded women, excluded queer folks. But I understand the power of it. The thoughts of what brings Black people together. Even if we say “Black Nation”, even if we say “Black Liberation”. We know it’s talking about our community, but I know that my role is to make sure that we’re being inclusive in our circles. So I’m constantly telling you, especially young Black folks, that those who are speaking in our behalf—because, you know, anarchists don’t play “you speaking on our behalf”. You don’t do that. But in our circles, we need to be the ones to speak up and say, “Uh-uh, we ain’t all on that page.” If you’re going to talk about our people. You talking about us too, and we’re playing a part in this, as you are. Maybe you might be the one who has to move out. In the ’60s, too, there was a point where there was a saying, “Move on over or we’ll move all over you.” That point may have come again in the Black Movement, as we speak.
I’m using this as an example, because, as we do all the things we do in our localities and our homes, in our private lives, we got to keep in mind, just like I do, that people somewhere, everywhere, always are trying to raise the stakes, are trying to break out of the box. When I don’t remind myself is when I go into depression. My friends get on me. They say, “You’re watching too much CNN, too much MSNBC, or that station”. So I got to keep reminding myself, “No, remember Seattle? Remember the Zapatistas? Remember the uprising with George Floyd?” Oh no, I got to remember. I got to remind myself. I’m telling you that as an elder now. I got to keep reminding myself. You got to keep reminding yourself that all over people are doing things that will really confirm and affirm that we can make this revolution, insurrectionary change happen. [Audience cheers]
So I’m not sure. At some point I’m gonna see if I can play something. When I do it, I’m gonna put the microphone up to give you an example of what I’m saying. There’s times when I’m sitting at home and my wife would say, “I’m sending you something.” I don’t know if it’s Tiktok or… I don’t know them things. But it was this brother at a meeting with other Black folks. And I’ll stop there for a minute. I have been in my own head searching for what ways could those of us in the Black community confront those male-ist, sexist, heterosexist folks in the Black community who are really impediments to our liberation and participation in the broader movements. And I’m like, “man, we have got to confront these folks!” I could not find words, and then my wife sends me something. This brother’s at a meeting, and he just lets these other folks—Black folks in the meeting, all black—he lets them have it. He’s telling them that, “You can’t accept the leadership of Black women and Black queers because of who they having sex with?” He just lets them have it and challenges them. He says, “their leadership seems to be calculated. They’re there for me when I can’t be there for myself because the police is shooting me and throwing me in prison, and you telling me you concerned with who they having sex with?” I’m like, “this is the language I’ve been looking for!” Because sometimes you have got to do that even amongst your own neighborhood, your own community. You got to kind of let folks know that, “no, this has to stop. I am here. This has to stop.”
So all these things become really important, even if they seem insignificant in an isolated way. They’re really not. We are the ones that are really putting out visions of ways that we can be in this land mass, beyond empire, respecting that this is Indigenous land. We are the ones that are really putting forth that we need to have hard conversations. We are the ones who are saying, “Hey, right now, them folks who are using needles over there, they need some help. Right now them folks that are in prison over there, they need some help. Right now these children are not getting a proper education. We need to be able to help them.” Immediate stuff. But every immediate stuff has broader, deeper visions going on. We have got to keep that in mind. Keep it in mind.
So the last few days—I know tomorrow, I’m here tomorrow. I am still on the cloud. I don’t know if you can tell. It just confirms and affirms to me that it ain’t over. Y’all make me so proud. [Audience claps] So proud.
I’m not necessarily going to be long, but I wanted to talk about the promise, the liberatory promise, which basically comes down to this: in a religious way, you could call it the covenant. In a legal way, you could call it a promise, but in a spiritual way it can also be like your ancestors. You know that your ancestors did the best they could for you, and when you give them thought, it is really like drawing from them that they wanted the best for you. Your spirituality may be telling you that, “Yo”—and this is that covenant, right?—“if you do these things, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in the people, then we’ll win. This land can change.” It’s passed on from generation to generation. In the Black Movement, we talk, probably to this day, about the promised land. It all comes from the Bible. The promised land. We ain’t got to the Promised Land yet, but I think it’s because of the situation we’re in. We were kidnapped, put in that ship and brought here. We can’t even call Africa the promised land. It may, it may have to be here. It’s got to be here in dialog with our indigenous folks, but we ain’t got nowhere else to go. We’re not immigrants. The Chicanos, they’re not immigrants. The Indigenous folks are not immigrants. We’re not immigrants. We came here in the most horrible way, but this ain’t been home to us yet. So the promise is that together, we can create the vision of what a home for all of us could be on the kind of liberatory basis that really allows for, like that Zapatista thing, a world where many worlds exist. Them kind of imaginative visionings, we still have to do that. We have to do that, probably more important than any thing else, to know why we engage in the most minute actions or behaviors.
So I’m going to see if I can play this. If I can get it, I have to put it up to the microphone. The reason I’m playing it is because I want to see my peoples pull it together. You see the election thing going on now, you got all these Uncle Tom collaborating Black folks that’s going to do everything they can to pull us back into this monster’s grip. Even with militant rhetoric. That’s an Al Sharpton, right? But when you got others on the ground having these other conversations, they give you an indication that whatever those are saying in the media, listen to the conversations that are going on on the ground level, in the communities. That might give you more of an insight of the level of resistance and the potential of more resistance.
I think Modibo [Kadalie] was saying that also with his presentation. He’s telling you the books that him and Andrew [Zonneveld] have written are dealing with the resistance going back to the 1500s when they brought the first Africans over, how they had to resist in very intimate, direct, democratic ways. Modibo brought up at the end that they didn’t write these books for people to just know the historical explanations that they’re putting out, but for us to see that even as we live now, there are people who are engaging in direct democracy, and sometimes we just need the vision to see it and to know how to support that. Which is why, again, we are not the vanguard. We just really trying to help ourselves and others to see how we can already do this and just bring the streams together. So as I go, I’m gonna try to get this. I ain’t the best at this. My computer is not the fastest. Everybody’s alright so far? [Audience cheers]
While I’m doing this too, just in New York last month. I went to New York. I’m in Rhode Island. Two of our comrades had passed. Sekou Odinga, who was Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army. One of those, when they set up the international chapter in the Black Panther Party in Algiers, they was meeting all these different liberation movements, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PFLP and stuff. And Sekou and others was part of those who went to training camps run by the Palestinians to learn guerrilla warfare and to bring them skills back here. So there’s stories like that. Some of them people didn’t even know until the memorial, because some of that was shared. But then there’s also Greg Thomas, professor in Massachusetts. He did a book on George Jackson, who was at certain point in California prisons, he was the revolutionary organizer. At one point, was incorporated into the Black Panther Party, but then they killed his brother who was trying to help free him one year, then he made an escape attempt and they killed him. When they raided his cell and took out everything from his cell, he had two handwritten poems. One of them was called “Enemy of the Sun.” When it was put out, a lot of people thought that he wrote it, but then in some research, they realized that no, it was from a well known Palestinian poet who, at the time, was in prison. But it was the impact that the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian Liberation Movement had on each other. So again, you never know how events in the world are going to impact you. Okay, I’m getting back to this.
[Video Clip]“…just shot dead in the street? Guess who’s not on the front lines? [Inaudible] Black women and gay men are running. So if you sit here and tell me that you can’t follow leadership from a gay man or Black woman, to be honest, you p*ssy. Because if you can’t take somebody who’s way more, far more calculated to run this because of who they decide to have sex with, I’m worried about who you’re trying to have sex with. What is your issue? If they gay. It has nothing to do with you. If they a woman has nothing to do with you. Let them lead. They trying to make sure we not shot no more. You not doing it. You not doing it. I can’t do it. A lot of us can’t do it. Why we f*cked up? If we come into contact with the police, we’re going to jail. So when they out here, and they putting [inaudible] f*cking life on the line, when they really dying. There’s an astronomical number of Black women dead for no reason. A number of gay, trans people dying. Guess what color they are? They Black. So just saying, ‘I can’t get behind that because you gay.’ F*ck outta here. Get behind them and shut up or stay at home.”
[crowd applause]Ashanti: So I share that because you never know what helps you to keep them spirits up. Or sometimes you just could be down in the dumps and you’re like, “Are we gonna pull this together?” and it could be something as simple as that. It could be you hearing a poem. It could be you just watching a couple walking down the street with a child. Those things that feed that spirit in you for more, for better, for freedom. When I hear that, then I know that things I was concerned with, even in the Black community, that lets me know it’s already happening. Even in the different struggles that we represent in here, you should have a sense that what you’re doing is already part of 1,000 other efforts and work being done. We just need to see it. It’d be great if we can figure out more ways to connect what’s already happening. The revolution, that insurrectionary impulse is there. People want better. So we gotta see it, and we gotta believe it. We gotta believe it.
So I’mma leave it there, because if there are questions I would definitely take them. But to know you… You’re beautiful. You are the ones—and you allow me to be a part of this—that is on the forefront of changing this world. Y’all are doing this, and I’m glad that there’s that inter-generational thing that we can do now too, because I’m so glad. We cut the older generation off. We were too angry. You can’t be up in your anger all the time, but the fact that we can do this in an inter-generational way means a lot as well. We can give you what we can. We don’t need to be your leaders, but we can give you what we can and help you, especially to believe that we can win. We can win. Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people! [Applause]
Ashanti: Right on, right on. Okay, so do we want to do it? If they want to. I might sit down for that.
Question 1: I work at a liquor store that’s very small, and most of us are queer and trans. We’re trying to maintain a culture of mask wearing among employees, and we interact with a lot of customers who have seen that as being almost a direct threat to their being, and we have seen a little bit of escalation of discomfort, especially in older generations as a result. What would be your advice when interacting with these people on a day to day basis, often every day, to help make them feel included and empowered to do that for them. And thank you. Thank you so much.
Cindy Milstein: Anarchism in action. We want to do a couple more questions, and then Ashanti can respond. Anyone else feel like coming up and saying something?
Question 2: As someone who’s been on the receiving end of some of the worst that our prison state/police state has to offer, what would your advice be for people who are in conflict with the police as part of the struggle and for people who are currently incarcerated?
Question 3: I wanted to ask what ways you cultivate joy in your life that have worked over and over for you throughout the years, no matter what you’ve had to face.
Question 4: There’s been a Black trans movement that has run parallel historically to a lot of sort of like Black liberationist struggles, and I feel like Black trans people have historically been relegated to specific margins of those movements. What do you make of this parallel track that has historically existed but is so often forgotten and removed from Black revolutionary history, and how do we even conceptualize a future Black trans resistance if we can’t even begin to conceptualize this past one?
Ashanti: [Responding to question 4] A big part of my responsibility is because—and I hate to say this—but of those from the Panther Party, I think I might be one of the few who will even bring up the fact that our movements still exclude women and don’t want to hear nothing about queer, trans, nothing. And I’m like, “Well, if you give me the platform, I’m going to tell you that you need to. And either way it’s going to happen, if you’re talking about Black people.” I did that at the Black Radical Conference in Atlanta. I think it was this year. Because I am tired of it. And tired of it, knowing that as a young revolutionary, I participated in it. Not knowing any better, I participated. But once I know, then that’s got to come to an end. Sometimes when you feel you’re speaking out for the first times, I knew it took some courage for me like, “Nope. I’mma do it, and then I’m going to do it every time after that.” We have to challenge our people. That’s one reasons I wanted to show that there, because it’s happening even when I didn’t even know it was happening.
I just felt like a lot of trans/queer in our communities, just pretty much said, “No f*ck them man. I’ve been hurt from family and others so much I don’t even care.” I know that that doesn’t work for us, but I know that we have to be very careful with it. Because we have to still move as a people. So at least as a Panther, I know I’mma speak on it. But then I’m always on internet and listening to others who also speak on and then I’m reaching out. I want us to create more ways to be together, so that our voice becomes heard and our power gets to be felt. In this sense, yeah, we need power. And this other thing. I don’t even know if I can—I say “we” a lot when I’m talking about trans and queer community. I’m a cis male. I don’t even know if I can do that. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to ask for permission, but that’s the revolutionary community I want to be a part of. You understand? [Audience cheering] So I know that we have to do that battle, and I’m hoping that I still will meet more folks and we figure out ways to communicate.
So I know the other one… Give it to me again.
Audience Member: [Repeats Question 2]
Ashanti: Conflict with the police or in the prison system. We know that we always going to confront the police. They are the front line troops. In the Panther Party we called them “the occupying army”, and it made sense to those of us who needed to see that to begin to understand their role. In the heady days, you might find yourself confronting the police in the street and in the prisons. Sometimes you also learn some wisdom and know that you ain’t got to confront all the time and throw a punch to their jaw all the time. Maybe there’s other ways you can do it, especially depending on what the situation is. I was just telling my comrade who will be a father, “when a child is in the family, that means you ain’t making decisions for you anymore. You making decisions for the family. If you’re part of an organization, you’ve also got to understand you ain’t making decisions for you. You also considering the organization. It requires a certain kind of discipline.” There’s still the trauma that you’re going to get from these people. I think that’s harm reduction too. As much as you can avoid having them kind of direct traumatic experiences, you do. If you on a road by yourself and they pull you over, man, don’t start calling them pigs and all that, “Mother f*cker, why you pulling me over?” No. Just say “Okay officer. Here’s my sh*t. Okay, give me the ticket. See you later.”
You want to live. You want to survive to fight another day. The ones who are doing time in there. They learn very quick, you got to learn how to get around these people for your sanity, for your survival. Then at that point, if you ever make the parole board, you want to be able to give your best little performance. You got to do that sometimes. It’s a survival skill, but it’s also constantly recognizing the police is the police. Whether they in the prisons, they on the street, whether they got the uniform, going to Vietnam, other places, they’re still playing the police role. You understand that they’re part of the system that’s got to change, Anti-police, anti-prison system, all that is my concept of Abolition. That whole thing gotta go.
The other one was joy. And then there’s one after that. [Responding to question 3] Here’s what I do. The last few days: Easy. I got joy. This is the easy one. I got joy, and I know that I need to keep putting myself in situations of joy like this more. I think it’s been part of the problem that I’ve been isolating, and I feel like it’s been for years and years. Stop isolating. Get amongst them folks. I say like-minded and like-hearted because feeling like I’m amongst people that want to make this thing happen, it keeps my spirits up. Sometimes, at home it’s putting on music. I’m from Plainfield, New Jersey, the land of Parliament-Funkadelic. I might have Parliament-Funkadelic blasting sometimes, walking the dog up and down the neighborhood. Let me tell about the neighborhood. Barrington is the suburb of Providence. Barrington is pretty white. I don’t know what my neighbors think when I’m playing the music. I don’t put them earplugs, and I want to hear the music. I’m bopping as I’m walking the dog, and I’m sure the neighbors like, “What is he doing?” But the music brings up things for me. It was them good times. Parliament-Funkadelic, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, the jazz players. Sometimes I put on “Compared to What.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. Yes! Those things keep my spirits up.
Going to church. I’m back in church. A little thing about my church: it’s a Hebrew Israelite church. Not the people with the buckles and the outfits and stuff, just regular folks. It comes out of the Black experience, so it might seem like regular Black gospel, regular church, but we have our rituals which are different from Rabbinic and other stuff. But man, when you go there and you hear the singing and there’s times when you’re getting up and there’s a marching thing, right? To me, the marching thing is like, “that’s that marching thing. We at war. Hold up that banner. Don’t let the banner fall.” It means a lot to me. I need that community. I need them kind of visuals. I understand that the visuals are from a language we don’t use anymore, but I understand it. It helps me to know that I’m still in this battle. So going to church is the thing, too. And then connecting with my comrades, my old comrades, whether on the phone or sometimes it might be a memorial. It’s those moments when we’re together that we know we’ve been through something that not others will quite understand. And they may not get when we laughing over something we done did and we hope nobody ever knows. We know we’ve been through hell, but we came out still with some level of humanity and an ability to laugh about it.
Those are the kind of things now and then with the kids. My oldest is 50 and 49, then I got married again, so it’s a 14 year old an 11 year old. Their friends think I’m granddaddy, and they then my kids got said, “No, that’s dad. That’s my Baba”. But anyhow, watching them grow, like my son, who’s 14, big afro, and he’s into track and field. I’m watching this body grow. He’s got this little hairline coming. Joy that I’m still here to be able to see it because I did not think I was going to make it past 20. Did not think so. I’m 50 years over that. But being able to watch them, it’s them kind of moments of joy. And that’s the kind of thing that I want for us all. Moments of joy are precious. We have got to know that we need them. And for moments when you gotta sometimes take off—you’re going to the beach, you’re going on a hiking trip, whatever. Do it! Do it because it is you building a resistance against the sh*t that we face. Joy, and you’re changing in the process. So I’m really big on that now, and I think I’ve been in a good space now for maybe the last year for a long time. And I plan on staying. [Audience cheers] So I know there was one more, the first one?
Audience Member: [Repeats Question 1]
Ashanti: I think we need to figure out have how to have better conversations with folks who we know they’re not necessarily on the same page as us. One of mines was around probably 10, 15, years ago—being at anarchist spaces and you start hearing the pronoun thing, and I ain’t understand it then. But even as I did, I’m like, if I who make an effort to understand it find it difficult, because I gotta remember—My memory ain’t the best. What about other folks in the communities that just don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about? They might come into a meeting out of curiosity, and you giving them vibes because they ain’t calling you by the pronoun you wanted, you got an attitude and you’re actually showing it to them. I want you to have some compassion for those of us who are older. It may take a minute, but we try, those of us who try. Others who don’t try, you may just want to put it like, “I got a limit. If you can’t handle that, maybe we don’t need to talk, whatever.” But people are going to get it because you’ve been pushing it, and others have been pushing it, and the children have been pushing it. My daughter, especially the one at 11, she she already has a sense of who she is.
It’s going to get better, but there’s got to be some compassion. The resistance is not from a mean spirit. It’s just like, “What the hell is this?” And you talking about someone who physically looks like female has a different way to define themselves. Some folks are like, “What the hell?” The Rush Limbaugh folks are all on this. That’s why they’re saying “We’ve got to get Trump in office.” They are really on this thing of trans and queer and gay. Which is another reason why, if Trump should get in, we need to figure out how we’re going to support each other. Because we know some of the things Trump will do that a Biden may not do as fast. But we know that, you know, on the issues of gay and queer, there’s going to be some things that Congress may not pass that kind of makes it easier. It’s just like alternatives to abortion. We already should be thinking—I’m sure we are—about what we can do if certain things happen. We’re going to take care of ourselves and possibly show others that they can do the same. Because the State is the State. The Empire is the Empire.
Do you have any more? I could if you want [answer more questions]. I always like the this part, because I know people going to ask some direct stuff that they want to know or share.Question 5: So many faces… First of all, thank you. Your contribution to the struggle is like innumerable and immense. I oftentimes find myself returning to your words in times of intense despair, and I just want to thank you so much for that. I came from so-called Chicago, where Stateville prison is planned to be torn down and replaced with a reformative, so-called rehabilitative prison instead. Someone inside also passed away this past weekend from a heat wave that affected him and had he had an asthma attack and died. So I just want to ask, knowing the death trap that prison is, how do you think that we can be in more material solidarity and support of people inside, beyond book packing, letter writing and phone zaps and all that type of stuff, especially knowing that folks inside are this wellspring of revolutionary, insurrectionary knowledge and practice?
Ashanti: The prison issue and the political prisoner issues are some of the hardest issues to get our communities to take on. As a member of the Jericho Movement, Jericho fights for the freedom of political prisoners in the United States. Man, we’ve been doing this for decades. Even just getting the folks in the community to listen to us that they are political prisoners, that they’ve been in there for decades. They’re the same ones, many times, who the politicians got them voting for more police, more prison construction or better… even if they say in better prison, no one is talking about abolition. It seemed like at some point that abolition was gaining some ground. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but I still think we need to work at that. We got to put ourselves in situations where we have more face-to-face with key figures in the community. When I say key figures, I don’t necessarily mean the politicians. Maybe sometimes the preachers, maybe the deacons and deaconesses, maybe and the regular folks or folks who are at the community centers and possibly even the street organizations. I think that we don’t do the face-to-face anymore, and I think because of that, we’re not developing a better way of presenting the kind of narrative that might get folks to understand why we need to intervene and what’s going on in the prisons, why we need to get our political prisoners free. There’s all kind of things.
It’s the most difficult area that I have ever worked in. There’s not been many joyous moments. My comrade Veronza Bowers just got out several months ago, after 40 something years. There ain’t no recognition about who he is, his contributions, nothing. When Dhoruba bin Wahad got out, there was a little recognition. When Jalil Muntaqim got out after almost 50 years, there’s no recognition. But every decade, every year he was in there, we was fighting for his release and going to as many different venues to speak about political prisoners. Reverend Joy Powell is in upstate New York prison now. No one knows about her. Reverend Joy Powell is one of them who has stories similar to Malcolm X when he was Detroit Red. That was Reverend Joy Powell at one time, and then she changed. She became a minister I think in Rochester, New York or somewhere upstate. She’s fighting against police brutality, next thing you know, they done got her jammed up on something, and she’s doing I don’t know how many years in upstate as a New York political prisoner.
So it’s hard, but I think the challenge is for us to find a different narrative and to start going into communities and having actual conversation with, I say, key folks. They might say “influencers” today, maybe on certain levels. I’m not big on the social media with that, but to be able to sit down with folks and say, “Hey, you know the situation we’ve been in. You know that there’s people going to come forth and fight back or try to lead us or raise consciousness. Why are they sitting in prison?” In the women’s prison, men’s prisons, there is such a clamp down that even me trying to stay up on it now, I can’t imagine how that would be for me. I just did total 14 years, but what I hear they’re doing now? That’s to drive you insane. You don’t even get the actual letters anymore. You might get a visit, and there’s the screen, if they do come up. You’re so far away, you may not get a visit. And it’s the same thing inside. The way that they talk to you, treat you, it’s like you’re an animal. So it’s a big order. Even on that, I don’t have no immediate answers, but I always go to [that] we don’t have them kind of conversations in the community no more. We need to start trying to build grassroots movements from the bottom by having them conversations.A lot of times, the street organizations can’t get too involved because they already got records, and the slightest violation they got, then they right back in. So it even makes it harder. But what they’re doing in the prisons—and they’re expanding—we will be that open air prison like Gaza and all these situations now. The ways that they are laying down their technologies of control. It ain’t just the prisons anymore. I feel like it’s the welfare. I don’t even think they call it welfare no more. You got to go to court for all kind of fines, your car fine, your house fine, or they’re getting ready to do all these other things. They got us under such control. The Internet got us under such control. The cameras on the corners. The things that fly, [drones]. So it feels like it’s closing in, and it keeps closing. And we gotta figure out more how to break out of them confinements and get the people to see, man, we can’t keep wasting time, because it’ll get to the point where we can’t even breathe without their permission. So we strike out. Anarchists, we know what to do, so… I wish I had more to give you.
Question 6: Thank you so much. I’ve written down part of a question because we’ve had other comrades ask for advice when dealing with physical conflictuality with the state. And you’ve also spoken about times when, if you’re alone in the car at night, where strategic de-escalation might be something that you approach. We call that a version of a harm reductive approach. This has come up in conversation. I also relate to what you’re saying about this kind of disorientation and difficulty remembering the lessons that you’ve learned and other people have taught you sometimes at these very tense, fight or flight moments. So I’m wondering if you have some lessons that you can put into the collective consciousness. What might go through your mind in a moment where you’re choosing between this crossroads? Not to create a duality between moments of intentional escalation and otherwise.
Ashanti: Just real quick on that. I did share with somebody today. There was times I’ve been in demonstrations, marches, and the police start really getting out of hand. There was one time where they was really being abusive to this elder Black woman. And I can’t take that. I can’t stand and watch that. So I see myself walking. But the younger comrades, I had already told them about me in this sense: When you see me in that zone, all I need you to do, stand in front of me, make me look you in the eye. That’s all. Just say “Ashanti.” Because I know, and they know, I’m getting ready to jump on this mother f*cker. So imagine how I felt when I’m watching George Floyd. I am so angry at the people around him. I understand they scared, but you just stood there and watched them kill this Black man to his last breath. There’s times where you gotta really chill out. You gotta consider who’s around you. You gotta consider the repercussions of your own actions. So you can’t just snap like that. And if you folks, who you’re close to know you, they know what to do. And I would give them young folks permission, “Y’all know. Get in front of me. Get in front of me.” And I think a part of that why I don’t have no fears, because from the Panthers to the BLA, I learned to take them on. I learned that, oh, they can be just as scared as anybody else. But the thing is to think, just think about it. That’s why it’s important for when you let people know you, know your limitations. It becomes really important. That’s that’s why it’s really great when we can share our stories with each other. So folks know who you are, what you’ve been through, so some things don’t trigger you.
In the Panther Party—and this is around sexual abuse—a lot of times there was sexual abuse in the Black Panther Party, but even more, we didn’t know who was sexually abused before they even joined the Black Panther Party. You do certain things, and it’s a trigger. So me now, we need to know each other, but that calls for trust too. That’s cause for that kind of vulnerability, that you say, “I need to share with you that when you do this or you say that, it’s a trigger. I need to feel safe. I need to feel like it matters to me what you do and how it’s going to impact me.” That’s what we have to do more. It can’t be no side thought. It has to be fully integrated into how we’re raising ourselves. So, the thing with what do you do in them situations. Do you fight? Sometimes you do. Do you stand back? Sometimes you do. Do you think as much as possible who’s around you, who needs to be safe around you? That mother and the child that’s close by you, is it possible that they could get hurt? Just things to think about. So it ain’t just the macho thing. You think about it. And imagine them situations even beforehand, because sometimes that helps you to make snap judgments when it actually happens.
Question 7: So one of the questions I had is regarding “influencer” people, like how social capital affects the way that we organize sometimes, where people that are very influential in a place, because they’re more outspoken, or they know the right words to say and therefore can get into positions of more influence in anarchist circles. For example, in the Panther Party, like Huey or whoever, like people that get in those leadership like roles. How do we combat that? Sometimes it’s subtle. I’ve seen it in anarchist circles where it happens, but it’s not an actual leader. They don’t have a chairman or a title. Yet they’re able to move people around situations sometimes and therefore have more influence or bully other people. You see this sometimes. People don’t know how to approach this, especially when a person is of a certain identity as well or like goes through this specific struggle, and just finding a way of dealing with that.
And then another thing kind of adding to what you were saying about agitation. As an anarchist, my approach was always to agitate. Anywhere you go at the beginning, we hold the sign and we stayed on the sidewalk where it’s legal. But it’s “blah,” right? What can we do because normally, historically, anarchism has been agitative, right? You go to places, we’re known for doing the rowdy sh*t. So I was just wondering, like expanding on that a little bit.
Ashanti: I think we should stay rowdy. I think we should stay rowdy. [Audience cheers] But on the other level, now we can we talk about interpersonal relationships within the group and why it’s important to have some things you agree upon in terms of how you’re going to function with each other. What we’re trying to do in Providence now, we’re putting together community center, but the first retreat we just had was just laying down things as simple as: how do you want to be treated in the organization, how do you want your relationship to be with others, how do you want to make decisions, how do you want to deal with issues of egos and and the authoritarian? Because it ain’t like anarchists are free of all this. We got all these tendencies. We’re in this society. But I still think to this day, we’re more likely to at least be willing to talk about it and try to struggle against it. I think other folks it’s not even on their agendas. That’s so-called movement folks.
There’s a lot of information out here now, readings that people can do that helps us to see why it’s important for us to get to know each other and for us to create the kind of practices that helps us to minimize the tendencies of the bully, the sexist, the one who’s super submissive that has never known anything else but possibly listening to a man. We know that these are some of the internalized oppressions that we have to deal with. So let’s learn them. And there’s a lot of people that do trainings in them. There’s a lot of books out on it, and we are reading people, man. You know. I say that because I’m reading things all the time, because I know the internal stuff is really the thing that killed us in the Panther Party. The FBI just knew how to manipulate it.
So what do we do? We develop those capacities to help us to evolve, to get to better places. From our stories—our stories are so different. Each one is unique, but we gotta know it. It helps if we can get to the point to be honest and vulnerable, to share with the trust that ain’t nobody going to abuse what you just shared with them, that they will work with you, you and others will work together, to be better as a human being and what you do as an organizational member. It’s a struggle, so that’s why we ain’t bringing this thing down without, at the same time, getting it out of us. It’s got to be the same. You can’t do one without the other. That was that New Age stuff: “Oh, we just gonna free ourselves,” and no consideration about the mega-oppressions. We got to do both. The more that we do it, I think the better we can get. And I think it helps us also, we get better with each other when we see in the community, folks who have similar things. We got a little bit of experience and wisdom in how to help others in the community that don’t have this experience to know how to get to a better place. They want to join the group. They see things.
One quick example: One of the things that helped with Critical Resistance, because Critical Resistance was pretty much run by anarchists and anti-authoritarians, the ways that we did meetings, was always to get the men to not talk so much and to step back and to use the board to be inclusive on everybody’s input. Some people who had no political experience, when they saw that, like, “They really want, my opinion? It’s going up on the board?” That blew their minds, because no other time had that happened to them. It was us saying, “No, we are all important, and we all want to be included.” I’m telling you, it was us who were putting them examples forward. So we got to continue to do things like that.
I thank you for being patient. If I said anything rambling or whatnot, you can blame it on Cindy. But this has been great. This has been good. Let’s leave from here with that spirit, that spirit that we can change. We got ancestors. We got folks who we are building off of them. We know that this can happen, that what the United States is now can be no more.
Our dreams. Our dreams up. Our dreams up. Let’s make it happen. Power to the people, one last time.
Audience: All power to the people!
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This week, we’re sharing words from anarchist, author, organizer and former participant in the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Ashanti Omowali Alston, in the keynote address at the 2024 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville. The presentation was entitled “Solidarity, Spirituality and Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back”. You can support Ashanti’s GoFundMe here.
From the ACAB website:
Trusting in solidarity, the mysterium of spirituality, and a promise from god knows where—a “where” that at this historical moment, might just be Palestine. What does it mean TO BE in the midst of all this right now? RIGHT NOW!
Ashanti Alston is a revolutionary Black nationalist, anarchist, abolitionist, speaker, writer, elder motivator. A long-time member of The Jericho Movement, he is presently an advisory board member of the National Jericho Movement and co-founding board member of the Center for Grassroots Organizing (Vermont land project). He continues giving talks and writing inspirational analyses concerning the dismantling of the myriad oppressive regimes in which we find ourselves enmeshed.
Ashanti is one of the few former members of the Black Panther Party who identifies as an anarchist in the tradition of ancestor Kuwasi Balagoon (BPP & BLA). He developed abolitionist politics in the early years of Critical Resistance. He has helped save the life of a baby pig with animal liberationists, learned depth-queer politics from being challenged, and wants to see non-ego eldership partaking through sincerely loving the younger generations who truly want to ‘CARRY IT ON.”
You can find other recordings from the 2024 ACABookfair at acabookfair.noblogs.org.
Transcription
Cindy Milstein: I’m Cindy. I want to really welcome everybody here on behalf of the ACAB Bookfair. It is such a joy and pleasure and delight for us to organize this and then have so many incredibly amazing people show up in one place. Why does this have to just be three days? It’s also beautiful how everybody has been really helping, so I want to thank everybody who’s done so much this weekend to make this weekend happen and to get here and to be here. Thank you, everyone, really. Welcome.
I wasn’t planning to introduce Ashanti, but I actually feel delighted. I used to see Ashanti a lot, and we used to be involved in anarchist summer schools together and other projects together. We did a lot together. We saw each other a lot and feel like dear friends. Then, I don’t think we’ve seen each other for 12 years or so, and it feels super powerful to be together again with friends and Ashanti. I’ve always really appreciated him. I keep saying “sweetheart, sweetheart.” I’m an older anarchist too, and It’s really nice to be around in this multi-generational space with someone who’s so humble and able to still see possibility, able to still see that we need to be in this for the long haul and be together no matter where we are with our anarchism.
Ashanti has had a long, illustrious career being a revolutionary and a radical, starting as a teenager with the Black Panthers, moving into the Black Liberation Army, with the State trying to contain and destroy Ashanti, and Ashanti not letting them do that, and coming out and being involved with the Jericho political prisoner support movement, among other things. And is also a parent. Okay, so enough of me. I’m gonna let Ashanti speak, and then we’ll do some Q&A afterward.
Ashanti: Okay, I’m not sure. I might sit down. I don’t know, man. I’m not used to the sitting down thing. Well, first of all, thank you for the introduction. It has been years, and it’s just been so good to reconnect. So a lot of times when you know that we’ve all been through so much, then you start seeing some of your old comrades, man, that kind of lifts your spirits up. Right on. But I need you to work with me right now, because I still got a few butterflies going here, right? So, back in them days, Black Panther Party, you know, when we said “Power to the people,” the response was always, “All power to the people.” All power to the people. So I want you to, like, help me to release these revolutionary butterflies out into your midst with your response: Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: One more time. Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: I see them. I see them. Alright. Now, it is clear. I said “to the people.” I did not say to the preachers, to the politicians, to them profiteers. To the people. That’s also my anarchist analysis of The Black Panther Party. It wasn’t an anarchist group, but there was so much about it that helped move me towards anarchism, anti-authoritarian thinkings and practices because the experience in the party taught me the dangers of authoritarianism, even when it was coming from good places. You know? We want to liberate our people. We want to help make a revolution in the United States, but then what happens when you got an ideology and a structure that so much resembles the ideology and structure of what you fighting, with just different words.
Then the FBI and the counterintelligence program and local police is able to feed in on your own internalized, colonial dynamics: the sexisms, the egos, and all them other things. Next thing you know we’re fighting each other. Movements are collapsing. There’s attacks on chapters. There’s comrades getting framed on charges. Others had to take off, going into exile. Others like Fred Hampton and those killed in their beds. It’s a dangerous struggle, but the fact is, that I and others have survived… And I’m 70 now, you know. My knees feel it more, so I accept the elder thing now, right? I’m an elder. So at least I have opportunities to share with you, those things that I hope will be helpful. In this particular case, when I say to you, because this is an anarchist gathering, and I’ve just been so excited since coming here Thursday to return to a spirit of “we going to make this happen.”
That’s, that’s an anarchist spirit to me, because the other folks I’m talking to are still trying to figure out “How are we going to indoctrinate people in the community to do the right thing?” You’re talking about, “How can we create the liberatory programs right now with the knowledges that we are learning right now, that we know we will learn more tomorrow, and put it into all kinds of experimental practices?” That’s where it’s at. That it is not the ideological approach that just says “We got this all laid out. We got it laid out. You just gotta follow this. No, they did it in China. No, they did it in Cuba. They did it in Africa.” No, they didn’t. No, they didn’t.
If anybody listening was at Modibo’s talk… and Modibo, I think, is my elder. Modibo is like in his early 80s? And just to say this about him, also, it was such an honor for me to finally meet him in person. He’s been around longer than I have been doing this, and still believes in his 80s that we can change the world in very anti-authoritarian ways. Every workshop that I was able to attend today just reaffirms for me the same thing. When I went to the harm reduction one, because I couldn’t get into yours, it was so packed [speaking to another presenter]This harm reduction is all new to me, because I feel like I’ve been out of it for a long time. I finally been able to say easily: depression. The depression comes when I feel like, “Man, is a generation going to take this, or are they going to get bamboozled and buy into this madness again?” And when I do that and isolate myself, I get depressed. I sit and do nothing. The years go by. The years go by. Then miraculous things happen. You know? One of them was Seattle, way back. Another one was the Zapatista movement, right? The latest one is what? Who would have thought with what’s going on in occupied Palestine, that the international resistance would be at this level? I’ve never seen anything like it in my 70 years. So it makes me feel like, “Well, Ashanti, you need to get back in there. Get back in there.” You know? And I feel like in the last year, there’s been things happening that have allowed me to feel like I can still be in there and just give it my best. You know? In the process, I am learning so much, from the social media stuff, which I always thought was quite crazy. But then I realize it also has us watching, by minute, the genocide going on over there. It’s allowing us to connect, to increase our resistance, the demonstrations, what we’re doing on the campuses. Oh my god, it’s not over. It’s. Not. Over. So I want to share that with you, because I’m like, “I’m back in. I am here,” and I thank you for the way you have invited me here.
All right. The title I chose was—I don’t know why I choose these. I try to do these fancy titles—“Solidarity, Spirituality and the Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back.” Y’all know what I’m talking about with a turtle, right? The Turtle? Turtle Island, right? I wanted us to think of images. So I would go on the internet and I would put in “on the back of the turtle”, and I put in “civilization on the back of a turtle.” I wanted the images that would show this turtle. Aang was a great help for me, I should tell you. And the particular scene where he’s talking to the lion turtle.
I wanted to imagine in my mind what it means for indigenous folks who have a certain mythology around Turtle Island, and what it meant for Aang to have this conversation with the turtle, to get this wisdom. What does it mean for those who… We can be so scientific. We can just lop that off as, oh, “That’s myths. That’s folk tales. That means nothing.” But what does it mean to those for who that is their culture, and they get their wisdom from these stories? What happened to the role of stories? You know, not everything has to be so scientific. For us, as it helps to focus on the plight of indigenous folks in this country, let’s look at what it means that Turtle Island, before the European conquest, had its ways of living. Then here comes the conquest, and they start building on top of the back of the turtle. Just moving, removing whatever was there, the villages, the agricultural scenes and whatever. Now, you are chopping down trees, you are blowing up mountains, you are digging deep into the earth, and you start to build the United States, or this North American empire, on the back.
I wanted to be able to envision our role as, “How can we get this empire off the back of the turtle?” It can only happen with mass social movements that we become that can opener that just starts cranking around this turtle. And at some point we just gonna flip this motherf*cker off into the galaxy. So that we might begin to really create them lives we know we deserve. We know. We want to live better. What I like about the fact that we are anarchists is that our visions tend to be that imaginative. Our practices tend to be that daring and risky. That’s why I think we have such an important role to play, because a lot of other folks are just dealing with such old ideas, not critiquing them. Old practices, not looking at them to see how destructive or poisonous they can be. Settler colonialism is one thing to say, but what happens when you look at internalized colonialism? What does it look like as we’ve been here and it has seeped all in our behaviors, our bodies? That means that we have got to fight this battle on different level. Different levels.
What happens in solidarity a lot of times, even just in a simple way, is how do we look at each other as we go down the street sometime or knock on the neighbor’s door? How do we look at each other? From saying, “Hey, neighbor, how you doing?” Was it last night or night before the neighbors where I’m staying had lost the cat. They lost the cat. So they’re like, “Well, let’s exchange numbers, and if we see the cat, we help you and return the cat.” Is that not solidarity? Mutual aid? You hear what happened to the indigenous folks—this was me with Wounded Knee—and you want to figure out, “Well, how do you help the folks in Wounded Knee?” Attica jumps off and being that I’m in New York/New Jersey at the time, there’s folks like, “Well, we got to figure out how to get up there and help them prisoners in rebellion.” The act of doing those things has the potential to not only really aid them but to change you in ways that you may not have even expected. That is amazing. It is an amazing way to be in the world where that kind of surprise is allowed to happen in your life.
There’s a story that some of you may know from reading Assata Shakur’s autobiography, when she talks about her grandmother. She had, I don’t know if it’s a phone conversation or a grandmother came to see her. Her grandmother’s this religious woman, and the grandmother is like—she called her Joanne, I’m sure. And she’s like, “Joanne, I had a dream last night, and in that dream, you had got free!” I’m sure Assata and them at the time was plotting anyhow, but that coming from grandma, from that place… I’m sure Assata ain’t trying to do no scientific analysis with her grandmama telling her. She knows her grandma’s a spiritual woman. Take it for what it’s worth. What happens eventually, maybe within the next month, is Assata is free. Those kind of acts of solidarity… because this was an integrated underground team. It was not only Black Liberation Army, it was Weather Underground and others, some with no organization, who came together in solidarity to free Assata Shakur. I bring that up so that it’s not just all in, “We’re going to change. We’re going to evolve. We’re going to become new.” Sometimes it’s in the very physical acts of freeing somebody from one of the most oppressive situations you can be in. In that process, every one of them involved in that process was affected by it in some really great, humanizing ways when it was successful. We in a struggle that we gotta be open to what we do on the every day in our organizing and how we how we relate to people, how we meet people, how we make love, how we talk to folk, how we get up, how we get down means something.
One of the most craziest things, I think, for people to get is that our oppression is really deep and on many levels, but one of the ways to deal with the internalized part is that you got to seek joy. Sometimes it sounds crazy. How can you seek joy when there’s so much suffering? Because that joy is the most powerful way to combat the internalized oppression that you’ve been carrying. And this is what I learned from the years in prison, from reading all the radical psychologies and the different things like that. You got to return to something that for many sounds, “Oh, that’s kind of wishy washy,” but no Martin Luther King said it’s the most powerful force in the universe, love. At first, when I read that from him in prison, I’m like, “Oh, Martin, you always talking that love.” But I’m also reading books on love, from Erich Fromm to others. And I’m like, oh, I get or at least I’m getting it. Looking at what we’ve been through, I’m like, I don’t want to repeat those same things when I get out, and I want to be with folks, like-minded and like-hearted folks, when I get out so that we are trying to create new ways of making this transformation of society happen, that includes our transformation in the process, that does not leave it up to some future time when we done overcame the capitalist class. That is such bullsh*t. I use bullsh*t because I heard my other comrades use bullsh*t. [Audience laughs]
But, those things become very, very important. So when I get the opportunities to share, those are things I want to share. When we was dealing with the Palestine presentation earlier, on the resistance, what lessons can we learn? I’m already feeling like, “oh man, this is a hard thing to convey to folks, that we may be in struggles where people are really going to get hurt.” I think of that young one, [Tortugita], who I’m sure did not have any idea [they were] going to end [their] life there, right? And many others who have been in or who go to jail for one day and get bailed out, but that might be the most traumatic experience they have ever had, and they’re going to need help. So in our formations, we have got to work into what we do, how we learn: collective care, community care, self-care. It is one of the most powerful ways for us to deal with the internalized stuff, as we’re dealing with these mega systems of oppression that we’re going to meet. How are we going to change with each other?I had one question yesterday around what happens when someone is physically or sexually harmed within the movement. It happens. I think I shared one example of back in our days when that has happened and we didn’t necessarily have the best methods, but it at least let me know that we need to have more understandings. Harm reduction, more understandings. When someone is hurt deep inside, there are folks now who can help us on them levels to help those individuals to kind of recover. Otherwise, we kind of push them to the side.
One of the new words I’ve learned this year is neurodivergency. [Audience cheers] Now for me, that is so exciting. For one, it’s like what the fu*k is neurodivergency? Because it came up in this gathering, so I know when I’m going home, I’m getting right on the laptop, and I’m looking it up. Looking it up gives me an understanding of something that can be so important in our movement so we stop isolating folks who don’t fit the norm. How do we do that? We’re the inclusive ones. We’re the ones who include. We’re the ones at least make them efforts. It’s always a struggle, but we make them efforts. For me to have that understanding also allowed me to look back on on folks who I may have avoided… because what? They sound a little crazy? They talked a little crazy? They moved a little crazy? Like “oh… oh, okay, I’m going to change that.” So I know that when I have times to talk, I want to bring that up. At least from me because I know that I got some social capital being Ashanti from the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army. I done did all this prison time. Nothing compared with what Mumia is doing now. I put all that perspective. It ain’t nothing. But the things that help us to change within, for me, is still primary.
The incident in the library. I’m just gonna be brief, but I’m like, “Oh, these my childrens here.” Okay. I know I could just sit back, because they got this. They got this. But it’s like, we’re the ones who are at least willing to stand and fight. Not in the macho sense that we just going to fight. We got an understanding with it. We know that everything we do has a much larger and deeper picture, because the world we want is much larger and deeper. It’s that Octavia Butlerian world. It’s them type of science fiction worlds, right? That’s why I think that imagination part becomes so important. We cannot be locked down. We don’t lock ourselves down, you know? Because in this struggle, we do need everything. We need everybody.As a Black revolutionary and one who, I’m very clear—I call myself a revolutionary nationalist, but I also say that you got to go beyond nationalism. One of the reasons for the “beyond” is because I know old school Black Nationalism excluded women, excluded queer folks. But I understand the power of it. The thoughts of what brings Black people together. Even if we say “Black Nation”, even if we say “Black Liberation”. We know it’s talking about our community, but I know that my role is to make sure that we’re being inclusive in our circles. So I’m constantly telling you, especially young Black folks, that those who are speaking in our behalf—because, you know, anarchists don’t play “you speaking on our behalf”. You don’t do that. But in our circles, we need to be the ones to speak up and say, “Uh-uh, we ain’t all on that page.” If you’re going to talk about our people. You talking about us too, and we’re playing a part in this, as you are. Maybe you might be the one who has to move out. In the ’60s, too, there was a point where there was a saying, “Move on over or we’ll move all over you.” That point may have come again in the Black Movement, as we speak.
I’m using this as an example, because, as we do all the things we do in our localities and our homes, in our private lives, we got to keep in mind, just like I do, that people somewhere, everywhere, always are trying to raise the stakes, are trying to break out of the box. When I don’t remind myself is when I go into depression. My friends get on me. They say, “You’re watching too much CNN, too much MSNBC, or that station”. So I got to keep reminding myself, “No, remember Seattle? Remember the Zapatistas? Remember the uprising with George Floyd?” Oh no, I got to remember. I got to remind myself. I’m telling you that as an elder now. I got to keep reminding myself. You got to keep reminding yourself that all over people are doing things that will really confirm and affirm that we can make this revolution, insurrectionary change happen. [Audience cheers]
So I’m not sure. At some point I’m gonna see if I can play something. When I do it, I’m gonna put the microphone up to give you an example of what I’m saying. There’s times when I’m sitting at home and my wife would say, “I’m sending you something.” I don’t know if it’s Tiktok or… I don’t know them things. But it was this brother at a meeting with other Black folks. And I’ll stop there for a minute. I have been in my own head searching for what ways could those of us in the Black community confront those male-ist, sexist, heterosexist folks in the Black community who are really impediments to our liberation and participation in the broader movements. And I’m like, “man, we have got to confront these folks!” I could not find words, and then my wife sends me something. This brother’s at a meeting, and he just lets these other folks—Black folks in the meeting, all black—he lets them have it. He’s telling them that, “You can’t accept the leadership of Black women and Black queers because of who they having sex with?” He just lets them have it and challenges them. He says, “their leadership seems to be calculated. They’re there for me when I can’t be there for myself because the police is shooting me and throwing me in prison, and you telling me you concerned with who they having sex with?” I’m like, “this is the language I’ve been looking for!” Because sometimes you have got to do that even amongst your own neighborhood, your own community. You got to kind of let folks know that, “no, this has to stop. I am here. This has to stop.”
So all these things become really important, even if they seem insignificant in an isolated way. They’re really not. We are the ones that are really putting out visions of ways that we can be in this land mass, beyond empire, respecting that this is Indigenous land. We are the ones that are really putting forth that we need to have hard conversations. We are the ones who are saying, “Hey, right now, them folks who are using needles over there, they need some help. Right now them folks that are in prison over there, they need some help. Right now these children are not getting a proper education. We need to be able to help them.” Immediate stuff. But every immediate stuff has broader, deeper visions going on. We have got to keep that in mind. Keep it in mind.
So the last few days—I know tomorrow, I’m here tomorrow. I am still on the cloud. I don’t know if you can tell. It just confirms and affirms to me that it ain’t over. Y’all make me so proud. [Audience claps] So proud.
I’m not necessarily going to be long, but I wanted to talk about the promise, the liberatory promise, which basically comes down to this: in a religious way, you could call it the covenant. In a legal way, you could call it a promise, but in a spiritual way it can also be like your ancestors. You know that your ancestors did the best they could for you, and when you give them thought, it is really like drawing from them that they wanted the best for you. Your spirituality may be telling you that, “Yo”—and this is that covenant, right?—“if you do these things, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in the people, then we’ll win. This land can change.” It’s passed on from generation to generation. In the Black Movement, we talk, probably to this day, about the promised land. It all comes from the Bible. The promised land. We ain’t got to the Promised Land yet, but I think it’s because of the situation we’re in. We were kidnapped, put in that ship and brought here. We can’t even call Africa the promised land. It may, it may have to be here. It’s got to be here in dialog with our indigenous folks, but we ain’t got nowhere else to go. We’re not immigrants. The Chicanos, they’re not immigrants. The Indigenous folks are not immigrants. We’re not immigrants. We came here in the most horrible way, but this ain’t been home to us yet. So the promise is that together, we can create the vision of what a home for all of us could be on the kind of liberatory basis that really allows for, like that Zapatista thing, a world where many worlds exist. Them kind of imaginative visionings, we still have to do that. We have to do that, probably more important than any thing else, to know why we engage in the most minute actions or behaviors.
So I’m going to see if I can play this. If I can get it, I have to put it up to the microphone. The reason I’m playing it is because I want to see my peoples pull it together. You see the election thing going on now, you got all these Uncle Tom collaborating Black folks that’s going to do everything they can to pull us back into this monster’s grip. Even with militant rhetoric. That’s an Al Sharpton, right? But when you got others on the ground having these other conversations, they give you an indication that whatever those are saying in the media, listen to the conversations that are going on on the ground level, in the communities. That might give you more of an insight of the level of resistance and the potential of more resistance.
I think Modibo [Kadalie] was saying that also with his presentation. He’s telling you the books that him and Andrew [Zonneveld] have written are dealing with the resistance going back to the 1500s when they brought the first Africans over, how they had to resist in very intimate, direct, democratic ways. Modibo brought up at the end that they didn’t write these books for people to just know the historical explanations that they’re putting out, but for us to see that even as we live now, there are people who are engaging in direct democracy, and sometimes we just need the vision to see it and to know how to support that. Which is why, again, we are not the vanguard. We just really trying to help ourselves and others to see how we can already do this and just bring the streams together. So as I go, I’m gonna try to get this. I ain’t the best at this. My computer is not the fastest. Everybody’s alright so far? [Audience cheers]
While I’m doing this too, just in New York last month. I went to New York. I’m in Rhode Island. Two of our comrades had passed. Sekou Odinga, who was Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army. One of those, when they set up the international chapter in the Black Panther Party in Algiers, they was meeting all these different liberation movements, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PFLP and stuff. And Sekou and others was part of those who went to training camps run by the Palestinians to learn guerrilla warfare and to bring them skills back here. So there’s stories like that. Some of them people didn’t even know until the memorial, because some of that was shared. But then there’s also Greg Thomas, professor in Massachusetts. He did a book on George Jackson, who was at certain point in California prisons, he was the revolutionary organizer. At one point, was incorporated into the Black Panther Party, but then they killed his brother who was trying to help free him one year, then he made an escape attempt and they killed him. When they raided his cell and took out everything from his cell, he had two handwritten poems. One of them was called “Enemy of the Sun.” When it was put out, a lot of people thought that he wrote it, but then in some research, they realized that no, it was from a well known Palestinian poet who, at the time, was in prison. But it was the impact that the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian Liberation Movement had on each other. So again, you never know how events in the world are going to impact you. Okay, I’m getting back to this.
[Video Clip]“…just shot dead in the street? Guess who’s not on the front lines? [Inaudible] Black women and gay men are running. So if you sit here and tell me that you can’t follow leadership from a gay man or Black woman, to be honest, you p*ssy. Because if you can’t take somebody who’s way more, far more calculated to run this because of who they decide to have sex with, I’m worried about who you’re trying to have sex with. What is your issue? If they gay. It has nothing to do with you. If they a woman has nothing to do with you. Let them lead. They trying to make sure we not shot no more. You not doing it. You not doing it. I can’t do it. A lot of us can’t do it. Why we f*cked up? If we come into contact with the police, we’re going to jail. So when they out here, and they putting [inaudible] f*cking life on the line, when they really dying. There’s an astronomical number of Black women dead for no reason. A number of gay, trans people dying. Guess what color they are? They Black. So just saying, ‘I can’t get behind that because you gay.’ F*ck outta here. Get behind them and shut up or stay at home.”
[crowd applause]Ashanti: So I share that because you never know what helps you to keep them spirits up. Or sometimes you just could be down in the dumps and you’re like, “Are we gonna pull this together?” and it could be something as simple as that. It could be you hearing a poem. It could be you just watching a couple walking down the street with a child. Those things that feed that spirit in you for more, for better, for freedom. When I hear that, then I know that things I was concerned with, even in the Black community, that lets me know it’s already happening. Even in the different struggles that we represent in here, you should have a sense that what you’re doing is already part of 1,000 other efforts and work being done. We just need to see it. It’d be great if we can figure out more ways to connect what’s already happening. The revolution, that insurrectionary impulse is there. People want better. So we gotta see it, and we gotta believe it. We gotta believe it.
So I’mma leave it there, because if there are questions I would definitely take them. But to know you… You’re beautiful. You are the ones—and you allow me to be a part of this—that is on the forefront of changing this world. Y’all are doing this, and I’m glad that there’s that inter-generational thing that we can do now too, because I’m so glad. We cut the older generation off. We were too angry. You can’t be up in your anger all the time, but the fact that we can do this in an inter-generational way means a lot as well. We can give you what we can. We don’t need to be your leaders, but we can give you what we can and help you, especially to believe that we can win. We can win. Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people! [Applause]
Ashanti: Right on, right on. Okay, so do we want to do it? If they want to. I might sit down for that.
Question 1: I work at a liquor store that’s very small, and most of us are queer and trans. We’re trying to maintain a culture of mask wearing among employees, and we interact with a lot of customers who have seen that as being almost a direct threat to their being, and we have seen a little bit of escalation of discomfort, especially in older generations as a result. What would be your advice when interacting with these people on a day to day basis, often every day, to help make them feel included and empowered to do that for them. And thank you. Thank you so much.
Cindy Milstein: Anarchism in action. We want to do a couple more questions, and then Ashanti can respond. Anyone else feel like coming up and saying something?
Question 2: As someone who’s been on the receiving end of some of the worst that our prison state/police state has to offer, what would your advice be for people who are in conflict with the police as part of the struggle and for people who are currently incarcerated?
Question 3: I wanted to ask what ways you cultivate joy in your life that have worked over and over for you throughout the years, no matter what you’ve had to face.
Question 4: There’s been a Black trans movement that has run parallel historically to a lot of sort of like Black liberationist struggles, and I feel like Black trans people have historically been relegated to specific margins of those movements. What do you make of this parallel track that has historically existed but is so often forgotten and removed from Black revolutionary history, and how do we even conceptualize a future Black trans resistance if we can’t even begin to conceptualize this past one?
Ashanti: [Responding to question 4] A big part of my responsibility is because—and I hate to say this—but of those from the Panther Party, I think I might be one of the few who will even bring up the fact that our movements still exclude women and don’t want to hear nothing about queer, trans, nothing. And I’m like, “Well, if you give me the platform, I’m going to tell you that you need to. And either way it’s going to happen, if you’re talking about Black people.” I did that at the Black Radical Conference in Atlanta. I think it was this year. Because I am tired of it. And tired of it, knowing that as a young revolutionary, I participated in it. Not knowing any better, I participated. But once I know, then that’s got to come to an end. Sometimes when you feel you’re speaking out for the first times, I knew it took some courage for me like, “Nope. I’mma do it, and then I’m going to do it every time after that.” We have to challenge our people. That’s one reasons I wanted to show that there, because it’s happening even when I didn’t even know it was happening.
I just felt like a lot of trans/queer in our communities, just pretty much said, “No f*ck them man. I’ve been hurt from family and others so much I don’t even care.” I know that that doesn’t work for us, but I know that we have to be very careful with it. Because we have to still move as a people. So at least as a Panther, I know I’mma speak on it. But then I’m always on internet and listening to others who also speak on and then I’m reaching out. I want us to create more ways to be together, so that our voice becomes heard and our power gets to be felt. In this sense, yeah, we need power. And this other thing. I don’t even know if I can—I say “we” a lot when I’m talking about trans and queer community. I’m a cis male. I don’t even know if I can do that. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to ask for permission, but that’s the revolutionary community I want to be a part of. You understand? [Audience cheering] So I know that we have to do that battle, and I’m hoping that I still will meet more folks and we figure out ways to communicate.
So I know the other one… Give it to me again.
Audience Member: [Repeats Question 2]
Ashanti: Conflict with the police or in the prison system. We know that we always going to confront the police. They are the front line troops. In the Panther Party we called them “the occupying army”, and it made sense to those of us who needed to see that to begin to understand their role. In the heady days, you might find yourself confronting the police in the street and in the prisons. Sometimes you also learn some wisdom and know that you ain’t got to confront all the time and throw a punch to their jaw all the time. Maybe there’s other ways you can do it, especially depending on what the situation is. I was just telling my comrade who will be a father, “when a child is in the family, that means you ain’t making decisions for you anymore. You making decisions for the family. If you’re part of an organization, you’ve also got to understand you ain’t making decisions for you. You also considering the organization. It requires a certain kind of discipline.” There’s still the trauma that you’re going to get from these people. I think that’s harm reduction too. As much as you can avoid having them kind of direct traumatic experiences, you do. If you on a road by yourself and they pull you over, man, don’t start calling them pigs and all that, “Mother f*cker, why you pulling me over?” No. Just say “Okay officer. Here’s my sh*t. Okay, give me the ticket. See you later.”
You want to live. You want to survive to fight another day. The ones who are doing time in there. They learn very quick, you got to learn how to get around these people for your sanity, for your survival. Then at that point, if you ever make the parole board, you want to be able to give your best little performance. You got to do that sometimes. It’s a survival skill, but it’s also constantly recognizing the police is the police. Whether they in the prisons, they on the street, whether they got the uniform, going to Vietnam, other places, they’re still playing the police role. You understand that they’re part of the system that’s got to change, Anti-police, anti-prison system, all that is my concept of Abolition. That whole thing gotta go.
The other one was joy. And then there’s one after that. [Responding to question 3] Here’s what I do. The last few days: Easy. I got joy. This is the easy one. I got joy, and I know that I need to keep putting myself in situations of joy like this more. I think it’s been part of the problem that I’ve been isolating, and I feel like it’s been for years and years. Stop isolating. Get amongst them folks. I say like-minded and like-hearted because feeling like I’m amongst people that want to make this thing happen, it keeps my spirits up. Sometimes, at home it’s putting on music. I’m from Plainfield, New Jersey, the land of Parliament-Funkadelic. I might have Parliament-Funkadelic blasting sometimes, walking the dog up and down the neighborhood. Let me tell about the neighborhood. Barrington is the suburb of Providence. Barrington is pretty white. I don’t know what my neighbors think when I’m playing the music. I don’t put them earplugs, and I want to hear the music. I’m bopping as I’m walking the dog, and I’m sure the neighbors like, “What is he doing?” But the music brings up things for me. It was them good times. Parliament-Funkadelic, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, the jazz players. Sometimes I put on “Compared to What.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. Yes! Those things keep my spirits up.
Going to church. I’m back in church. A little thing about my church: it’s a Hebrew Israelite church. Not the people with the buckles and the outfits and stuff, just regular folks. It comes out of the Black experience, so it might seem like regular Black gospel, regular church, but we have our rituals which are different from Rabbinic and other stuff. But man, when you go there and you hear the singing and there’s times when you’re getting up and there’s a marching thing, right? To me, the marching thing is like, “that’s that marching thing. We at war. Hold up that banner. Don’t let the banner fall.” It means a lot to me. I need that community. I need them kind of visuals. I understand that the visuals are from a language we don’t use anymore, but I understand it. It helps me to know that I’m still in this battle. So going to church is the thing, too. And then connecting with my comrades, my old comrades, whether on the phone or sometimes it might be a memorial. It’s those moments when we’re together that we know we’ve been through something that not others will quite understand. And they may not get when we laughing over something we done did and we hope nobody ever knows. We know we’ve been through hell, but we came out still with some level of humanity and an ability to laugh about it.
Those are the kind of things now and then with the kids. My oldest is 50 and 49, then I got married again, so it’s a 14 year old an 11 year old. Their friends think I’m granddaddy, and they then my kids got said, “No, that’s dad. That’s my Baba”. But anyhow, watching them grow, like my son, who’s 14, big afro, and he’s into track and field. I’m watching this body grow. He’s got this little hairline coming. Joy that I’m still here to be able to see it because I did not think I was going to make it past 20. Did not think so. I’m 50 years over that. But being able to watch them, it’s them kind of moments of joy. And that’s the kind of thing that I want for us all. Moments of joy are precious. We have got to know that we need them. And for moments when you gotta sometimes take off—you’re going to the beach, you’re going on a hiking trip, whatever. Do it! Do it because it is you building a resistance against the sh*t that we face. Joy, and you’re changing in the process. So I’m really big on that now, and I think I’ve been in a good space now for maybe the last year for a long time. And I plan on staying. [Audience cheers] So I know there was one more, the first one?
Audience Member: [Repeats Question 1]
Ashanti: I think we need to figure out have how to have better conversations with folks who we know they’re not necessarily on the same page as us. One of mines was around probably 10, 15, years ago—being at anarchist spaces and you start hearing the pronoun thing, and I ain’t understand it then. But even as I did, I’m like, if I who make an effort to understand it find it difficult, because I gotta remember—My memory ain’t the best. What about other folks in the communities that just don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about? They might come into a meeting out of curiosity, and you giving them vibes because they ain’t calling you by the pronoun you wanted, you got an attitude and you’re actually showing it to them. I want you to have some compassion for those of us who are older. It may take a minute, but we try, those of us who try. Others who don’t try, you may just want to put it like, “I got a limit. If you can’t handle that, maybe we don’t need to talk, whatever.” But people are going to get it because you’ve been pushing it, and others have been pushing it, and the children have been pushing it. My daughter, especially the one at 11, she she already has a sense of who she is.
It’s going to get better, but there’s got to be some compassion. The resistance is not from a mean spirit. It’s just like, “What the hell is this?” And you talking about someone who physically looks like female has a different way to define themselves. Some folks are like, “What the hell?” The Rush Limbaugh folks are all on this. That’s why they’re saying “We’ve got to get Trump in office.” They are really on this thing of trans and queer and gay. Which is another reason why, if Trump should get in, we need to figure out how we’re going to support each other. Because we know some of the things Trump will do that a Biden may not do as fast. But we know that, you know, on the issues of gay and queer, there’s going to be some things that Congress may not pass that kind of makes it easier. It’s just like alternatives to abortion. We already should be thinking—I’m sure we are—about what we can do if certain things happen. We’re going to take care of ourselves and possibly show others that they can do the same. Because the State is the State. The Empire is the Empire.
Do you have any more? I could if you want [answer more questions]. I always like the this part, because I know people going to ask some direct stuff that they want to know or share.Question 5: So many faces… First of all, thank you. Your contribution to the struggle is like innumerable and immense. I oftentimes find myself returning to your words in times of intense despair, and I just want to thank you so much for that. I came from so-called Chicago, where Stateville prison is planned to be torn down and replaced with a reformative, so-called rehabilitative prison instead. Someone inside also passed away this past weekend from a heat wave that affected him and had he had an asthma attack and died. So I just want to ask, knowing the death trap that prison is, how do you think that we can be in more material solidarity and support of people inside, beyond book packing, letter writing and phone zaps and all that type of stuff, especially knowing that folks inside are this wellspring of revolutionary, insurrectionary knowledge and practice?
Ashanti: The prison issue and the political prisoner issues are some of the hardest issues to get our communities to take on. As a member of the Jericho Movement, Jericho fights for the freedom of political prisoners in the United States. Man, we’ve been doing this for decades. Even just getting the folks in the community to listen to us that they are political prisoners, that they’ve been in there for decades. They’re the same ones, many times, who the politicians got them voting for more police, more prison construction or better… even if they say in better prison, no one is talking about abolition. It seemed like at some point that abolition was gaining some ground. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but I still think we need to work at that. We got to put ourselves in situations where we have more face-to-face with key figures in the community. When I say key figures, I don’t necessarily mean the politicians. Maybe sometimes the preachers, maybe the deacons and deaconesses, maybe and the regular folks or folks who are at the community centers and possibly even the street organizations. I think that we don’t do the face-to-face anymore, and I think because of that, we’re not developing a better way of presenting the kind of narrative that might get folks to understand why we need to intervene and what’s going on in the prisons, why we need to get our political prisoners free. There’s all kind of things.
It’s the most difficult area that I have ever worked in. There’s not been many joyous moments. My comrade Veronza Bowers just got out several months ago, after 40 something years. There ain’t no recognition about who he is, his contributions, nothing. When Dhoruba bin Wahad got out, there was a little recognition. When Jalil Muntaqim got out after almost 50 years, there’s no recognition. But every decade, every year he was in there, we was fighting for his release and going to as many different venues to speak about political prisoners. Reverend Joy Powell is in upstate New York prison now. No one knows about her. Reverend Joy Powell is one of them who has stories similar to Malcolm X when he was Detroit Red. That was Reverend Joy Powell at one time, and then she changed. She became a minister I think in Rochester, New York or somewhere upstate. She’s fighting against police brutality, next thing you know, they done got her jammed up on something, and she’s doing I don’t know how many years in upstate as a New York political prisoner.
So it’s hard, but I think the challenge is for us to find a different narrative and to start going into communities and having actual conversation with, I say, key folks. They might say “influencers” today, maybe on certain levels. I’m not big on the social media with that, but to be able to sit down with folks and say, “Hey, you know the situation we’ve been in. You know that there’s people going to come forth and fight back or try to lead us or raise consciousness. Why are they sitting in prison?” In the women’s prison, men’s prisons, there is such a clamp down that even me trying to stay up on it now, I can’t imagine how that would be for me. I just did total 14 years, but what I hear they’re doing now? That’s to drive you insane. You don’t even get the actual letters anymore. You might get a visit, and there’s the screen, if they do come up. You’re so far away, you may not get a visit. And it’s the same thing inside. The way that they talk to you, treat you, it’s like you’re an animal. So it’s a big order. Even on that, I don’t have no immediate answers, but I always go to [that] we don’t have them kind of conversations in the community no more. We need to start trying to build grassroots movements from the bottom by having them conversations.A lot of times, the street organizations can’t get too involved because they already got records, and the slightest violation they got, then they right back in. So it even makes it harder. But what they’re doing in the prisons—and they’re expanding—we will be that open air prison like Gaza and all these situations now. The ways that they are laying down their technologies of control. It ain’t just the prisons anymore. I feel like it’s the welfare. I don’t even think they call it welfare no more. You got to go to court for all kind of fines, your car fine, your house fine, or they’re getting ready to do all these other things. They got us under such control. The Internet got us under such control. The cameras on the corners. The things that fly, [drones]. So it feels like it’s closing in, and it keeps closing. And we gotta figure out more how to break out of them confinements and get the people to see, man, we can’t keep wasting time, because it’ll get to the point where we can’t even breathe without their permission. So we strike out. Anarchists, we know what to do, so… I wish I had more to give you.
Question 6: Thank you so much. I’ve written down part of a question because we’ve had other comrades ask for advice when dealing with physical conflictuality with the state. And you’ve also spoken about times when, if you’re alone in the car at night, where strategic de-escalation might be something that you approach. We call that a version of a harm reductive approach. This has come up in conversation. I also relate to what you’re saying about this kind of disorientation and difficulty remembering the lessons that you’ve learned and other people have taught you sometimes at these very tense, fight or flight moments. So I’m wondering if you have some lessons that you can put into the collective consciousness. What might go through your mind in a moment where you’re choosing between this crossroads? Not to create a duality between moments of intentional escalation and otherwise.
Ashanti: Just real quick on that. I did share with somebody today. There was times I’ve been in demonstrations, marches, and the police start really getting out of hand. There was one time where they was really being abusive to this elder Black woman. And I can’t take that. I can’t stand and watch that. So I see myself walking. But the younger comrades, I had already told them about me in this sense: When you see me in that zone, all I need you to do, stand in front of me, make me look you in the eye. That’s all. Just say “Ashanti.” Because I know, and they know, I’m getting ready to jump on this mother f*cker. So imagine how I felt when I’m watching George Floyd. I am so angry at the people around him. I understand they scared, but you just stood there and watched them kill this Black man to his last breath. There’s times where you gotta really chill out. You gotta consider who’s around you. You gotta consider the repercussions of your own actions. So you can’t just snap like that. And if you folks, who you’re close to know you, they know what to do. And I would give them young folks permission, “Y’all know. Get in front of me. Get in front of me.” And I think a part of that why I don’t have no fears, because from the Panthers to the BLA, I learned to take them on. I learned that, oh, they can be just as scared as anybody else. But the thing is to think, just think about it. That’s why it’s important for when you let people know you, know your limitations. It becomes really important. That’s that’s why it’s really great when we can share our stories with each other. So folks know who you are, what you’ve been through, so some things don’t trigger you.
In the Panther Party—and this is around sexual abuse—a lot of times there was sexual abuse in the Black Panther Party, but even more, we didn’t know who was sexually abused before they even joined the Black Panther Party. You do certain things, and it’s a trigger. So me now, we need to know each other, but that calls for trust too. That’s cause for that kind of vulnerability, that you say, “I need to share with you that when you do this or you say that, it’s a trigger. I need to feel safe. I need to feel like it matters to me what you do and how it’s going to impact me.” That’s what we have to do more. It can’t be no side thought. It has to be fully integrated into how we’re raising ourselves. So, the thing with what do you do in them situations. Do you fight? Sometimes you do. Do you stand back? Sometimes you do. Do you think as much as possible who’s around you, who needs to be safe around you? That mother and the child that’s close by you, is it possible that they could get hurt? Just things to think about. So it ain’t just the macho thing. You think about it. And imagine them situations even beforehand, because sometimes that helps you to make snap judgments when it actually happens.
Question 7: So one of the questions I had is regarding “influencer” people, like how social capital affects the way that we organize sometimes, where people that are very influential in a place, because they’re more outspoken, or they know the right words to say and therefore can get into positions of more influence in anarchist circles. For example, in the Panther Party, like Huey or whoever, like people that get in those leadership like roles. How do we combat that? Sometimes it’s subtle. I’ve seen it in anarchist circles where it happens, but it’s not an actual leader. They don’t have a chairman or a title. Yet they’re able to move people around situations sometimes and therefore have more influence or bully other people. You see this sometimes. People don’t know how to approach this, especially when a person is of a certain identity as well or like goes through this specific struggle, and just finding a way of dealing with that.
And then another thing kind of adding to what you were saying about agitation. As an anarchist, my approach was always to agitate. Anywhere you go at the beginning, we hold the sign and we stayed on the sidewalk where it’s legal. But it’s “blah,” right? What can we do because normally, historically, anarchism has been agitative, right? You go to places, we’re known for doing the rowdy sh*t. So I was just wondering, like expanding on that a little bit.
Ashanti: I think we should stay rowdy. I think we should stay rowdy. [Audience cheers] But on the other level, now we can we talk about interpersonal relationships within the group and why it’s important to have some things you agree upon in terms of how you’re going to function with each other. What we’re trying to do in Providence now, we’re putting together community center, but the first retreat we just had was just laying down things as simple as: how do you want to be treated in the organization, how do you want your relationship to be with others, how do you want to make decisions, how do you want to deal with issues of egos and and the authoritarian? Because it ain’t like anarchists are free of all this. We got all these tendencies. We’re in this society. But I still think to this day, we’re more likely to at least be willing to talk about it and try to struggle against it. I think other folks it’s not even on their agendas. That’s so-called movement folks.
There’s a lot of information out here now, readings that people can do that helps us to see why it’s important for us to get to know each other and for us to create the kind of practices that helps us to minimize the tendencies of the bully, the sexist, the one who’s super submissive that has never known anything else but possibly listening to a man. We know that these are some of the internalized oppressions that we have to deal with. So let’s learn them. And there’s a lot of people that do trainings in them. There’s a lot of books out on it, and we are reading people, man. You know. I say that because I’m reading things all the time, because I know the internal stuff is really the thing that killed us in the Panther Party. The FBI just knew how to manipulate it.
So what do we do? We develop those capacities to help us to evolve, to get to better places. From our stories—our stories are so different. Each one is unique, but we gotta know it. It helps if we can get to the point to be honest and vulnerable, to share with the trust that ain’t nobody going to abuse what you just shared with them, that they will work with you, you and others will work together, to be better as a human being and what you do as an organizational member. It’s a struggle, so that’s why we ain’t bringing this thing down without, at the same time, getting it out of us. It’s got to be the same. You can’t do one without the other. That was that New Age stuff: “Oh, we just gonna free ourselves,” and no consideration about the mega-oppressions. We got to do both. The more that we do it, I think the better we can get. And I think it helps us also, we get better with each other when we see in the community, folks who have similar things. We got a little bit of experience and wisdom in how to help others in the community that don’t have this experience to know how to get to a better place. They want to join the group. They see things.
One quick example: One of the things that helped with Critical Resistance, because Critical Resistance was pretty much run by anarchists and anti-authoritarians, the ways that we did meetings, was always to get the men to not talk so much and to step back and to use the board to be inclusive on everybody’s input. Some people who had no political experience, when they saw that, like, “They really want, my opinion? It’s going up on the board?” That blew their minds, because no other time had that happened to them. It was us saying, “No, we are all important, and we all want to be included.” I’m telling you, it was us who were putting them examples forward. So we got to continue to do things like that.
I thank you for being patient. If I said anything rambling or whatnot, you can blame it on Cindy. But this has been great. This has been good. Let’s leave from here with that spirit, that spirit that we can change. We got ancestors. We got folks who we are building off of them. We know that this can happen, that what the United States is now can be no more.
Our dreams. Our dreams up. Our dreams up. Let’s make it happen. Power to the people, one last time.
Audience: All power to the people!
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Eric King, Ashanti Alston, and Ray Luc Levasseur—all contributors to “Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners”—discuss their experiences with imprisonment, education behind bars, organizing with fellow inmates, and the ongoing importance of international solidarity with captured revolutionaries.
The following is a selection of the transcription from the full video conversation.
Eric King: So both of you did over a decade in prison. Ray, you did you did two decades during that time. How are you able to maintain or be a part of the struggle–either the struggle inside the prison or the struggle that you were a part of that landed you in prison–how were you able to continue and maintain that struggle if you were?
Ashanti Alston: Well, inside when we were captured in New Haven, Connecticut, there was support groups that was there for us from New York, even ones that I have been a part of and others, but at a certain point I’m underground and some of those same folks when we was in New Haven going to trial that them same defense committees was there for us during the trial and there was one local group in New Haven, which was actually a Trotskyist group that was there for us and they were really solid, really consistent, really great, and also they were the first ones to give me a much better understanding of what it was to be a Trotskyist in the movement because I think I kind of brushed it off because as the the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, sometimes you don’t really question why do we got this thing with the Trotskyists, why is that anyhow, but they were really solid and really great supporters.
So inside, those support groups, defense groups all also help to keep you in touch with family; they would, if the family needed help to come up to see me, they would help with that process. The letter writings at that time was like really really important because, though our minds at the time during the trial was still ‘we ain’t really trying to here for the process of this trial.’ We really are looking for avenues out, but you got to kind of deal with both reality, both possibilities. You might have to do this trial and get sent or you might find an opening and you’re out of there. They provided that link that kept us hopeful with the course of the struggle.
I think I could say that folks were still carrying on the struggle in our particular case because we were captured in the midst of this expropriation. We had no illusions about getting acquitted. We were fortunate enough to have good lawyers who volunteered their services and two of them, David Rosen and Ed Dolan were also part of Erica Huggins’ and Bobby Seale’s legal defense team and so they just contacted us and said, “Hey, we’re here for you if you want it. We’re here to to defend you.” And we were like, “Well, right on.” And there was another lawyer John Williams, who also had politics.
We knew that this this was going to be a political trial, but during this time our our minds was still ‘we’re at war.’ The process of this trial was just almost like a distraction and it was the connection with the defense committees–the New York ones, the New Haven ones, and there was not a lot of support, but it still kept us connected.
We wasn’t able to get out after a few attempts. We get sentenced–it was federal charges and state charges. So for the bank expropriation, it was a five to 25 year sentence and then for because it was the shootout and two cops got hurt, it was 10 to 20 for that. And after that, they kept us separated. We was never to be in the same prison anywhere again except towards the end and in summers when one of my comrades was transferred there and for a brief period of time I had made parole, we was there at least for several months together.
What I wanted to bring up is that because our minds is still at war, I studied, I trained. My comrades studied, trained, because we had the examples of stories from Huey P. Newton and in prison, we had the stories of George Jackson, so it was almost like if you’re in the cell and here comes the guard, just making his regular rounds, we might just to to play with him pop down on the floor we knocking out 20 push-ups or whatever. Otherwise, we’re doing all the other things because we want to stay ready, that whole Stay Ready mentality. It was not depressing for me. I didn’t go through no depression. It was just the ready mentality.
I read all the time, so going off to prison, the first stop was Oxford, Wisconsin. That was the first one they sent me to because I had to do the federal time first. One of my comrades comes there, who’s down in prison in Georgia now, Kamau Sadiki. It was one of the first times that me and another comrade from the BLA was in the same prison. Same mentality we had: War. We got a brother that’s training us in kung fu and everything else and we got to do it secretly cuz you can’t do it in the open. The guards don’t play that stuff, you know.
Then, I had put in for a transfer to Lewisburg prison and eventually, I got transferred to Lewisburg because it was at least, it was the closest to home. So, Lewisburg was was one of the major maximum prisons, federal prisons, serious place, and I’m a young guy and there was a few other guys in there. We’re young, but there’s a collective there and what the collective does [is] you come into the collective of comrades from different formations, and you’re studying, you’re training, you got other folks in there, prisoners who want to be a part of that kind of revolutionary consciousness raising stuff. It’s like an easy connection still at the time because this is the mid to going into the late ’70s, so still, how can we get out of this big prison with these tall walls and everything?
Support groups kept us connected to the movements, but I will say over and over, it wasn’t like we got letters from a lot of people like the national Jericho movement and other groups will have letter writing nights and all that. We didn’t get that. We wasn’t getting money for commissary. We was just facing this situation, doing this time, looking for openings to get out. But I learned a lot there. I read and even all the times I was in and out of segregation, I’m like, “you can put me in, just give me my books.” Now, I’m reading and I’m interacting with others.
This is when I’m beginning to read the radical psychologies, the feminisms. I’m beginning to read the more in-depth histories of different struggles, like the Irish Freedom struggles with the IRA and the Philippine Hukbalahap and all this stuff, and even more in-depth Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, because comrades was still able to get books and things in, so there was books always floating around, so I’m also learning in this environment. I don’t give a damn that it’s in prison, and Sundiata Acoli would when we used to correspond–wasn’t supposed to, but we did–he would say, “turn that prison into University.” Yes, it’s all about preparing you for getting out. So that was my experience there.
But the repression inside the prison got to be really bad. This particularly fascist warden came in at a certain point. He was clamping down on a lot of stuff and I worked industry with others at the time and some things happen in industry like industry caught on fire a few times. Hey, by chance, you know, by chance. That’s what I say. But who did they come after? They came after me, a few other comrades, those others who was jailhouse lawyers. Next thing I know they swooping us up, we on the bus on our way to Marion, Illinois.
At Marion who’s one of the first persons we see who’s in general population, but they walking us to segregation uh it’s Rafael Miranda of the Puerto Rican independentistas. He’s letting us know that they already know that we’re on our way there. They had already got the word through the grapevine. Herman Bell was there, other comrades who may not be known… because Marion took the place of Alcatraz. This was supposed to be the most escape-proof prison at the time and it was so electronic…
Those political prisoners and politicized prisoners had one of the most fantastic libraries, so again I’m learning. I’m increasing my understandings of struggle and the anti-authoritarian aspects, the anarchist aspects and moving closer in that direction. I still had connection through the defense committees on some of the movements that was going on, but those numbers were dwindling because they were getting hit with a lot of repression. Safiya [Bukhari, Ashanti’s wife] and others decided to go underground because there was these grand jury searches, trying to get them on different charges of supporting other actions to help free BLA folks or political prisoners, and so wasn’t a lot of letters, wasn’t all that stuff, but we know we’re soldiers. This is what we gonna do.
From there, some of us was like the word was don’t accept general population and so some of us decide to stay in seg to force them to transfer us and they ended up transferring some of us to Lompoc, California. Who was amongst that group? Leonard Peltier… Curly Raul Estremera from the BLA, Puerto Rican BLA and others. So here we are now. Lompoc was just in the process of transferring from medium security to maximum and it was kind of a modernist place and it had fences, but they hadn’t had all the concertina wire up yet, so here we are all doing all this time. We like “man, we got to hit this fence before they get all this concertina wire up,” but in the process, we are meeting other folks, supporters from the outside and especially at this time, some revolutionary groups in California. One was called the Wellspring Collective or Tribal Thumb, which was a very anti-authoritarian group and so they would come up to visit.
So it’s like more and more I am learning different ways that people struggle and are trying to carry it on in that California area, because a lot of them politicized prisoners who was with George or out of them circles were coming out also and getting involved with grassroots organizing. So I feel like that’s always my prison experience. I gotta learn, I gotta be ready and I gotta make sure that I’m interacting with folks who are still carrying us on or figuring out ways to keep the momentum and and many of us was on that same page.
And so then Connecticut and eventually I get parole to the Connecticut state prison and I finished the second half of my sentence there and eventually get out.
Eric: Perfect, thank you, also you mentioned Tribal Thumb and someone I look up to, Bill Dunne was a member of Tribal Thumb.
Ashanti: Just to say about Bill Dunne, I believe that part of the reason he got captured, recaptured was because we needed him to help us. And so there’s a special part of me that’s always for him because, of course, he made a sacrifice for the people.
Eric: And for the people listening, if you’d like to write Bill Dunne, he is currently at the medical facility in FCI Butner.
Ray, would you like to touch on that same topic about how you maintain struggle both or either inside or outside of those movements?
Ray Luc Levasseur: Well, first of all, Bill Dunne, it would be very nice if people could write to him at Butner. I just got a letter from him a few weeks ago. He’s struggling with health issues, but he’s he’s still got the same strong spirit and good sense of humor he always has but he needs a little support, lots of support.
Briefly, we’re talking one struggle here, two parts of it, inside and outside. And I’ve always found it interesting the political prisoners on the inside always gravitate to each other no matter which movement or which organizations they come from, while the support organizations on the street seem to do a lot more squabbling with each other and can’t seem to deal with all the obstacles they need to to form a more united front around political prisoners.
Briefly, my first experience in Tennessee pen and in Brushy Mountain–it was my first prison experience and I had been politically active before I went in Southern Student Organizing Committee, but hadn’t been in the movement that long and so my my support network wasn’t that strong initially. I was able to get books and correspond with people and this is very helpful and like Ashanti pointed, political education inside, but right from the get go, we had a food strike over conditions at the county jail and what was particularly interesting and and pertinent about that was you had white and black prisoners and you had to overcome that racial barrier to get everybody together on the same page and go and strike over these conditions.
So I presented the demands–we threw all our food back out, made a mess and wouldn’t eat and the Goon Squad comes up, the whole deal. I got the demands ready: they have to improve the food and the medical care, which was basically non-existent and they dragged me out the next day to the courthouse and got me a force transfer to State Penitentiary and Nashville. Every joint I’ve been in has been either Max or super Max and right away, I got a jacket and that jacket follows me through the rest of my time in the Tennessee prisons and it shows up again many years later for the next 20 years in the federal prisons.
What my jacket says is “he’s a troublemaker, he’s a radical, and he’s a racial agitator.” That they stuck on me after I got to to Nashville, but the seeds for that was in the food strike because the most radical thing I did and could be done when I got to the state penitentary was cross the color line. It was basically Jim Crow. Those are the exact words they put in my jacket: “he’s a racial agitator.” Why is this guy trying to bring people together? As if there’s something wrong here because prison systems are notorious for keeping people divided on racial lines so cross crossing that racial line is what I did as a matter of principle as already a practicing anti-racist in my time with SSOC.
Then, they stuck me on death row to get me off the compound. I was actually on death row. They had several cells for miscreant that they considered real troublemakers from the population. They put me there. I was in there with brothers from Memphis who gave me an education about white supremacy and killer cops I will never forget. You know, learning is a two-way street inside and we were doing political education.
So then, they sent me to Brushy, which was a connection to the old convict leasing system. I got there in 1970. If I got there in 1965, I would have been mining coal. In 1970, it was a Super Max, one of the early super Maxes, so we were locked up almost all the time they cut off all books, all newspapers, no phone calls, very restricted correspondence: immediate family, lawyer, clergy. And that was another racist place, every single guard in Brushy Mountain–this is in East Tennessee Mountains–was white. Half the prisoners there were black. They moved death row and me there at the same time and most of the prisoners on death row were black and I literally had to fight my way out of that place. I used to tell people I’m a Vietnam vet. I was in a war before I ever got to this War. I was in a foreign war. I’m a veteran of foreign and domestic Wars because it was a battle to get out of there.
Fast forward: I gotta do 20 years here in the feds, most of it was at Marion and ADX. You know about those places. About 13 years of it in some kind of isolation or solitary confinement…
I had to write,that was the key: a pencil, a pen. It became enormously important for me, my codefendants and I like to think of making a contribution to the ongoing struggles on the streets. I wrote prolifically for quite a long time. I wrote one of the first really published widely spread article outside of mainstream media about ADX in prison legal news. So disarmed from whatever you armed yourself with on the street, you know, it changes inside and I was fortunate that we had supporters on the street–this is pre-internet and everything–to take those writings and developments concerning us and amplify and widely distributed it as much as possible… So this was an important Network and was an important method for me to communicate. For Leonard Peltier or Oscar Lopez it was art. Tom Manning: art. There’s different ways it can be done. With Marilyn [Buck]: poetry. There’s any number of ways that you have to keep your spirit and your politics alive and relevant somehow and that was the way I did it.
I think the most important action we took as political prisoners during my time at Marion was we we did a work refusal. They had it set up where they would not release you from Marion until you went to a pre-transfer unit that made military hardware. And we drew the line and said we will not do that as a condition for a transfer to somewhere else because we weren’t there on disciplinary charges. They had just sent us there because of our jackets. We were all radical and so we refused it. Me, Tom Manning, Mutulu Shakur, Oscar Lopez Rivera and others, we refused and then we end up in ADX.
I want to just reiterate what Ashanti said through all this is study, political education, physical conditioning and the one time of year that I always see that happen when I was inside and I got out is in August. And I did it with Mutulu and the other conscious Brothers before I left–we commemorate Black August throughout the prison system, state or federal, which involves fasting, which involves political education, which involves physical exercise, as much as you can do it together. It’s commemorating the sacrifices of those Black Freedom Fighters like George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson and others before them and after them and it continues to this day.
Eric: In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, we saw more direct action. We saw bank appropriations, we saw people putting their freedom on the line for the Liberation struggle. Why do you think that is banished? Why do you think we do not see that sort of militant action anymore?
Ashanti: It’s a question that is always on my mind and so to try to explain why it’s always on my mind, the ’60s and ’70s, I still feel like, man, that was such a period for me to come of age, joining the Black Panther Party. It was such a time to be alive, it was just in so many ways magical. It’s like you didn’t have all the distractions. You saw that the Civil Rights Movement was getting beat down. You could turn on that television; it wasn’t but maybe six channels on that television. You’re going to see what these fascists are doing to the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. But it’s also the point where Black Power is coming into being. Stokeley Carmichael’s voice, H. Rap Brown [AKA] Jamil al-Amin, who’s now still in prison. They were raising more of the Malcolm X spirit in the sense of “we want to be free.” Black power also was directing us towards what does self-determination look like, how might we actually take over our communities, the institutions, etc. It gave more of a concrete picture of what are we fighting for here and not integration.
So here also now we beginning to explore socialism, communism and the Panther Party, having to read Karl Marx and and then Frantz Fanon and all these other folks. It made us see more of the reality of this monster we’re facing, that it could not be changed. It could not be even modified. This monster has to be challenged and we have to build the kind of revolutionary movements that can like George Jackson say, bring it to its knees and I don’t know how that sounds to other people, but when you know your history, when you know what this country on the back of Turtle Island did to indigenous Nations, what it has and continues to do, what it did to African people and continues to do, what it had did to the Mexicans and others who come here. This is not something you try to reform. So you see the necessity, even us as teenagers, of fighting this, develop the capacity to fight.
The great thing about the Panther Party was that you know that fight took the form of survival programs as well as Liberation schools. The survival programs were so key because it was pretty much telling people that we can feed ourselves. The free health clinics was basically saying we can take care of our own health issues. The political education classes was like if the schools are not going to teach us what we really need to know then we need to do that. That was that self-determination nationalist attitude. When we talk about Nat Turner and all the other folks, we knew that there were those who did fight back by any means necessary.
And it’s the same thing with the guy now that speaks on Palestine a lot, Norman Finklestein, the thing he brings up about the Nat Turner rebellion and he says clearly, that was a pretty vicious thing, but it was an act of rebellion and an act of necessity, and he went to what the Abolitionist Movement leaders were putting out in their papers and in their talks to give it some perspective and and basically, what the Abolitionist Movement was telling people was, “we told you things like this were going to happen because you have these people enslaved.” So Norman Finklestein was comparing it to the open air prison, Palestine, Gaza and, that was what we were trying to get across also. Don’t call us crazy because we are trying to develop the capacity to be free, which will mean that we have got to confront this monster with all means necessary.
The Panther Party, I feel, came closest to to bringing that into fruition because it started off Black Panther Party for self-defense, but also in its growing process understood this aspect of armed struggle and we need to defend our communities and then we we don’t need to rely on the police to do it because clearly the police is an occupying force. That language at the time was so key. When when Eldridge Cleaver and them talked about this being an internal colony and we’re inside the mother country, he was giving us a way to see what this settler colonialism was and also see our struggle on a much broader level compared with the African Liberation movements, the Liberation movements coming out of Asia, the Revolutionary struggles even in Germany and Japan and other places.
Those of us in the in the Panther Party who went underground, we had always understood that we have to develop the capacity to defend ourselves. Who do we come up against is all those Bourgeois Negroes and others who want to stay connected to the monster and want to convince our people “do not follow them crazy people, stay with the monster, they’re going to give us a few trinkets, they’re going to give us a little bit more.”
Let me tell you what happened quickly after the rebellion in my hometown. This is ’67, this is what pretty much brought me into the movement. I’m like 13, 14 years old. The rebellion in Planfield when black folks took over the black community because they went and got crates of M1 rifles, they was able to hold it for a week. 13, 14 year old Ashanti was like “oh my God.” This is blowing my mind that we are able to do this. But then after the National Guard came in with the tanks and took it over, the first thing that the city government did once they was contained, was to put some swimming pools in the playgrounds and they called that, you know, “y’all should be satisfied with that.” Now Plainfield ain’t been right since.
To this day, even with afterwards, black Mayors, it ain’t been right since because we could not hold that self-determination, that black power perspective because of how that black middle class wanted to just fit in. They wanted to integrate. The lesson we should know from that is that we can’t integrate into this poisonous monstrous Empire. We have really got to figure out that the way forward is to cut it loose. Cut it loose in every way we can.
Eric: Thank you! Shout out to Plainfield. Ray Luc, do you have an opinion or a thought on why this generation—particularly with what’s going on— why we’ve seen such a decrease in militant action or direct action compared to when you guys were comin’ up?
Ray Luc: You know, I agree a lot with what Ashanti said about time, place, conditions. During our early political activist years, it was a much different time in the world. You know, Che said, “1, 2, 3, many Vietnams” and I come out of Vietnam, you know—that seemed like a real possibility.
And, Ashanti, you were talking about 1967; you know, I was in Vietnam in 1967. We got an old Life magazine over there, you know— a very popular American weekly at the time— and it showed pictures of Detroit at the 1967 rebellion. And I saw that when I was in ‘Nam, and I’d done a lot of flying in helicopters, and, you know, the devastation that I saw in the pages of Life magazine looked similar to what I was seeing in parts of Vietnam.
And so I went up to Detroit to look at it myself, after I got back (I was stationed at Fort Campbell.), and I could see there was a real war going on here, too.
When I got out in 2004, one of the things I noticed about the general climate is I felt people were fearful. There was a level of, you know— this was following 9/11, and I was inside during 9/11. But there was this sense of, people has a sense of fear, insecurity, anxiety that I hadn’t sensed twenty years earlier, when I went in. And, it is a real challenge.
I mean, when I’m involved in Palestine work right now, mainly what I’m seeing is certainly a lot of energy has been generated around supporting Palestine. Some for different reasons among different people, but there’s real potential there for this…This movement that’s happening around this country right now to develop to the level it was around South Africa 25 years ago. But that is an exception, and I don’t have a firm answer for what you’re saying. One of the questions I used to get a lot over the years—not so much anymore, but did— it indicates why people were thinking different than they were, you know, decades earlier. There’s a sense about people, you know, that they were kind of overwhelmed by the power of the system, you know? They would say, “How can you challenge something like this? It seems that everything we do or try doesn’t get anywhere.” Because it’s too big, it’s too powerful.
And, the other one was about sacrifice. If you go up against the system, there are consequences.
Eric: Serious consequences.
Ray Luc: You know, we here, on this panel right now are demonstrating what some of those consequences are, but there’s a lot of other consequences. I’ve heard you, Eric, talk about an organization I’ve been very involved with, which is Rosenberg Fund for Children.
Eric: Love ‘em!
Ray: This is an organization that supports children of political prisoners— and if you go and you look at the parents with these children, the activists, how many different ways government can make you pay for your activism. Whether you’re an immigration activist, a climate activist, an antifascist activist…And at different levels of activism, depending on where you are, you know—there’s other factors—but it’s a whole lot of people that are paying a price for their activism and it scares a lot of people.
Eric: Thank you! Thank you so much. Ashanti, you wanted us to come back to you? You had a follow-up?
Ashanti: ….What I had wanted to get back to around here is the difference between then and now. I do think fear is a big, big part, ’cause I think that once they had captured a lot of us, what was put in place— not only the more militarized police but on a cultural level, television has beaucoup cop shows! Beaucoup cop shows that they had millions and millions of people what would watch every week. Because in the cop shows, the cops always got the “criminal.” And, in many instances, the criminals was folks like me and Ray. Right?
Eric: Right, right.
Ashanti: And people were getting convinced, just like they captured us: “Don’t you try to do the same thing, ’cause we’ll get you, too. You cannot escape us.” Because when I went in in ’74, and when I got out at the end of ’85 and I’m living with my lawyer until he could work it out, my lawyer had a close relationship with a lot of black high school students, in New Haven, that had basketball skills…
But one of the young high-school students— ’cause he was being around the legal office— and just out of curiosity, I asked him, “What do you know about the Black Panther Party?” And he asked me, was it a martial arts group? Which helped me to understand what our enemy does in order to recoup, to recover from that revolutionary period that we kinda, like, was on the edge—
Eric: So close!
Ashanti: …Of revolution, and it felt like in so many ways. They know what they’re doing! And so, on the militarized level, and on that cultural level, they was recouping. And not to rule out, also, the influx of drugs into the community around the same time, too! ‘Cause when many of us got out, we saw the proliferation of street organizations that was involved with this murderous drug game? Oh, it made our job, ooooh— this is WAY more than we know how to handle. WAY more. So, all of these things are still with us today. That’s why I wanted to get back to that, because we talked about today. There’s real, legitimate reasons, but we still gotta figure out how to confront the fear.
Because if we don’t, they continue. I don’t wanna hear all that talk about, you know, the Empire is on its last legs; I get tired of that. People make predictions and all that shit. No! And, if it is, who’s going to be the ones who’s really going to suffer, if it really feels it, it’s gonna hit us at the bottom, and we gotta figure out how to still organize…
Eric: Yeah!
Ashanti: …against these things, on multi-dimensional levels, because the trauma— just like what the Palestinians is going through now.
Eric: We’re gonna get to that!
Ashanti: You know, the trauma, and it’s intergenerational, and it’s ongoing.
Ray: Can I just add one quick thing? You know, people are more likely to set up, and do, enter various types of activism around various issues— all of which is needed, that’s clear! Hasn’t been long since we saw all these huge Black Lives Matter demonstrations, right? A good example of what I’m talking about with how the system operates and what we need to do to stop Cop City, alright? We’re talking about intimidating people…
If we—Ashanti knows this, ’cause we’ve been doing this work for decades— if we don’t support the activists who are jailed and imprisoned, then we’re not worth shit. ‘Cause every movement that has succeeded in challenging the System and making some advance are those movements that have supported their prisoners.
People who get locked up, you know? You make a sacrifice, you know— You could lose your life, you know? Or you can be imprisoned. Or you can suffer some other consequences, as I mentioned earlier.
And all you’ve gotta do is…You’re talking about the struggle in Palestine? They don’t forget their prisoners in Palestine! Anyone who’s following the struggle in Palestine…And they never have! For real! And that’s part of what makes their movement and spirit so strong. And if you look at the Irish independent struggle, same thing.
If you look at South Africa, in the anti-apartheid years, Nelson Mandela, there was a lot of others. There was ANC or PAC, they didn’t leave their prisoners behind. They kept support networks going for them. They didn’t abandon them.
It’s been a constant struggle in this country to get recognition of political prisoners and, activists who get jailed, to don’t let them get abandoned. And what [they’re trying to do with] Stop Cop City is, “You’d better abandon them, or we’re gonna have your ass, too, next!”
You know, I know Stop Cop City defendants here in Maine, and I can tell you that, after talking with him in depth a couple of times…He was pretty well shell-shocked when he came out of the RICO indictment against them.
We have another case going on right now, in southern New Hampshire: Three young women being charged with felonies for nothing but a little bit of vandalism at an Elbit plant in southern New Hampshire (Elbit being a major military supplier to Israel). You can’t let these people be forgotten. If people see that they get absolutely no support when they step up and do something, they’re gonna be less likely to stand. Doesn’t mean they don’t see the issue, they don’t think something needs to be done; but they’re concerned about what happens if they do it.
Eric: That’s a great point. Something that I think my generation— 30-to-40-year-olds— noticed is when the Green Scare happened, those people got smashed. They got smashed with sentences that my generation did not think still happened. And I think that scared a lot of people away. When you see the 15-to-30 range with Marius Mason and Eric McDavid, Jake Conroy, all those guys— all those people…
So I wanna switch base real quick and jump to what’s happening right now on college campuses that we’re seeing— and that is, college kids comin’ together, making encampments, and facing extreme police responses, in some cases. Here in Denver, my boss, Zeke Williams, is— and our co-director of our legal firm, Claire— both were arrested just for being at an encampment! Just for showing up to support the students.
So, I was wondering if either of you two had views or had opinions on the positive aspects of the Palestinian movement, where we’re lacking, or anything in between that you would like to talk about?
Ashanti: Yeah. Well, one, I’ma tell you, I haven’t been this excited in a long time-
Eric: Shit’s happening!
Ashanti: -with the support that’s been coming out for the Palestinian people, the Palestinian nation, occupied Palestine. I think what has surprised me so much about it is not only the protests, but especially the, I’ma say “white Jews”— mainly young Jews, but I know there are supporters across the board— who are disconnecting Zionism from Judaism.
Eric: Breaking off that propaganda, not letting it get through.
Ashanti: Who would’ve thought? I mean, who would’ve thought? You know, because the Zionism in the United States is really strong! That hold on that, that consciousness is really strong. And to see these young folks challengin’ that— and older folks, too, I’ve been really watching— It warms my heart. Right?
So they’re comin’ out, and, this is antiwar! You know, when one says “anti-genocide,” it’s because of that war, the genocide war on the Palestinian people, you know?
So it’s at a great time…My fears is, is it going to be syphoned off into this presidential election? Right? And if all these folks who are against genocide and for the Palestinian people to be free, to be liberated, you know, does the act stop there?
You know, one of the things I kinda felt goin’ on in the antiwar movement back in the day was that once that war kind of concluded, there were still issues that we were fighting for. Black folks fighting for liberation, Indigenous folks fighting for sovereignty, Puerto Ricans fighting for independence, you know, Chicanos fighting for liberation of Atzlán, the workers are fighting, the women are fighting. Does it stop there? And that’s my concern that this what we’re doing for Palestine–we should see it as we have our Palestine here, yes, in this Empire that’s on the back of Turtle Island.
I’m really excited about one of the books I’m almost finished with now, Mohamed Abdou’s book Islam and Anarchy. It’s a really great really great book, whose author Mohamed Abdou I’ve known for like 20 years and I think he’s been working on this this book for 20 years… He’s an African Anarchist from Egypt, so he’s got the experience of the so-called Arab Spring. He lived in Canada, so he has that experience of developing deep relationship with the struggles there, particularly the indigenous struggles and connected with struggles here as well, so he’s on the ground. He’s not really the academic only guy. He is really a revolutionary, he’s really an anarchist.
The thing that he brings up that I think is key for folks now–not only those who are are Jews, but those who are immigrants–here he brings up a a term he uses is Settlers of color are those immigrants who come here looking for a better life, but they buy into Empire and so I think one things that can help this expression of massive resistance now in the United States is that there’s got to be a Consciousness that deepens around that this is Turtle Island and there’s still a a struggle going on here. There is African people who were brought here enslaved and if this Consciousness is not there then people will continue to fight for a better America– make America live up to its ideals and all of that. When folks who come here do that then you have to accept that you’re doing it on the backs of those original sins that this Empire has committed and it continues. Empire is not just something that happened in the past. It is a daily continuing thing that just goes on…
So we’re Palestine here as well, and we got to figure out how to get this madness off of us and into the dust bin of History.
Eric: thank you thank you for sharing that. Ray, do you yeah have any views on that?
Ray: Yeah I’m pumped about it too, about the the student movement that we’ve seen rise and it’s a really solid example of international solidarity. I like the cross-pollination of it with this, like Ashanti mentioned, it’s not just students. It’s interestingly enough tied into labor because in the California University system and some of the other big University Systems, a lot of those who have joined the campus demonstrations are actually union members on campus and then you got community people also, and I think that’s important. And of course, it is student leadership and students have have had a historic role in this country, in other countries in terms of social change and challenging the system…
It’s a spark and it could be built on, and I’m hoping and cautiously optimistic that they will continue to build on it. It’s a training ground for the future and the last point is that the seed is there in a lot of the Palestine work that’s going on now for longterm solidarity…
Eric: Do either of you two have have an opinion on what could be done to change or get rid of the prison system in America? Ray, I don’t know if you believe in full abolition. I don’t know where you stand on that, but you have an opinion.
Ray: This is a multistep thing… The fact is if you want to get to get rid of this Gulag as it exists in the United States of America today it requires system change. I’m an abolitionist. It’s an ideal of mine. But how do you do that? I’ve been seeing a lot of problems and issues rising up among the prison abolition thing, and the police abolition thing. I actually was involved in a panel discussion around security abolition, which is get rid of the FBI and the CIA and all the rest of it. I didn’t initiate it–I was asked to speak at it. You’re not going to do that without smashing capitalism, uprooting white supremacy…
Think local and act Global. I’ve been involved in prison work against mass incarceration, solitary confinement stuff for years in Maine… a little local project here in a place like Maine in Penobscot County, here, Wabanaki land, of course, they’re going to name a jail after a Native American word Penobscot. They should put on the outside on that that’s because disproportionately [high] number of Native Americans are inside their jail. They want to double the size of that jail. They want to build a new jail twice the size of the one they got now. Five years ago they came up with an architectural plan to do exactly that, but it requires they need the money which requires it goes to referendum. The county voters going to vote on it. We tore that plan apart… Every plan they put up, we have stopped and now we’re in year number five.
The point is how can you do anything about the largest prison system in the world or talk really realistically about abolition if you cannot stop this expansion of it–larger prisons, larger jails…
The architect that built Marion prison back in 1963 I think it was–the replacement for Alcatraz–is one of the architects on the bid to double the size of this new jail right here in my neighborhood over a half century later. These motherfuckers have been sucking all this money up, building–what kind of resume is that? But if you go on their website and look, they got all the nonprofit industrial complex rhetoric down flat. They say they’re going to have trauma sensitive cells and all that. But the point is it’s a small project but you take that and you amplify and multiply. If every little town, every small city was able to do the same thing, we could make some headway into turning. I think that’s just a a practical step that is almost a prerequisite step as part of moving towards abolition.
Eric: Thank you. Ashanti, do you have a view on this?
Ashanti: I’m definitely an abolitionist. I have some concerns, but I’m going to just tie it into this and not really get too deep into it. Like many things, this system has the ability to co-opt, regurgitate and spit something else back out to us, as if it was their idea, and I think that has been happening. And I think other abolitionists who have been developing this for years see the same thing, that this thing with abolitionist getting distorted and watered down to the point where you got many people who will use the word abolition where they abolitionist, you know, defund the police and all that other stuff.
I’m not really that big on the defund the police because I think that doesn’t show any understanding of the role of the police–that they ain’t gonna stand around like “oh you going to take our job from us.” No no no, “we’re Killers, we’re Shooters, we control you. That’s our job.” No, I think people can be kind of naive.
I am more for tying abolition into real Grassroots organizing that people can see the need to take back their lives. I like the initiative coming from The People’s Senate, which which is putting forth the Spirit of Mandela, a sort of dual power possibility of people developing the capacities to develop their own power in opposition to the white supremacist capitalist powers that be. I really like Dhoruba bin Wahad’s idea that he’s been pushing in terms of developing a united front against fascism, as we tried back in the days of fascism. And I think what is so key about that is that Dhoruba is very analytical and pointed into the role of the technologies of political control. He’s trying to get people to see the role of the police in a much broader picture that we need to get ready for.
And so I would encourage people–you can go to the uh the Spirit of Mandela website. You can even–if you put in united front against fascism, put Dhoruba’s name in there you’ll see where he has the conversation with Jill Stein and Cornell West. Both have a united front aspect and both want to reach masses of people from different communities, from different perspectives, but to be clear about how we need to focus on the role of them Frontline forces who are going to always be there to prevent us from developing this capacity to transform this madness…
Can we stay focused on the need to bring this Empire down as even the best way to help [against] the genocides that’s going on in Palestine and in Africa and other different places. But we don’t really talk about the genocides in Africa as much but those of us out of the Black Liberation struggle…
Like Che Guevara would say, “we’re in the brain of this Empire.” I say let’s get that aneurism going. Bring this thing down so that the role that the United States Empire plays in world oppressions can be disrupted and to help other people to develop the spaces in other countries and other struggles to free themselves.
I’m more concerned with a lot of the Abolitionist rhetoric today and a lot of people that are coming to the fore. There’s no deep class analysis; there’s no deep race analysis; there’s no idea of a settler Colonial situation here. And without them things, then you really talking about “I want to make America live up to its ideals.” And I don’t want to make America live up to its ideals because this is the ideal, regardless of its rhetoric. What we see now is the best that it can do and the best that it wants to do. We deserve better.
Eric: This is going to be our last question here. Ray and Ashanti, if either of you two have any projects you’re working on that you want to talk about, any things you just want to get off your chest or just get out there, I ask you to please take this time to do that now.
Ashanti: Right, I want to make sure to mention the work of Jericho, [supporting] political prisoners–I mean really, we got to be there for folks that take chances, take them risks. Tortuguita in the Cop City thing in Atlanta, was he expecting to die on that day? No. Was all those people expecting to get arrested under new versions of RICO? No. And Martin Luther King, how many times was he arrested? We have to be more real about that.
The other thing that I want to say is I’m an anarchist. So all of you folks out there who are anarchists, I feel we got a lot to offer and I feel like man we need to start talking more and being able to have more of a presence and input into shaping these struggles as they unfold and so I’m asking y’all–let’s figure out how to make that happen.
Eric: Thank you. Ray?
Ray: …I’ll just leave it with a little Parable… I’ve lived and operated in huge cities for a long time, but what I say a lot of times to people that live in less populated areas: there are many of us in small towns, suburbs, small cities. Speaking with people, they raise a lot of issues about, you know, you can say “united front against fascism” sounds good, but how do we get from here to there? You can identify the problem fairly easily: smash capitalism, imperialism and white supremacy and you’re off in the right direction. But how do you get there?
So without coming down a party line. I don’t represent a particular sectarian party, so coming from a working background, I made my living as a carpenter. Until I got old and retired, I made my living as a carpenter, not a hugely skilled carpenter. I’m a frame carpenter, but that means I can build it from bottom to top and when a dude hired me on the job, I was trying to get any kind of job I can because I was on parole and I needed a job. I needed money. So I said, “I’ll be carpenter’s helper” because I didn’t have any skill at all. And he says we don’t want carpenter’s helpers. Everybody is a carpenter, just different skill levels. And he gave me some advice that I’ve extrapolated for use in political organizing and advocacy.
He says, “how many people can just go out there and build a house? It would be overwhelming for the average person.”… He says “don’t try to build a house until you built a shed first.” And I live in the country. I’ve built quite a few sheds, among other things as unskilled as I was. Before I developed those skills, I built a shed, because to build a shed requires the same basic principles and blueprint as building a house…
So take that and put it into Community organizing terms: don’t be overwhelmed. We’re going to build a united front against fascism. You want to deal with white supremacy, you want to deal with Palestine, start with what you’ve got to work with. Build a shed first, get a program going, get us a few people together, get things started and I first got a taste of that because I was with a group that patterned ourselves to a degree after the Black Panther Party, although we were predominantly white, but we took seriously the survival programs that the the Panthers did. You had to start smaller to get people involved in working on their own to see that to get
to a higher level survival ending with Revolution without giving up your politics. So that’s that’s my hard suggestion.Eric: So as everyone who talks to me on social media knows, what I always always leave people with is please write a prisoner. Please write a prisoner, whether they’re a political prisoner, a social prisoner, whether they’re in the lower custody level or the highest custody level. Please write someone inside. Please start a project with those inside. See what you can do to help them and help make their time and their comrades’ time inside better.
Ashanti, brother, I thank you so much. Ray, thank you so much. It was a real honor talking to both of you.
#AnarchistPrisoners #ashantiAlston #bla #ericKing #internationalSolidarity #northAmerica #palestine #PoliticalPrisoners #rayLucLevasseur
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Eric King, Ashanti Alston, and Ray Luc Levasseur—all contributors to “Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners”—discuss their experiences with imprisonment, education behind bars, organizing with fellow inmates, and the ongoing importance of international solidarity with captured revolutionaries.
The following is a selection of the transcription from the full video conversation.
Eric King: So both of you did over a decade in prison. Ray, you did you did two decades during that time. How are you able to maintain or be a part of the struggle–either the struggle inside the prison or the struggle that you were a part of that landed you in prison–how were you able to continue and maintain that struggle if you were?
Ashanti Alston: Well, inside when we were captured in New Haven, Connecticut, there was support groups that was there for us from New York, even ones that I have been a part of and others, but at a certain point I’m underground and some of those same folks when we was in New Haven going to trial that them same defense committees was there for us during the trial and there was one local group in New Haven, which was actually a Trotskyist group that was there for us and they were really solid, really consistent, really great, and also they were the first ones to give me a much better understanding of what it was to be a Trotskyist in the movement because I think I kind of brushed it off because as the the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, sometimes you don’t really question why do we got this thing with the Trotskyists, why is that anyhow, but they were really solid and really great supporters.
So inside, those support groups, defense groups all also help to keep you in touch with family; they would, if the family needed help to come up to see me, they would help with that process. The letter writings at that time was like really really important because, though our minds at the time during the trial was still ‘we ain’t really trying to here for the process of this trial.’ We really are looking for avenues out, but you got to kind of deal with both reality, both possibilities. You might have to do this trial and get sent or you might find an opening and you’re out of there. They provided that link that kept us hopeful with the course of the struggle.
I think I could say that folks were still carrying on the struggle in our particular case because we were captured in the midst of this expropriation. We had no illusions about getting acquitted. We were fortunate enough to have good lawyers who volunteered their services and two of them, David Rosen and Ed Dolan were also part of Erica Huggins’ and Bobby Seale’s legal defense team and so they just contacted us and said, “Hey, we’re here for you if you want it. We’re here to to defend you.” And we were like, “Well, right on.” And there was another lawyer John Williams, who also had politics.
We knew that this this was going to be a political trial, but during this time our our minds was still ‘we’re at war.’ The process of this trial was just almost like a distraction and it was the connection with the defense committees–the New York ones, the New Haven ones, and there was not a lot of support, but it still kept us connected.
We wasn’t able to get out after a few attempts. We get sentenced–it was federal charges and state charges. So for the bank expropriation, it was a five to 25 year sentence and then for because it was the shootout and two cops got hurt, it was 10 to 20 for that. And after that, they kept us separated. We was never to be in the same prison anywhere again except towards the end and in summers when one of my comrades was transferred there and for a brief period of time I had made parole, we was there at least for several months together.
What I wanted to bring up is that because our minds is still at war, I studied, I trained. My comrades studied, trained, because we had the examples of stories from Huey P. Newton and in prison, we had the stories of George Jackson, so it was almost like if you’re in the cell and here comes the guard, just making his regular rounds, we might just to to play with him pop down on the floor we knocking out 20 push-ups or whatever. Otherwise, we’re doing all the other things because we want to stay ready, that whole Stay Ready mentality. It was not depressing for me. I didn’t go through no depression. It was just the ready mentality.
I read all the time, so going off to prison, the first stop was Oxford, Wisconsin. That was the first one they sent me to because I had to do the federal time first. One of my comrades comes there, who’s down in prison in Georgia now, Kamau Sadiki. It was one of the first times that me and another comrade from the BLA was in the same prison. Same mentality we had: War. We got a brother that’s training us in kung fu and everything else and we got to do it secretly cuz you can’t do it in the open. The guards don’t play that stuff, you know.
Then, I had put in for a transfer to Lewisburg prison and eventually, I got transferred to Lewisburg because it was at least, it was the closest to home. So, Lewisburg was was one of the major maximum prisons, federal prisons, serious place, and I’m a young guy and there was a few other guys in there. We’re young, but there’s a collective there and what the collective does [is] you come into the collective of comrades from different formations, and you’re studying, you’re training, you got other folks in there, prisoners who want to be a part of that kind of revolutionary consciousness raising stuff. It’s like an easy connection still at the time because this is the mid to going into the late ’70s, so still, how can we get out of this big prison with these tall walls and everything?
Support groups kept us connected to the movements, but I will say over and over, it wasn’t like we got letters from a lot of people like the national Jericho movement and other groups will have letter writing nights and all that. We didn’t get that. We wasn’t getting money for commissary. We was just facing this situation, doing this time, looking for openings to get out. But I learned a lot there. I read and even all the times I was in and out of segregation, I’m like, “you can put me in, just give me my books.” Now, I’m reading and I’m interacting with others.
This is when I’m beginning to read the radical psychologies, the feminisms. I’m beginning to read the more in-depth histories of different struggles, like the Irish Freedom struggles with the IRA and the Philippine Hukbalahap and all this stuff, and even more in-depth Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, because comrades was still able to get books and things in, so there was books always floating around, so I’m also learning in this environment. I don’t give a damn that it’s in prison, and Sundiata Acoli would when we used to correspond–wasn’t supposed to, but we did–he would say, “turn that prison into University.” Yes, it’s all about preparing you for getting out. So that was my experience there.
But the repression inside the prison got to be really bad. This particularly fascist warden came in at a certain point. He was clamping down on a lot of stuff and I worked industry with others at the time and some things happen in industry like industry caught on fire a few times. Hey, by chance, you know, by chance. That’s what I say. But who did they come after? They came after me, a few other comrades, those others who was jailhouse lawyers. Next thing I know they swooping us up, we on the bus on our way to Marion, Illinois.
At Marion who’s one of the first persons we see who’s in general population, but they walking us to segregation uh it’s Rafael Miranda of the Puerto Rican independentistas. He’s letting us know that they already know that we’re on our way there. They had already got the word through the grapevine. Herman Bell was there, other comrades who may not be known… because Marion took the place of Alcatraz. This was supposed to be the most escape-proof prison at the time and it was so electronic…
Those political prisoners and politicized prisoners had one of the most fantastic libraries, so again I’m learning. I’m increasing my understandings of struggle and the anti-authoritarian aspects, the anarchist aspects and moving closer in that direction. I still had connection through the defense committees on some of the movements that was going on, but those numbers were dwindling because they were getting hit with a lot of repression. Safiya [Bukhari, Ashanti’s wife] and others decided to go underground because there was these grand jury searches, trying to get them on different charges of supporting other actions to help free BLA folks or political prisoners, and so wasn’t a lot of letters, wasn’t all that stuff, but we know we’re soldiers. This is what we gonna do.
From there, some of us was like the word was don’t accept general population and so some of us decide to stay in seg to force them to transfer us and they ended up transferring some of us to Lompoc, California. Who was amongst that group? Leonard Peltier… Curly Raul Estremera from the BLA, Puerto Rican BLA and others. So here we are now. Lompoc was just in the process of transferring from medium security to maximum and it was kind of a modernist place and it had fences, but they hadn’t had all the concertina wire up yet, so here we are all doing all this time. We like “man, we got to hit this fence before they get all this concertina wire up,” but in the process, we are meeting other folks, supporters from the outside and especially at this time, some revolutionary groups in California. One was called the Wellspring Collective or Tribal Thumb, which was a very anti-authoritarian group and so they would come up to visit.
So it’s like more and more I am learning different ways that people struggle and are trying to carry it on in that California area, because a lot of them politicized prisoners who was with George or out of them circles were coming out also and getting involved with grassroots organizing. So I feel like that’s always my prison experience. I gotta learn, I gotta be ready and I gotta make sure that I’m interacting with folks who are still carrying us on or figuring out ways to keep the momentum and and many of us was on that same page.
And so then Connecticut and eventually I get parole to the Connecticut state prison and I finished the second half of my sentence there and eventually get out.
Eric: Perfect, thank you, also you mentioned Tribal Thumb and someone I look up to, Bill Dunne was a member of Tribal Thumb.
Ashanti: Just to say about Bill Dunne, I believe that part of the reason he got captured, recaptured was because we needed him to help us. And so there’s a special part of me that’s always for him because, of course, he made a sacrifice for the people.
Eric: And for the people listening, if you’d like to write Bill Dunne, he is currently at the medical facility in FCI Butner.
Ray, would you like to touch on that same topic about how you maintain struggle both or either inside or outside of those movements?
Ray Luc Levasseur: Well, first of all, Bill Dunne, it would be very nice if people could write to him at Butner. I just got a letter from him a few weeks ago. He’s struggling with health issues, but he’s he’s still got the same strong spirit and good sense of humor he always has but he needs a little support, lots of support.
Briefly, we’re talking one struggle here, two parts of it, inside and outside. And I’ve always found it interesting the political prisoners on the inside always gravitate to each other no matter which movement or which organizations they come from, while the support organizations on the street seem to do a lot more squabbling with each other and can’t seem to deal with all the obstacles they need to to form a more united front around political prisoners.
Briefly, my first experience in Tennessee pen and in Brushy Mountain–it was my first prison experience and I had been politically active before I went in Southern Student Organizing Committee, but hadn’t been in the movement that long and so my my support network wasn’t that strong initially. I was able to get books and correspond with people and this is very helpful and like Ashanti pointed, political education inside, but right from the get go, we had a food strike over conditions at the county jail and what was particularly interesting and and pertinent about that was you had white and black prisoners and you had to overcome that racial barrier to get everybody together on the same page and go and strike over these conditions.
So I presented the demands–we threw all our food back out, made a mess and wouldn’t eat and the Goon Squad comes up, the whole deal. I got the demands ready: they have to improve the food and the medical care, which was basically non-existent and they dragged me out the next day to the courthouse and got me a force transfer to State Penitentiary and Nashville. Every joint I’ve been in has been either Max or super Max and right away, I got a jacket and that jacket follows me through the rest of my time in the Tennessee prisons and it shows up again many years later for the next 20 years in the federal prisons.
What my jacket says is “he’s a troublemaker, he’s a radical, and he’s a racial agitator.” That they stuck on me after I got to to Nashville, but the seeds for that was in the food strike because the most radical thing I did and could be done when I got to the state penitentary was cross the color line. It was basically Jim Crow. Those are the exact words they put in my jacket: “he’s a racial agitator.” Why is this guy trying to bring people together? As if there’s something wrong here because prison systems are notorious for keeping people divided on racial lines so cross crossing that racial line is what I did as a matter of principle as already a practicing anti-racist in my time with SSOC.
Then, they stuck me on death row to get me off the compound. I was actually on death row. They had several cells for miscreant that they considered real troublemakers from the population. They put me there. I was in there with brothers from Memphis who gave me an education about white supremacy and killer cops I will never forget. You know, learning is a two-way street inside and we were doing political education.
So then, they sent me to Brushy, which was a connection to the old convict leasing system. I got there in 1970. If I got there in 1965, I would have been mining coal. In 1970, it was a Super Max, one of the early super Maxes, so we were locked up almost all the time they cut off all books, all newspapers, no phone calls, very restricted correspondence: immediate family, lawyer, clergy. And that was another racist place, every single guard in Brushy Mountain–this is in East Tennessee Mountains–was white. Half the prisoners there were black. They moved death row and me there at the same time and most of the prisoners on death row were black and I literally had to fight my way out of that place. I used to tell people I’m a Vietnam vet. I was in a war before I ever got to this War. I was in a foreign war. I’m a veteran of foreign and domestic Wars because it was a battle to get out of there.
Fast forward: I gotta do 20 years here in the feds, most of it was at Marion and ADX. You know about those places. About 13 years of it in some kind of isolation or solitary confinement…
I had to write,that was the key: a pencil, a pen. It became enormously important for me, my codefendants and I like to think of making a contribution to the ongoing struggles on the streets. I wrote prolifically for quite a long time. I wrote one of the first really published widely spread article outside of mainstream media about ADX in prison legal news. So disarmed from whatever you armed yourself with on the street, you know, it changes inside and I was fortunate that we had supporters on the street–this is pre-internet and everything–to take those writings and developments concerning us and amplify and widely distributed it as much as possible… So this was an important Network and was an important method for me to communicate. For Leonard Peltier or Oscar Lopez it was art. Tom Manning: art. There’s different ways it can be done. With Marilyn [Buck]: poetry. There’s any number of ways that you have to keep your spirit and your politics alive and relevant somehow and that was the way I did it.
I think the most important action we took as political prisoners during my time at Marion was we we did a work refusal. They had it set up where they would not release you from Marion until you went to a pre-transfer unit that made military hardware. And we drew the line and said we will not do that as a condition for a transfer to somewhere else because we weren’t there on disciplinary charges. They had just sent us there because of our jackets. We were all radical and so we refused it. Me, Tom Manning, Mutulu Shakur, Oscar Lopez Rivera and others, we refused and then we end up in ADX.
I want to just reiterate what Ashanti said through all this is study, political education, physical conditioning and the one time of year that I always see that happen when I was inside and I got out is in August. And I did it with Mutulu and the other conscious Brothers before I left–we commemorate Black August throughout the prison system, state or federal, which involves fasting, which involves political education, which involves physical exercise, as much as you can do it together. It’s commemorating the sacrifices of those Black Freedom Fighters like George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson and others before them and after them and it continues to this day.
Eric: In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, we saw more direct action. We saw bank appropriations, we saw people putting their freedom on the line for the Liberation struggle. Why do you think that is banished? Why do you think we do not see that sort of militant action anymore?
Ashanti: It’s a question that is always on my mind and so to try to explain why it’s always on my mind, the ’60s and ’70s, I still feel like, man, that was such a period for me to come of age, joining the Black Panther Party. It was such a time to be alive, it was just in so many ways magical. It’s like you didn’t have all the distractions. You saw that the Civil Rights Movement was getting beat down. You could turn on that television; it wasn’t but maybe six channels on that television. You’re going to see what these fascists are doing to the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. But it’s also the point where Black Power is coming into being. Stokeley Carmichael’s voice, H. Rap Brown [AKA] Jamil al-Amin, who’s now still in prison. They were raising more of the Malcolm X spirit in the sense of “we want to be free.” Black power also was directing us towards what does self-determination look like, how might we actually take over our communities, the institutions, etc. It gave more of a concrete picture of what are we fighting for here and not integration.
So here also now we beginning to explore socialism, communism and the Panther Party, having to read Karl Marx and and then Frantz Fanon and all these other folks. It made us see more of the reality of this monster we’re facing, that it could not be changed. It could not be even modified. This monster has to be challenged and we have to build the kind of revolutionary movements that can like George Jackson say, bring it to its knees and I don’t know how that sounds to other people, but when you know your history, when you know what this country on the back of Turtle Island did to indigenous Nations, what it has and continues to do, what it did to African people and continues to do, what it had did to the Mexicans and others who come here. This is not something you try to reform. So you see the necessity, even us as teenagers, of fighting this, develop the capacity to fight.
The great thing about the Panther Party was that you know that fight took the form of survival programs as well as Liberation schools. The survival programs were so key because it was pretty much telling people that we can feed ourselves. The free health clinics was basically saying we can take care of our own health issues. The political education classes was like if the schools are not going to teach us what we really need to know then we need to do that. That was that self-determination nationalist attitude. When we talk about Nat Turner and all the other folks, we knew that there were those who did fight back by any means necessary.
And it’s the same thing with the guy now that speaks on Palestine a lot, Norman Finklestein, the thing he brings up about the Nat Turner rebellion and he says clearly, that was a pretty vicious thing, but it was an act of rebellion and an act of necessity, and he went to what the Abolitionist Movement leaders were putting out in their papers and in their talks to give it some perspective and and basically, what the Abolitionist Movement was telling people was, “we told you things like this were going to happen because you have these people enslaved.” So Norman Finklestein was comparing it to the open air prison, Palestine, Gaza and, that was what we were trying to get across also. Don’t call us crazy because we are trying to develop the capacity to be free, which will mean that we have got to confront this monster with all means necessary.
The Panther Party, I feel, came closest to to bringing that into fruition because it started off Black Panther Party for self-defense, but also in its growing process understood this aspect of armed struggle and we need to defend our communities and then we we don’t need to rely on the police to do it because clearly the police is an occupying force. That language at the time was so key. When when Eldridge Cleaver and them talked about this being an internal colony and we’re inside the mother country, he was giving us a way to see what this settler colonialism was and also see our struggle on a much broader level compared with the African Liberation movements, the Liberation movements coming out of Asia, the Revolutionary struggles even in Germany and Japan and other places.
Those of us in the in the Panther Party who went underground, we had always understood that we have to develop the capacity to defend ourselves. Who do we come up against is all those Bourgeois Negroes and others who want to stay connected to the monster and want to convince our people “do not follow them crazy people, stay with the monster, they’re going to give us a few trinkets, they’re going to give us a little bit more.”
Let me tell you what happened quickly after the rebellion in my hometown. This is ’67, this is what pretty much brought me into the movement. I’m like 13, 14 years old. The rebellion in Planfield when black folks took over the black community because they went and got crates of M1 rifles, they was able to hold it for a week. 13, 14 year old Ashanti was like “oh my God.” This is blowing my mind that we are able to do this. But then after the National Guard came in with the tanks and took it over, the first thing that the city government did once they was contained, was to put some swimming pools in the playgrounds and they called that, you know, “y’all should be satisfied with that.” Now Plainfield ain’t been right since.
To this day, even with afterwards, black Mayors, it ain’t been right since because we could not hold that self-determination, that black power perspective because of how that black middle class wanted to just fit in. They wanted to integrate. The lesson we should know from that is that we can’t integrate into this poisonous monstrous Empire. We have really got to figure out that the way forward is to cut it loose. Cut it loose in every way we can.
Eric: Thank you! Shout out to Plainfield. Ray Luc, do you have an opinion or a thought on why this generation—particularly with what’s going on— why we’ve seen such a decrease in militant action or direct action compared to when you guys were comin’ up?
Ray Luc: You know, I agree a lot with what Ashanti said about time, place, conditions. During our early political activist years, it was a much different time in the world. You know, Che said, “1, 2, 3, many Vietnams” and I come out of Vietnam, you know—that seemed like a real possibility.
And, Ashanti, you were talking about 1967; you know, I was in Vietnam in 1967. We got an old Life magazine over there, you know— a very popular American weekly at the time— and it showed pictures of Detroit at the 1967 rebellion. And I saw that when I was in ‘Nam, and I’d done a lot of flying in helicopters, and, you know, the devastation that I saw in the pages of Life magazine looked similar to what I was seeing in parts of Vietnam.
And so I went up to Detroit to look at it myself, after I got back (I was stationed at Fort Campbell.), and I could see there was a real war going on here, too.
When I got out in 2004, one of the things I noticed about the general climate is I felt people were fearful. There was a level of, you know— this was following 9/11, and I was inside during 9/11. But there was this sense of, people has a sense of fear, insecurity, anxiety that I hadn’t sensed twenty years earlier, when I went in. And, it is a real challenge.
I mean, when I’m involved in Palestine work right now, mainly what I’m seeing is certainly a lot of energy has been generated around supporting Palestine. Some for different reasons among different people, but there’s real potential there for this…This movement that’s happening around this country right now to develop to the level it was around South Africa 25 years ago. But that is an exception, and I don’t have a firm answer for what you’re saying. One of the questions I used to get a lot over the years—not so much anymore, but did— it indicates why people were thinking different than they were, you know, decades earlier. There’s a sense about people, you know, that they were kind of overwhelmed by the power of the system, you know? They would say, “How can you challenge something like this? It seems that everything we do or try doesn’t get anywhere.” Because it’s too big, it’s too powerful.
And, the other one was about sacrifice. If you go up against the system, there are consequences.
Eric: Serious consequences.
Ray Luc: You know, we here, on this panel right now are demonstrating what some of those consequences are, but there’s a lot of other consequences. I’ve heard you, Eric, talk about an organization I’ve been very involved with, which is Rosenberg Fund for Children.
Eric: Love ‘em!
Ray: This is an organization that supports children of political prisoners— and if you go and you look at the parents with these children, the activists, how many different ways government can make you pay for your activism. Whether you’re an immigration activist, a climate activist, an antifascist activist…And at different levels of activism, depending on where you are, you know—there’s other factors—but it’s a whole lot of people that are paying a price for their activism and it scares a lot of people.
Eric: Thank you! Thank you so much. Ashanti, you wanted us to come back to you? You had a follow-up?
Ashanti: ….What I had wanted to get back to around here is the difference between then and now. I do think fear is a big, big part, ’cause I think that once they had captured a lot of us, what was put in place— not only the more militarized police but on a cultural level, television has beaucoup cop shows! Beaucoup cop shows that they had millions and millions of people what would watch every week. Because in the cop shows, the cops always got the “criminal.” And, in many instances, the criminals was folks like me and Ray. Right?
Eric: Right, right.
Ashanti: And people were getting convinced, just like they captured us: “Don’t you try to do the same thing, ’cause we’ll get you, too. You cannot escape us.” Because when I went in in ’74, and when I got out at the end of ’85 and I’m living with my lawyer until he could work it out, my lawyer had a close relationship with a lot of black high school students, in New Haven, that had basketball skills…
But one of the young high-school students— ’cause he was being around the legal office— and just out of curiosity, I asked him, “What do you know about the Black Panther Party?” And he asked me, was it a martial arts group? Which helped me to understand what our enemy does in order to recoup, to recover from that revolutionary period that we kinda, like, was on the edge—
Eric: So close!
Ashanti: …Of revolution, and it felt like in so many ways. They know what they’re doing! And so, on the militarized level, and on that cultural level, they was recouping. And not to rule out, also, the influx of drugs into the community around the same time, too! ‘Cause when many of us got out, we saw the proliferation of street organizations that was involved with this murderous drug game? Oh, it made our job, ooooh— this is WAY more than we know how to handle. WAY more. So, all of these things are still with us today. That’s why I wanted to get back to that, because we talked about today. There’s real, legitimate reasons, but we still gotta figure out how to confront the fear.
Because if we don’t, they continue. I don’t wanna hear all that talk about, you know, the Empire is on its last legs; I get tired of that. People make predictions and all that shit. No! And, if it is, who’s going to be the ones who’s really going to suffer, if it really feels it, it’s gonna hit us at the bottom, and we gotta figure out how to still organize…
Eric: Yeah!
Ashanti: …against these things, on multi-dimensional levels, because the trauma— just like what the Palestinians is going through now.
Eric: We’re gonna get to that!
Ashanti: You know, the trauma, and it’s intergenerational, and it’s ongoing.
Ray: Can I just add one quick thing? You know, people are more likely to set up, and do, enter various types of activism around various issues— all of which is needed, that’s clear! Hasn’t been long since we saw all these huge Black Lives Matter demonstrations, right? A good example of what I’m talking about with how the system operates and what we need to do to stop Cop City, alright? We’re talking about intimidating people…
If we—Ashanti knows this, ’cause we’ve been doing this work for decades— if we don’t support the activists who are jailed and imprisoned, then we’re not worth shit. ‘Cause every movement that has succeeded in challenging the System and making some advance are those movements that have supported their prisoners.
People who get locked up, you know? You make a sacrifice, you know— You could lose your life, you know? Or you can be imprisoned. Or you can suffer some other consequences, as I mentioned earlier.
And all you’ve gotta do is…You’re talking about the struggle in Palestine? They don’t forget their prisoners in Palestine! Anyone who’s following the struggle in Palestine…And they never have! For real! And that’s part of what makes their movement and spirit so strong. And if you look at the Irish independent struggle, same thing.
If you look at South Africa, in the anti-apartheid years, Nelson Mandela, there was a lot of others. There was ANC or PAC, they didn’t leave their prisoners behind. They kept support networks going for them. They didn’t abandon them.
It’s been a constant struggle in this country to get recognition of political prisoners and, activists who get jailed, to don’t let them get abandoned. And what [they’re trying to do with] Stop Cop City is, “You’d better abandon them, or we’re gonna have your ass, too, next!”
You know, I know Stop Cop City defendants here in Maine, and I can tell you that, after talking with him in depth a couple of times…He was pretty well shell-shocked when he came out of the RICO indictment against them.
We have another case going on right now, in southern New Hampshire: Three young women being charged with felonies for nothing but a little bit of vandalism at an Elbit plant in southern New Hampshire (Elbit being a major military supplier to Israel). You can’t let these people be forgotten. If people see that they get absolutely no support when they step up and do something, they’re gonna be less likely to stand. Doesn’t mean they don’t see the issue, they don’t think something needs to be done; but they’re concerned about what happens if they do it.
Eric: That’s a great point. Something that I think my generation— 30-to-40-year-olds— noticed is when the Green Scare happened, those people got smashed. They got smashed with sentences that my generation did not think still happened. And I think that scared a lot of people away. When you see the 15-to-30 range with Marius Mason and Eric McDavid, Jake Conroy, all those guys— all those people…
So I wanna switch base real quick and jump to what’s happening right now on college campuses that we’re seeing— and that is, college kids comin’ together, making encampments, and facing extreme police responses, in some cases. Here in Denver, my boss, Zeke Williams, is— and our co-director of our legal firm, Claire— both were arrested just for being at an encampment! Just for showing up to support the students.
So, I was wondering if either of you two had views or had opinions on the positive aspects of the Palestinian movement, where we’re lacking, or anything in between that you would like to talk about?
Ashanti: Yeah. Well, one, I’ma tell you, I haven’t been this excited in a long time-
Eric: Shit’s happening!
Ashanti: -with the support that’s been coming out for the Palestinian people, the Palestinian nation, occupied Palestine. I think what has surprised me so much about it is not only the protests, but especially the, I’ma say “white Jews”— mainly young Jews, but I know there are supporters across the board— who are disconnecting Zionism from Judaism.
Eric: Breaking off that propaganda, not letting it get through.
Ashanti: Who would’ve thought? I mean, who would’ve thought? You know, because the Zionism in the United States is really strong! That hold on that, that consciousness is really strong. And to see these young folks challengin’ that— and older folks, too, I’ve been really watching— It warms my heart. Right?
So they’re comin’ out, and, this is antiwar! You know, when one says “anti-genocide,” it’s because of that war, the genocide war on the Palestinian people, you know?
So it’s at a great time…My fears is, is it going to be syphoned off into this presidential election? Right? And if all these folks who are against genocide and for the Palestinian people to be free, to be liberated, you know, does the act stop there?
You know, one of the things I kinda felt goin’ on in the antiwar movement back in the day was that once that war kind of concluded, there were still issues that we were fighting for. Black folks fighting for liberation, Indigenous folks fighting for sovereignty, Puerto Ricans fighting for independence, you know, Chicanos fighting for liberation of Atzlán, the workers are fighting, the women are fighting. Does it stop there? And that’s my concern that this what we’re doing for Palestine–we should see it as we have our Palestine here, yes, in this Empire that’s on the back of Turtle Island.
I’m really excited about one of the books I’m almost finished with now, Mohamed Abdou’s book Islam and Anarchy. It’s a really great really great book, whose author Mohamed Abdou I’ve known for like 20 years and I think he’s been working on this this book for 20 years… He’s an African Anarchist from Egypt, so he’s got the experience of the so-called Arab Spring. He lived in Canada, so he has that experience of developing deep relationship with the struggles there, particularly the indigenous struggles and connected with struggles here as well, so he’s on the ground. He’s not really the academic only guy. He is really a revolutionary, he’s really an anarchist.
The thing that he brings up that I think is key for folks now–not only those who are are Jews, but those who are immigrants–here he brings up a a term he uses is Settlers of color are those immigrants who come here looking for a better life, but they buy into Empire and so I think one things that can help this expression of massive resistance now in the United States is that there’s got to be a Consciousness that deepens around that this is Turtle Island and there’s still a a struggle going on here. There is African people who were brought here enslaved and if this Consciousness is not there then people will continue to fight for a better America– make America live up to its ideals and all of that. When folks who come here do that then you have to accept that you’re doing it on the backs of those original sins that this Empire has committed and it continues. Empire is not just something that happened in the past. It is a daily continuing thing that just goes on…
So we’re Palestine here as well, and we got to figure out how to get this madness off of us and into the dust bin of History.
Eric: thank you thank you for sharing that. Ray, do you yeah have any views on that?
Ray: Yeah I’m pumped about it too, about the the student movement that we’ve seen rise and it’s a really solid example of international solidarity. I like the cross-pollination of it with this, like Ashanti mentioned, it’s not just students. It’s interestingly enough tied into labor because in the California University system and some of the other big University Systems, a lot of those who have joined the campus demonstrations are actually union members on campus and then you got community people also, and I think that’s important. And of course, it is student leadership and students have have had a historic role in this country, in other countries in terms of social change and challenging the system…
It’s a spark and it could be built on, and I’m hoping and cautiously optimistic that they will continue to build on it. It’s a training ground for the future and the last point is that the seed is there in a lot of the Palestine work that’s going on now for longterm solidarity…
Eric: Do either of you two have have an opinion on what could be done to change or get rid of the prison system in America? Ray, I don’t know if you believe in full abolition. I don’t know where you stand on that, but you have an opinion.
Ray: This is a multistep thing… The fact is if you want to get to get rid of this Gulag as it exists in the United States of America today it requires system change. I’m an abolitionist. It’s an ideal of mine. But how do you do that? I’ve been seeing a lot of problems and issues rising up among the prison abolition thing, and the police abolition thing. I actually was involved in a panel discussion around security abolition, which is get rid of the FBI and the CIA and all the rest of it. I didn’t initiate it–I was asked to speak at it. You’re not going to do that without smashing capitalism, uprooting white supremacy…
Think local and act Global. I’ve been involved in prison work against mass incarceration, solitary confinement stuff for years in Maine… a little local project here in a place like Maine in Penobscot County, here, Wabanaki land, of course, they’re going to name a jail after a Native American word Penobscot. They should put on the outside on that that’s because disproportionately [high] number of Native Americans are inside their jail. They want to double the size of that jail. They want to build a new jail twice the size of the one they got now. Five years ago they came up with an architectural plan to do exactly that, but it requires they need the money which requires it goes to referendum. The county voters going to vote on it. We tore that plan apart… Every plan they put up, we have stopped and now we’re in year number five.
The point is how can you do anything about the largest prison system in the world or talk really realistically about abolition if you cannot stop this expansion of it–larger prisons, larger jails…
The architect that built Marion prison back in 1963 I think it was–the replacement for Alcatraz–is one of the architects on the bid to double the size of this new jail right here in my neighborhood over a half century later. These motherfuckers have been sucking all this money up, building–what kind of resume is that? But if you go on their website and look, they got all the nonprofit industrial complex rhetoric down flat. They say they’re going to have trauma sensitive cells and all that. But the point is it’s a small project but you take that and you amplify and multiply. If every little town, every small city was able to do the same thing, we could make some headway into turning. I think that’s just a a practical step that is almost a prerequisite step as part of moving towards abolition.
Eric: Thank you. Ashanti, do you have a view on this?
Ashanti: I’m definitely an abolitionist. I have some concerns, but I’m going to just tie it into this and not really get too deep into it. Like many things, this system has the ability to co-opt, regurgitate and spit something else back out to us, as if it was their idea, and I think that has been happening. And I think other abolitionists who have been developing this for years see the same thing, that this thing with abolitionist getting distorted and watered down to the point where you got many people who will use the word abolition where they abolitionist, you know, defund the police and all that other stuff.
I’m not really that big on the defund the police because I think that doesn’t show any understanding of the role of the police–that they ain’t gonna stand around like “oh you going to take our job from us.” No no no, “we’re Killers, we’re Shooters, we control you. That’s our job.” No, I think people can be kind of naive.
I am more for tying abolition into real Grassroots organizing that people can see the need to take back their lives. I like the initiative coming from The People’s Senate, which which is putting forth the Spirit of Mandela, a sort of dual power possibility of people developing the capacities to develop their own power in opposition to the white supremacist capitalist powers that be. I really like Dhoruba bin Wahad’s idea that he’s been pushing in terms of developing a united front against fascism, as we tried back in the days of fascism. And I think what is so key about that is that Dhoruba is very analytical and pointed into the role of the technologies of political control. He’s trying to get people to see the role of the police in a much broader picture that we need to get ready for.
And so I would encourage people–you can go to the uh the Spirit of Mandela website. You can even–if you put in united front against fascism, put Dhoruba’s name in there you’ll see where he has the conversation with Jill Stein and Cornell West. Both have a united front aspect and both want to reach masses of people from different communities, from different perspectives, but to be clear about how we need to focus on the role of them Frontline forces who are going to always be there to prevent us from developing this capacity to transform this madness…
Can we stay focused on the need to bring this Empire down as even the best way to help [against] the genocides that’s going on in Palestine and in Africa and other different places. But we don’t really talk about the genocides in Africa as much but those of us out of the Black Liberation struggle…
Like Che Guevara would say, “we’re in the brain of this Empire.” I say let’s get that aneurism going. Bring this thing down so that the role that the United States Empire plays in world oppressions can be disrupted and to help other people to develop the spaces in other countries and other struggles to free themselves.
I’m more concerned with a lot of the Abolitionist rhetoric today and a lot of people that are coming to the fore. There’s no deep class analysis; there’s no deep race analysis; there’s no idea of a settler Colonial situation here. And without them things, then you really talking about “I want to make America live up to its ideals.” And I don’t want to make America live up to its ideals because this is the ideal, regardless of its rhetoric. What we see now is the best that it can do and the best that it wants to do. We deserve better.
Eric: This is going to be our last question here. Ray and Ashanti, if either of you two have any projects you’re working on that you want to talk about, any things you just want to get off your chest or just get out there, I ask you to please take this time to do that now.
Ashanti: Right, I want to make sure to mention the work of Jericho, [supporting] political prisoners–I mean really, we got to be there for folks that take chances, take them risks. Tortuguita in the Cop City thing in Atlanta, was he expecting to die on that day? No. Was all those people expecting to get arrested under new versions of RICO? No. And Martin Luther King, how many times was he arrested? We have to be more real about that.
The other thing that I want to say is I’m an anarchist. So all of you folks out there who are anarchists, I feel we got a lot to offer and I feel like man we need to start talking more and being able to have more of a presence and input into shaping these struggles as they unfold and so I’m asking y’all–let’s figure out how to make that happen.
Eric: Thank you. Ray?
Ray: …I’ll just leave it with a little Parable… I’ve lived and operated in huge cities for a long time, but what I say a lot of times to people that live in less populated areas: there are many of us in small towns, suburbs, small cities. Speaking with people, they raise a lot of issues about, you know, you can say “united front against fascism” sounds good, but how do we get from here to there? You can identify the problem fairly easily: smash capitalism, imperialism and white supremacy and you’re off in the right direction. But how do you get there?
So without coming down a party line. I don’t represent a particular sectarian party, so coming from a working background, I made my living as a carpenter. Until I got old and retired, I made my living as a carpenter, not a hugely skilled carpenter. I’m a frame carpenter, but that means I can build it from bottom to top and when a dude hired me on the job, I was trying to get any kind of job I can because I was on parole and I needed a job. I needed money. So I said, “I’ll be carpenter’s helper” because I didn’t have any skill at all. And he says we don’t want carpenter’s helpers. Everybody is a carpenter, just different skill levels. And he gave me some advice that I’ve extrapolated for use in political organizing and advocacy.
He says, “how many people can just go out there and build a house? It would be overwhelming for the average person.”… He says “don’t try to build a house until you built a shed first.” And I live in the country. I’ve built quite a few sheds, among other things as unskilled as I was. Before I developed those skills, I built a shed, because to build a shed requires the same basic principles and blueprint as building a house…
So take that and put it into Community organizing terms: don’t be overwhelmed. We’re going to build a united front against fascism. You want to deal with white supremacy, you want to deal with Palestine, start with what you’ve got to work with. Build a shed first, get a program going, get us a few people together, get things started and I first got a taste of that because I was with a group that patterned ourselves to a degree after the Black Panther Party, although we were predominantly white, but we took seriously the survival programs that the the Panthers did. You had to start smaller to get people involved in working on their own to see that to get
to a higher level survival ending with Revolution without giving up your politics. So that’s that’s my hard suggestion.Eric: So as everyone who talks to me on social media knows, what I always always leave people with is please write a prisoner. Please write a prisoner, whether they’re a political prisoner, a social prisoner, whether they’re in the lower custody level or the highest custody level. Please write someone inside. Please start a project with those inside. See what you can do to help them and help make their time and their comrades’ time inside better.
Ashanti, brother, I thank you so much. Ray, thank you so much. It was a real honor talking to both of you.
#AnarchistPrisoners #ashantiAlston #bla #ericKing #internationalSolidarity #northAmerica #palestine #PoliticalPrisoners #rayLucLevasseur
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April Showers Bring May Books
I will not apologize for my horrendous title. You deserve it.
When the world is a mess, you lean into your reading list. Hard. This month was a solid mix of military history and historical fiction, with author Naomi Novik once again dropping some bangers. She is rapidly turning into one of my favorite authors. But despite her prowess, this month my top book is *shockingly* a work of history. I know, I know, literally no one is shocked.
If there were to be a theme for the month, I think it would be that although war and battles are often the tempting solution to solving problems, they usually produce more problems than they solve. Wars are like Jason’s Molotov cocktails on the show The Good Place – he uses them to solve his problems, because after you’ve thrown one, you suddenly find that you have many more problems and your initial problem is no longer a concern. I feel as though the geopolitical events of May and June have mostly borne this out, as nations struggle to disentangle themselves from military conflicts that don’t seem to want to go quietly back into their boxes.
The Allure of Battle – by Cathal Nolan
Do you ever read a book and find yourself stopping to text your friends screenshots or quotes? Well for me, that was Allure of Battle. This work is probably one of the most meaningful reflections on military history and national strategy that has been published in the last decade. Nolan pulls few punches; in fact, it’s fair to say that he comes out swinging and doesn’t stop delivering knock-outs until you close the book. And even then, you’re left chewing on the thesis for another week or two.
His thesis – that when nations and military leaders seek decisive battle to solve their problems, they find themselves bogged down in a tactical mess no closer to any real solution – is particularly meaningful at the moment. The US Department of Defense is making a big push to increase “lethality” and a “warrior” spirit in the military. Both of these initiatives fall into what Nolan calls “Plan[ing] for battle and not for war.” As a mentor of mine put succinctly put it, “America is always looking for tactical answers to strategic problems.” Suffice to say, it’s not a great way to plan for the future.
The author spares not the pen on past generals and leaders. Not even Bonaparte is safe, as Nolan points out that even the king of decisive battles waged far more and bloody indecisive battles. Nolan is harshest on the 1871-1945 Germans (erstwhile darlings of the DOD until recent years). Quoting von Moltke, he summarizes their tactics and technology-based approach to war as “Punch a hole and then see what happens,” which is hardly a strategic approach. Which, of course, is why the Germans took big fat Ls in two world wars. Turns out, connecting national goals with achievable battlefield results is important. Who knew? Through the words of participants and theorists over the years, Nolan crafts a skillful argument backed by excellent research. The Allure of Battle should be mandatory reading for all field grade officers and GS-15s and above. Because, yes, we of the US Army definitely make an appearance in basically everything post-Korea. National self reflection is hard, but we badly need it.
The Temeraire Series – Naomi Novik
“Napoleonic War but what if dragons” continues in Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, and Victory of Eagles. These delightful – but also stressful? – books continue the story of a Royal Navy captain turned aviator and his opinionated dragon. In these four books, Captain Will Laurence and Temeraire travel to China, Turkey, Africa, and many places in between in the long struggle to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte shows possibly more deftness and diplomatic ability in this world than he showed in real life, but one can see that you would want to have an adversary worthy of Temeraire. Novik’s world building skills are on display once again as she imagines how different nations and cultures would adapt to dragons, their rights and duties, and how to adapt them to warfare. Her ability to craft unique characters for dragons remains delightful (they’re like cats but also dogs?). Highly recommend for those looking for well-written historical fiction (she drops some wonderful Easter eggs throughout, and Wellington’s appearance is exactly as fantastic as you would hope) and also some unexpected discussions on duty and ethics. The books do not require an investment of energy and make a good distraction from the travails of the day-to-day.
If We are Striking for Pennsylvania – by Eric Wittenberg and Scott Mingus
Links here for Volume 1 and Volume 2
Even though I am what I’d call a consummate Gettysburg nerd, even I have to ask “do we really need not one, but two more books on the Gettysburg campaign?” Thankfully, the authors themselves asked this question – sharing the remarkable factoid that there are so many books on Gettysburg, that it’s like one has been published every three days since the battle ended. What makes this series different from most is that it places the Gettysburg campaign within the larger context of the eastern theater of the Civil War. It encompasses operations from the Shenandoah Valley across to the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia in minute detail, placing the campaign within its proper strategic context. The reader gains a far better appreciation for the stakes at hand, Robert E. Lee’s operational missteps, and George Meade’s competency as an army commander. The two volumes follow Lee from his lines along the Rappahannock in early June as he receives permission from the Confederate cabinet to invade Pennsylvania to the engagements in Winchester and the Loudon Valley along the way, the cavalry fights around Hanover as Stuart and Lee blindly try to find each other, and the opening shots of the battle of Gettysburg. The works present a vastly more rich perspective on the campaign and it is hoped the authors produce something similar on the aftermath of the battle. Because yeah, I am a sucker for G-burg content.
Revolution Downeast: the War for American Independence in Maine – James Leamon
Seeing as it is the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution, I took to the stacks to read one of the very few comprehensive books out there on the war in the Pine Tree State. Then still a part of hated Massachusetts, Maine is often overlooked in scholarship and lumped into that state. Which is a pity, as Maine’s people deserve to stand forth on their own. While Leamon does separate Maine from the lair of the Massholes, his analysis comes up somewhat short of what I had hoped for. Typical of its era, it does a good job of providing a social and political summary of the people while giving an overview of military operations in the district. It glances at Arnold’s march, gives perspective on the burning of Falmouth, and points to the failures in the 1779 Penobscot expedition. The author covers the frontier conflicts in adequate detail, but the reader is left wanting more on the experience of the Wabanaki peoples. What is sadly lacking is a history of Mainers in the Continental Army. For that, we shall have to wait. In the meantime, this work provides an excellent jumping off point for future scholars.
Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg – Edward Longacre
Okay, I won’t lie – I went to this book not because of some interest in US cavalry officer David Gregg, but because I wanted more context on the evolution of US cavalry in the eastern theater in the Civil War and Longacre is known for his cavalry work. I can’t say I came away from the book afire with devotion for David Gregg, but I do have additional appreciation for his actions. Did he save the Union at Gettysburg? I mean, didn’t everyone in the Army of the Potomac? That’s how to wiggle out of that thorny question. What the author does deliver is an excellent overview of the use of US cavalry from 1862-1865 (the period of Gregg’s service). The evolution of tactics and technology takes the cavalry arm from the era of the scout and the saber charge to the era of mobile infantry in just about two years. By the Petersburg campaign, US cavalry brigades and divisions demonstrate proficiency at maneuver warfare. For example, Gregg ended the war fighting two of his regiments dismounted and backed by an artillery battery in sections, with a mounted regiment in support. This flexibility enabled him to react to a rapidly changing battlefield and to exploit opportunities when they appeared. While it was not the comprehensive overview I would have liked, Longacre delivered an engaging read.
That wraps it up for May, coming in just under the wire with July looming on the horizon like a…like a…like a thing that looms. Look, not every sentence can be a winner. Thanks for bearing with me as I mess with the thorny issue of reviewing books. The bookies at Atlantic City will give you good odds on how soon I receive a complaint from an author.
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The opinions represented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.
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Welcome back to the fold, DeSantis. John Buss, @Repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
We no longer have Ron DeSantis to kick around! Well, we’ll still kick him around for a least a few more days here. He’s such an easy target. DeSantis ended his bizarro world campaign with a hat tip to a fake Churchill Quote just before bending the knee. This is from The Daily Beast. Jake Lahut has the coverage. “DeSantis Campaign Uses Fake Churchill Quote in Final Message. “The International Churchill Society once referred to it as “a double misquote” in a blog post on the same set of words.” I’m pretty sure SNL will have a heyday with this one. His campaign was as misbegotten as his personality. Do all Republicans appear to have Personality Disorders, or is it just my take from the few courses I took at University?
The Ron DeSantis large language model appeared to hallucinate on Sunday, with the campaign running an apparently fake Winston Churchill quote as the title of the candidate’s drop-out announcement video.
It was a fitting touch for a campaign whose launch was a glitchy mess on Twitter, ending with another farce on the same site now called X.
“Defeat is never fatal. Victory is never final: it is the courage to continue that counts,” the quote attributed to Churchill by the DeSantis campaign read.
Unfortunately, Churchill not only never said that, but he didn’t even say the next closest quote that’s more commonly falsely attributed to him—amounting to what the International Churchill Society once referred to as “a double misquote” in a blog post on the same set of words.
According to the Churchill remembrance outfit, the former British prime minister and military leader never said anything close to the phrase that the DeSantis campaign attributed to him.
“Ok, one more toon drop in celebration of the glorious crash and burn that was Awkward Himmler’s campaign of cringe.” Jesse Duquette.
I’m not sure these days how some of these folks even made it out the door for kindergarten, let alone a public career. Bye, Felicia!
NBC News has this analysis of the crash and burn. “‘A total failure to launch’: Why Ron DeSantis was doomed from the start. Muddled messages, hiring too many staffers and even a puzzle — how it all went wrong for DeSantis’ presidential bid.” I thought this guy was the worst candidate I’ve ever seen. No amount of high-paid staffers and public relations gurus can correct that. I really wonder about the brains of those Dark Money Billionaires that got behind him. I think a toddler could slice and dice this disaster.
Iowa was supposed to be make-or-break for Ron DeSantis.
The Florida governor essentially moved his campaign there late last year, and Never Back Down, his allied super PAC, spent tens of millions of dollars knocking on doors in the state.
“We’re going to win Iowa,” DeSantis declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 2
But in the week before the all-important caucuses, Scott Wagner, the recently installed head of the super PAC, was doing something that aides found puzzling: He was literally doing a puzzle.
In the headquarters of Never Back Down in West Des Moines, Iowa, Wagner was, according to some of his staff, spending a significant amount of time in the precious final few days constructing a peaceful 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a landscape.
In a photo taken on Jan. 9, shared with NBC News by a Never Back Down team member, others in the room were hunched over their laptops.
“Staffers are putting their dedication and devotion to electing Gov. DeSantis and they come in and the CEO, the chairman of the organization, is sitting there working on a puzzle for hours,” said a Never Back Down staffer who was there.
Another Never Back Down staffer also said Wagner worked on it for “hours” in the week before Iowa.
Let me reconsider the value of those “high-paid staffers and public relations gurus.” My guess is they’ll never put Humpty DeSantis back together again. This guy probably put that “Churchill” quote in the final speech.
The fact that one of the top people in charge of securing a win for DeSantis in Iowa was spending time on something unrelated to the caucuses was emblematic of the mismanagement and wasted efforts that many of DeSantis’ own supporters say have plagued the campaign from the very beginning.
In a comment to NBC News, Wagner noted that the “office puzzle” was “there when we arrived” and “became a sense of pride for the entire team and everyone chipped in a few minutes a piece to get it done.”
“I could not be more proud of every person in our Iowa office. I came out to work with our Iowa team and our incredible COO Jordan Wiggins in person for the final two week push in Iowa and I came away with a group of people I would go to war with any time, anywhere. We worked non-stop together on operations in terrible weather conditions,” he said, adding, “The operation worked nearly 24/7 throughout for the Gov and was absolutely seamless. I am so proud of what we achieved in Iowa and will achieve beyond.”
Desantis quit and then endorsed Orange Caligula. This is from the New York Times. “Ron DeSantis Ends Campaign for President. The Florida governor, who once appeared to be Donald Trump’s most daunting challenger, ran a costly, turbulent campaign that failed to catch on with Republican voters.” Is it just me, or do all these headlines sound like something that should be in a film noir review?
Mr. DeSantis’s devastating 30-percentage-point loss to Mr. Trump in the Iowa caucuses last Monday had left him facing a daunting question: Why keep going? On Sunday, he provided his answer, acknowledging there was no point in soldiering on without a “clear path to victory.”
“I am today suspending my campaign,” Mr. DeSantis said in a video posted after The New York Times reported he was expected to leave the race, adding: “Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear.”
Tell that to all those folk still pissing themselves and lying about the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Peter Wehner–writing at The Atlantic–has the bigger picture. “The Party of Malice. Donald Trump has made the Republican Party cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted.” Ya think? But, after all that’s what they were going for with the Southern Strategy, right? Ronald Reagan announced his presidency with a slap in the face-like hint. Republicans have been after this a long time since John Brown and Abe Lincoln’s bodies have been moldering in the grave. Reagan read it like the C-level actor he was over and over. But back to the current state of the party.
You knew it was coming.
As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.
Last week, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes that any person born on American soil is a citizen of the United States and therefore can serve as president.
Last Tuesday, Trump decided to ratchet up the racism a few notches. On Truth Social, he wrote this about his former ambassador to the United Nations:
Anyone listening to Nikki “Nimrada” Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary. She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant THIRD! She said she would never run against me, “he was a great President,” and she should have followed her own advice. Now she’s stuck with WEAK POLICIES, and a VERY STRONG MAGA BASE, and there’s just nothing she can do!
That was three days ago. Dark Brandon isn’t waiting for the New Hampshire Primary tomorrow.
The Biden campaign has launched a minute-long ad, on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, featuring a Texas woman who was forced to leave the state to get an abortion. pic.twitter.com/3q5ImwBAVK
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 22, 2024
Why wait for Haley to throw in the towel? They have attacked Trump in a series of new ads. This is from The Hill. “Biden campaign features OB-GYN who left Texas for abortion in new ad.”
President Biden’s reelection campaign on Monday dropped an ad to mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade that features an OB-GYN who couldn’t receive an abortion in Texas after the landmark law was overturned
The 60-second ad, entitled “Forced,” is narrated by Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Texas and mother of three, who placed the blame squarely on former President Trump, the GOP front-runner in the 2024 election, for having to leave the state for the procedure.
Dennard said in the ad she had a planned pregnancy two years ago and learned the fetus had a fatal condition with no chance of survival.
“In Texas, you are forced to carry that pregnancy and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade. The choice was completely taken away. I was to continue my pregnancy, putting my life at risk,” she added.
The ad went live Monday in battleground states and will broadcast nationally during the season premiere of ABC’s “The Bachelor.” It will also run on channels like HGTV, TLC, Bravo, Hallmark, Food Network, and Oxygen, according to the Biden campaign.
It hits right at the heart of Trump being in charge of turning women into walking coffins. That will be one of the core issues of 2024. But also, Dark Brandon and company have gone for Trump’s jugular. His mental decline is oblivious. They even dare to use Nikki against him.
‼️ WOW: This devastating Biden campaign ad highlighting Trump’s obvious cognitive decline is truly fantastic! Please retweet to help make sure everyone sees it! 👀 pic.twitter.com/aokpAyN0T8
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) January 21, 2024
Other issues haunt Trump. He’s got all those court appearances and trials. This is from Ankush Khardori, who is writing for Politico. “Polls Show Trump Could Be Doomed If He’s Convicted. Will a Trial Happen in Time? Here’s the real timeline for Trump’s criminal trials. “
The results in Iowa last week were a win for Donald Trump, but they also underscored that the former president’s ongoing legal troubles are among his biggest liabilities in a rematch with Joe Biden.
Nearly a third of Republican caucusgoers told pollsters that Trump would not be “fit” for the presidency if he is convicted of a crime — a sizable defection that, if it held, would likely doom Trump’s general election chances.
Polling in this area is challenging, so it is best to take this figure with a considerable grain of salt. Some portion of these people, for instance, may believe Trump would literally be incapable of serving as president if convicted of a crime — perhaps because he would immediately be hauled off to prison or disqualified — which is not true, and which they would eventually come to learn if things moved in that direction.
But what is clear is that some lingering courtroom questions are now essential electoral questions as well: When will Trump’s myriad trials take place? And can any jury deliver a verdict before this November?
The answers are crucial to understanding how the 2024 campaign could ultimately unfold. Over the coming year, federal and state prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges — including the Supreme Court — will have to maneuver amid an inflexible political calendar. Here’s the timeline for how it’s likely to go.
Hurry! … Oops, too late. The Disgraced Former Guy running again and again and again. John Buss,@repeat1968
Khadori argues that “Among All Trump’s Trials, the Jan. 6 Case Is Key. For both political and legal reasons, the most important case is the Justice Department’s prosecution over Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.” You may read more at the link.
This one story is from The Washington Post, where Trump’s antics have been outrageous. ” In Judge Kaplan’s court, Trump plays with fire. “
In the high-stakes world of presidential trials, there are no judges like Lewis A. Kaplan.
At 79, after decades on the bench, the senior judge is one of the most well-regarded legal minds in New York. And he has a unique history that makes Donald Trump’s courtroom behavior over the past
Trump is on trial in a civil case as writer E. Jean Carroll seeks damages from Trump, who has been found liable for defaming her when he made disparaging remarks denying he sexually assaulted her decades ago in a department store.
Trump has claimed that he intends to testify in the case on Monday — which would probably produce a dramatic courtroom showdown. But it’s unclear whether Trump will really show up. For one thing, he has made similar claims in the past, then not appeared. For another, Tuesday is the New Hampshire primary, and Trump is again running for president.
If he does testify, legal experts said, his time on the witness stand could be something akin to a suicide mission.
Over the past week, Kaplan’s handling of the damages trial in Lower Manhattan shows how different a federal courtroom is from most other parts of public life — even state court, where Trump and his lawyers had more leeway to squabble with a judge overseeing a different civil trial in another New York courthouse over the past several months. Kaplan has not tolerated similar behavior, and Trump has railed on social media that the federal judge is “a totally biased and hostile person.”
The former president claimed that he only lost a previous lawsuit brought by Carroll over the sexual assault and a different set of defamatory commentsbecause he didn’t appear in court personally. Kaplan oversaw that lawsuit, too.
In recent weeks, Trump has been attending more court hearings than he needs to, seemingly deciding that the best way to fight his legal critics — and win the GOP nomination — is to try to shout them down. He has spoken out of turn in the courtroom and denounced the proceedings.
Legal experts warn that if he does so on the witness stand in Kaplan’s courtroom, he could end up humiliated and threatened with contempt of court.
Robert Katzberg, a veteran New York white-collar criminal defense lawyer, said Kaplan is “the worst possible draw for Trump,” not because of any personal or political bias, but because of the type of judge he is.
“He’s really smart and takes no guff from either side. He expects lawyers to be professional and toe the line, and if they do not, holds them accountable,” said Katzberg, who is now consulting counsel for Holland & Knight.
“Even if you had the most pro-Trump judge in America overseeing the trial, Donald Trump should not testify. Multiply that by a million with Lewis Kaplan on the bench,” he said. “Given both his lack of any relevant facts as to the only issue remaining — the damages suffered by Ms. Carroll — and Donald Trump’s inability to control himself emotionally, he is begging not only to be debased before the jury, but contempt citations will be looming large.”
Media outlets are already taking notice of Biden’s ads and the basic look of Trump in Court. So are Political Cartoonists! This is from The Guardian. “Video released of petulant Trump in civil fraud trial deposition. Smirking, pouting and defiant ex-president bragged about properties and claimed he prevented nuclear war with North Korea.”
Months before Donald Trump’s defiant turn as a witness at his New York civil fraud trial, the former president came face to face with the state attorney general who is suing him when he sat for a deposition last year at her Manhattan office.
Video made public on Friday of the seven-hour, closed-door session last April shows the Republican presidential frontrunner’s demeanor going from calm and cool to indignant – at one point ripping into the lawsuit of the attorney general, Letitia James, against him as a “disgrace” and “a terrible thing”.
Sitting with arms folded, an incredulous Trump complained to the state lawyer questioning him that he was being forced to “justify myself to you” after decades of success building a real estate empire that is now threatened by the court case.
Trump, who contends James’s lawsuit is part of a politically motivated “witch-hunt”, was demonstrative from the outset. The video shows him smirking and pouting as the attorney general, a Democrat, introduced herself and told him that she was “committed to a fair and impartial legal process”.
James’s office released the video on Friday in response to requests from media outlets under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Trump’s lawyers previously posted a transcript of his remarks to the trial docket in August.
James’s lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives of defrauding banks, insurers, and others by inflating his wealth and exaggerating the value of assets on annual financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the case because a jury is not allowed in this type of lawsuit, has said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of January.
Friday’s video is a rare chance for the public at large to see Trump as a witness.
Sahil Kapur of NBC reports this headline as Democratic candidates look poised to flip some seats. ‘It’s embarrassing’: Republicans worry they have no achievements to run on in 2024. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, has openly questioned whether the GOP deserves to keep the House majority, lamenting the lack of accomplishments this Congress. He’s not alone.” Ah, poor widdle babies.
When Congress began the new year, Rep. Andy Biggs gave a television interview and made a startling confession: House Republicans have done nothing they can run on.
“We have nothing. In my opinion, we have nothing to go out there and campaign on,” the Arizona Republican said on the conservative network Newsmax. “It’s embarrassing.”
Anchor Chris Salcedo responded with a bemused chuckle. “I know,” he said. “The Republican Party in the Congress majority has zero accomplishments.”
The exchange captured a dynamic that looms over Republican lawmakers heading into the 2024 election: They’ve passed little substantive legislation since winning the majority in 2022 and struggled to do the basics of governing with a Democratic-led Senate. Their first year was instead marked by fractiousness and chaos, complicating the party’s pitch to voters this fall. The challenge is accentuated by likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump making “retribution” against his enemies, rather than shared policy goals, the centerpiece of his comeback bid as he continues to spread fabricated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
With 10 months until Election Day, Republicans still have a few opportunities to salvage what has been a historically unproductive congressional session and pass new laws in the divided government.
A spending deal between House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., gives the GOP a chance to achieve spending cuts. A potential Senate immigration deal gives them an opportunity to toughen asylum and border laws. And a bipartisan tax bill that overwhelmingly passed through committee on Friday presents a rare opening to deliver tax breaks for GOP backers in the business community.
Yet none of those measures are guaranteed to become law. Right-wing members, including Biggs, are rebelling against some of them for being insufficiently conservative. The emerging immigration bill’s prospects may hinge on Trump, who is seeking to wield chaos at the border as a weapon against President Joe Biden in the general election.
The tax bill faces some skepticism from Senate Republicans and fierce opposition from the business-aligned Wall Street Journal editorial board, which complained that it would “give Democrats a huge policy victory” on the child credit. “Republicans haven’t done much in the 118th Congress, and in their scramble to compensate they may now do real policy harm,” the paper wrote.
It’s not looking like Trump or Republicans have the momentum right now, even though polls don’t reflect that. I’m waiting until at least Super Tuesday to really take any poll seriously. I’m just focused on the insane weather around me right now. It’s supposed to get better tomorrow. I hope you have some bright and sunny days! No matter where you are, it will not be bright or sunny during the election 2024 season.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/01/22/mostly-monday-reads-say-goodnight-ronnie/
#Election2024 #JiveTurkeyRonDeSantis #NikkiHaley #Primaries2024 #RacistRepublicans #RunningOnEmpty #TrumpTrials
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The Palace at the Foot of the Walk: the thread about the many lives of an early cinema
The Foot of the Walk pub in Leith has been in the news recently as its owner has put it on the market for sale, to much local indignation. These premises first opened on 1st January 1913 as The Palace cinema (in reference to the term “Picture Palace“, which was in use at the time to differentiate the upper end of the cinema market from the lower), showing a programme of illustrated nursery rhymes, a film about a gang of horse thieves and other “pictures of a humorous kind, which were greatly appreciated“. The cinema, as built, had a proscenium 32 feet wide by 22 feet high which gave it the largest screen in all of Edinburgh or Leith. It had a capacity for 2,000; 900 in the pit, 650 in the pit stalls and 450 in the upper gallery and a feature was that both the roof and balcony were cantilevered, with no supporting pillars to get in the way of the view of the screen. Great attention was paid to fire safety; the Brackliss Motiograph projector was installed behind the auditorium, within fireproof walls, there were 8 emergency exits from the auditorium and lighting was electric, rather than gas.
“Palace Buildings & Foot of Leith Walk”, James Valentine picture postcard, 1913. The round tower over the entrance is long gone. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIt cost the Leith Public Hall & Property Co. around £20,000 to build (around £1.8 million in 2023) and was part of a syndicate of cinemas controlled by theatre impresario Robert Colburn (“RC”) Buchanan; a man described by Scottish Cinema journal at that time as being gifted to the trade “by the gods“. Buchanan was for a time the managing director of the Gaiety theatre in Leith, which stood on th opposite side of Constitution Street from The Palace. The latter site had long been the premises of Bell, Rannie & Co., one of Leith’s longest established wine merchants, where brothers Robert and John Cockburn served their apprenticeships.
The Foot of the Walk in 1891, looking towards Bell, Rannie & Co.’s vaults and house in the centre distance. The buildings on the right were replaced by Leith Central Station in 1903, those on the left remain, now the British Heart Foundation shop. © Edinburgh City LibrariesA fire at Bell, Rannie & Co.’s George Street shop in 1910 led to the sale of their Constitution Street warehouse and offices. It was briefly thereafter occupied by the Rev. John Findlater and the Leith Methodist Church, which had recently become homeless after its church across the road was demolished to allow the construction of Leith Central Station. Shortly after this, it too was cleared, to make way for the cinema which was built on top of Bell & Rannie’s old vaults.
Sale of Bell, Rannie & Co. vaults etc. at 171-173 constitution street, The Scotsman- 5th February 1910The cinema was surrounded at ground floor level with shop units on both Constitution and Duke Streets and at this time the opportunity was taken for the former street to be widened and a corresponding portion of the latter narrowed, to improve the road layout at the Foot of the Walk. Upstairs, on the Duke Street side, there was a hall that was long occupied by the Leith Central Snooker Club.
The Foot of the Walk in Ordnance Survey Maps of 1849 (left) and 1944 (right). Move the slide to compare how the plot of the Palace Cinema was changed from that of Bell & Rannie by widening Constitution Street and narrowing Duke Street correspondingly. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandOne thing that wasn’t included in the demolition and rebuilding was an adjoining bonded warehouse, the property of Cockburn & Campbell, wine merchants at 15 Duke Street. This sad looking, long-abandoned old building is actually one of the oldest in this part of Leith – dating from at least 1804!
The Duke Street wing of The Palace in 1953. The number 19 tram to Tollcross passes by as someone steps into The Marksman public house (which is there to this day). On the first floor gable a painted sign can be read “The Palace, Continuous 6 – 10:30” and the old Cockburn’s warehouse is the dark, windowless building beyond.The Palace was designed around showing two programmes every night, at 7PM and 9PM, and so was laid out internally such that one audience could enter through the foyer while previous one exited through separate doors onto Duke and Constitution street, without any mutual disruption. The advert below shows the opening week’s programme, which described the venue as “a Lordly Picture House. The Largest. The Latest. The Best.“
The Palace – “A Lordly Picture House”, opening week programme. Evening News – 6th January 1913The opening feature – “A Race For An Inheritance” (A Drama rushing from sensation to sensation) – was a Gaumont film that had only recently been released.
Kinematograph Weekly – 7th November 1912This wasn’t the only “Palace” cinema in the neighbourhood, there was Pringle’s Picture Palace at the other end of The Walk on Elm Row and they were joined by the Empire Picture Palace on Henderson Street in 1917. Further afield there was the St. Bernard’s Picture Palace in Stockbridge, which opened in 1911, The Palace on Princes Street, which opened on Christmas Eve 1913 and the New Palace on the High Street that opened for talkies in 1929. The Leith Palace was wired for sound in September 1930 to allow it to join that latest cinema craze. In 1931 the Cimarron with Richard Dix and Irene Dunne was one of the first such pictures being shown. Alterations were made at this time by renowned cinema (and roadhouse!) architect Thomas Bowhill Gibson, whose work includes the Dominion in Morningside and former George / County in Portobello. These may have included removal of the tower over the entrance that is seen in the first picture on this page.
George cinema in Portobello, 1971, photograph by Kevin & Henry Wheelan. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe Palace quietly prospered in the 1930s and 1940s, although eclipsed by newer and larger and more modern houses (such as The Capitol on Manderston Street and The State on Great Junction Street, it remained popular. However by the 1960s, like many smaller houses it was beginning to struggle to compete with television and closed without ceremony on December 31st 1966, 53 years to the day since it opened, showing The Trouble With Angels starring Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills.
The Palace in the early-to-mid 1950s, taken looking down Constitution Street from the Foot of the Walk. Picture from “The last picture shows, Edinburgh : ninety years of cinema entertainment in Scotland’s capital city” by Brendon ThomasThe cinema went on the market and was purchased by new owners, Norwich Enterprises Ltd, trading as Palace Promotions. It was shortly thereafter converted to serve the new craze of bingo, still under the Palace name. A fire in 1968 destroyed most of the auditorium roof of the building on March 24th 1968, fortunately some hours after the 1,000 patrons who had been playing had gone home. It was repaired thereafter and soon back in business.
Palace Bingo Club, 1971, photograph by Kevin & Henry Wheelan, 1971. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn 1978 the Bingo hall closed and was replaced by Cuemasters Snooker and Social Club and in turn the long established Leith Central Snooker Club upstairs closed in 1983. In 1992 a small church called “The Potters House” moved in to the latter space.
Potters House Christian Centre, Evening News, October 15th 1992The old cinema was refurbished and reopened as the Wetherspoon pub The Foot of the Walk on 27th June 2001. Few of the original features are visible inside, but if you use your imagination you can get a rough idea of the original layout. The upper balcony still exists, hidden away, with its seats, carpets and wall coverings as they were when the last film was shown in 1966. You can view pictures of it here on the excellent Scottish Cinemas website. After over 20 years of security in the guise of a cheap, cheerful and popular watering hole, its future is once again uncertain. In its life it has spent 53 years as a cinema, 12 years as a bingo hall, 23 years as a snooker hall and a further 23 as a public house; like many former cinemas it has now spent longer not being a cinema than the time it spent serving its intended purpose.
The Foot of the Walk, JD Wetherspoon promotional picture.As for the name “Foot of the Walk“? It’s a name for this locality that’s as old as postal directories are in Edinburgh and Leith, appearing in Peter Williamson’s first directories in the 1770s. And we can push it back 40 years more in the newspapers, an advert for one of the first houses built here appearing in the Caledonian Mercury on January 4th 1737.
“At the foot of the Walk of Leith”, Caledonian Mercury – 4th January 1737Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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Tony Blair: Soulless Creature of the West’s War Machine.
Article republished by Jerry Alatalo | April 8, 2026
(Source: ScheerPost.com)
[Editor’s note: Jonathan Cook’s literary evisceration/disembowelment of Iraq War criminal Tony Blair applies in equal measure to war criminals Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and their fellow ZioFascist imperialist members of the so-called “Board of Peace”.
Tony Blair is a founding member of the “Board of Peace,” an international organization established by Donald Trump to oversee peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Gaza. Blair has praised Trump’s vision for the region and is involved in discussions about redevelopment plans.
The Board of Peace currently has 27 member states, including countries like the United States, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among others. Membership requires a financial commitment, with countries able to renew their membership every three years.
Particularly relevant – considering the repeated irrational public statements from the “Board of Peace” chairman: Donald Trump’s control over the Board of Peace, including his ability to determine membership and set the agenda, raises significant concerns about its legitimacy as an impartial entity in international relations. This centralization of power may undermine the Board’s effectiveness and perception as a fair arbiter in global conflicts.]
Please share this information far and wide. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you very much. Peace.
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Blair’s Latest Deceit-Riddled Column Vilifies The UK Left To Justify Genocide
Tony Blair, the man who led Britain into a disastrous and illegal war on Iraq more than 20 years ago based on false information, is still very much a sought-after commentator in the UK media.
His regular political pronouncements are treated as pearls of wisdom; his columns as consequential insights from a globe-striding elder statesman.
Even his leading role on Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, the US president’s panel of autocrats seeking to elbow the United Nations – and international law – off the world stage, appears to have done little to dent his claim to moral authority.
Blair, more than anybody, illustrates the capacity of western leaders – with the help of a complicit establishment media – to rewrite their criminal past and escape accountability in perpetuity.
The former British prime minister’s latest political intervention is a lengthy, and typically repugnant, article published by the Sunday Times newspaper. It effectively blames “the left” for an arson attack last month on four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in London.
No, Blair hasn’t unearthed any startling new information tying leftwingers to the attack. His article is a pure disinformation – propaganda designed to malign those critical of Israel.
More on that in a moment.
But as a prelude, let us note that there are many terrible things going on in the world right now that might be considered more pressing for Blair to write about than the torching of a handful of ambulances: whether it be a genocide in Gaza – where Israel destroyed not just four ambulances but the enclave’s entire health sector – or an illegal, joint US-Israeli war on Iran that has similarly targeted medical centres and other civilian infrastructure.
Twisted logic
Blair once served as a Middle East envoy to an international body known as the Quartet. In that role, he spent several years shuttling futilely between his eponymous institute in London and Israel and the Palestinian territories.
There are, however, two self-evident reasons why Blair may have been averse to dedicating his latest column to the catastrophes unfolding in the Middle East.
First, because his close allies – the leaders of the US and Israel – are indisputably the ones committing the crimes of genocide and aggression respectively in Gaza and Iran.
And second, because Blair was himself responsible for launching, alongside the US, a war of aggression on Iraq in 2003.
But it is not just that Blair is in no position to moralise on matters of the utmost global importance.
He has made it his primary duty in public life to excuse the West’s supreme crimes – crimes that, were there meaningful accountability for western leaders, would necessitate that he stand trial at the international war crimes court in the Hague.
That is the context for understanding both why Blair penned his column on the arson attack in London and the twisted logic that underpins his argument in that article.
Dirty war
Anyone who has studied Blair’s back-catalogue of opinion pieces will hardly be surprised by the Sunday Times headline: “We must end left’s unholy alliance with the Islamists.”
Or its subhead: “Parts of the left cast Jewish communities as supporters of Israel and Jews become ‘fair game’.”
Although the article ostensibly concerns an arson attack on a Jewish community ambulance service in London, Blair has much larger – carefully veiled – ambitions.
This is his latest manoeuvre in a dirty war to silence and crush Britain’s progressive left – waged by those, like Blair, who duplicitiously claim both to belong to that left and to serve as its natural leaders.
Blair is central to a cabal of so-called Atlanticists who view the world in Manichean terms, as “a clash of civilisations” between a supposedly superior, enlightened Judeo-Christian West, led by the US, and a backward, primitive Islamic East, now, it seems, led de facto by Iran.
Israel is presented as a first line of defence against this dangerous “Muslim” enemy.
Everything for Blair is seen through this racist prism.
He would sound more obviously like some Victorian, pith-helmeted empire-builder were it not for the fact that his fundamental, and fundamentalist, worldview continues to be shared by the entire UK ruling class, including the billionaire-owned media and the main political parties.
And for good reason. A Britain belonging to a “superior” West can openly aid Israel’s genocidal campaign of carpet-bombing and starvation in Gaza, and loan air bases to assist the US in its illegal war of aggression on Iran, and still pretend to itself that this is all being done “defensively”.
Christendom is still, apparently, “defending” itself against the rampaging barbarian hordes.
Achilles’ heel
In fact, Blair’s column in the Sunday Times should be seen as another front in a continuing war being waged by British prime minister Keir Starmer – a disciple of Blair – on the Corbynite left.
Their joint aim is to shepherd back into the Atlanticist fold a Labour party that supposedly lost its way under Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn’s crime was to have taken Labour towards internationalism – and the prioritising of human rights for all, not just westerners. That project necessarily entailed treating British Muslims as an integral part of British society, no less than British Jews.
Corbyn’s politics were an ideological assault on – and continue to pose a threat to – the Blair-Starmer worldview.
In other words, Blair’s article is part of a running battle – as the British establishment’s claim to moral authority is steadily eroded by its collusion in Israeli and US crimes – to prevent the progressive left ever reviving its political fortunes.
With the help of the Israel lobby, Blair and his ilk believe they have identified the achilles’ heel of a British left determined to highlight a brutal US-led western imperialism and its inherent hypocrisies.
The goal is to crop out the left’s increasingly persuasive critique of US imperialism and zoom in instead on the left’s parallel criticisms of Israel: its apartheid rule over Palestinians, its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and its genocidal campaign of destruction in Gaza.
Blair wishes to wave all this away, as if wielding a magic wand, by labelling it as “antisemitism”.
After that move worked so successfully in fatally wounding Corbyn as Labour leader, Blair and Starmer assume the same smear can be repurposed more generally – in this case, to implicate an undefined “left” over the torching of a handful of ambulances.
It goes without saying, that in prioritising the suppression of the left’s critiques of western imperialism, Blair and Starmer are leaving the door wide open to a resurgence by the far-right – which indeed is antisemitic.
That should serve as a reminder that Blair, Starmer and the rest of the British establishment have no real concern for the welfare of the Jewish community they profess to be protecting.
If the Jewish community turns out to be collateral damage in their war on the left, then so be it.
‘New antisemitism’
In the article itself, Blair argues that a so-called left-wing antisemitism “is a pernicious and novel development in progressive politics: the alliance with Islamists”.
First, notice the sleight of hand. British Muslims who, quite reasonably, are deeply critical of Israel because its army has been committing for decades war crimes with impunity against their extended families are reduced here simply to “Islamists”.
Blair is doing to Muslims precisely what he accuses – falsely – the left of doing to Jews. He is conflating Muslims, a religious group, with Islamists, champions of an extreme political ideology.
Yet he considers it patently antisemitic to conflate Jews, a religious and ethnic group, with Zionists, champions of an equally extreme political ideology – one whose adherents still mostly deny a genocide in Gaza.
Paradoxically, Blair is laundering his own rancid Islamophobia to smear the British left as antisemites.
The imagined “alliance” between the left and “Islamists” aside, there is nothing novel about the allegation of a “new antisemitism”. It has been the blueprint for vilifying the left for decades – trotted out every time Israel is exposed committing war crimes so egregious they cannot be hidden.
As the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein noted in his book Beyond Chutzpah, the term “the new Anti-Semitism” was actually coined way back in 1973 by Israel’s then foreign minister, Abba Eban, to deal with what was at the time a novel development: parts of the western left had started to grow more critical of Israel.
That year, Eban wrote in a publication of the American Jewish Congress: “Let there be no mistake: the new left is the author and the progenitor of the new anti-Semitism.”
The aim was to demonise and discredit this “new left”, which had begun to appreciate that the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel in 1967 were facing permanent, brutal military occupation.
This new scrutiny emerged in the context of additional concern from Israel that it was being seen as a geopolitical liability following the 1973 war, when western powers supported Israel against its Arab neighbours. In echoes of current events, a resulting Arab oil embargo plunged the world into economic crisis.
Shrill warnings about a “new antisemitism” would re-emerge a decade later, in the 1980s.
This followed another double whammy for Israel: its so-called “new historians” excavated from the archives revelations of shocking crimes committed at Israel’s founding in 1948; and the Israeli army was exposed as committing systematic war crimes during its occupation of Lebanon, including overseeing a massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Again, echoes from the present moment.
The only really novel development in this latest moral panic about a “new antisemitism” is that the lobby no longer needs, when Israel is in reputational trouble, to fabricate these smears itself. It can outsource the job to figures like Tony Blair.
Deep collusion
It is a sign of how insular the worldview of western leaders like Blair has become that he apparently imagines the following argument will resonate: “In its opposition to Israel, [the left] has found an animating cause. And the war in Gaza has allowed it full rein in pursuing it.”
So the problem, suggests Blair, is that the left has chosen to highlight Israel’s genocidal campaign of carpet-bombing and starvation of Gaza’s population. Presumably, he believes it should have cheered the slaughter on instead.
And therein lies the real problem for Blair. The left has also been highlighting the deep collusion of the British establishment, of which he is a figurehead, in Israel’s genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians.
The UK has provided arms to Israel, shipped US and German munitions to carry out the genocide, operated RAF spy flights to assist with Israel’s targeting of Palestinians, and run cover for Israel with continuous genocide denial.
The British establishment’s real grievance with the left is that it has pursued with “full rein” the exposure of Israel’s war crimes and Britain’s complicity in those crimes, organising regular mass demonstrations against the slaughter.
Israeli talking points
Blair continues: “Parts of the left cast the Jewish community as supporters of the government of Israel. And Jews become ‘fair game’.”
Strangely, he fails to note that it is not the left making this claim about the Jewish community. It is Jewish community leaders. They are on record regularly asserting – with little evidence – that there is almost unanimous support among British Jews for Israel.
So, accepting Blair’s logic, what should we conclude? If most Jews truly do support Israel – in fact, polling suggests that’s not close to being true in relation to the slaughter in Gaza – does Blair regard the Jewish community as having made itself “fair game” for an arson attack?
Maybe he needs to have a word with the Board of Deputies, rather than vilify “the left” once again.
Next, Blair insists that the left cannot “legitimately” criticise Israel’s two-and-a-half-year genocide in Gaza unless it first condemns Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
He writes: “You cannot pretend that Israel does not face a substantial terrorist threat from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and other groups that do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.”
Unravelling the hotchpotch of Israeli talking points in his column is no simple task. But let us start by noting – for the umpteenth time – that states do not have an intrinsic “right to exist”, even if peoples do.
Apartheid South Africa had no “right to exist”. That state is now relegated to the history books. A new South Africa was born in its place. White and Black South Africans exist in this new state. No one, apart from a few diehard racists, is any the poorer for the erasure of that apartheid state.
There is precisely no reason why the apartheid state of Israel, nearly 60 years into an intensifying, brutal occupation and in the third year of a genocide, should have any right to exist. It must be brought to an end like apartheid South Africa was.
That objective, whatever Blair claims, is not the preserve of the left and groups dismissed by him and the UK government as “terrorists”.
In fact, a large panel of eminent judges at the International Court of Justice ruled two years ago that Israel’s system of illegal occupation and apartheid rule had to end. Are they also culpable for the arson attack on the four ambulances in London?
The left’s recognition of the corrupt and corrupting nature of an Israeli ethnocratic state isn’t the problem. It is evidence only that the progressive left refuses to follow politicians like Blair in making endless excuses for a discredited, criminal and unsustainable status quo.
Moral abyss
But this is just Blair’s warm-up act. Now he jumps feet first into the moral abyss.
He continues: “You cannot complain about the restrictions on goods and material going in and out of Gaza unless you also reference the reasons for the restrictions: the fear in Israel that such materials will be used for the purpose of building a terrorist infrastructure, which is precisely what nearly 300 miles of tunnels underneath Gaza represent.”
Seen another way, the tunnels represent the best chance a people in a tiny territory under an illegal blockade and Israel’s regular “mowing the lawn” stand of resisting their oppressor, one of the most fearsomely armed militaries in the world.
But more significantly, and appallingly, Blair appears to be excusing Israel’s starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.
According to Blair, no one, not even the progressive left, should be allowed to criticise an Israeli siege that has blocked food, water, fuel and medicines to Gaza – unless they first justify that blockade as essential to Israel’s “security”.
Again, maybe he needs to have a word with the judges of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Because they are seeking Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on charges of crimes against humanity over his efforts to starve Gaza’s population.
Is the ICC also responsible for torching four ambulances in London?
Meanwhile, Starmer will be delighted by Blair’s argument. After all, at the outset of the genocide, asked whether Israel had a right to cut off all essentials to Gaza answered that Israel “had that right”. The prime minister presumably represents, in Blair’s view, the legitimate “left”.
Historical illiteracy
In Blair’s assessment, not only should the left not criticise Israel, nor oppose its starvation blockade of Gaza, but it also should not use the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s killing of many tens of thousands – and more likely, hundreds of thousands – of civilians.
Blair opines: “You should not diminish the charge of genocide — whatever your views of Israel’s actions — by a barb particularly aimed at Jewish memories of the Holocaust, which was a genocide.”
This seems clear evidence either of Blair’s mendacity or his historical illiteracy. The Holocaust is not the only example of genocide. Far from it. There have been many different genocides, each unique.
And their status as genocides is determined not by “Jewish memories”, whatever that is supposed to mean, but by legal considerations set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Human rights groups and a raft of leading Israeli genocide scholars have all judged that the slaughter in Gaza to clearly meet those criteria.
Are they too responsible for the arson attack in London?
Gaza’s dead and maimed cannot be denied the status of genocide victims simply because such a characterisation might offend the feelings of Israel apologists like Blair.
Lesser humans
In another wantonly deceitful Israeli talking point, Blair claims “the war would have ended at any point in time if Hamas had said they were releasing the hostages”.
Yet Gaza’s problems did not start with the taking of Israelis as hostages by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Before the genocidal “war”, the enclave had suffered decades of brutal, illegal occupation and siege – abuses that continue, despite the last of the hostages being released many months ago.
In any case, Blair cannot justify the levelling of the enclave, mass murder and the engineered destitution of its people just because he can point to crimes committed by Hamas. That is collective punishment of the wider population, a grave war crime.
Blair even has the chutzpah to blame Gaza’s immiseration on Hamas’ failure to achieve “a Palestinian State … through negotiation”. As if the Israeli government has not been openly opposed for decades to a Palestinian state and to any negotiations to achieve it.
Israel refuses to speak even with Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called “moderate” Palestinian leader in the West Bank, who says security coordination with Israel is “sacred”.
Is Hamas to blame for not negotiating with itself?
Blair wonders how Britons would react “if we woke up one day and between the hours of 6am and midday, 1,200 of our citizens were murdered, including young people at a music festival, with women raped and others taken hostage”.
Set aside again the Israeli disinformation – no tangible evidence has ever been produced of any rapes taking place on 7 October – and instead ask a more pertinent question, one Blair desperately wants to distract us from.
How would Britons respond if they woke up every day for eight decades to find they were losing more of their homeland – and their homes – to colonising immigrants claiming a right to take their lands based on a supposed 3,000-year-old birthright?
How would Britons react if many hundreds of thousands of them were given lengthy prison terms, often following torture, by kangaroo military courts set up by those same colonisers with near 100 per cent conviction rates?
How would Britons feel about foreign settler militias being allowed, again for decades, to regularly rampage through their towns and villages, setting fire to their homes and cars, pointing guns at them, sometimes shooting at their family members – all watched over by paramilitary forces that not only refused to intervene to protect them but often joined in the attacks?
Blair observes of the likely response of Britons: “I suspect it would be total determination that those responsible were going to be removed as a threat, and nothing would deter us from doing so.”
And yet here is Blair writing a column condemning a British left that agrees with him. They believe the threat to Palestinians posed by Israel’s criminal settlers, by Israel’s criminal army, by Israel’s criminal government needs to be removed with “total determination”.
The difference is that Blair is indifferent to Palestinian suffering because, in a long tradition of racists, he regards them as lesser humans. He cares only when Israelis suffer a reaction to their state’s systematic abuses of the Palestinians.
Soulless creature
Blair correctly concludes by arguing that he is defending more than just Israel.
“It’s about defending reason,” he writes. “Defending facts. Standing up to the noise and intimidation to assert the truth.”
But Blair is not “defending reason”, in the sense of rationality. He is defending rationalisation – excuses for wanton criminality that currently includes overwhelming US-led western aggression towards Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
The British establishment, in which he is a central figure, is deeply enmeshed in those criminal endeavors, from its role sharing intelligence to Israel and the US, the latter as a member of Five Eyes, and providing air bases, weapons and diplomatic cover.
And also, as Blair does here, by manipulating the information sphere with a mix of continuous pro-war messaging and relentless demonisation campaigns against those – mostly on the left – who try to convey a little of the reality of western criminality.
Blair is not defending facts. He is defending the inhuman void into which western foreign policy sucks all those like him whose job is to whitewash imperial crimes.
And while he may face “noise” – from the the street protests organised by the anti-war left he so despises – he faces no meaningful intimidation. After all, the left does not have prisons to lock up criminals like Blair. It is the left that is being locked up – as terrorists – for holding placards opposing Israel’s genocide. That is the real intimidation.
What Blair wants is for the left to be utterly silenced so that its protests do not rouse uncomfortable twinges of guilt forcibly reminding him that long ago he became a soulless creature of the West’s war machine.
It is not just that Blair has faced no consequences for his criminal undertaking in Iraq. He has instead become fabulously wealthy, venerated by western establishments, and an oracle for an equally complicit, billionaire-owned media.
Blair is the model that proves there is no price in the West to be paid for selling one’s soul, for engineering mass slaughter in the service of a western empire.
Which is why those mass slaughters not only continue but grow relentlessly in scale.
Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
#BoardOfPeace #DonaldTrump #GazaGenocide #InternationalLaw #Iran #Israel #Zionism -
Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library
After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.
Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.
Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.
The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.
The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.
This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.
The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.
When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.
Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Sources used
- “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
- “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
- “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
- “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
- “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
- “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
- Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
- “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
- “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
- “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
- “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
- Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
- Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
- Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
- Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
- Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
- “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
- “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
- Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
- Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
- “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
- “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
- “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
- “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
- Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
- “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
- “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
- “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
- “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
- “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.
#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons
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Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library
After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.
Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.
Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.
The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.
The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.
This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.
The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.
When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.
Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Sources used
- “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
- “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
- “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
- “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
- “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
- “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
- Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
- “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
- “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
- “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
- “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
- Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
- Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
- Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
- Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
- Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
- “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
- “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
- Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
- Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
- “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
- “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
- “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
- “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
- Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
- “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
- “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
- “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
- “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
- “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.
#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons
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Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library
After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.
Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.
Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.
The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.
The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.
This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.
The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.
When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.
Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Sources used
- “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
- “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
- “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
- “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
- “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
- “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
- Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
- “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
- “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
- “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
- “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
- Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
- Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
- Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
- Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
- Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
- “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
- “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
- Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
- Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
- “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
- “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
- “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
- “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
- Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
- “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
- “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
- “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
- “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
- “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.
#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons
-
Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library
After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.
Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.
Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.
The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.
The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.
This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.
The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.
When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.
Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Sources used
- “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
- “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
- “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
- “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
- “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
- “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
- Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
- “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
- “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
- “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
- “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
- Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
- Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
- Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
- Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
- Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
- “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
- “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
- Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
- Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
- “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
- “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
- “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
- “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
- Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
- “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
- “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
- “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
- “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
- “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.
#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons
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Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library
After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.
Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.
Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.
The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.
The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.
This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.
The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.
When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.
Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Sources used
- “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
- “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
- “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
- “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
- “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
- “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
- Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
- “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
- “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
- “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
- “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
- Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
- Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
- Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
- Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
- Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
- “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
- “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
- Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
- Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
- “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
- “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
- “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
- “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
- Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
- “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
- “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
- “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
- “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
- “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.
#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons
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Wednesday Reads
Good Day!!
I spent the last 3 days reading books and relaxing, and mostly avoiding watching or reading news social media. My RA pain had been pretty bad lately, and it has definitely improved as a result. I’ll have to see what happens after I engage with the news for this post, but at the moment I plan to go back on a news diet when I finish. I definitely think my health is improved by avoiding news about Trump.
Here’s what’s happening this morning:
Cable news Legend Ted Turner has died.
The New York Times (gift article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.
The rest of the article is fascinating–dealing with Turner’s personal life, political beliefs and more. I’ve included a gift link in case you want to read more.Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.
Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
Ted Turner
Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.
As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.
In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world’s largest media companies.
Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.
“I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader’s Digest article in 1998. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.”
Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch — who once had his New York Post run the headline “Is Turner Insane?” — had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.
An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.
Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.
Of course the big story is still Trump’s war with Iran. It’s difficult to know what to believe about what’s going on, since Trump and Hegseth lie constantly.
CNN reports the Trump/Hegseth line: US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says.
The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.
The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise, two administration officials told CNN while offering some skepticism about Pakistan’s optimism.
From CentCom: Project Freedom at Strait of Hormuz
But a renewed diplomatic push has emerged in recent days, the regional source said. President Donald Trump appears to be simplifying issues in peace negotiations so moderates in the Iranian regime can come back to the negotiating table, the source added, with the aim being to tackle thornier issues later.
A one-page plan being floated internally contains provisions that have been at the heart of negotiations to end the conflict, a person familiar with the plan told CNN. The document would declare an end to the war while triggering a 30-day negotiation period on resolving sticking points, including on nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz, the person said.
Precise details of the plan couldn’t immediately be verified, but the source familiar said it would include discussion of a moratorium on uranium enrichment for a period of longer than 10 years. A previous US proposal had set it at 20 years.
The plan also requires Iran to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country, but details were still being negotiated.
News of positive movement from the Pakistanis helped spur Trump on Tuesday to announce a pause of “Project Freedom” – an operation to guide stranded ships out of the strait – citing progress in negotiations with Iran, the administration officials said. The pause came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had ended and that the administration’s full focus was on Project Freedom.
The regional source told CNN that the harder the US pushed its agenda of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury, the more the hardliners in Iran stood up and had a bigger voice.
The Guardian reports on Iran’s reaction: Middle East crisis live: US proposal to end war a ‘wishlist, not a reality’, warns Iranian official.
‘American wishlist, not a reality’: Iranian officials cast doubt on US proposal to end war.
Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesperson of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, has poured cold water on the Axios report claiming the US and Iran were nearing a one-page memorandum to end the war, saying it was an “American wishlist [and] not a reality”.
Ebrahim Rezaei
In a fiery statement on X, he said: “Americans will not gain in a lost war what they failed to achieve in face-to-face negotiations. Iran has its finger on the trigger and is ready; if they do not surrender and grant the necessary concessions, or if they or their lapdogs attempt any mischief, we will respond with a harsh and regrettable response.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also responded to the Axios report, telling the Iranian Isna news agency that the US proposal is still being reviewed by Tehran.
“Once Iran concludes its assessment, it will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Isna reported, adding that the US demands detailed in the Axios report “included excessive and unrealistic demands that have been strongly rejected by Iranian officials in recent days”.
Isna reported that the Iranian negotiating team is solely reviewing the “termination of the war” and the nuclear issue is not currently being discussed.
That doesn’t sound like an agreement is coming soon. And Trump is issuing threats.
AP: US and Iran appear to move closer to ending their war as Trump threatens more bombing.
The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.
Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.
Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.
Iran’s effective closure of the strait has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, rattled the global economy and put enormous economic pressure on countries, including major powers such as China.
China’s foreign minister called for a comprehensive ceasefire Wednesday after meeting in Beijing with Iran’s top envoy. Wang Yi said his country was “deeply distressed” by the conflict, which began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
China’s close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence. The Trump administration is pressing China to use that relationship to urge the Islamic Republic to open the strait.
Meanwhile it appears that the Trump administration has been trying to conceal how much damage Iran has done to U.S. bases in the Middle East region.
The Washington Post (gift article): Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment atU.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks,fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, seven service members have died in strikes on U.S. facilities in the region — six in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia — and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries as of late April, the U.S. military said. While most of the wounded returned to duty within days, at least 12 suffered injuries that military officials classified as serious, according to U.S. officials who, among others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Satellite imagery of the Middle East is unusually difficult to acquire at present. Two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet, have complied with requests from the U.S. government — their biggest customer — to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing, making it difficult or impossible to assess Iran’s counterstrikes. Those restrictions began less than two weeks into the war.
Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have from the start regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on their social media accounts that claimed to document damage to U.S. sites.
Images of damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait, released and annotated by Iranian state-affiliated media. Washington Post illustration.
For this examination — one of the first comprehensive public accounts of the damage to U.S. facilities in the region — The Post reviewed more than 100 high-resolution Iranian-released satellite images. The Post verified the authenticity of 109 of the those images by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available. The Post excluded 19 Iranian images from the damage analysis because comparisons with the Copernicus imagery were inconclusive. No Iranian imagery was found to have been manipulated.
In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran. In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.
Read the rest and view more images using the gift link above. I wonder what it will take to repair the damage?
Here’s a bit of hopeful news from The Washington Post: Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth.
Americans are deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a striking rebuke in a closely divided country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The poll finds positive ratings for Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized U.S. actions on immigration andin Iran, drawing criticism from Trump that the president repeated on Tuesday.
Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislikeHegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.
“There is only one Jesus! I found the posts to be inappropriate and offensive. Humility is at the core of being Jesus,” said Kimberly Chopin, a 57-year-old Catholic who lives in suburban Baton Rouge and voted for Trump. She added that Hegseth’s prayer calling for violence made her “extremely uncomfortable. That kind of language sounds like the language of al-Qaeda.”
Interesting.
Of course Trump is much less interested in the war he started as a distraction from the Epstein files than remaking the White House and surrounding buildings and monuments in his own image. And his number one obsession is his insane ballroom.
Now Republicans in Congress are getting into the act. We were told that the ballroom project would be paid for with private money. Suddenly, we learn that taxpayers are expected to cover the growing price tag.
The New York Times: G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project.
Senate Republicans have inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.
The leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees on Monday released plans for the roughly $70 billion package, which would significantly bolster spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of Mr. Trump’s term using a party-line legislative process that can skirt a filibuster.
Trump’s proposed ballroom addition to the White House
A surprise addition to the measure was the $1 billion proposed by the Judiciary Committee for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.
While the president has previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through private donations, a spokesman on Tuesday said the White House applauded the proposed security funding for a “long overdue” project.
Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have escalated their efforts to defend the project after the attempted assault late last month at a journalism gala in Washington attended by the president.
The bill says the public money would be directed to “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” It also bars any of the funding being spent on “non-security elements.”
WTF?!
“Republicans are on a different planet than American families,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a post on social media. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Top Democrats also noted that consideration of the bill would put all senators on the record on a White House construction project that polls have shown to be unpopular.
“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said on social media.
Should the provision survive and be enacted into law, it could clear away legal obstacles to construction of the ballroom, which a federal judge has ruled requires congressional approval.
Republicans are advancing the legislation outside of normal congressional spending channels because Senate Democrats had blocked money for ICE and the border control in a dispute over the tactics and conduct of federal immigration officers. That fight shut down parts of the Department of Homeland Security for almost 80 days.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”
Trump is destroying our country and our Capitol. He has to be stopped. One more on this from NPR: The many ways Trump wants to change D.C., from buildings to statues to parks.
President Trump is looking to make his mark on the White House and Washington, D.C., and not just politically.
The longtime real estate developer has either announced or embarked on a number of construction and renovation projects across the nation’s capital.
“I have two jobs,” Trump said in late 2025, the presidency being just one of them. “I have a construction job, which is really like relaxation for me because I have been doing it my entire life.”
The White House ballroom, reflecting pool resurfacing, Kennedy Center renovations and a triumphal arch are among the many changes Trump wants to make in D.C.
Some of those changes are seemingly temporary, like the huge banners of Trump’s face hanging from the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture and other federal buildings. Several concern the decor and aesthetics of the White House, like the paved-over Rose Garden and gilded Oval Office. Others are matters of nomenclature, like the addition of Trump’s name to the signs on the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.
But many of the efforts in progress could reshape D.C.’s architectural landscape for decades to come.
Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says while Trump had aesthetic ambitions during his first term, his “insistence on making it so much about his own style and his own brand and wearing this glory of America’s past is distinct to this term.” Many of his initiatives are connected to the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary in July.
“They all sort of declare the glory of America rather than actually building any kind of growth or future for America,” Flanagan says. “If you’re trying to slash the science budget … at the same [as you’re] building these grand monuments, you’re not building a creative America, you’re wearing a great American past as a costume.”
The latest change was to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its gray bottom with a shade he described to reporters as “American flag blue.”
The 2,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.
It last underwent a major renovation from 2010 to 2012, both for structural fixes (to address decades of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic improvements (it was intentionally made shallower). But the Department of Interior says the wrong-size pipes were installed, resulting in the continued need for expensive refills (71 million additional gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).
Trump has been talking publicly about fixing the pool since at least November 2025, but ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints about the state of the landmark. He told reporters that he is working with one of his best “pool builders” from his real estate days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade “like in the Bahamas.”
Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the city itself, “like it’s his personal country club.”
“You get some pool guys and then they refinish it in a way that is more suitable to, basically, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago,” he adds.
That’s all I have for today. I can’t take anymore. \
Have a peaceful Wednesday.
#DonaldTrump #EbrahimRezaei #EsmailBaghaei #IranWarNegotiations #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool #ProjectFreedom #StraitOfHormuz #TedTurner #TrumpSBallroom -
Wednesday Reads
Good Day!!
I spent the last 3 days reading books and relaxing, and mostly avoiding watching or reading news social media. My RA pain had been pretty bad lately, and it has definitely improved as a result. I’ll have to see what happens after I engage with the news for this post, but at the moment I plan to go back on a news diet when I finish. I definitely think my health is improved by avoiding news about Trump.
Here’s what’s happening this morning:
Cable news Legend Ted Turner has died.
The New York Times (gift article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.
The rest of the article is fascinating–dealing with Turner’s personal life, political beliefs and more. I’ve included a gift link in case you want to read more.Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.
Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
Ted Turner
Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.
As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.
In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world’s largest media companies.
Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.
“I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader’s Digest article in 1998. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.”
Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch — who once had his New York Post run the headline “Is Turner Insane?” — had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.
An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.
Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.
Of course the big story is still Trump’s war with Iran. It’s difficult to know what to believe about what’s going on, since Trump and Hegseth lie constantly.
CNN reports the Trump/Hegseth line: US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says.
The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.
The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise, two administration officials told CNN while offering some skepticism about Pakistan’s optimism.
From CentCom: Project Freedom at Strait of Hormuz
But a renewed diplomatic push has emerged in recent days, the regional source said. President Donald Trump appears to be simplifying issues in peace negotiations so moderates in the Iranian regime can come back to the negotiating table, the source added, with the aim being to tackle thornier issues later.
A one-page plan being floated internally contains provisions that have been at the heart of negotiations to end the conflict, a person familiar with the plan told CNN. The document would declare an end to the war while triggering a 30-day negotiation period on resolving sticking points, including on nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz, the person said.
Precise details of the plan couldn’t immediately be verified, but the source familiar said it would include discussion of a moratorium on uranium enrichment for a period of longer than 10 years. A previous US proposal had set it at 20 years.
The plan also requires Iran to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country, but details were still being negotiated.
News of positive movement from the Pakistanis helped spur Trump on Tuesday to announce a pause of “Project Freedom” – an operation to guide stranded ships out of the strait – citing progress in negotiations with Iran, the administration officials said. The pause came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had ended and that the administration’s full focus was on Project Freedom.
The regional source told CNN that the harder the US pushed its agenda of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury, the more the hardliners in Iran stood up and had a bigger voice.
The Guardian reports on Iran’s reaction: Middle East crisis live: US proposal to end war a ‘wishlist, not a reality’, warns Iranian official.
‘American wishlist, not a reality’: Iranian officials cast doubt on US proposal to end war.
Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesperson of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, has poured cold water on the Axios report claiming the US and Iran were nearing a one-page memorandum to end the war, saying it was an “American wishlist [and] not a reality”.
Ebrahim Rezaei
In a fiery statement on X, he said: “Americans will not gain in a lost war what they failed to achieve in face-to-face negotiations. Iran has its finger on the trigger and is ready; if they do not surrender and grant the necessary concessions, or if they or their lapdogs attempt any mischief, we will respond with a harsh and regrettable response.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also responded to the Axios report, telling the Iranian Isna news agency that the US proposal is still being reviewed by Tehran.
“Once Iran concludes its assessment, it will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Isna reported, adding that the US demands detailed in the Axios report “included excessive and unrealistic demands that have been strongly rejected by Iranian officials in recent days”.
Isna reported that the Iranian negotiating team is solely reviewing the “termination of the war” and the nuclear issue is not currently being discussed.
That doesn’t sound like an agreement is coming soon. And Trump is issuing threats.
AP: US and Iran appear to move closer to ending their war as Trump threatens more bombing.
The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.
Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.
Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.
Iran’s effective closure of the strait has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, rattled the global economy and put enormous economic pressure on countries, including major powers such as China.
China’s foreign minister called for a comprehensive ceasefire Wednesday after meeting in Beijing with Iran’s top envoy. Wang Yi said his country was “deeply distressed” by the conflict, which began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
China’s close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence. The Trump administration is pressing China to use that relationship to urge the Islamic Republic to open the strait.
Meanwhile it appears that the Trump administration has been trying to conceal how much damage Iran has done to U.S. bases in the Middle East region.
The Washington Post (gift article): Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment atU.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks,fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, seven service members have died in strikes on U.S. facilities in the region — six in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia — and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries as of late April, the U.S. military said. While most of the wounded returned to duty within days, at least 12 suffered injuries that military officials classified as serious, according to U.S. officials who, among others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Satellite imagery of the Middle East is unusually difficult to acquire at present. Two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet, have complied with requests from the U.S. government — their biggest customer — to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing, making it difficult or impossible to assess Iran’s counterstrikes. Those restrictions began less than two weeks into the war.
Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have from the start regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on their social media accounts that claimed to document damage to U.S. sites.
Images of damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait, released and annotated by Iranian state-affiliated media. Washington Post illustration.
For this examination — one of the first comprehensive public accounts of the damage to U.S. facilities in the region — The Post reviewed more than 100 high-resolution Iranian-released satellite images. The Post verified the authenticity of 109 of the those images by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available. The Post excluded 19 Iranian images from the damage analysis because comparisons with the Copernicus imagery were inconclusive. No Iranian imagery was found to have been manipulated.
In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran. In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.
Read the rest and view more images using the gift link above. I wonder what it will take to repair the damage?
Here’s a bit of hopeful news from The Washington Post: Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth.
Americans are deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a striking rebuke in a closely divided country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The poll finds positive ratings for Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized U.S. actions on immigration andin Iran, drawing criticism from Trump that the president repeated on Tuesday.
Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislikeHegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.
“There is only one Jesus! I found the posts to be inappropriate and offensive. Humility is at the core of being Jesus,” said Kimberly Chopin, a 57-year-old Catholic who lives in suburban Baton Rouge and voted for Trump. She added that Hegseth’s prayer calling for violence made her “extremely uncomfortable. That kind of language sounds like the language of al-Qaeda.”
Interesting.
Of course Trump is much less interested in the war he started as a distraction from the Epstein files than remaking the White House and surrounding buildings and monuments in his own image. And his number one obsession is his insane ballroom.
Now Republicans in Congress are getting into the act. We were told that the ballroom project would be paid for with private money. Suddenly, we learn that taxpayers are expected to cover the growing price tag.
The New York Times: G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project.
Senate Republicans have inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.
The leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees on Monday released plans for the roughly $70 billion package, which would significantly bolster spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of Mr. Trump’s term using a party-line legislative process that can skirt a filibuster.
Trump’s proposed ballroom addition to the White House
A surprise addition to the measure was the $1 billion proposed by the Judiciary Committee for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.
While the president has previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through private donations, a spokesman on Tuesday said the White House applauded the proposed security funding for a “long overdue” project.
Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have escalated their efforts to defend the project after the attempted assault late last month at a journalism gala in Washington attended by the president.
The bill says the public money would be directed to “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” It also bars any of the funding being spent on “non-security elements.”
WTF?!
“Republicans are on a different planet than American families,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a post on social media. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Top Democrats also noted that consideration of the bill would put all senators on the record on a White House construction project that polls have shown to be unpopular.
“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said on social media.
Should the provision survive and be enacted into law, it could clear away legal obstacles to construction of the ballroom, which a federal judge has ruled requires congressional approval.
Republicans are advancing the legislation outside of normal congressional spending channels because Senate Democrats had blocked money for ICE and the border control in a dispute over the tactics and conduct of federal immigration officers. That fight shut down parts of the Department of Homeland Security for almost 80 days.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”
Trump is destroying our country and our Capitol. He has to be stopped. One more on this from NPR: The many ways Trump wants to change D.C., from buildings to statues to parks.
President Trump is looking to make his mark on the White House and Washington, D.C., and not just politically.
The longtime real estate developer has either announced or embarked on a number of construction and renovation projects across the nation’s capital.
“I have two jobs,” Trump said in late 2025, the presidency being just one of them. “I have a construction job, which is really like relaxation for me because I have been doing it my entire life.”
The White House ballroom, reflecting pool resurfacing, Kennedy Center renovations and a triumphal arch are among the many changes Trump wants to make in D.C.
Some of those changes are seemingly temporary, like the huge banners of Trump’s face hanging from the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture and other federal buildings. Several concern the decor and aesthetics of the White House, like the paved-over Rose Garden and gilded Oval Office. Others are matters of nomenclature, like the addition of Trump’s name to the signs on the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.
But many of the efforts in progress could reshape D.C.’s architectural landscape for decades to come.
Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says while Trump had aesthetic ambitions during his first term, his “insistence on making it so much about his own style and his own brand and wearing this glory of America’s past is distinct to this term.” Many of his initiatives are connected to the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary in July.
“They all sort of declare the glory of America rather than actually building any kind of growth or future for America,” Flanagan says. “If you’re trying to slash the science budget … at the same [as you’re] building these grand monuments, you’re not building a creative America, you’re wearing a great American past as a costume.”
The latest change was to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its gray bottom with a shade he described to reporters as “American flag blue.”
The 2,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.
It last underwent a major renovation from 2010 to 2012, both for structural fixes (to address decades of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic improvements (it was intentionally made shallower). But the Department of Interior says the wrong-size pipes were installed, resulting in the continued need for expensive refills (71 million additional gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).
Trump has been talking publicly about fixing the pool since at least November 2025, but ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints about the state of the landmark. He told reporters that he is working with one of his best “pool builders” from his real estate days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade “like in the Bahamas.”
Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the city itself, “like it’s his personal country club.”
“You get some pool guys and then they refinish it in a way that is more suitable to, basically, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago,” he adds.
That’s all I have for today. I can’t take anymore. \
Have a peaceful Wednesday.
#DonaldTrump #EbrahimRezaei #EsmailBaghaei #IranWarNegotiations #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool #ProjectFreedom #StraitOfHormuz #TedTurner #TrumpSBallroom -
Wednesday Reads
Good Day!!
I spent the last 3 days reading books and relaxing, and mostly avoiding watching or reading news social media. My RA pain had been pretty bad lately, and it has definitely improved as a result. I’ll have to see what happens after I engage with the news for this post, but at the moment I plan to go back on a news diet when I finish. I definitely think my health is improved by avoiding news about Trump.
Here’s what’s happening this morning:
Cable news Legend Ted Turner has died.
The New York Times (gift article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.
The rest of the article is fascinating–dealing with Turner’s personal life, political beliefs and more. I’ve included a gift link in case you want to read more.Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.
Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
Ted Turner
Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.
As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.
In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world’s largest media companies.
Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.
“I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader’s Digest article in 1998. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.”
Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch — who once had his New York Post run the headline “Is Turner Insane?” — had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.
An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.
Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.
Of course the big story is still Trump’s war with Iran. It’s difficult to know what to believe about what’s going on, since Trump and Hegseth lie constantly.
CNN reports the Trump/Hegseth line: US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says.
The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.
The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise, two administration officials told CNN while offering some skepticism about Pakistan’s optimism.
From CentCom: Project Freedom at Strait of Hormuz
But a renewed diplomatic push has emerged in recent days, the regional source said. President Donald Trump appears to be simplifying issues in peace negotiations so moderates in the Iranian regime can come back to the negotiating table, the source added, with the aim being to tackle thornier issues later.
A one-page plan being floated internally contains provisions that have been at the heart of negotiations to end the conflict, a person familiar with the plan told CNN. The document would declare an end to the war while triggering a 30-day negotiation period on resolving sticking points, including on nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz, the person said.
Precise details of the plan couldn’t immediately be verified, but the source familiar said it would include discussion of a moratorium on uranium enrichment for a period of longer than 10 years. A previous US proposal had set it at 20 years.
The plan also requires Iran to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country, but details were still being negotiated.
News of positive movement from the Pakistanis helped spur Trump on Tuesday to announce a pause of “Project Freedom” – an operation to guide stranded ships out of the strait – citing progress in negotiations with Iran, the administration officials said. The pause came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had ended and that the administration’s full focus was on Project Freedom.
The regional source told CNN that the harder the US pushed its agenda of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury, the more the hardliners in Iran stood up and had a bigger voice.
The Guardian reports on Iran’s reaction: Middle East crisis live: US proposal to end war a ‘wishlist, not a reality’, warns Iranian official.
‘American wishlist, not a reality’: Iranian officials cast doubt on US proposal to end war.
Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesperson of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, has poured cold water on the Axios report claiming the US and Iran were nearing a one-page memorandum to end the war, saying it was an “American wishlist [and] not a reality”.
Ebrahim Rezaei
In a fiery statement on X, he said: “Americans will not gain in a lost war what they failed to achieve in face-to-face negotiations. Iran has its finger on the trigger and is ready; if they do not surrender and grant the necessary concessions, or if they or their lapdogs attempt any mischief, we will respond with a harsh and regrettable response.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also responded to the Axios report, telling the Iranian Isna news agency that the US proposal is still being reviewed by Tehran.
“Once Iran concludes its assessment, it will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Isna reported, adding that the US demands detailed in the Axios report “included excessive and unrealistic demands that have been strongly rejected by Iranian officials in recent days”.
Isna reported that the Iranian negotiating team is solely reviewing the “termination of the war” and the nuclear issue is not currently being discussed.
That doesn’t sound like an agreement is coming soon. And Trump is issuing threats.
AP: US and Iran appear to move closer to ending their war as Trump threatens more bombing.
The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.
Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.
Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.
Iran’s effective closure of the strait has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, rattled the global economy and put enormous economic pressure on countries, including major powers such as China.
China’s foreign minister called for a comprehensive ceasefire Wednesday after meeting in Beijing with Iran’s top envoy. Wang Yi said his country was “deeply distressed” by the conflict, which began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
China’s close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence. The Trump administration is pressing China to use that relationship to urge the Islamic Republic to open the strait.
Meanwhile it appears that the Trump administration has been trying to conceal how much damage Iran has done to U.S. bases in the Middle East region.
The Washington Post (gift article): Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment atU.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks,fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, seven service members have died in strikes on U.S. facilities in the region — six in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia — and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries as of late April, the U.S. military said. While most of the wounded returned to duty within days, at least 12 suffered injuries that military officials classified as serious, according to U.S. officials who, among others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Satellite imagery of the Middle East is unusually difficult to acquire at present. Two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet, have complied with requests from the U.S. government — their biggest customer — to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing, making it difficult or impossible to assess Iran’s counterstrikes. Those restrictions began less than two weeks into the war.
Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have from the start regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on their social media accounts that claimed to document damage to U.S. sites.
Images of damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait, released and annotated by Iranian state-affiliated media. Washington Post illustration.
For this examination — one of the first comprehensive public accounts of the damage to U.S. facilities in the region — The Post reviewed more than 100 high-resolution Iranian-released satellite images. The Post verified the authenticity of 109 of the those images by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available. The Post excluded 19 Iranian images from the damage analysis because comparisons with the Copernicus imagery were inconclusive. No Iranian imagery was found to have been manipulated.
In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran. In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.
Read the rest and view more images using the gift link above. I wonder what it will take to repair the damage?
Here’s a bit of hopeful news from The Washington Post: Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth.
Americans are deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a striking rebuke in a closely divided country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The poll finds positive ratings for Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized U.S. actions on immigration andin Iran, drawing criticism from Trump that the president repeated on Tuesday.
Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislikeHegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.
“There is only one Jesus! I found the posts to be inappropriate and offensive. Humility is at the core of being Jesus,” said Kimberly Chopin, a 57-year-old Catholic who lives in suburban Baton Rouge and voted for Trump. She added that Hegseth’s prayer calling for violence made her “extremely uncomfortable. That kind of language sounds like the language of al-Qaeda.”
Interesting.
Of course Trump is much less interested in the war he started as a distraction from the Epstein files than remaking the White House and surrounding buildings and monuments in his own image. And his number one obsession is his insane ballroom.
Now Republicans in Congress are getting into the act. We were told that the ballroom project would be paid for with private money. Suddenly, we learn that taxpayers are expected to cover the growing price tag.
The New York Times: G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project.
Senate Republicans have inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.
The leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees on Monday released plans for the roughly $70 billion package, which would significantly bolster spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of Mr. Trump’s term using a party-line legislative process that can skirt a filibuster.
Trump’s proposed ballroom addition to the White House
A surprise addition to the measure was the $1 billion proposed by the Judiciary Committee for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.
While the president has previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through private donations, a spokesman on Tuesday said the White House applauded the proposed security funding for a “long overdue” project.
Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have escalated their efforts to defend the project after the attempted assault late last month at a journalism gala in Washington attended by the president.
The bill says the public money would be directed to “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” It also bars any of the funding being spent on “non-security elements.”
WTF?!
“Republicans are on a different planet than American families,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a post on social media. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Top Democrats also noted that consideration of the bill would put all senators on the record on a White House construction project that polls have shown to be unpopular.
“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said on social media.
Should the provision survive and be enacted into law, it could clear away legal obstacles to construction of the ballroom, which a federal judge has ruled requires congressional approval.
Republicans are advancing the legislation outside of normal congressional spending channels because Senate Democrats had blocked money for ICE and the border control in a dispute over the tactics and conduct of federal immigration officers. That fight shut down parts of the Department of Homeland Security for almost 80 days.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”
Trump is destroying our country and our Capitol. He has to be stopped. One more on this from NPR: The many ways Trump wants to change D.C., from buildings to statues to parks.
President Trump is looking to make his mark on the White House and Washington, D.C., and not just politically.
The longtime real estate developer has either announced or embarked on a number of construction and renovation projects across the nation’s capital.
“I have two jobs,” Trump said in late 2025, the presidency being just one of them. “I have a construction job, which is really like relaxation for me because I have been doing it my entire life.”
The White House ballroom, reflecting pool resurfacing, Kennedy Center renovations and a triumphal arch are among the many changes Trump wants to make in D.C.
Some of those changes are seemingly temporary, like the huge banners of Trump’s face hanging from the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture and other federal buildings. Several concern the decor and aesthetics of the White House, like the paved-over Rose Garden and gilded Oval Office. Others are matters of nomenclature, like the addition of Trump’s name to the signs on the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.
But many of the efforts in progress could reshape D.C.’s architectural landscape for decades to come.
Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says while Trump had aesthetic ambitions during his first term, his “insistence on making it so much about his own style and his own brand and wearing this glory of America’s past is distinct to this term.” Many of his initiatives are connected to the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary in July.
“They all sort of declare the glory of America rather than actually building any kind of growth or future for America,” Flanagan says. “If you’re trying to slash the science budget … at the same [as you’re] building these grand monuments, you’re not building a creative America, you’re wearing a great American past as a costume.”
The latest change was to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its gray bottom with a shade he described to reporters as “American flag blue.”
The 2,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.
It last underwent a major renovation from 2010 to 2012, both for structural fixes (to address decades of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic improvements (it was intentionally made shallower). But the Department of Interior says the wrong-size pipes were installed, resulting in the continued need for expensive refills (71 million additional gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).
Trump has been talking publicly about fixing the pool since at least November 2025, but ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints about the state of the landmark. He told reporters that he is working with one of his best “pool builders” from his real estate days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade “like in the Bahamas.”
Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the city itself, “like it’s his personal country club.”
“You get some pool guys and then they refinish it in a way that is more suitable to, basically, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago,” he adds.
That’s all I have for today. I can’t take anymore. \
Have a peaceful Wednesday.
#DonaldTrump #EbrahimRezaei #EsmailBaghaei #IranWarNegotiations #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool #ProjectFreedom #StraitOfHormuz #TedTurner #TrumpSBallroom -
Wednesday Reads
Good Day!!
I spent the last 3 days reading books and relaxing, and mostly avoiding watching or reading news social media. My RA pain had been pretty bad lately, and it has definitely improved as a result. I’ll have to see what happens after I engage with the news for this post, but at the moment I plan to go back on a news diet when I finish. I definitely think my health is improved by avoiding news about Trump.
Here’s what’s happening this morning:
Cable news Legend Ted Turner has died.
The New York Times (gift article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.
The rest of the article is fascinating–dealing with Turner’s personal life, political beliefs and more. I’ve included a gift link in case you want to read more.Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.
Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
Ted Turner
Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.
As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.
In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world’s largest media companies.
Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.
“I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader’s Digest article in 1998. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.”
Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch — who once had his New York Post run the headline “Is Turner Insane?” — had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.
An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.
Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.
Of course the big story is still Trump’s war with Iran. It’s difficult to know what to believe about what’s going on, since Trump and Hegseth lie constantly.
CNN reports the Trump/Hegseth line: US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says.
The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.
The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise, two administration officials told CNN while offering some skepticism about Pakistan’s optimism.
From CentCom: Project Freedom at Strait of Hormuz
But a renewed diplomatic push has emerged in recent days, the regional source said. President Donald Trump appears to be simplifying issues in peace negotiations so moderates in the Iranian regime can come back to the negotiating table, the source added, with the aim being to tackle thornier issues later.
A one-page plan being floated internally contains provisions that have been at the heart of negotiations to end the conflict, a person familiar with the plan told CNN. The document would declare an end to the war while triggering a 30-day negotiation period on resolving sticking points, including on nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz, the person said.
Precise details of the plan couldn’t immediately be verified, but the source familiar said it would include discussion of a moratorium on uranium enrichment for a period of longer than 10 years. A previous US proposal had set it at 20 years.
The plan also requires Iran to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country, but details were still being negotiated.
News of positive movement from the Pakistanis helped spur Trump on Tuesday to announce a pause of “Project Freedom” – an operation to guide stranded ships out of the strait – citing progress in negotiations with Iran, the administration officials said. The pause came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had ended and that the administration’s full focus was on Project Freedom.
The regional source told CNN that the harder the US pushed its agenda of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury, the more the hardliners in Iran stood up and had a bigger voice.
The Guardian reports on Iran’s reaction: Middle East crisis live: US proposal to end war a ‘wishlist, not a reality’, warns Iranian official.
‘American wishlist, not a reality’: Iranian officials cast doubt on US proposal to end war.
Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesperson of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, has poured cold water on the Axios report claiming the US and Iran were nearing a one-page memorandum to end the war, saying it was an “American wishlist [and] not a reality”.
Ebrahim Rezaei
In a fiery statement on X, he said: “Americans will not gain in a lost war what they failed to achieve in face-to-face negotiations. Iran has its finger on the trigger and is ready; if they do not surrender and grant the necessary concessions, or if they or their lapdogs attempt any mischief, we will respond with a harsh and regrettable response.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also responded to the Axios report, telling the Iranian Isna news agency that the US proposal is still being reviewed by Tehran.
“Once Iran concludes its assessment, it will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Isna reported, adding that the US demands detailed in the Axios report “included excessive and unrealistic demands that have been strongly rejected by Iranian officials in recent days”.
Isna reported that the Iranian negotiating team is solely reviewing the “termination of the war” and the nuclear issue is not currently being discussed.
That doesn’t sound like an agreement is coming soon. And Trump is issuing threats.
AP: US and Iran appear to move closer to ending their war as Trump threatens more bombing.
The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.
Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.
Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.
Iran’s effective closure of the strait has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, rattled the global economy and put enormous economic pressure on countries, including major powers such as China.
China’s foreign minister called for a comprehensive ceasefire Wednesday after meeting in Beijing with Iran’s top envoy. Wang Yi said his country was “deeply distressed” by the conflict, which began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
China’s close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence. The Trump administration is pressing China to use that relationship to urge the Islamic Republic to open the strait.
Meanwhile it appears that the Trump administration has been trying to conceal how much damage Iran has done to U.S. bases in the Middle East region.
The Washington Post (gift article): Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment atU.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks,fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, seven service members have died in strikes on U.S. facilities in the region — six in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia — and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries as of late April, the U.S. military said. While most of the wounded returned to duty within days, at least 12 suffered injuries that military officials classified as serious, according to U.S. officials who, among others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Satellite imagery of the Middle East is unusually difficult to acquire at present. Two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet, have complied with requests from the U.S. government — their biggest customer — to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing, making it difficult or impossible to assess Iran’s counterstrikes. Those restrictions began less than two weeks into the war.
Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have from the start regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on their social media accounts that claimed to document damage to U.S. sites.
Images of damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait, released and annotated by Iranian state-affiliated media. Washington Post illustration.
For this examination — one of the first comprehensive public accounts of the damage to U.S. facilities in the region — The Post reviewed more than 100 high-resolution Iranian-released satellite images. The Post verified the authenticity of 109 of the those images by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available. The Post excluded 19 Iranian images from the damage analysis because comparisons with the Copernicus imagery were inconclusive. No Iranian imagery was found to have been manipulated.
In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran. In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.
Read the rest and view more images using the gift link above. I wonder what it will take to repair the damage?
Here’s a bit of hopeful news from The Washington Post: Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth.
Americans are deeply uncomfortable with recent religion-related statements by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a striking rebuke in a closely divided country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The poll finds positive ratings for Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized U.S. actions on immigration andin Iran, drawing criticism from Trump that the president repeated on Tuesday.
Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislikeHegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.
“There is only one Jesus! I found the posts to be inappropriate and offensive. Humility is at the core of being Jesus,” said Kimberly Chopin, a 57-year-old Catholic who lives in suburban Baton Rouge and voted for Trump. She added that Hegseth’s prayer calling for violence made her “extremely uncomfortable. That kind of language sounds like the language of al-Qaeda.”
Interesting.
Of course Trump is much less interested in the war he started as a distraction from the Epstein files than remaking the White House and surrounding buildings and monuments in his own image. And his number one obsession is his insane ballroom.
Now Republicans in Congress are getting into the act. We were told that the ballroom project would be paid for with private money. Suddenly, we learn that taxpayers are expected to cover the growing price tag.
The New York Times: G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project.
Senate Republicans have inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.
The leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees on Monday released plans for the roughly $70 billion package, which would significantly bolster spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol through the end of Mr. Trump’s term using a party-line legislative process that can skirt a filibuster.
Trump’s proposed ballroom addition to the White House
A surprise addition to the measure was the $1 billion proposed by the Judiciary Committee for security work related to Mr. Trump’s East Wing renovation. The measure does not mention the president’s proposed new ballroom, which is being challenged in court, but Mr. Trump has insisted that a main reason for the project is to enhance security.
While the president has previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through private donations, a spokesman on Tuesday said the White House applauded the proposed security funding for a “long overdue” project.
Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have escalated their efforts to defend the project after the attempted assault late last month at a journalism gala in Washington attended by the president.
The bill says the public money would be directed to “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” It also bars any of the funding being spent on “non-security elements.”
WTF?!
“Republicans are on a different planet than American families,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a post on social media. “Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Top Democrats also noted that consideration of the bill would put all senators on the record on a White House construction project that polls have shown to be unpopular.
“Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said on social media.
Should the provision survive and be enacted into law, it could clear away legal obstacles to construction of the ballroom, which a federal judge has ruled requires congressional approval.
Republicans are advancing the legislation outside of normal congressional spending channels because Senate Democrats had blocked money for ICE and the border control in a dispute over the tactics and conduct of federal immigration officers. That fight shut down parts of the Department of Homeland Security for almost 80 days.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”
Trump is destroying our country and our Capitol. He has to be stopped. One more on this from NPR: The many ways Trump wants to change D.C., from buildings to statues to parks.
President Trump is looking to make his mark on the White House and Washington, D.C., and not just politically.
The longtime real estate developer has either announced or embarked on a number of construction and renovation projects across the nation’s capital.
“I have two jobs,” Trump said in late 2025, the presidency being just one of them. “I have a construction job, which is really like relaxation for me because I have been doing it my entire life.”
The White House ballroom, reflecting pool resurfacing, Kennedy Center renovations and a triumphal arch are among the many changes Trump wants to make in D.C.
Some of those changes are seemingly temporary, like the huge banners of Trump’s face hanging from the Justice Department, Department of Agriculture and other federal buildings. Several concern the decor and aesthetics of the White House, like the paved-over Rose Garden and gilded Oval Office. Others are matters of nomenclature, like the addition of Trump’s name to the signs on the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace buildings.
But many of the efforts in progress could reshape D.C.’s architectural landscape for decades to come.
Neil Flanagan, an architect and public historian in D.C., says while Trump had aesthetic ambitions during his first term, his “insistence on making it so much about his own style and his own brand and wearing this glory of America’s past is distinct to this term.” Many of his initiatives are connected to the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary in July.
“They all sort of declare the glory of America rather than actually building any kind of growth or future for America,” Flanagan says. “If you’re trying to slash the science budget … at the same [as you’re] building these grand monuments, you’re not building a creative America, you’re wearing a great American past as a costume.”
The latest change was to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
Trump is resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, coating its gray bottom with a shade he described to reporters as “American flag blue.”
The 2,030-foot-long reflecting pool has been the backdrop of marches, speeches and inaugurations for a century.
It last underwent a major renovation from 2010 to 2012, both for structural fixes (to address decades of leaking and sinking) and aesthetic improvements (it was intentionally made shallower). But the Department of Interior says the wrong-size pipes were installed, resulting in the continued need for expensive refills (71 million additional gallons, exceeding $1 million, in 2019 alone).
Trump has been talking publicly about fixing the pool since at least November 2025, but ramped up his efforts in April after what he described as complaints about the state of the landmark. He told reporters that he is working with one of his best “pool builders” from his real estate days, who talked him out of a turquoise shade “like in the Bahamas.”
Flanagan says Trump is treating the pool, and the city itself, “like it’s his personal country club.”
“You get some pool guys and then they refinish it in a way that is more suitable to, basically, a swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago,” he adds.
That’s all I have for today. I can’t take anymore. \
Have a peaceful Wednesday.
#DonaldTrump #EbrahimRezaei #EsmailBaghaei #IranWarNegotiations #LincolnMemorialReflectingPool #ProjectFreedom #StraitOfHormuz #TedTurner #TrumpSBallroom -
Queen of the High Street: the thread about the life and times of Esta Henry
On this day (January 15th) in 1963, a small silver airliner with 45 people on board took off from Sao Paulo in Brazil en route for Rio de Janeiro. Moments later it plunged into the ground in the city’s suburbs, taking with it 13 lives. The last victim to be identified was that of Esta Henry, a renowned and somewhat eccentric Edinburgh antiques dealer; her husband Paul was at her side and perished too. Thus ended the final chapter in the colourful life of the lady the papers called the Queen of the High Street. Her surprising story now follows.
Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Convair 340 aircraft, registration PP-CDW, the plane that crashed in January 1963. CC-by Smithsonian InstitutionShe was born Esther Louis on July 3rd 1882 in Sunderland, County Durham, to Louie Louis and his wife Eveline (née Jackson). Her parents were Jewish, her father a 1st generation Prussian immigrant and her mother 2nd generation to Dutch and German parents. Like many Jews in Britain at this time, to integrate and protect themselves somewhat from anti-Semitism, they altered their names; Louie and Evelina were thus better known as John and Eva. He worked variously as a cobbler, a clothier and an auctioneer and the family moved frequently with his work between Sunderland and Scotland. The family moved to 2 Jane Street in Leith in 1884 where Louie opened an auction room in the Kirkgate. Alas tragedy was to strike the following year. When Esta was just 2 her father died from fever and pneumonia leaving his wife with 7 hungry mouths to feed and another on the way.
Esta’s immediate family tree.Evelina and her entourage of children gravitated back to Wearside where she remarried in 1889 to Charles Goldman, a pawnbroker. Four half-siblings to Esta would follow and at the time of the 1891 census the enlarged family stayed in a small but prim end-terraced house at 4 Sorley Street in Sunderland. In her own telling of her story at this age the 9 year old Esta ran off to variously Edinburgh or Leith and sold door-to-door by barrow or bicycle to eke out a living, but we should take this with a very large pinch of salt as the records contradict the story and she made a habit of tweaking and embellishing tales of her life to suit circumstances. In 1901 they were at 12 Rutland Street in Sunderland, living above the family pawnbrokers. The 18 year old Esta was described as a General Dealer in the census; she was running a corner shop.
Rutland Street, Sunderland, 1929. Number 12, the Goldman shop and house is at the end of the row with the canopy, if you look very closely the pawnbroker’s sign is in the Goldman name. via Sunderland Antiquarian SocietyBut Esta did not stay put for much longer, by the next year we find her living at 156 Canongate in Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter she married a 25 year old jeweller, Jack H. Henry of 30 Milton Street. But like her Father, Esta’s new husband was using an alias; he was actually born Joseph Henry Abrovich in Łódź, Poland. It suited him to keep details of his past deliberately obscure; he spent his life giving different dates (between 1869-79) and places of birth in official documents and was most frequently recorded as John but sometimes also Jacob. But he married Esta as Jack. His mysteriousness was necessary as he was leading a double life; he was actually a talented concert violinist, a member of the touring orchestra of Polish piano impresario Ignacy Paderewski (who would rise to become Prime Minister of his country). Jack had skipped town in Dublin when on tour in the 1890s in order to avoid returning home to compulsory military service for the Russian Empire. It was also a difficult time for the Polish Jews in general as they faced the Russian Pogroms and waves were emigrating west. Thus he ended up in Scotland; possibly via Glasgow where there were already Abrovichs resident.
“Jack H. Henry.” picture shared by his grandson, used with permissionEsta and Jack settled at the tenement at 170 Canongate and soon opened a jewellery shop at number 168. They moved into the back of the shop and began to raise a family together. Louis (Lou) was born in 1903, Philip (Philly) in 1904, Herbert (Bertie) in 1906 and Rosa (Rose) in 1908. While the Canongate was a down at heel neighbourhood at the time, one with much slum housing and a largely itinerant population that included many of the city’s poor and immigrants, they were doing well for themselves and advertised for a servant – “apply Mrs Henry” – in the newspapers.
Canongate in the late 19th century. On the left is the tower and clock of the Tolbooth, on the right the distinctive obelisk-topped gate piers of Moray House. The Henry shop and home is the lighter coloured tenement on the right hand side of the street. Beyond is the projecting gable of Huntly House; it is a neighbourhood steeped in Scottish history. Postcard, unknown artist. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandAfter 1910, the shop moved over the road to 183 Canongate, where a photo shows Jack standing proudly in the doorway amongst his door.
Jack Henry at 183 Canongate, photo from “Edinburgh Shops: Past and Present”, by Malcolm Cant, 2005As they prospered, raising 3 children in the back of a shop ceased to be a necessity and they moved to a smart new, end-of-terrace, middle class villa at 1 Lismore Avenue in Willowbrae. It was here in 1918 that their ranks were joined by the birth of Henrietta (Bunty). By 1915 the shop had relocated up the Royal Mile to number 51 High Street, next to the well know building known as John Knox’s House. This was the ground floor of Moubray House, one of the oldest surviving residential buildings in the city, where Daniel Defoe had once lodged. It had recently been restored by the Cockburn Association and placed in the hands of a trust. Despite raising 4 children, Esta was clearly becoming more involved in the affairs of business as classified adverts are in the name of both her and Jack. By 1920 she is styling herself “Mrs Henry, Antique Dealer” in these.
“Unidentified Man and Children”, Alexander Wilson Hill, c. 1933. This the shop at 51 High Street and it is Jack Henry standing outside. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandThe Henrys began to put money into property as shown in the 1915 and 1920 valuation rolls; a shop at 54 Hanover Street that would later be run by their son Louis, and the entire frontage of the High Street from 83 to 95. Two of these shop units they would use for themselves to hold more stock and others were let out. The 1921 census finds the family have moved on and up in the housing world again, now at a very large villa at 15 Mayfield Terrace in Newington. Louis Henry was following his father into the jewellery trade and Philip was training to become a dentist. Life was good but it was about to get better. In 1923 the Scottish newspapers reported the surprise visit of Queen Mary to the Henrys’ shop, where she spent an hour and bought many items, particularly Chinese curios. She was “greatly interested with both the collection and the premises” and shook hands with Esta and Jack as she left, promising to return. Her Majesty was true to her word and returned exactly one year later, buying “a score of articles” including a Louis XIV fan that had once belonged to Queen Victoria. She signed the visitors’ book and said that her purchases the previous year had been gifted to the West Kensington Museum.
Queen Mary leaving Henry’s on one of her many visits. Postcard, unknown artist. Via Canmore, SC 2649474 © Courtesy HESThe Queen was back again a year later, with over a dozen items bought, including a portrait believed to have been the property of Napoleon. The Henrys were invited to deliver the items in person to Holyroodhouse that afternoon and join the Queen for tea. They learned that some of the purchases were to stay there at the palace as part of its collection. The Queen thereafter returned almost every year on her visits to Holyrood, the newspapers reporting the purchase of items in 1927 and 1930 for Buckingham Palace and her personal collection. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Princes Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister Queen Margaret would carry on this royal tradition in later years and a whole section of wall in the shop was reserved for the display of their proudly framed cheques.
As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, Esta’s public profile was ascendant but Jack seems to have begun to step back somewhat from the limelight and into the shadows of the shop. In 1928 she stood for election to the Parish Council in the Canongate ward. Although she came second, there were two seats up for grabs and she was duly returned. Her election notices are the first time in print I could find where she is referring to herself as Esta, rather than just Mrs Henry. Her election was notable as she was the first Jewish woman to be elected to a public office in Scotland and also the press referred to her as Councillor Mrs Esta Henry, other married female councillors were referred to by their husband’s name, e.g Councillor Mrs Adam Millar. This is a public demonstration that she was very much her own woman.
Candidate picture of Esta Henry, Evening News, 7th November 1928The following year civic Parish Councils in Scotland – which existed largely for the purposes of poor relief – were abolished and merged into the Town Councils. Esta stood as an independent for this latter body in 1929 but came 4th behind two Socialists and a Moderate candidate. She would stand again for the Town Council in 1931, 1933 and 1935. She made very clear in her election speeches, which were reported in the press, that her priorities were housing, housewives, child welfare and the treatment of the sick and poor. Women and children were always central to her campaigns and she was known to mobilise squads of them in the Canongate to carry her election materials and to parade around the polling stations. But despite her strenuous campaign efforts on a sensible platform, her public profile and her local popularity, as an independent female candidate she stood little realistic chance of election. Edinburgh was run by the very pale, male and stale Moderates who largely owned the Council’s seats – many of which they didn’t even need to contest – and it was only in a handful of wards where the Socialists could challenge them (to find out more about the political groupings of 20th century Edinburgh and how the election system worked, you can bookmark this thread to read later).
In between election campaigns and royal visits, in 1933 the Henrys commissioned a magnificent L-plan house in a Dutch Cape Colonial style that also incorporated the latest in Moderne tastes. This was Marchdyke at 50 Pentland Terrace on the outskirts of the city’s growing suburbs and it totally eclipsed the monotonous rows of middle class bungalows that were much in favour all around it. Completed in 1935 this 4,000 square foot, 5 bedroom residence featured a Tudorbethan dining room, copious lounge and parlour, a terrazzo bathroom in a Roman style and in the basement a large garage for Jack’s cars, a wine cellar and antiques store. While many of the windows were in an ultra-fashionable fish scale style, the stained glass of the master staircase incorporated original 16th century Swiss and German panes from their collection.
Marchdyke, now known as Huntersmoon. Wilson Property Group, 2022 Property Listing – click here to see an archived copy with the full album of photos.In the 1935 Town Council election, Esta had come third behind the Socialist Party candidate and another from the Protestant Action Society (PA). This party were extreme anti-Catholics who stood on a platform of “No Popery”. Their leader was the rabble-rouser John Cormack and his political stock was rising at the time. In 1934 his party got just 6% of the popular vote in the Edinburgh municipal elections and 1 seat; in 1935 they got 21% and 3 seats. The exact order of following events are not clear but at the 1936 election Esta was already intending to stand once again on her usual independent platform. John Cormack made it be known in the press that he was inclined to lend his support to her in the Canongate (where many Catholic Irish and Italians lived). Perhaps it was a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, but with just a week to go before polling, Esta Henry made the shock announcement that she was now standing as a Protestant Action candidate – “the Only Party who do Not Want R. C. Votes“. So late was this change that even on the eve of election some of the papers still reported her as an independent. She topped the ballot, beating PA’s primary candidate, and was duly elected as a Town Councillor at the 5th attempt. It was a good year for PA, they got 31% of the popular vote and won 6 seats. Indeed it was their apogee and they soon slumped into bitter infighting and electoral obscurity, leaving just John Cormack to solider on for decades as their only councillor.
Election adverts, Evening News, 31st October 1936It’s never been clear just how committed Esta was to her new found political home – she certainly threw herself into public meetings on its behalf for a while, it being reported that she would stroll up and down the aisle, brandishing her umbrella at the audience. Realistically she may just have been desperate to get elected and chose the only other party than the Progressives (as the Moderates had re-branded) or Socialists with any chance of winning a seat. John Cormack was strongly criticised from within his own ranks for allowing a Jewish woman to stand on his platform – indeed much later in 1952 he organised pickets against her for suggesting public entertainments on Sundays at public meetings. She did not linger too long under his party whip and had resigned before the 1938 elections. She may have been made very uneasy with the association after a tumultuous public meeting in October 1937 in the Canongate Tolbooth. At this, her male PA colleague refused to answer questions directly and instead railed against Catholics to the boos and heckles of the crowd. Esta tried to make clear that she was there to fight the Socialists in politics but the audience deemed her guilty by association and turned on her too. Thereafter, she dedicated herself thereafter to public service for the Canongate in her own name. She would rise to become Convenor of the Baths and Washhouses Committee, a member of the Cleansing and Lighting Committee, the Streets and Buildings Committee and in 1941 was made JP (a Justice of the Peace, a lay magistrate in the lowest level of municipal courts).
Esta Henry commands the floor at a political meeting. Evening News, 8th February 1940Esta found that her official role as a councillor fitted well alongside her personal philanthropic activities and she long described herself publicly as a Social Worker in the Canongate (although she frequently embellished the timescales somewhat). In 1931 she had formed the Edinburgh United Independent Association in the Canongate to run youth projects and raise money for the city’s Royal Infirmary hospital. Her attitudes were quite progressive and she recognised the need and value for activities and exercise for her district’s youth to keep them from being led astray and getting into trouble and for their general health. She was heavily involved in the Canon Club for Boys and Girls and formed an amateur dramatic society there.
The youth of the Canongate ward is my special care… I want to mother the young people – I have done it all my days – and to impress them with the same spirit that I have myself… Never to let go, to hold on to the good things of life, because they will be rewarded in the end, the same as I have been.
Esta Henry, 1936She also put her money where her mouth was and provided trophies for local clubs. In 1936 she presented the first of many Esta Henry Cups to the men of the Trinity College and Moray Knox Club on Cranston Street, an organisation formed for unemployed men. It was for the man who scored highest in their games league of dominoes, billiards, draughts and other pastimes with which they occupied their enforced idleness. Another such cup was presented to the local Caledonian Football Club. In November 1937, the Lord Provost gave her a leave of absence from her duties to travel officially to South Africa, where she was to spend two and a half months investigating working class housing and town planning on behalf of the city. He provided her with letters of introduction but they probably weren’t necessary, she apparently owned a fruit farm in the country and her son Phillie had settled there as a dentist! On her return she reported back that she had “travelled many hundreds of miles by air” but that it turned out things in Scotland were far more advanced and better organised for the poor than they were in South Africa! At this time she was also becoming increasingly involved with the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, becoming a local committee member, and in 1939 she and the Lady Provost threw a Christmas dinner for its members in the Canongate Tolbooth.
Esta Henry (2nd left, in the beret) and the Lady Provost give a Christmas Dinner to the elderly of the Canongate in the Tolbooth. Evening News, December 22nd 1939The year 1939 also brought the clouds of war to the High Street and municipal elections were suspended for the duration. As an incumbent councillor at the end of her 3 year term, Esta would have faced re-election in November that year. She now found herself with an extra six uncontested years added to her term of office and intended to make the most of this chance. She applied her single-minded determination, boundless energy and never-ending appetite for meetings and committees to the task at hand. And so it was that Councillor Esta Henry went to war. Interviewed shortly after the outbreak, she told the People’s Journal that there was no need to conscript women to the war effort as she had not met a woman in Edinburgh “who is not prepared to do whatsoever she is called upon to do“.
People’s Journal, 16th September 1939One of her first acts, on behalf of the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, was to campaign for government allowances for women dependent on the wages of their sons where these men had now been called up. In the Canongate she joined the local ARP (Air Raid Precautions civil defence force), turned her shop basement into an air raid shelter (her name is against it in the Valuation Rolls) and established a corps of 40 local women to act as fire pickets. Later, the Esta Henry Ambulance Section first aiders were also formed. She was soon putting on social events to help finance these activities and found herself placed in charge of the Entertainments Committee of the Lady Provost’s Comforts Fund. This latter organisation started out with the simple of aim of knitting kilt socks for soldiers of the Highland Regiments, as had been done in the 1914-18 conflict. Esta organised bridge parties to raise funds for buying the wool and offered up her house of Marchdyke as a suitable venue. In the Canongate she formed the local women in to work parties in the Tolbooth meeting hall, and arranged free entertainments to keep them amused as they knitted the socks. Soon she was organising mass balls; in February 1940 some 600 dancers packed out the Plaza dancehall in Morningside in a charity gala. At the Eldorado dancehall in Leith though it wasn’t dancing that she put on but boxing, a sport new to her but one that she had fallen in love with. There was nothing that she would not turn her attention to in the name of raising funds; charity auctions, raising pigs and Warship Week where she matched every £1 bond bought at a public rally with £1 of her own.
Esta Henry feeding pigs she was raising for charity sale. Evening News, 26th April 1940Increasingly in the city centre on her ceaseless war work, getting to and from Marchdyke must have been proving an inconvenience as in 1941 she took possession of the flat in Moubray House above the shop and fitted it out as her own residence. She was also keen to demonstrate that old houses in the High Street could be rehabilitated for use without demolishing them. At the end of that year she paid for 800 local children to go to the cinema as a Hogmanay treat, a special programme being put on for them at the New Palace on the High Street. At the end of this screening she had new years resolutions projected onto the screen and had her audience promise en masse to be good children while their fathers were away and to help contribute to the war effort. 1942 saw the institution of the city Corporation’s Holidays at Home programme; municipal entertainments to keep people and children occupied over the summer holidays and try and reduce the temptation to travel. Esta organised outdoor public dances at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens which were put on for 2 hours every Monday to Friday afternoon, admission 6d on the gate. She herself led off the first dance with the Lord Provost and was a regular attendee, encouraging and cajoling shy young men to get themselves a partner and join in.
Wartime dancing at the Ross Bandstand in 1945. Evening News photo, from “Living Memories” by Jennifer VeitchThere was more dancing organised by Esta Henry in 1943, as well as cycle racing at Meadowbank, mass picnics for mothers and children and – as Baths & Washhouses Committee Convenor – she arranged for Portobello outdoor swimming pool to be re-opened (some of its machinery had been removed for war use and the rest had fallen into disrepair) so that charity swimming and water polo galas could be held (the awards being more Esta Henry Cups). This also meant children and youths could go swimming in the holidays again – she was well aware that with many fathers away on service and mothers occupied with war work at home, juvenile delinquency as a result of bored children being left to their own devices was a real problem. At the end of that year she spoke at a meeting to form the East Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Committe when it was announced that British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Moseley had been released from jail.
In 1944 she instituted a scheme whereby service personnel in the city and groups of school children were invited to the City Chambers to attend meetings of the Town Councils as her guest. They watched the proceedings and afterwards could question her and other members about the mechanics of local government; she wanted to show how the Home Front was functioning, to connect people with the municipal authorities and to raise awareness of the acute difficulties faced by it at this time. That summer she pressed the Corporation to make the city’s now unnecessary civil defence resources available to house evacuee children from London in the face of the new V1 and later V2 terror bombing. Although the idea garnered wide support it ultimately came to nothing and she would latter press the city to instead give away its accumulated surplus of bunk beds, mattresses and blankets for free to those in need.
With the end of the war finally coming into sight she now turned her attention to the post war prospects. With the Rev. Selby Weight of Canongate Kirk she held public meetings for the Canongate Welcome Home Service Fund to plan for the reintegration of demobbed service personnel and provide comforts and necessities for them and their families. She joined the local Women for Westminster branch to try and get a woman MP elected for the city and repeatedly went on the record that providing for youths and children had to be central to the city’s postwar planning and foresaw the coming housing crisis in the Old Town (it had of course always been there to an extent, but it was about to get very acute). “My slogan is houses and more houses – housing priority!” she said, but she was also clear that it had to be done by reconstruction of existing communities, not by swinging the wrecking ball and scattering them to all the corners of the city. She also took a great interest in Portobello and joined a local campaign to improve the district after the war. Always one to put her money where her mouth was, at her own expense she commissioned plans and artists’ impressions for a scheme to turn “Edinburgh’s ugly sister” into a fashionable new sea-side resort and Garden City. This wasn’t just pie-in-the-sky thinking, she successfully proposed it to the city authorities who had it approved by the Lord Provost’s Committee and included in Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s 1949 “Plan for the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh” (you will find it on page 69 in glorious technicolour but with little additional detail). The realities of postwar economics and political priorities meant however that it would never get beyond the pages of that work.
Artist’s impression of Esta Henry’s scheme for post-war Portobello. Evening News, September 18th 1945As the war drew to its close Esta found time to join yet one more committee, that of the League of Angry Wives. These were Scottish women who had married American servicemen and as “G.I. brides” wanted the right to join their husbands in that country. A resolution was passed and representations were sent directly to President Truman – by letter – and the First Lady – by telegram. A week later, Esta henry defended her seat, which she had now held for 9 years, at the ballot box but the winds of political change blew hard and she was comprehensively defeated by Labour candidates. This was despite her being presented with a pair of boxing gloves by her supporters and urged to “go on fighting“. After further defeats at the 1946 and 1947 elections she stepped back finally from politics, but not from life!
Esta Henry addresses the League of Angry Wives, Daily Record, October 29th 1945In 1946 and 1947 she was a key organiser with the Scottish Housewives Association in an Edinburgh and Fife-based campaign against bread rationing. This culminated in her and Janet Neish of Kirkcaldy chasing the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade out of the North British Hotel and across the street to his car as he sought to avoid the combined fury of their sharp tongues! Never one to turn down a committee, she was also elected as the President of the Edinburgh branch of that organisation. 1947 had however started on a sad note for her as Jack Henry finally succumbed to long-term heart disease, leaving her a widow. It was around this time that the house at Marchdyke was sold. But Esta showed no signs of retiring from life to mourn and threw herself instead to yet another new activity; women’s football. She became the director of the Edinburgh Lady Dynamos, a team formed from core members of successful pre-war teams when the women’s game had enjoyed a brief spell of public popularity. Donating another Esta Henry Trophy to the cause it was likely that she paid for their kits too and she could be relied upon to turn her formidable oratory power at the authorities when they refused to allow the women to play in public grounds.
Edinburgh Lady Dynamos football team, late 1940s. CC-by-SA-NC 0084-003, via Edinburgh Collected.
Back row L-R is Esta Henry, Kitty Russell, Betty Rae, Agnes Whitelaw, Theresa Mulvie, goalkeeper Jessie Baillie, Nan Laurie, Babs McWhinney and Walter Caesar. Front row L-R is Eleanor Wilson, Betty Davidson (?), Linda Clements, Mary Leslie, Bet Adamson.She had long been a local celebrity but in the year 1953, Esta Henry’s reputation went national on two accounts. Around the 27th of December 1952, a well dressed man entered her shop on the High Street and introduced himself as a Belgian art dealer, Paul Eugene Dillin. The pair quickly struck up a rapport and he soon confided in her that his identity was a front; he was actually a stateless Romanian Jew by the name of Pinchas Haimovici and had spent two and a half years in hiding in the Netherlands during the war. As he refused to sign a national oath pledging himself to Communism he was exiled from his country of birth and had no papers. It was at the recommendation of the renowned sculptor Benno Schotz, a prominent member of the Scottish Jewish community and whose wife came from the same village as him, that he had come to Edinburgh seeking art. Esta fell in love with the man then and there, despite an age gap of 21 years between them, and proposed to him on the condition that he took the name Henry. When he accepted she threw his fake passport on the fire and urged him to turn himself in and seek asylum so that they could be legally wed.
Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Esta perhaps imagined naïvely that her reputation and connections would make it a mere formality and booked the couple a honeymoon trip to Madeira. However when the police were invited to the shop they instead charged Pinchas with offences for landing illegally in the country on false papers under the Aliens Act 1920 and he was sent to Saughton Prison. On December 31st he pled guilty at the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh and was remanded for sentencing, which was deferred to give his solicitor a chance to arrange an application for Israeli papers and asylum so that he could travel there instead of being deported. After the hearing, Esta told the waiting reporters that she still intended to marry her “Prince Paul” (Paul Haemovitz was another alias he had used) but that she was going to go on the Honeymoon trip to Maderia anyway by herself as the stress of events would otherwise give her a stroke; the reporter noted that she was smoking at the time and confided she had smoked 100 already that day. The case rumbled on and on, the Israelis were being slow with the papers as apparently there was another Pinchas Haimovici on an Interpol watch-list, despite this being a common name in Romania, and he had to prove it was not him. The Sheriff in Edinburgh grew tired of the repeated delays and on March 13th 1953 he ordered Pinchas’ release. But no sooner had he left the courtroom than he found himself re-arrested; the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe had finally signed a deportation order for him and he was sent straight back to Saughton. Esta told a waiting reporter from the Daily Mirror that if he was to be deported to Romania then she would join him there; “I’m only seventy, and fit enough to crash any of Stalin’s curtains”.
Pinchas petitioned the High Court in Edinburgh to avoid deportation and his case was heard on April 10th. As a declared anti-communist he told the court that he faced “torture and death” if returned to Romania. He also asked leave from court to marry Esta (who waved the papers she had ready to the court), but this request and his protests over his captivity fell on deaf ears and the case was adjourned. Back to Saughton Prison he went were Esta, with her lawyer Lionel Daiches, continued to visit him and made a habit of finding her way uninvited into the Governor’s office to protest more directly. The case was now being reported across the national and regional British newspapers and had become quite embarrassing for the Government. And so it was that the Home Secretary cancelled his previous order and on Friday 24th April 1953 Pinchas Haimovici was released and met by Esta with a pony and trap to drive him home and a brass band she had hired to serenade his freedom. The couple announced that they were to be married on the Monday morning and after a brief registry office ceremony, so they were. Esta insisted that they returned immediately to the shop to re-open for business but outside they were met by an immense crowd of well-wishers who lifted her into the air as they cheered for her and her husband. She lost her shoes in the process and the police had to attend to find the couple a path through the throng.
Esta and Pinchas are met by jubilant crowds of well-wishers in Hunter Square after their marriage. Daily Mirror, April 28th 1953The crowd followed them all the way back to the shop where they posed for the press and thanked their well-wishers while Esta fumbled through the 20 different keys she kept for the various locks on the premises. They were back behind the counter and at work within an hour of their ceremony starting. The next day they took a taxi out to Saughton Prison and thanked the warders with wedding cake and champagne, Pinchas let the press know that they had treated him very kindly. A few days later he formally changed his name to Paul Henry in line with Esta’s prenuptial wishes.
Pinchas and Esta re-open the shop after wedding, Associated Press, 27th April 1953To celebrate their union and to thank Benno Schotz for helping bring them together they commissioned him to produce a brass bust of them. Schotz insisted that Pinchas should be holding something in his hand and, knowing that Esta was immensely fond of rings, designed an Adam & Eve ring for the purpose. The finished work was unveiled to mark their first wedding anniversary as the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy on Princes Street.
Unveiling the bust with Benno Schotz, 23rd April 1954. Paul is holding the ring in his hand.Returning to the events of 1953, it was while her Prince Paul was still incarcerated that the other event took place that garnered national reporting for Esta; she was robbed! Perhaps she had been distracted by the events surrounding Paul’s case, but she allowed herself to be taken in by a group of well-organised confidence tricksters posing as American buyers. Having taken the time and effort to establish her routines and build up a rapport with her, they arranged a distraction and took their chance to steal jewellery that she valued at £20,000 from a lock box, £320 and $600 in cash and the pass books for her life savings. Esta told the press that amongst the items stolen was an amethyst fob which had once been part of the Hungarian crown jewels. Bits and pieces of the loot turned up in sale rooms afterwards and she was forced to buy them back at half of what the other dealer had paid for them; she was not impressed. The police eventually caught up with her trio of robbers due to their amateurish attempts to pass her stolen valuables off to on an antique dealer for far less than their actual worth. Roy Fontaine got 4 years for theft, Arthur Wooton 3 years for reset and George Ross-Wham had already been jailed on a separate offence by the time his sentencing came up. Fontaine was a career jewel thief, confidence trickster and blackmailer but Esta had found him charming and visited him in jail. She left money for him to try and start up a better life after he was released. This he tried, but it was not to be. It turned out that she may have gotten off lightly from Fontaine’s gang; he was actually the Glaswegian Archibald Hall who gained notoriety some 20 years later as a serial killer who the press dubbed the Monster Butler. His modus operandi was robbing and killing wealthy elderly and high-profile clients that he had worked his charm on to gain work as a butler. He was sentenced to life without parole in 1978.
Archibald Hall being taken to Jail, Daily Record, May 1978Esta Henry would have one last high-profile adventure before settling down to a quieter married life keeping shop with Paul. In 1954 the Egyptian Junta let it be known that they were auctioning off part of the personal collection of art and objets accumulated by the now deposed King Farouk at the state’s expense. She told the press she was determined to bag herself a bargain and flew to Cairo to the auction at the Koubbeh Palace; they were there at Turnhouse Airport to wave her off. In Egypt, when the Sotheby’s auctioneer initially announced the lots only in French and Arabic she interrupted to protest – “English was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for these people”. He yielded to her request and began to also announce the lots in English. She next stopped proceedings to ask an Egyptian army major to bring her some tea; tea was brought. When asked not to smoke she refused and instead asked for one of King Farouk’s diamond-studded, gold ashtrays – an auction lot – be brought to her.
Esta Henry, glasses in hand, berates the auctioneer yet again. The other bidders seem much amused. Sphere, 20th March 1954She eventually brought the proceedings into complete farce by repeatedly protesting when, at the behest of the Egyptian organisers, multiple auction lots were withdrawn, joint lots were split up and opening bids were significantly above the catalogue reserve price. The other bidders, and indeed the Sotheby’s auctioneers, were actually on her side – they too were less than impressed with how the sale was being conducted. When she eventually walked out, labelling the Egyptians “a bunch of twisters”, a number of fellow dealers followed her out. She was chased into the car park by the auctioneer and a senior Egyptian officer who begged her to return. Realising she had made her point, she acquiesced, and went back into the sale room where she publicly hugged and kissed the astonished auctioneer. She now stopped making a nuisance of herself and got down to the business of buying, eventually spending some £15,000 (c. £360,000 in 2025). She allowed herself one last moment of pantomime when, outbid on a 16th century Scottish clock, did jump up, grab the item from the auctioneer’s desk and announce to all that it was Scottish, she was Scottish and “I am going to have it!”. Her delighted fellow buyers let her have it. When she returned home, the gossip columnists and society magazines were waiting and she told them she was left with only the 2/6d in her pocket having spent the rest in Egypt. Her treasures arrived at the end of the following month, and she was met by both the press and by Customs to assess the haul.
Esta and Paul Henry demonstrate one of the Egyptian auction items to a customs officer and the press. Sunday Post, 2nd May 1954Esta and Paul Henry spent a happy decade together behind the counter at 51 High Street surrounded by the antiques and art that had brought them together. Esta through numerous exhibitions at Moubray House and contributed rare pieces to others. She began to form plans to perhaps leave the house and the best parts of her collection to the nation. In 1960 a fellow Edinburgh antique dealer told the press that they probably had the best collection in the country inside their shop. For their 10th wedding anniversary the couple decided to take a long overdue honeymoon and booked a round the world trip, perhaps to acquire yet more pieces or perhaps with a view to scouting out somewhere warm to retire to.
Copy of Esta Henry’s entry card into Brazil, issued by the Consul General in London on 10th December 1962It was for this reason that they were in Sao Paulo, en route to Rio de Janiero on January 15th when Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Flight 144 came down shortly after takeoff, killing them both. The long reign of the Queen of the High Street was over and the Brazilian authorities had her buried together with her Prince in Sao Paulo. Back home her vast collection of treasure that formed the bulk of her estate was split up and sold off. Her shop became home to a succession of trinket and tourist businesses but her flat above fared better, remaining in the care of the Cockburn association before being restored by a wealthy American benefactor and in 2012 gifted to the nation under the care of Historic Environment Scotland.
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The Cooperator’s Dilemma: How Martin Nowak’s Mathematics of Kindness Became a Blueprint for Control
Martin Nowak wanted to prove that cooperation is the animating force of evolution. He succeeded. His mathematical models, published across decades of work at Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard, demonstrate with formal rigor that cooperation is not an anomaly in a competitive world but a fundamental mechanism by which biological complexity arises. Genomes cooperate. Cells cooperate. Organisms cooperate. Societies cooperate. Without cooperation, there are no multicellular bodies, no ant colonies, no languages, no civilizations. This is not sentiment. It is mathematics. And it is precisely because the mathematics are correct that they are dangerous.
Nowak is Professor of Mathematics and Biology at Harvard University, an Austrian-born scientist trained in biochemistry and mathematics at the University of Vienna, where he worked under Peter Schuster on quasispecies theory and with Karl Sigmund on evolutionary game theory. He earned his doctorate sub auspiciis praesidentis, the highest academic honor Austria can bestow on a graduating student. He moved to Oxford, where he collaborated with Robert May (later Lord May of Oxford) on spatial evolutionary dynamics and virus population models. He established the first center for theoretical biology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1998. In 2003, he came to Harvard to found the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED), where he would spend two decades formalizing the mathematics of cooperation, cancer evolution, language emergence, and infection dynamics.
His landmark 2006 paper in Science, “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation,” laid out the theoretical architecture that his 2011 book SuperCooperators: Why We Need Each Other to Succeed (co-written with science journalist Roger Highfield) would translate for a general audience. The core argument is elegant and, on its face, optimistic: natural selection, left alone, favors defectors over cooperators, but five distinct mechanisms can reverse this tendency and allow cooperation to evolve. Those mechanisms are kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. Each mechanism can be reduced to a simple mathematical rule specifying the conditions under which cooperation becomes the favored strategy. Each rule expresses a threshold: when the benefit-to-cost ratio of a cooperative act exceeds a critical value determined by the mechanism’s structure, cooperation wins.
The book is earnest. It is hopeful. It tells a story about vampire bats sharing blood meals, about cancer as a failure of cellular cooperation, about human language as the greatest cooperative innovation since the gene. Nowak calls humans “supercooperators” because we are the only species that deploys all five mechanisms simultaneously. The implication is that our capacity for cooperation is not just biologically real but biologically supreme. We are, in his framework, evolution’s greatest collaborative achievement.
This is all true. And none of it prevents the mathematics from being turned inside out.
The Five Mechanisms as Five Exploits
What Nowak mapped are not merely descriptions of how cooperation arises. They are, read from the other direction, specifications for how cooperation can be manufactured, directed, and harvested by any actor with sufficient control over the relevant variables. Each mechanism contains its own vulnerability. Each rule that tells you how to promote cooperation also tells you how to engineer compliance that feels like cooperation to the people inside the system.
Direct Reciprocity: The Obligation Engine
Direct reciprocity is the simplest mechanism: I help you now, you help me later, and we both benefit as long as we expect to interact again. Nowak’s mathematical condition is precise. Cooperation through direct reciprocity succeeds only when the probability of future interaction between the same two individuals exceeds the cost-to-benefit ratio of the cooperative act. If you and I will meet again many times, the cost of helping you today is offset by the expected return from your future help. The strategy that dominates in this environment is not pure tit-for-tat (which is too brittle, collapsing into mutual defection after a single error) but “win-stay, lose-shift,” a more forgiving strategy that sustains cooperation through noise.
The exploit is in the precondition. If you can engineer a situation where people believe they will interact with you repeatedly and indefinitely, you can extract cooperation from them even when the exchange is not mutual. Subscription services, employer-employee relationships with annual review cycles, government benefit programs tied to ongoing compliance, social media platforms that reward daily engagement: all of these create artificial conditions of repeated interaction. The person inside the system cooperates because their evolved psychology recognizes the pattern. They feel the pull of reciprocity. They return to the platform, they renew the subscription, they comply with the bureaucratic requirement, because the structure tells them the relationship will continue and defection carries a cost.
But the entity on the other side of the interaction is not bound by the same psychology. A corporation does not feel the tug of reciprocal obligation. A government agency does not experience guilt for failing to return a favor. The asymmetry is structural: the human cooperates because direct reciprocity is wired into primate social cognition; the institution extracts because it designed the interaction pattern to trigger exactly that response. The “repeated game” is real for the person and fictional for the institution, which can end the relationship, change the terms, or alter the benefit-to-cost ratio at any time without experiencing the psychological cost of defection.
Consider the modern employment relationship. An employee cooperates (works hard, stays late, defers complaints) because the structure of employment creates an expectation of continued interaction: there will be another paycheck, another review, another year. The employer benefits from this cooperation while retaining the unilateral power to terminate the relationship. The employee’s cooperation is genuine. The employer’s reciprocity is contingent. Nowak’s mathematics describe the employee’s behavior perfectly. They do not describe the employer’s, because the employer is not playing a repeated game. The employer is playing a series of one-shot games while the employee believes both parties are in a repeated game. This mismatch is not a bug in the model. It is the exploit.
Indirect Reciprocity: The Reputation Weapon
Nowak considers indirect reciprocity the most important mechanism for human cooperation, and he is probably right. Indirect reciprocity works through reputation: I help you not because I expect you to help me, but because others are watching, and my willingness to help builds a reputation that will cause others to help me in the future. The mathematical condition is that the probability of knowing someone’s reputation must exceed the cost-to-benefit ratio of cooperation. Language, Nowak argues, evolved in part to serve this mechanism. We gossip. We evaluate. We track who is trustworthy and who is not. This reputational calculus is what allows cooperation to scale beyond pairs of individuals who interact repeatedly.
The danger is obvious and immense. Whoever controls the reputation infrastructure controls the conditions for cooperation. And in the modern world, reputation infrastructure is not distributed among gossiping primates. It is centralized in databases.
Credit scoring systems (FICO in the United States, similar systems globally) are indirect reciprocity engines. They assign each person a reputation score based on their history of “cooperation” with financial institutions. A high score means you have reliably cooperated (paid debts, maintained accounts, avoided default). The score then determines whether others will cooperate with you (extend credit, offer favorable terms, rent you an apartment). The mathematics are identical to Nowak’s model. The probability of knowing your reputation is essentially 1.0 in a world of universal credit reporting. Therefore, the threshold for cooperation is easily met, and people cooperate.
But cooperate with what? With whom? The content of “cooperation” in a credit scoring system is defined by the institutions that build and maintain the scoring model. Cooperation means paying your bills. It means maintaining debt. It means participating in a financial system on its terms. The reputation system does not reward you for helping your neighbor move furniture or lending your car to a friend in need. It rewards you for being a reliable revenue source for financial institutions. The indirect reciprocity mechanism is operating exactly as Nowak describes. The mathematics are satisfied. But the cooperation is directed, not organic. It serves the architects of the reputation system, not the cooperators within it.
China’s social credit experiments take this further, attaching reputational scores to civic behavior, political speech, social associations, and consumption patterns. The mathematics are the same. The mechanism is the same. The outcome is that “cooperation” becomes indistinguishable from “compliance,” and the person inside the system cannot easily tell the difference, because the psychological experience of cooperating to maintain one’s reputation feels the same whether the reputation system is tracking genuine prosocial behavior or political obedience.
Social media platforms represent a third variant. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and formerly Twitter construct reputation systems (follower counts, likes, shares, verification badges) that trigger indirect reciprocity behavior. Users cooperate with the platform (producing content, engaging with others’ content, spending time on the platform) because the reputation system rewards them for doing so. The platform harvests this cooperation as engagement metrics, advertising revenue, and behavioral data. The user experiences the warm glow of reputational validation. The platform experiences profit. The mathematics of indirect reciprocity are perfectly satisfied in both directions. The exploitation is invisible precisely because it operates through a mechanism that evolution shaped to feel good.
Network Reciprocity: Whoever Designs the Graph Wins
Nowak’s third mechanism, developed in his landmark 1992 Nature paper with Robert May, showed that the spatial structure of interactions matters enormously. In a well-mixed population (where everyone interacts with everyone equally), defectors always win. But when interactions are local, restricted to neighbors on a network, cooperators can form clusters that protect themselves from exploitation. Cooperators surrounded by other cooperators thrive; defectors on the edge of cooperative clusters can invade, but the cluster structure slows the invasion and allows cooperation to persist.
The strategic implication is that whoever controls network topology controls the conditions for cooperation. This is not a metaphor. It is a direct application of the mathematics.
Social media algorithms determine who sees whose content, who appears in whose feed, who gets recommended as a connection. These algorithms are network reciprocity engines. They construct the “spatial structure” of online social interaction. A platform that clusters users into engagement-optimized groups is, in Nowak’s terms, constructing a network topology. If the topology is designed to maximize engagement (which is to say, to maximize the platform’s extraction of attention), then the cooperative clusters that form will be optimized for engagement, not for the welfare of the cooperators.
Corporate organizational design is another application. Who reports to whom, who collaborates with whom, who has access to information and who does not: these are network topology decisions. A company that understands network reciprocity can design org charts that promote exactly the cooperative behaviors it wants (cross-functional collaboration, knowledge sharing, collective problem-solving) while preventing the formation of cooperative clusters that might oppose management (unions, whistleblower networks, collective bargaining groups). The mathematics tell you which structures promote cooperation and which fragment it. The application is straightforward.
Gerrymandering is network reciprocity applied to democratic geography. By controlling which voters are grouped into which districts, political actors control the spatial structure of electoral cooperation. Voters who might form cooperative clusters around shared interests are separated. Voters whose “cooperation” (voting behavior) serves the redistricting party are grouped together. The mathematics of spatial evolutionary dynamics describe exactly why this works and how to optimize it.
Group Selection: The Factory of Tribes
Nowak’s treatment of group selection (which he and others now call multilevel selection) demonstrates that groups of cooperators outcompete groups of defectors, even when defectors dominate within groups. The mechanism requires that groups compete, that there is variation in the level of cooperation between groups, and that groups with more cooperators produce more offspring groups. Under these conditions, cooperation at the group level is favored even though individual defectors within groups do better than individual cooperators.
The exploit is the deliberate manufacture of group identity and intergroup competition. Nowak’s own reviewers noted the problem clearly: group selection favors within-group niceness and between-group nastiness. This is the mathematical basis of tribalism. It is also, historically, the most reliable mechanism by which authoritarian movements generate internal cohesion.
If you want a population to cooperate internally (pay taxes, report dissent, sacrifice personal interests for collective goals), you manufacture an external threat. The perceived competition between groups raises the benefit-to-cost ratio of within-group cooperation. Nationalists understand this intuitively. So do corporate culture architects who position their company against competitors while demanding employee loyalty. So do political parties that define themselves primarily through opposition. The mathematics of multilevel selection explain why “rally around the flag” effects work, why wartime economies produce extraordinary domestic cooperation, and why authoritarian regimes invest so heavily in identifying and publicizing external enemies.
The earnestness of Nowak’s presentation (he sees group selection as enabling the great cooperative achievements of human civilization, from agriculture to the United Nations) obscures how perfectly the same mathematics describe the cooperative achievements of fascism. The cooperative group that builds a hospital and the cooperative group that builds an internment camp are both satisfying the mathematical conditions for multilevel selection. The model does not distinguish between them. It cannot. The variables are the same.
Kin Selection: Manufacturing Family Where None Exists
Kin selection, formalized by W.D. Hamilton in 1964, is the oldest and most biologically grounded of the five mechanisms. Organisms cooperate with genetic relatives in proportion to their degree of relatedness, because helping a relative who shares your genes indirectly promotes the survival of those shared genes. Hamilton’s rule states that altruism is favored when the coefficient of relatedness between donor and recipient exceeds the cost-to-benefit ratio of the altruistic act. Nowak has a complicated relationship with Hamilton’s rule (his 2010 Nature paper with E.O. Wilson and Corina Tarnita argued that kin selection is less explanatory than previously thought, provoking a famous counterresponse signed by over 130 biologists), but the mechanism remains one of his five pillars.
The exploit is the simulation of kinship where none exists. “We are family.” “Band of brothers.” “Our company family.” “Fellow citizens.” “Children of God.” These are not merely sentimental phrases. They are invocations of kin selection psychology, designed to lower the threshold at which people will sacrifice personal interest for the group. When a military unit trains together, eats together, sleeps together, suffers together, and adopts shared rituals, symbols, and origin stories, it is manufacturing fictive kinship. The result is that soldiers will take risks for their unit-mates that they would not take for strangers, because their psychology has been calibrated to treat those unit-mates as kin.
Religious organizations, fraternities, political movements, cults, and nationalist ideologies all exploit this mechanism. The more completely an institution can simulate the markers of genetic relatedness (shared appearance through uniforms, shared language through jargon, shared history through founding myths, shared suffering through initiation rites), the more effectively it triggers kin selection psychology, and the more cooperation it can extract from its members. The cost of this cooperation is borne by the members. The benefit accrues to whoever designed the kinship simulation.
The Epstein Entanglement: A Case Study in the Exploitation of Cooperation Science
Any serious discussion of Martin Nowak’s work must confront the fact that the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, the institutional home of his cooperation research, was founded with $6.5 million from Jeffrey Epstein. This was the largest single gift Epstein made to Harvard, part of a total of more than $9 million in donations to the university between 1998 and 2007. Epstein, a convicted sex offender who would later be charged with sex trafficking before his death in federal custody in 2019, did not merely donate money and walk away. He embedded himself in the program.
Harvard’s own 2020 review found that after Epstein’s 2008 conviction and release from prison, he continued to visit the PED offices more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018. He had a personal office in Nowak’s lab. He had a key card. He was typically accompanied by young women described as his assistants. His publicist requested that PED post information about Epstein on the harvard.edu domain because, as the publicist wrote, it would be helpful for Google search results. PED complied. Epstein’s foundation page was linked from the PED website under a tab labeled “Friends.” Epstein was the only “Friend” listed.
More recently, documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2025 revealed that Epstein’s involvement went beyond access and reputation-laundering. He discussed research topics with Nowak and his graduate students. He suggested lines of inquiry, including “commercial evolution” and “prelife.” He facilitated visa arrangements for at least one graduate student. He funneled scholarship money through a Ph.D. student to young female mathematicians in Romania. He reviewed page proofs of a Nature paper before publication and offered advice on handling criticism. In 2025, Nowak was placed on administrative leave a second time after his name appeared more than 8,000 times in the newly released DOJ Epstein files.
The irony is lacerating. Epstein was a man who built his entire social and financial empire on the exploitation of cooperation mechanisms. His method was indirect reciprocity: he cultivated relationships with scientists, politicians, and financiers by offering gifts, access, and introductions, building a reputation as a brilliant and generous patron of science. He used network reciprocity: he positioned himself as a hub connecting elite nodes (Harvard professors, tech billionaires, heads of state), making himself indispensable as a broker of social capital. He manufactured fictive kinship: his dinners, his island retreats, his intellectual salons created a sense of belonging and shared identity among participants. He exploited direct reciprocity: every gift came with an implicit expectation of return, whether it was a letter of reference, a favorable public statement, or simply continued access and association.
And he funded, specifically and deliberately, the research program that mathematically formalized every one of these strategies. He did not fund a chemistry lab or an engineering department. He funded the mathematics of cooperation. He then used the institutional affiliation (Harvard, the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics) as a reputational asset, laundering his public image through association with the most prestigious cooperative institution in American academia.
Nowak has not been charged with any crime related to Epstein’s offenses. The Harvard review found policy violations, not criminal conduct. But the structural relationship between Epstein and PED is itself a perfect illustration of the very dynamics Nowak’s research describes. Epstein was a defector masquerading as a cooperator, using the mechanisms of cooperation (reputation, network position, reciprocal obligation, fictive kinship) to extract value from a system whose participants genuinely believed they were cooperating for the advancement of knowledge. The mathematics predicted this possibility. The researchers did not see it, or chose not to.
The Cyclical Trap
The deepest and most troubling insight in Nowak’s work is the finding that cooperation is inherently cyclical. Cooperators increase in number and trust, building successful clusters and institutions. Then a minority of defectors, positioned to exploit the high-trust environment, invade. Cooperation collapses. Eventually, cooperators rebuild. The cycle repeats. Nowak frames this as a feature of evolutionary dynamics, a permanent oscillation that can be modulated but never eliminated.
For a government or corporation seeking to exploit cooperation, this cyclical pattern is not a problem. It is the business model. The cycle describes exactly what extraction looks like over time. During the cooperative phase, the institution harvests trust, labor, engagement, compliance, and revenue. During the collapse phase, the institution restructures, rebrands, and resets the conditions for a new cooperative phase. The people inside the system experience the collapse as a betrayal. The institution experiences it as a cost of doing business.
Platform companies cycle through this pattern visibly. A new platform launches, cultivates a cooperative community of early adopters, builds network effects, then monetizes by degrading the experience for users while extracting more value from advertisers. Users eventually defect (leave the platform), but by then the platform has captured enough network position to survive, or a new platform launches and the cycle restarts. This is Nowak’s evolutionary dynamic playing out in real time, at internet speed.
Political cycles follow the same pattern. A new administration or movement builds cooperative coalitions around shared goals. Trust increases. Policy achievements accumulate. Then insiders begin to extract (corruption, patronage, self-dealing), trust erodes, the coalition fragments, and a new movement arises to rebuild cooperation on different terms. The cycle is so regular that political scientists have formalized it independently of evolutionary biology, but Nowak’s mathematics show that it is not unique to politics. It is a property of any system in which cooperation and defection coexist.
What Nowak Missed, or Chose Not to Say
SuperCooperators is a book about the conditions that produce cooperation. It is not a book about the conditions that produce just cooperation. This is not a minor omission. It is the central weakness of the work.
Nowak’s five mechanisms are content-neutral. They describe the structural conditions under which organisms will choose to cooperate, but they are silent on what the cooperation is for. Cooperation to build a hospital and cooperation to build a surveillance state satisfy the same mathematical conditions. Within-group cooperation that produces a democratic parliament and within-group cooperation that produces a paramilitary organization both emerge from the same multilevel selection dynamics. A reputation system that tracks genuine generosity and a reputation system that tracks political loyalty both promote cooperation through indirect reciprocity.
The book occasionally gestures toward this problem. Nowak acknowledges that defectors can invade cooperative groups, that cooperation cycles, that punishment mechanisms can themselves become exploitative. But these acknowledgments are treated as complications within a fundamentally optimistic narrative, not as structural features of the mathematics that demand equal weight. The title is SuperCooperators, not SuperExploiters. The framing celebrates cooperation’s triumphs without adequately confronting the fact that the same mathematics, applied with different intent, describe cooperation’s capture.
This omission is not unique to Nowak. It is endemic to a certain strain of evolutionary optimism that mistakes the existence of cooperation for its benevolence. Cooperation is not inherently good. It is a strategy. It can be deployed in service of any goal. The mathematics do not care. A reader who absorbs Nowak’s five rules as a celebration of human goodness will be poorly prepared to recognize those same rules operating as mechanisms of control in their workplace, their government, their social media feed, and their financial system.
The Responsibility of the Mapmaker
Nowak drew a map. The map is accurate. The territory it describes is real. But a map can be read by anyone, and the same map that helps a traveler find water helps an army find the traveler. The five rules for the evolution of cooperation are, simultaneously, five rules for the engineering of compliance. The mathematics are identical. Only the intent differs.
The question is not whether Nowak should have refrained from publishing his research. Suppressing accurate mathematics is never the answer. The question is whether the scientific community and the reading public have a responsibility to read the map with both eyes open: to see not only the beautiful cooperative structures it reveals but also the exploitative architectures it enables. The answer, given what we now know about who funded the map’s creation and what they used its institutional credibility to accomplish, should be self-evident.
Cooperation is real. It is mathematically demonstrable. It is essential to every level of biological and social organization. It is also the single most exploitable feature of human psychology, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either not paying attention or is the one doing the exploiting.
#consumerValue #cooperation #engineering #epsteinFiles #fiveMechanisms #harvard #martinNowak #needingEachOther #oxford #politics #princeton #research #rogerHighfield -
The thread about Esta Henry; the life and times of the Queen of the High Street
On this day (January 15th) in 1963, a small silver airliner with 45 people on board took off from Sao Paulo in Brazil en route for Rio de Janeiro. Moments later it plunged into the ground in the city’s suburbs, taking with it 13 lives. The last victim to be identified was that of Esta Henry, a renowned and somewhat eccentric Edinburgh antiques dealer; her husband Paul was at her side and perished too. Thus ended the final chapter in the colourful life of the lady the papers called the Queen of the High Street. Her surprising story now follows.
Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Convair 340 aircraft, registration PP-CDW, the plane that crashed in January 1963. CC-by Smithsonian InstitutionShe was born Esther Louis on July 3rd 1882 in Sunderland, County Durham, to Louie Louis and his wife Eveline (née Jackson). Her parents were Jewish, her father a 1st generation Prussian immigrant and her mother 2nd generation to Dutch and German parents. Like many Jews in Britain at this time, to integrate and protect themselves somewhat from anti-Semitism, they altered their names; Louie and Evelina were thus better known as John and Eva. He worked variously as a cobbler, a clothier and an auctioneer and the family moved frequently with his work between Sunderland and Scotland. The family moved to 2 Jane Street in Leith in 1884 where Louie opened an auction room in the Kirkgate. Alas tragedy was to strike the following year. When Esta was just 2 her father died from fever and pneumonia leaving his wife with 7 hungry mouths to feed and another on the way.
Esta’s immediate family tree.Evelina and her entourage of children gravitated back to Wearside where she remarried in 1889 to Charles Goldman, a pawnbroker. Four half-siblings to Esta would follow and at the time of the 1891 census the enlarged family stayed in a small but prim end-terraced house at 4 Sorley Street in Sunderland. In her own telling of her story at this age the 9 year old Esta ran off to variously Edinburgh or Leith and sold door-to-door by barrow or bicycle to eke out a living, but we should take this with a very large pinch of salt as the records contradict the story and she made a habit of tweaking and embellishing tales of her life to suit circumstances. In 1901 they were at 12 Rutland Street in Sunderland, living above the family pawnbrokers. The 18 year old Esta was described as a General Dealer in the census; she was running a corner shop.
Rutland Street, Sunderland, 1929. Number 12, the Goldman shop and house is at the end of the row with the canopy, if you look very closes the pawnbroker’s sign is in the Goldman name. via Sunderland Antiquarian SocietyBut Esta did not stay put for much longer, by the next year we find her living at 156 Canongate in Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter she married a 25 year old jeweller, Jack H. Henry of 30 Milton Street. But like her Father, Esta’s new husband was using an alias; he was actually born Joseph Henry Abrovich in Łódź, Poland. It suited him to keep details of his past deliberately obscure; he spent his life giving different dates (between 1869-79) and places of birth in official documents and was most frequently recorded as John but sometimes also Jacob. But he married Esta as Jack. His mysteriousness was necessary as he was leading a double life; he was actually a talented concert violinist, a member of the touring orchestra of Polish piano impresario Ignacy Paderewski (who would rise to become Prime Minister of his country). Jack had skipped town in Dublin when on tour in the 1890s in order to avoid returning home to compulsory military service for the Russian Empire. It was also a difficult time for the Polish Jews in general as they faced the Russian Pogroms and waves were emigrating west. Thus he ended up in Scotland; possibly via Glasgow where there were already Abrovichs resident.
“Jack H. Henry.” Juliette Bird, via AncestryEsta and Jack settled at the tenement at 170 Canongate and soon opened a jewellery shop below at number 168. They moved into the back of the shop and began to raise a family together. Louis (Lou) was born in 1903, Philip (Philly) in 1904, Herbert (Bertie) in 1906 and Rosa (Rose) in 1908. While the Canongate was a down at heel neighbourhood at the time, one with much slum housing and a largely itinerant population that included many of the city’s poor and immigrants, they were doing well for themselves and advertised for a servant – “apply Mrs Henry” – in the newspapers.
Canongate in the late 19th century. On the left is the tower and clock of the Tolbooth, on the right the distinctive obelisk-topped gate piers of Moray House. The Henry shop and home is the lighter coloured tenement on the right hand side of the street. Beyond is the projecting gable of Huntly House; it is a neighbourhood steeped in Scottish history. Postcard, unknown artist. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandAs they prospered, raising 3 children in the back of a shop ceased to be a necessity and they moved to a smart new, end-of-terrace, middle class villa at 1 Lismore Avenue in Willowbrae. It was here in 1918 that their ranks were joined by the birth of Henrietta (Bunty). 1914 saw them relocate the shope up the Royal Mile to number 51 High Street, next to the well know building known as John Knox’s House. This was the ground floor of Moubray House, one of the oldest surviving residential buildings in the city, where Daniel Defoe had once lodged. It had recently been restored by the Cockburn Association and placed in the hands of a trust. Despite raising 4 children, Esta was clearly becoming more involved in the affairs of business as classified adverts are in the name of both her and Jack. By 1920 she is styling herself “Mrs Henry, Antique Dealer” in these.
“Unidentified Man and Children”, Alexander Wilson Hill, c. 1933. This the shop at 51 High Street and it is probably Jack Henry standing outside. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandThe 1921 census finds the family have moved on and up in the housing world again, now at a very large villa at 15 Mayfield Terrace in Newington. Louis Henry was following his father into the jewellery trade and Philip was training to become a dentist. Life was good but it was about to get better. In 1923 the Scottish newspapers reported the surprise visit of Queen Mary to the Henrys’ shop, where she spent an hour and bought many items, particularly Chinese curios. She was “greatly interested with both the collection and the premises” and shook hands with Esta and Jack as she left, promising to return. Her Majesty was true to her word and returned exactly one year later, buying “a score of articles” including a Louis XIV fan that had once belonged to Queen Victoria. She signed the visitors’ book and said that her purchases the previous year had been gifted to the West Kensington Museum.
Queen Mary leaving Henry’s on one of her many visits. Postcard, unknown artist. Via Canmore, SC 2649474 © Courtesy HESThe Queen was back again a year later, with over a dozen items bought, including a portrait believed to have been the property of Napoleon. The Henrys were invited to deliver the items in person to Holyroodhouse that afternoon and join the Queen for tea. They learned that some of the purchases were to stay there at the palace as part of its collection. The Queen thereafter returned almost every year on her visits to Holyrood, the newspapers reporting the purchase of items in 1927 and 1930 for Buckingham Palace and her personal collection. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Princes Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister Queen Margaret would carry on this royal tradition in later years and a whole section of wall in the shop was reserved for the display of their proudly framed cheques.
As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, Esta’s public profile was ascendant but Jack seems to have begun to step back somewhat from the limelight and into the shadows of the shop. In 1928 she stood for election to the Parish Council in the Canongate ward. Although she came second, there were two seats up for grabs and she was duly returned. Her election notices are the first time in print I could find where she is referring to herself as Esta, rather than just Mrs Henry. Her election was notable as she was the first Jewish woman to be elected to a public office in Scotland and also the press referred to her as Councillor Mrs Esta Henry, other married female councillors were referred to by their husband’s name, e.g Councillor Mrs Adam Millar. This is a public demonstration that she was very much her own woman.
Candidate picture of Esta Henry, Evening News, 7th November 1928The following year civic Parish Councils in Scotland – which existed largely for the purposes of poor relief – were abolished and merged into the Town Councils. Esta stood as an independent for this latter body in 1929 but came 4th behind two Socialists and a Moderate candidate. She would stand again for the Town Council in 1931, 1933 and 1935. She made very clear in her election speeches, which were reported in the press, that her priorities were housing, housewives, child welfare and the treatment of the sick and poor. Women and children were always central to her campaigns and she was known to mobilise squads of them in the Canongate to carry her election materials and to parade around the polling stations. But despite her strenuous campaign efforts on a sensible platform, her public profile and her local popularity, as an independent female candidate she stood little realistic chance of election. Edinburgh was run by the very pale, male and stale Moderates who largely owned the Council’s seats – many of which they didn’t even need to contest – and it was only in a handful of wards where the Socialists could challenge them (to find out more about the political groupings of 20th century Edinburgh and how the election system worked, you can bookmark this thread to read later).
In between election campaigns and royal visits, in 1933 the Henrys commissioned a magnificent L-plan house in a Dutch Cape Colonial style that also incorporated the latest in Moderne tastes. This was Marchdyke at 50 Pentland Terrace on the outskirts of the city’s growing suburbs and it totally eclipsed the monotonous rows of middle class bungalows that were much in favour all around it. Completed in 1935 this 4,000 square foot, 5 bedroom residence featured a Tudorbethan dining room, copious lounge and parlour, a terrazzo bathroom in a Roman style and in the basement a large garage for Jack’s cars, a wine cellar and antiques store. While many of the windows were in an ultra-fashionable fish scale style, the stained glass of the master staircase incorporated original 16th century Swiss and German panes from their collection.
Marchdyke, now known as Huntersmoon. Wilson Property Group, 2022 Property Listing – click here to see an archived copy with the full album of photos.In the 1935 Town Council election, Esta had come third behind the Socialist Party candidate and another from the Protestant Action Society (PA). This party were extreme anti-Catholics who stood on a platform of “No Popery”. Their leader was the rabble-rouser John Cormack and his political stock was rising at the time. In 1934 his party got just 6% of the popular vote in the Edinburgh municipal elections and 1 seat; in 1935 they got 21% and 3 seats. The exact order of following events are not clear but at the 1936 election Esta was already intending to stand once again on her usual independent platform. John Cormack made it be known in the press that he was inclined to lend his support to her in the Canongate (where many Catholic Irish and Italians lived). Perhaps it was a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, but with just a week to go before polling, Esta Henry made the shock announcement that she was now standing as a Protestant Action candidate – “the Only Party who do Not Want R. C. Votes“. So late was this change that even on the eve of election some of the papers still reported her as an independent. She topped the ballot, beating PA’s primary candidate, and was duly elected as a Town Councillor at the 5th attempt. It was a good year for PA, they got 31% of the popular vote and won 6 seats. Indeed it was their apogee and they soon slumped into bitter infighting and electoral obscurity, leaving just John Cormack to solider on for decades as their only councillor.
Election adverts, Evening News, 31st October 1936It’s never been clear just how committed Esta was to her new found political home – she certainly threw herself into public meetings on its behalf for a while, it being reported that she would stroll up and down the aisle, brandishing her umbrella at the audience. Realistically she may just have been desperate to get elected and chose the only other party than the Progressives (as the Moderates had re-branded) or Socialists with any chance of winning a seat. John Cormack was strongly criticised from within his own ranks for allowing a Jewish woman to stand on his platform – indeed much later in 1952 he organised pickets against her for suggesting public entertainments on Sundays at public meetings. She did not linger too long under his party whip and had resigned before the 1938 elections. She may have been made very uneasy with the association after a tumultuous public meeting in October 1937 in the Canongate Tolbooth. At this, her male PA colleague refused to answer questions directly and instead railed against Catholics to the boos and heckles of the crowd. Esta tried to make clear that she was there to fight the Socialists in politics but the audience deemed her guilty by association and turned on her too. Thereafter, she dedicated herself thereafter to public service for the Canongate in her own name. She would rise to become Convenor of the Baths and Washhouses Committee, a member of the Cleansing and Lighting Committee, the Streets and Buildings Committee and in 1941 was made JP (a Justice of the Peace, a lay magistrate in the lowest level of municipal courts).
Esta Henry commands the floor at a political meeting. Evening News, 8th February 1940Esta found that her official role as a councillor fitted well alongside her personal philanthropic activities and she long described herself publicly as a Social Worker in the Canongate (although she frequently embellished the timescales somewhat). In 1931 she had formed the Edinburgh United Independent Association in the Canongate to run youth projects and raise money for the city’s Royal Infirmary hospital. Her attitudes were quite progressive and she recognised the need and value for activities and exercise for her district’s youth to keep them from being led astray and getting into trouble and for their general health. She was heavily involved in the Canon Club for Boys and Girls and formed an amateur dramatic society there.
The youth of the Canongate ward is my special care… I want to mother the young people – I have done it all my days – and to impress them with the same spirit that I have myself… Never to let go, to hold on to the good things of life, because they will be rewarded in the end, the same as I have been.
Esta Henry, 1936
She also put her money where her mouth was and provided trophies for local clubs. In 1936 she presented the first of many Esta Henry Cups to the men of the Trinity College and Moray Knox Club on Cranston Street, an organisation formed for unemployed men. It was for the man who scored highest in their games league of dominoes, billiards, draughts and other pastimes with which they occupied their enforced idleness. Another such cup was presented to the local Caledonian Football Club. In November 1937, the Lord Provost gave her a leave of absence from her duties to travel officially to South Africa, where she was to spend two and a half months investigating working class housing and town planning on behalf of the city. He provided her with letters of introduction but they probably weren’t necessary, she apparently owned a fruit farm in the country and her son Phillie had settled there as a dentist! On her return she reported back that she had “travelled many hundreds of miles by air” but that it turned out things in Scotland were far more advanced and better organised for the poor than they were in South Africa! At this time she was also becoming increasingly involved with the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, becoming a local committee member, and in 1939 she and the Lady Provost threw a Christmas dinner for its members in the Canongate Tolbooth.
Esta Henry (2nd left, in the beret) and the Lady Provost give a Christmas Dinner to the elderly of the Canongate in the Tolbooth. Evening News, December 22nd 1939The year 1939 also brought the clouds of war to the High Street and municipal elections were suspended for the duration. As an incumbent councillor at the end of her 3 year term, Esta would have faced re-election in November that year. She now found herself with an extra six uncontested years added to her term of office and intended to make the most of this chance. She applied her single-minded determination, boundless energy and never-ending appetite for meetings and committees to the task at hand. And so it was that Councillor Esta Henry went to war. Interviewed shortly after the outbreak, she told the People’s Journal that there was no need to conscript women to the war effort as she had not met a woman in Edinburgh “who is not prepared to do whatsoever she is called upon to do“.
People’s Journal, 16th September 1939One of her first acts, on behalf of the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, was to campaign for government allowances for women dependent on the wages of their sons where these men had now been called up. In the Canongate she joined the local ARP (Air Raid Precautions civil defence force), turned her shop basement into an air raid shelter (her name is against it in the Valuation Rolls) and established a corps of 40 local women to act as fire pickets. Later, the Esta Henry Ambulance Section first aiders were also formed. She was soon putting on social events to help finance these activities and found herself placed in charge of the Entertainments Committee of the Lady Provost’s Comforts Fund. This latter organisation started out with the simple of aim of knitting kilt socks for soldiers of the Highland Regiments, as had been done in the 1914-18 conflict. Esta organised bridge parties to raise funds for buying the wool and offered up her house of Marchdyke as a suitable venue. In the Canongate she formed the local women in to work parties in the Tolbooth meeting hall, and arranged free entertainments to keep them amused as they knitted the socks. Soon she was organising mass balls; in February 1940 some 600 dancers packed out the Plaza dancehall in Morningside in a charity gala. At the Eldorado dancehall in Leith though it wasn’t dancing that she put on but boxing, a sport new to her but one that she had fallen in love with. There was nothing that she would not turn her attention to in the name of raising funds; charity auctions, raising pigs and Warship Week where she matched every £1 bond bought at a public rally with £1 of her own.
Esta Henry feeding pigs she was raising for charity sale. Evening News, 26th April 1940Increasingly in the city centre on her ceaseless war work, getting to and from Marchdyke must have been proving an inconvenience as in 1941 she took possession of the flat in Moubray House above the shop and fitted it out as her own residence. She was also keen to demonstrate that old houses in the High Street could be rehabilitated for use without demolishing them. At the end of that year she paid for 800 local children to go to the cinema as a Hogmanay treat, a special programme being put on for them at the New Palace on the High Street. At the end of this screening she had new years resolutions projected onto the screen and had her audience promise en masse to be good children while their fathers were away and to help contribute to the war effort. 1942 saw the institution of the city Corporation’s Holidays at Home programme; municipal entertainments to keep people and children occupied over the summer holidays and try and reduce the temptation to travel. Esta organised outdoor public dances at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens which were put on for 2 hours every Monday to Friday afternoon, admission 6d on the gate. She herself led off the first dance with the Lord Provost and was a regular attendee, encouraging and cajoling shy young men to get themselves a partner and join in.
Wartime dancing at the Ross Bandstand in 1945. Evening News photo, from “Living Memories” by Jennifer VeitchThere was more dancing organised by Esta Henry in 1943, as well as cycle racing at Meadowbank, mass picnics for mothers and children and – as Baths & Washhouses Committee Convenor – she arranged for Portobello outdoor swimming pool to be re-opened (some of its machinery had been removed for war use and the rest had fallen into disrepair) so that charity swimming and water polo galas could be held (the awards being more Esta Henry Cups). This also meant children and youths could go swimming in the holidays again – she was well aware that with many fathers away on service and mothers occupied with war work at home, juvenile delinquency as a result of bored children being left to their own devices was a real problem. At the end of that year she spoke at a meeting to form the East Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Committe when it was announced that British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Moseley had been released from jail.
In 1944 she instituted a scheme whereby service personnel in the city and groups of school children were invited to the City Chambers to attend meetings of the Town Councils as her guest. They watched the proceedings and afterwards could question her and other members about the mechanics of local government; she wanted to show how the Home Front was functioning, to connect people with the municipal authorities and to raise awareness of the acute difficulties faced by it at this time. That summer she pressed the Corporation to make the city’s now unnecessary civil defence resources available to house evacuee children from London in the face of the new V1 and later V2 terror bombing. Although the idea garnered wide support it ultimately came to nothing and she would latter press the city to instead give away its accumulated surplus of bunk beds, mattresses and blankets for free to those in need.
With the end of the war finally coming into sight she now turned her attention to the post war prospects. With the Rev. Selby Weight of Canongate Kirk she held public meetings for the Canongate Welcome Home Service Fund to plan for the reintegration of demobbed service personnel and provide comforts and necessities for them and their families. She joined the local Women for Westminster branch to try and get a woman MP elected for the city and repeatedly went on the record that providing for youths and children had to be central to the city’s postwar planning and foresaw the coming housing crisis in the Old Town (it had of course always been there to an extent, but it was about to get very acute). “My slogan is houses and more houses – housing priority!” she said, but she was also clear that it had to be done by reconstruction of existing communities, not by swinging the wrecking ball and scattering them to all the corners of the city. She also took a great interest in Portobello and joined a local campaign to improve the district after the war. Always one to put her money where her mouth was, at her own expense she commissioned plans and artists’ impressions for a scheme to turn “Edinburgh’s ugly sister” into a fashionable new sea-side resort and Garden City. This wasn’t just pie-in-the-sky thinking, she successfully proposed it to the city authorities who had it approved by the Lord Provost’s Committee and included in Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s 1949 “Plan for the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh” (you will find it on page 69 in glorious technicolour but with little additional detail). The realities of postwar economics and political priorities meant however that it would never get beyond the pages of that work.
Artist’s impression of Esta Henry’s scheme for post-war Portobello. Evening News, September 18th 1945As the war drew to its close Esta found time to join yet one more committee, that of the League of Angry Wives. These were Scottish women who had married American servicemen and as “G.I. brides” wanted the right to join their husbands in that country. A resolution was passed and representations were sent directly to President Truman – by letter – and the First Lady – by telegram. A week later, Esta henry defended her seat, which she had now held for 9 years, at the ballot box but the winds of political change blew hard and she was comprehensively defeated by Labour candidates. This was despite her being presented with a pair of boxing gloves by her supporters and urged to “go on fighting“. After further defeats at the 1946 and 1947 elections she stepped back finally from politics, but not from life!
Esta Henry addresses the League of Angry Wives, Daily Record, October 29th 1945In 1946 and 1947 she was a key organiser with the Scottish Housewives Association in an Edinburgh and Fife-based campaign against bread rationing. This culminated in her and Janet Neish of Kirkcaldy chasing the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade out of the North British Hotel and across the street to his car as he sought to avoid the combined fury of their sharp tongues! Never one to turn down a committee, she was also elected as the President of the Edinburgh branch of that organisation. 1947 had however started on a sad note for her as Jack Henry finally succumbed to long-term heart disease, leaving her a widow. It was around this time that the house at Marchdyke was sold. But Esta showed no signs of retiring from life to mourn and threw herself instead to yet another new activity; women’s football. She became the director of the Edinburgh Lady Dynamos, a team formed from core members of successful pre-war teams when the women’s game had enjoyed a brief spell of public popularity. Donating another Esta Henry Trophy to the cause it was likely that she paid for their kits too and she could be relied upon to turn her formidable oratory power at the authorities when they refused to allow the women to play in public grounds.
Edinburgh Lady Dynamos football team, late 1940s. CC-by-SA-NC 0084-003, via Edinburgh Collected.
Back row L-R is Esta Henry, Kitty Russell, Betty Rae, Agnes Whitelaw, Theresa Mulvie, goalkeeper Jessie Baillie, Nan Laurie, Babs McWhinney and Walter Caesar. Front row L-R is Eleanor Wilson, Betty Davidson (?), Linda Clements, Mary Leslie, Bet Adamson.She had long been a local celebrity but in the year 1953, Esta Henry’s reputation went national on two accounts. Around the 27th of December 1952, a well dressed man entered her shop on the High Street and introduced himself as a Belgian art dealer, Paul Eugene Dillin. The pair quickly struck up a rapport and he soon confided in her that his identity was a front; he was actually a stateless Romanian Jew by the name of Pinchas Haimovici and had spent two and a half years in hiding in the Netherlands during the war. As he refused to sign a national oath pledging himself to Communism he was exiled from his country of birth and had no papers. It was at the recommendation of the renowned sculptor Benno Schotz, a prominent member of the Scottish Jewish community and whose wife came from the same village as him, that he had come to Edinburgh seeking art. Esta fell in love with the man then and there, despite an age gap of 21 years between them, and proposed to him on the condition that he took the name Henry. When he accepted she threw his fake passport on the fire and urged him to turn himself in and seek asylum so that they could be legally wed.
Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Esta perhaps imagined naïvely that her reputation and connections would make it a mere formality and booked the couple a honeymoon trip to Madeira. However when the police were invited to the shop they instead charged Pinchas with offences for landing illegally in the country on false papers under the Aliens Act 1920 and he was sent to Saughton Prison. On December 31st he pled guilty at the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh and was remanded for sentencing, which was deferred to give his solicitor a chance to arrange an application for Israeli papers and asylum so that he could travel there instead of being deported. After the hearing, Esta told the waiting reporters that she still intended to marry her “Prince Paul” (Paul Haemovitz was another alias he had used) but that she was going to go on the Honeymoon trip to Maderia anyway by herself as the stress of events would otherwise give her a stroke; the reporter noted that she was smoking at the time and confided she had smoked 100 already that day. The case rumbled on and on, the Israelis were being slow with the papers as apparently there was another Pinchas Haimovici on an Interpol watch-list, despite this being a common name in Romania, and he had to prove it was not him. The Sheriff in Edinburgh grew tired of the repeated delays and on March 13th 1953 he ordered Pinchas’ release. But no sooner had he left the courtroom than he found himself re-arrested; the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe had finally signed a deportation order for him and he was sent straight back to Saughton. Esta told a waiting reporter from the Daily Mirror that if he was to be deported to Romania then she would join him there; “I’m only seventy, and fit enough to crash any of Stalin’s curtains”.
Pinchas petitioned the High Court in Edinburgh to avoid deportation and his case was heard on April 10th. As a declared anti-communist he told the court that he faced “torture and death” if returned to Romania. He also asked leave from court to marry Esta (who waved the papers she had ready to the court), but this request and his protests over his captivity fell on deaf ears and the case was adjourned. Back to Saughton Prison he went were Esta, with her lawyer Lionel Daiches, continued to visit him and made a habit of finding her way uninvited into the Governor’s office to protest more directly. The case was now being reported across the national and regional British newspapers and had become quite embarrassing for the Government. And so it was that the Home Secretary cancelled his previous order and on Friday 24th April 1953 Pinchas Haimovici was released and met by Esta with a pony and trap to drive him home and a brass band she had hired to serenade his freedom. The couple announced that they were to be married on the Monday morning and after a brief registry office ceremony, so they were. Esta insisted that they returned immediately to the shop to re-open for business but outside they were met by an immense crowd of well-wishers who lifted her into the air as they cheered for her and her husband. She lost her shoes in the process and the police had to attend to find the couple a path through the throng.
Esta and Pinchas are met by jubilant crowds of well-wishers in Hunter Square after their marriage. Daily Mirror, April 28th 1953The crowd followed them all the way back to the shop where they posed for the press and thanked their well-wishers while Esta fumbled through the 20 different keys she kept for the various locks on the premises. They were back behind the counter and at work within an hour of their ceremony starting. The next day they took a taxi out to Saughton Prison and thanked the warders with wedding cake and champagne, Pinchas let the press know that they had treated him very kindly. A few days later he formally changed his name to Paul Henry in line with Esta’s prenuptial wishes.
Pinchas and Esta re-open the shop after wedding, Associated Press, 27th April 1953To celebrate their union and to thank Benno Schotz for helping bring them together they commissioned him to produce a brass bust of them. Schotz insisted that Pinchas should be holding something in his hand and, knowing that Esta was immensely fond of rings, designed an Adam & Eve ring for the purpose. The finished work was unveiled to mark their first wedding anniversary as the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy on Princes Street.
Unveiling the bust with Benno Schotz, 23rd April 1954. Paul is holding the ring in his hand.Returning to the events of 1953, it was while her Prince Paul was still incarcerated that the other event took place that garnered national reporting for Esta; she was robbed! Perhaps she had been distracted by the events surrounding Paul’s case, but she allowed herself to be taken in by a group of well-organised confidence tricksters posing as American buyers. Having taken the time and effort to establish her routines and build up a rapport with her, they arranged a distraction and took their chance to steal jewellery that she valued at £20,000 from a lock box, £320 and $600 in cash and the pass books for her life savings. Esta told the press that amongst the items stolen was an amethyst fob which had once been part of the Hungarian crown jewels. Bits and pieces of the loot turned up in sale rooms afterwards and she was forced to buy them back at half of what the other dealer had paid for them; she was not impressed. The police eventually caught up with her trio of robbers due to their amateurish attempts to pass her stolen valuables off to on an antique dealer for far less than their actual worth. Roy Fontaine got 4 years for theft, Arthur Wooton 3 years for reset and George Ross-Wham had already been jailed on a separate offence by the time his sentencing came up. Fontaine was a career jewel thief, confidence trickster and blackmailer but Esta had found him charming and visited him in jail. She left money for him to try and start up a better life after he was released. This he tried, but it was not to be. It turned out that she may have gotten off lightly from Fontaine’s gang; he was actually the Glaswegian Archibald Hall who gained notoriety some 20 years later as a serial killer who the press dubbed the Monster Butler. His modus operandi was robbing and killing wealthy elderly and high-profile clients that he had worked his charm on to gain work as a butler. He was sentenced to life without parole in 1978.
Archibald Hall being taken to Jail, Daily Record, May 1978Esta Henry would have one last high-profile adventure before settling down to a quieter married life keeping shop with Paul. In 1954 the Egyptian Junta let it be known that they were auctioning off part of the personal collection of art and objets accumulated by the now deposed King Farouk at the state’s expense. She told the press she was determined to bag herself a bargain and flew to Cairo to the auction at the Koubbeh Palace; they were there at Turnhouse Airport to wave her off. In Egypt, when the Sotheby’s auctioneer initially announced the lots only in French and Arabic she interrupted to protest – “English was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for these people”. He yielded to her request and began to also announce the lots in English. She next stopped proceedings to ask an Egyptian army major to bring her some tea; tea was brought. When asked not to smoke she refused and instead asked for one of King Farouk’s diamond-studded, gold ashtrays – an auction lot – be brought to her.
Esta Henry, glasses in hand, berates the auctioneer yet again. The other bidders seem much amused. Sphere, 20th March 1954She eventually brought the proceedings into complete farce by repeatedly protesting when, at the behest of the Egyptian organisers, multiple auction lots were withdrawn, joint lots were split up and opening bids were significantly above the catalogue reserve price. The other bidders, and indeed the Sotheby’s auctioneers, were actually on her side – they too were less than impressed with how the sale was being conducted. When she eventually walked out, labelling the Egyptians “a bunch of twisters”, a number of fellow dealers followed her out. She was chased into the car park by the auctioneer and a senior Egyptian officer who begged her to return. Realising she had made her point, she acquiesced, and went back into the sale room where she publicly hugged and kissed the astonished auctioneer. She now stopped making a nuisance of herself and got down to the business of buying, eventually spending some £15,000 (c. £360,000 in 2025). She allowed herself one last moment of pantomime when, outbid on a 16th century Scottish clock, did jump up, grab the item from the auctioneer’s desk and announce to all that it was Scottish, she was Scottish and “I am going to have it!”. Her delighted fellow buyers let her have it. When she returned home, the gossip columnists and society magazines were waiting and she told them she was left with only the 2/6d in her pocket having spent the rest in Egypt. Her treasures arrived at the end of the following month, and she was met by both the press and by Customs to assess the haul.
Esta and Paul Henry demonstrate one of the Egyptian auction items to a customs officer and the press. Sunday Post, 2nd May 1954Esta and Paul Henry spent a happy decade together behind the counter at 51 High Street surrounded by the antiques and art that had brought them together. Esta through numerous exhibitions at Moubray House and contributed rare pieces to others. She began to form plans to perhaps leave the house and the best parts of her collection to the nation. In 1960 a fellow Edinburgh antique dealer told the press that they probably had the best collection in the country inside their shop. For their 10th wedding anniversary the couple decided to take a long overdue honeymoon and booked a round the world trip, perhaps to acquire yet more pieces or perhaps with a view to scouting out somewhere warm to retire to.
Copy of Esta Henry’s entry card into Brazil, issued by the Consul General in London on 10th December 1962It was for this reason that they were in Sao Paulo, en route to Rio de Janiero on January 15th when Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Flight 144 came down shortly after takeoff, killing them both. The long reign of the Queen of the High Street was over and the Brazilian authorities had her buried together with her Prince in Sao Paulo. Back home her vast collection of treasure that formed the bulk of her estate was split up and sold off. Her shop became home to a succession of trinket and tourist businesses but her flat above fared better, remaining in the care of the Cockburn association before being restored by a wealthy American benefactor and in 2012 gifted to the nation under the care of Historic Environment Scotland.
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The thread about Esta Henry; the life and times of the Queen of the High Street
On this day (January 15th) in 1963, a small silver airliner with 45 people on board took off from Sao Paulo in Brazil en route for Rio de Janeiro. Moments later it plunged into the ground in the city’s suburbs, taking with it 13 lives. The last victim to be identified was that of Esta Henry, a renowned and somewhat eccentric Edinburgh antiques dealer; her husband Paul was at her side and perished too. Thus ended the final chapter in the colourful life of the lady the papers called the Queen of the High Street. Her surprising story now follows.
Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Convair 340 aircraft, registration PP-CDW, the plane that crashed in January 1963. CC-by Smithsonian InstitutionShe was born Esther Louis on July 3rd 1882 in Sunderland, County Durham, to Louie Louis and his wife Eveline (née Jackson). Her parents were Jewish, her father a 1st generation Prussian immigrant and her mother 2nd generation to Dutch and German parents. Like many Jews in Britain at this time, to integrate and protect themselves somewhat from anti-Semitism, they altered their names; Louie and Evelina were thus better known as John and Eva. He worked variously as a cobbler, a clothier and an auctioneer and the family moved frequently with his work between Sunderland and Scotland. The family moved to 2 Jane Street in Leith in 1884 where Louie opened an auction room in the Kirkgate. Alas tragedy was to strike the following year. When Esta was just 2 her father died from fever and pneumonia leaving his wife with 7 hungry mouths to feed and another on the way.
Esta’s immediate family tree.Evelina and her entourage of children gravitated back to Wearside where she remarried in 1889 to Charles Goldman, a pawnbroker. Four half-siblings to Esta would follow and at the time of the 1891 census the enlarged family stayed in a small but prim end-terraced house at 4 Sorley Street in Sunderland. In her own telling of her story at this age the 9 year old Esta ran off to variously Edinburgh or Leith and sold door-to-door by barrow or bicycle to eke out a living, but we should take this with a very large pinch of salt as the records contradict the story and she made a habit of tweaking and embellishing tales of her life to suit circumstances. In 1901 they were at 12 Rutland Street in Sunderland, living above the family pawnbrokers. The 18 year old Esta was described as a General Dealer in the census; she was running a corner shop.
Rutland Street, Sunderland, 1929. Number 12, the Goldman shop and house is at the end of the row with the canopy, if you look very closes the pawnbroker’s sign is in the Goldman name. via Sunderland Antiquarian SocietyBut Esta did not stay put for much longer, by the next year we find her living at 156 Canongate in Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter she married a 25 year old jeweller, Jack H. Henry of 30 Milton Street. But like her Father, Esta’s new husband was using an alias; he was actually born Joseph Henry Abrovich in Łódź, Poland. It suited him to keep details of his past deliberately obscure; he spent his life giving different dates (between 1869-79) and places of birth in official documents and was most frequently recorded as John but sometimes also Jacob. But he married Esta as Jack. His mysteriousness was necessary as he was leading a double life; he was actually a talented concert violinist, a member of the touring orchestra of Polish piano impresario Ignacy Paderewski (who would rise to become Prime Minister of his country). Jack had skipped town in Dublin when on tour in the 1890s in order to avoid returning home to compulsory military service for the Russian Empire. It was also a difficult time for the Polish Jews in general as they faced the Russian Pogroms and waves were emigrating west. Thus he ended up in Scotland; possibly via Glasgow where there were already Abrovichs resident.
“Jack H. Henry.” Juliette Bird, via AncestryEsta and Jack settled at the tenement at 170 Canongate and soon opened a jewellery shop below at number 168. They moved into the back of the shop and began to raise a family together. Louis (Lou) was born in 1903, Philip (Philly) in 1904, Herbert (Bertie) in 1906 and Rosa (Rose) in 1908. While the Canongate was a down at heel neighbourhood at the time, one with much slum housing and a largely itinerant population that included many of the city’s poor and immigrants, they were doing well for themselves and advertised for a servant – “apply Mrs Henry” – in the newspapers.
Canongate in the late 19th century. On the left is the tower and clock of the Tolbooth, on the right the distinctive obelisk-topped gate piers of Moray House. The Henry shop and home is the lighter coloured tenement on the right hand side of the street. Beyond is the projecting gable of Huntly House; it is a neighbourhood steeped in Scottish history. Postcard, unknown artist. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandAs they prospered, raising 3 children in the back of a shop ceased to be a necessity and they moved to a smart new, end-of-terrace, middle class villa at 1 Lismore Avenue in Willowbrae. It was here in 1918 that their ranks were joined by the birth of Henrietta (Bunty). 1914 saw them relocate the shope up the Royal Mile to number 51 High Street, next to the well know building known as John Knox’s House. This was the ground floor of Moubray House, one of the oldest surviving residential buildings in the city, where Daniel Defoe had once lodged. It had recently been restored by the Cockburn Association and placed in the hands of a trust. Despite raising 4 children, Esta was clearly becoming more involved in the affairs of business as classified adverts are in the name of both her and Jack. By 1920 she is styling herself “Mrs Henry, Antique Dealer” in these.
“Unidentified Man and Children”, Alexander Wilson Hill, c. 1933. This the shop at 51 High Street and it is probably Jack Henry standing outside. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandThe 1921 census finds the family have moved on and up in the housing world again, now at a very large villa at 15 Mayfield Terrace in Newington. Louis Henry was following his father into the jewellery trade and Philip was training to become a dentist. Life was good but it was about to get better. In 1923 the Scottish newspapers reported the surprise visit of Queen Mary to the Henrys’ shop, where she spent an hour and bought many items, particularly Chinese curios. She was “greatly interested with both the collection and the premises” and shook hands with Esta and Jack as she left, promising to return. Her Majesty was true to her word and returned exactly one year later, buying “a score of articles” including a Louis XIV fan that had once belonged to Queen Victoria. She signed the visitors’ book and said that her purchases the previous year had been gifted to the West Kensington Museum.
Queen Mary leaving Henry’s on one of her many visits. Postcard, unknown artist. Via Canmore, SC 2649474 © Courtesy HESThe Queen was back again a year later, with over a dozen items bought, including a portrait believed to have been the property of Napoleon. The Henrys were invited to deliver the items in person to Holyroodhouse that afternoon and join the Queen for tea. They learned that some of the purchases were to stay there at the palace as part of its collection. The Queen thereafter returned almost every year on her visits to Holyrood, the newspapers reporting the purchase of items in 1927 and 1930 for Buckingham Palace and her personal collection. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Princes Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister Queen Margaret would carry on this royal tradition in later years and a whole section of wall in the shop was reserved for the display of their proudly framed cheques.
As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, Esta’s public profile was ascendant but Jack seems to have begun to step back somewhat from the limelight and into the shadows of the shop. In 1928 she stood for election to the Parish Council in the Canongate ward. Although she came second, there were two seats up for grabs and she was duly returned. Her election notices are the first time in print I could find where she is referring to herself as Esta, rather than just Mrs Henry. Her election was notable as she was the first Jewish woman to be elected to a public office in Scotland and also the press referred to her as Councillor Mrs Esta Henry, other married female councillors were referred to by their husband’s name, e.g Councillor Mrs Adam Millar. This is a public demonstration that she was very much her own woman.
Candidate picture of Esta Henry, Evening News, 7th November 1928The following year civic Parish Councils in Scotland – which existed largely for the purposes of poor relief – were abolished and merged into the Town Councils. Esta stood as an independent for this latter body in 1929 but came 4th behind two Socialists and a Moderate candidate. She would stand again for the Town Council in 1931, 1933 and 1935. She made very clear in her election speeches, which were reported in the press, that her priorities were housing, housewives, child welfare and the treatment of the sick and poor. Women and children were always central to her campaigns and she was known to mobilise squads of them in the Canongate to carry her election materials and to parade around the polling stations. But despite her strenuous campaign efforts on a sensible platform, her public profile and her local popularity, as an independent female candidate she stood little realistic chance of election. Edinburgh was run by the very pale, male and stale Moderates who largely owned the Council’s seats – many of which they didn’t even need to contest – and it was only in a handful of wards where the Socialists could challenge them (to find out more about the political groupings of 20th century Edinburgh and how the election system worked, you can bookmark this thread to read later).
In between election campaigns and royal visits, in 1933 the Henrys commissioned a magnificent L-plan house in a Dutch Cape Colonial style that also incorporated the latest in Moderne tastes. This was Marchdyke at 50 Pentland Terrace on the outskirts of the city’s growing suburbs and it totally eclipsed the monotonous rows of middle class bungalows that were much in favour all around it. Completed in 1935 this 4,000 square foot, 5 bedroom residence featured a Tudorbethan dining room, copious lounge and parlour, a terrazzo bathroom in a Roman style and in the basement a large garage for Jack’s cars, a wine cellar and antiques store. While many of the windows were in an ultra-fashionable fish scale style, the stained glass of the master staircase incorporated original 16th century Swiss and German panes from their collection.
Marchdyke, now known as Huntersmoon. Wilson Property Group, 2022 Property Listing – click here to see an archived copy with the full album of photos.In the 1935 Town Council election, Esta had come third behind the Socialist Party candidate and another from the Protestant Action Society (PA). This party were extreme anti-Catholics who stood on a platform of “No Popery”. Their leader was the rabble-rouser John Cormack and his political stock was rising at the time. In 1934 his party got just 6% of the popular vote in the Edinburgh municipal elections and 1 seat; in 1935 they got 21% and 3 seats. The exact order of following events are not clear but at the 1936 election Esta was already intending to stand once again on her usual independent platform. John Cormack made it be known in the press that he was inclined to lend his support to her in the Canongate (where many Catholic Irish and Italians lived). Perhaps it was a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, but with just a week to go before polling, Esta Henry made the shock announcement that she was now standing as a Protestant Action candidate – “the Only Party who do Not Want R. C. Votes“. So late was this change that even on the eve of election some of the papers still reported her as an independent. She topped the ballot, beating PA’s primary candidate, and was duly elected as a Town Councillor at the 5th attempt. It was a good year for PA, they got 31% of the popular vote and won 6 seats. Indeed it was their apogee and they soon slumped into bitter infighting and electoral obscurity, leaving just John Cormack to solider on for decades as their only councillor.
Election adverts, Evening News, 31st October 1936It’s never been clear just how committed Esta was to her new found political home – she certainly threw herself into public meetings on its behalf for a while, it being reported that she would stroll up and down the aisle, brandishing her umbrella at the audience. Realistically she may just have been desperate to get elected and chose the only other party than the Progressives (as the Moderates had re-branded) or Socialists with any chance of winning a seat. John Cormack was strongly criticised from within his own ranks for allowing a Jewish woman to stand on his platform – indeed much later in 1952 he organised pickets against her for suggesting public entertainments on Sundays at public meetings. She did not linger too long under his party whip and had resigned before the 1938 elections. She may have been made very uneasy with the association after a tumultuous public meeting in October 1937 in the Canongate Tolbooth. At this, her male PA colleague refused to answer questions directly and instead railed against Catholics to the boos and heckles of the crowd. Esta tried to make clear that she was there to fight the Socialists in politics but the audience deemed her guilty by association and turned on her too. Thereafter, she dedicated herself thereafter to public service for the Canongate in her own name. She would rise to become Convenor of the Baths and Washhouses Committee, a member of the Cleansing and Lighting Committee, the Streets and Buildings Committee and in 1941 was made JP (a Justice of the Peace, a lay magistrate in the lowest level of municipal courts).
Esta Henry commands the floor at a political meeting. Evening News, 8th February 1940Esta found that her official role as a councillor fitted well alongside her personal philanthropic activities and she long described herself publicly as a Social Worker in the Canongate (although she frequently embellished the timescales somewhat). In 1931 she had formed the Edinburgh United Independent Association in the Canongate to run youth projects and raise money for the city’s Royal Infirmary hospital. Her attitudes were quite progressive and she recognised the need and value for activities and exercise for her district’s youth to keep them from being led astray and getting into trouble and for their general health. She was heavily involved in the Canon Club for Boys and Girls and formed an amateur dramatic society there.
The youth of the Canongate ward is my special care… I want to mother the young people – I have done it all my days – and to impress them with the same spirit that I have myself… Never to let go, to hold on to the good things of life, because they will be rewarded in the end, the same as I have been.
Esta Henry, 1936
She also put her money where her mouth was and provided trophies for local clubs. In 1936 she presented the first of many Esta Henry Cups to the men of the Trinity College and Moray Knox Club on Cranston Street, an organisation formed for unemployed men. It was for the man who scored highest in their games league of dominoes, billiards, draughts and other pastimes with which they occupied their enforced idleness. Another such cup was presented to the local Caledonian Football Club. In November 1937, the Lord Provost gave her a leave of absence from her duties to travel officially to South Africa, where she was to spend two and a half months investigating working class housing and town planning on behalf of the city. He provided her with letters of introduction but they probably weren’t necessary, she apparently owned a fruit farm in the country and her son Phillie had settled there as a dentist! On her return she reported back that she had “travelled many hundreds of miles by air” but that it turned out things in Scotland were far more advanced and better organised for the poor than they were in South Africa! At this time she was also becoming increasingly involved with the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, becoming a local committee member, and in 1939 she and the Lady Provost threw a Christmas dinner for its members in the Canongate Tolbooth.
Esta Henry (2nd left, in the beret) and the Lady Provost give a Christmas Dinner to the elderly of the Canongate in the Tolbooth. Evening News, December 22nd 1939The year 1939 also brought the clouds of war to the High Street and municipal elections were suspended for the duration. As an incumbent councillor at the end of her 3 year term, Esta would have faced re-election in November that year. She now found herself with an extra six uncontested years added to her term of office and intended to make the most of this chance. She applied her single-minded determination, boundless energy and never-ending appetite for meetings and committees to the task at hand. And so it was that Councillor Esta Henry went to war. Interviewed shortly after the outbreak, she told the People’s Journal that there was no need to conscript women to the war effort as she had not met a woman in Edinburgh “who is not prepared to do whatsoever she is called upon to do“.
People’s Journal, 16th September 1939One of her first acts, on behalf of the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association, was to campaign for government allowances for women dependent on the wages of their sons where these men had now been called up. In the Canongate she joined the local ARP (Air Raid Precautions civil defence force), turned her shop basement into an air raid shelter (her name is against it in the Valuation Rolls) and established a corps of 40 local women to act as fire pickets. Later, the Esta Henry Ambulance Section first aiders were also formed. She was soon putting on social events to help finance these activities and found herself placed in charge of the Entertainments Committee of the Lady Provost’s Comforts Fund. This latter organisation started out with the simple of aim of knitting kilt socks for soldiers of the Highland Regiments, as had been done in the 1914-18 conflict. Esta organised bridge parties to raise funds for buying the wool and offered up her house of Marchdyke as a suitable venue. In the Canongate she formed the local women in to work parties in the Tolbooth meeting hall, and arranged free entertainments to keep them amused as they knitted the socks. Soon she was organising mass balls; in February 1940 some 600 dancers packed out the Plaza dancehall in Morningside in a charity gala. At the Eldorado dancehall in Leith though it wasn’t dancing that she put on but boxing, a sport new to her but one that she had fallen in love with. There was nothing that she would not turn her attention to in the name of raising funds; charity auctions, raising pigs and Warship Week where she matched every £1 bond bought at a public rally with £1 of her own.
Esta Henry feeding pigs she was raising for charity sale. Evening News, 26th April 1940Increasingly in the city centre on her ceaseless war work, getting to and from Marchdyke must have been proving an inconvenience as in 1941 she took possession of the flat in Moubray House above the shop and fitted it out as her own residence. She was also keen to demonstrate that old houses in the High Street could be rehabilitated for use without demolishing them. At the end of that year she paid for 800 local children to go to the cinema as a Hogmanay treat, a special programme being put on for them at the New Palace on the High Street. At the end of this screening she had new years resolutions projected onto the screen and had her audience promise en masse to be good children while their fathers were away and to help contribute to the war effort. 1942 saw the institution of the city Corporation’s Holidays at Home programme; municipal entertainments to keep people and children occupied over the summer holidays and try and reduce the temptation to travel. Esta organised outdoor public dances at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens which were put on for 2 hours every Monday to Friday afternoon, admission 6d on the gate. She herself led off the first dance with the Lord Provost and was a regular attendee, encouraging and cajoling shy young men to get themselves a partner and join in.
Wartime dancing at the Ross Bandstand in 1945. Evening News photo, from “Living Memories” by Jennifer VeitchThere was more dancing organised by Esta Henry in 1943, as well as cycle racing at Meadowbank, mass picnics for mothers and children and – as Baths & Washhouses Committee Convenor – she arranged for Portobello outdoor swimming pool to be re-opened (some of its machinery had been removed for war use and the rest had fallen into disrepair) so that charity swimming and water polo galas could be held (the awards being more Esta Henry Cups). This also meant children and youths could go swimming in the holidays again – she was well aware that with many fathers away on service and mothers occupied with war work at home, juvenile delinquency as a result of bored children being left to their own devices was a real problem. At the end of that year she spoke at a meeting to form the East Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Committe when it was announced that British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Moseley had been released from jail.
In 1944 she instituted a scheme whereby service personnel in the city and groups of school children were invited to the City Chambers to attend meetings of the Town Councils as her guest. They watched the proceedings and afterwards could question her and other members about the mechanics of local government; she wanted to show how the Home Front was functioning, to connect people with the municipal authorities and to raise awareness of the acute difficulties faced by it at this time. That summer she pressed the Corporation to make the city’s now unnecessary civil defence resources available to house evacuee children from London in the face of the new V1 and later V2 terror bombing. Although the idea garnered wide support it ultimately came to nothing and she would latter press the city to instead give away its accumulated surplus of bunk beds, mattresses and blankets for free to those in need.
With the end of the war finally coming into sight she now turned her attention to the post war prospects. With the Rev. Selby Weight of Canongate Kirk she held public meetings for the Canongate Welcome Home Service Fund to plan for the reintegration of demobbed service personnel and provide comforts and necessities for them and their families. She joined the local Women for Westminster branch to try and get a woman MP elected for the city and repeatedly went on the record that providing for youths and children had to be central to the city’s postwar planning and foresaw the coming housing crisis in the Old Town (it had of course always been there to an extent, but it was about to get very acute). “My slogan is houses and more houses – housing priority!” she said, but she was also clear that it had to be done by reconstruction of existing communities, not by swinging the wrecking ball and scattering them to all the corners of the city. She also took a great interest in Portobello and joined a local campaign to improve the district after the war. Always one to put her money where her mouth was, at her own expense she commissioned plans and artists’ impressions for a scheme to turn “Edinburgh’s ugly sister” into a fashionable new sea-side resort and Garden City. This wasn’t just pie-in-the-sky thinking, she successfully proposed it to the city authorities who had it approved by the Lord Provost’s Committee and included in Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s 1949 “Plan for the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh” (you will find it on page 69 in glorious technicolour but with little additional detail). The realities of postwar economics and political priorities meant however that it would never get beyond the pages of that work.
Artist’s impression of Esta Henry’s scheme for post-war Portobello. Evening News, September 18th 1945As the war drew to its close Esta found time to join yet one more committee, that of the League of Angry Wives. These were Scottish women who had married American servicemen and as “G.I. brides” wanted the right to join their husbands in that country. A resolution was passed and representations were sent directly to President Truman – by letter – and the First Lady – by telegram. A week later, Esta henry defended her seat, which she had now held for 9 years, at the ballot box but the winds of political change blew hard and she was comprehensively defeated by Labour candidates. This was despite her being presented with a pair of boxing gloves by her supporters and urged to “go on fighting“. After further defeats at the 1946 and 1947 elections she stepped back finally from politics, but not from life!
Esta Henry addresses the League of Angry Wives, Daily Record, October 29th 1945In 1946 and 1947 she was a key organiser with the Scottish Housewives Association in an Edinburgh and Fife-based campaign against bread rationing. This culminated in her and Janet Neish of Kirkcaldy chasing the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade out of the North British Hotel and across the street to his car as he sought to avoid the combined fury of their sharp tongues! Never one to turn down a committee, she was also elected as the President of the Edinburgh branch of that organisation. 1947 had however started on a sad note for her as Jack Henry finally succumbed to long-term heart disease, leaving her a widow. It was around this time that the house at Marchdyke was sold. But Esta showed no signs of retiring from life to mourn and threw herself instead to yet another new activity; women’s football. She became the director of the Edinburgh Lady Dynamos, a team formed from core members of successful pre-war teams when the women’s game had enjoyed a brief spell of public popularity. Donating another Esta Henry Trophy to the cause it was likely that she paid for their kits too and she could be relied upon to turn her formidable oratory power at the authorities when they refused to allow the women to play in public grounds.
Edinburgh Lady Dynamos football team, late 1940s. CC-by-SA-NC 0084-003, via Edinburgh Collected.
Back row L-R is Esta Henry, Kitty Russell, Betty Rae, Agnes Whitelaw, Theresa Mulvie, goalkeeper Jessie Baillie, Nan Laurie, Babs McWhinney and Walter Caesar. Front row L-R is Eleanor Wilson, Betty Davidson (?), Linda Clements, Mary Leslie, Bet Adamson.She had long been a local celebrity but in the year 1953, Esta Henry’s reputation went national on two accounts. Around the 27th of December 1952, a well dressed man entered her shop on the High Street and introduced himself as a Belgian art dealer, Paul Eugene Dillin. The pair quickly struck up a rapport and he soon confided in her that his identity was a front; he was actually a stateless Romanian Jew by the name of Pinchas Haimovici and had spent two and a half years in hiding in the Netherlands during the war. As he refused to sign a national oath pledging himself to Communism he was exiled from his country of birth and had no papers. It was at the recommendation of the renowned sculptor Benno Schotz, a prominent member of the Scottish Jewish community and whose wife came from the same village as him, that he had come to Edinburgh seeking art. Esta fell in love with the man then and there, despite an age gap of 21 years between them, and proposed to him on the condition that he took the name Henry. When he accepted she threw his fake passport on the fire and urged him to turn himself in and seek asylum so that they could be legally wed.
Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Pinchas and Esta, Associated Press, 27th April 1953Esta perhaps imagined naïvely that her reputation and connections would make it a mere formality and booked the couple a honeymoon trip to Madeira. However when the police were invited to the shop they instead charged Pinchas with offences for landing illegally in the country on false papers under the Aliens Act 1920 and he was sent to Saughton Prison. On December 31st he pled guilty at the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh and was remanded for sentencing, which was deferred to give his solicitor a chance to arrange an application for Israeli papers and asylum so that he could travel there instead of being deported. After the hearing, Esta told the waiting reporters that she still intended to marry her “Prince Paul” (Paul Haemovitz was another alias he had used) but that she was going to go on the Honeymoon trip to Maderia anyway by herself as the stress of events would otherwise give her a stroke; the reporter noted that she was smoking at the time and confided she had smoked 100 already that day. The case rumbled on and on, the Israelis were being slow with the papers as apparently there was another Pinchas Haimovici on an Interpol watch-list, despite this being a common name in Romania, and he had to prove it was not him. The Sheriff in Edinburgh grew tired of the repeated delays and on March 13th 1953 he ordered Pinchas’ release. But no sooner had he left the courtroom than he found himself re-arrested; the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe had finally signed a deportation order for him and he was sent straight back to Saughton. Esta told a waiting reporter from the Daily Mirror that if he was to be deported to Romania then she would join him there; “I’m only seventy, and fit enough to crash any of Stalin’s curtains”.
Pinchas petitioned the High Court in Edinburgh to avoid deportation and his case was heard on April 10th. As a declared anti-communist he told the court that he faced “torture and death” if returned to Romania. He also asked leave from court to marry Esta (who waved the papers she had ready to the court), but this request and his protests over his captivity fell on deaf ears and the case was adjourned. Back to Saughton Prison he went were Esta, with her lawyer Lionel Daiches, continued to visit him and made a habit of finding her way uninvited into the Governor’s office to protest more directly. The case was now being reported across the national and regional British newspapers and had become quite embarrassing for the Government. And so it was that the Home Secretary cancelled his previous order and on Friday 24th April 1953 Pinchas Haimovici was released and met by Esta with a pony and trap to drive him home and a brass band she had hired to serenade his freedom. The couple announced that they were to be married on the Monday morning and after a brief registry office ceremony, so they were. Esta insisted that they returned immediately to the shop to re-open for business but outside they were met by an immense crowd of well-wishers who lifted her into the air as they cheered for her and her husband. She lost her shoes in the process and the police had to attend to find the couple a path through the throng.
Esta and Pinchas are met by jubilant crowds of well-wishers in Hunter Square after their marriage. Daily Mirror, April 28th 1953The crowd followed them all the way back to the shop where they posed for the press and thanked their well-wishers while Esta fumbled through the 20 different keys she kept for the various locks on the premises. They were back behind the counter and at work within an hour of their ceremony starting. The next day they took a taxi out to Saughton Prison and thanked the warders with wedding cake and champagne, Pinchas let the press know that they had treated him very kindly. A few days later he formally changed his name to Paul Henry in line with Esta’s prenuptial wishes.
Pinchas and Esta re-open the shop after wedding, Associated Press, 27th April 1953To celebrate their union and to thank Benno Schotz for helping bring them together they commissioned him to produce a brass bust of them. Schotz insisted that Pinchas should be holding something in his hand and, knowing that Esta was immensely fond of rings, designed an Adam & Eve ring for the purpose. The finished work was unveiled to mark their first wedding anniversary as the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy on Princes Street.
Unveiling the bust with Benno Schotz, 23rd April 1954. Paul is holding the ring in his hand.Returning to the events of 1953, it was while her Prince Paul was still incarcerated that the other event took place that garnered national reporting for Esta; she was robbed! Perhaps she had been distracted by the events surrounding Paul’s case, but she allowed herself to be taken in by a group of well-organised confidence tricksters posing as American buyers. Having taken the time and effort to establish her routines and build up a rapport with her, they arranged a distraction and took their chance to steal jewellery that she valued at £20,000 from a lock box, £320 and $600 in cash and the pass books for her life savings. Esta told the press that amongst the items stolen was an amethyst fob which had once been part of the Hungarian crown jewels. Bits and pieces of the loot turned up in sale rooms afterwards and she was forced to buy them back at half of what the other dealer had paid for them; she was not impressed. The police eventually caught up with her trio of robbers due to their amateurish attempts to pass her stolen valuables off to on an antique dealer for far less than their actual worth. Roy Fontaine got 4 years for theft, Arthur Wooton 3 years for reset and George Ross-Wham had already been jailed on a separate offence by the time his sentencing came up. Fontaine was a career jewel thief, confidence trickster and blackmailer but Esta had found him charming and visited him in jail. She left money for him to try and start up a better life after he was released. This he tried, but it was not to be. It turned out that she may have gotten off lightly from Fontaine’s gang; he was actually the Glaswegian Archibald Hall who gained notoriety some 20 years later as a serial killer who the press dubbed the Monster Butler. His modus operandi was robbing and killing wealthy elderly and high-profile clients that he had worked his charm on to gain work as a butler. He was sentenced to life without parole in 1978.
Archibald Hall being taken to Jail, Daily Record, May 1978Esta Henry would have one last high-profile adventure before settling down to a quieter married life keeping shop with Paul. In 1954 the Egyptian Junta let it be known that they were auctioning off part of the personal collection of art and objets accumulated by the now deposed King Farouk at the state’s expense. She told the press she was determined to bag herself a bargain and flew to Cairo to the auction at the Koubbeh Palace; they were there at Turnhouse Airport to wave her off. In Egypt, when the Sotheby’s auctioneer initially announced the lots only in French and Arabic she interrupted to protest – “English was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for these people”. He yielded to her request and began to also announce the lots in English. She next stopped proceedings to ask an Egyptian army major to bring her some tea; tea was brought. When asked not to smoke she refused and instead asked for one of King Farouk’s diamond-studded, gold ashtrays – an auction lot – be brought to her.
Esta Henry, glasses in hand, berates the auctioneer yet again. The other bidders seem much amused. Sphere, 20th March 1954She eventually brought the proceedings into complete farce by repeatedly protesting when, at the behest of the Egyptian organisers, multiple auction lots were withdrawn, joint lots were split up and opening bids were significantly above the catalogue reserve price. The other bidders, and indeed the Sotheby’s auctioneers, were actually on her side – they too were less than impressed with how the sale was being conducted. When she eventually walked out, labelling the Egyptians “a bunch of twisters”, a number of fellow dealers followed her out. She was chased into the car park by the auctioneer and a senior Egyptian officer who begged her to return. Realising she had made her point, she acquiesced, and went back into the sale room where she publicly hugged and kissed the astonished auctioneer. She now stopped making a nuisance of herself and got down to the business of buying, eventually spending some £15,000 (c. £360,000 in 2025). She allowed herself one last moment of pantomime when, outbid on a 16th century Scottish clock, did jump up, grab the item from the auctioneer’s desk and announce to all that it was Scottish, she was Scottish and “I am going to have it!”. Her delighted fellow buyers let her have it. When she returned home, the gossip columnists and society magazines were waiting and she told them she was left with only the 2/6d in her pocket having spent the rest in Egypt. Her treasures arrived at the end of the following month, and she was met by both the press and by Customs to assess the haul.
Esta and Paul Henry demonstrate one of the Egyptian auction items to a customs officer and the press. Sunday Post, 2nd May 1954Esta and Paul Henry spent a happy decade together behind the counter at 51 High Street surrounded by the antiques and art that had brought them together. Esta through numerous exhibitions at Moubray House and contributed rare pieces to others. She began to form plans to perhaps leave the house and the best parts of her collection to the nation. In 1960 a fellow Edinburgh antique dealer told the press that they probably had the best collection in the country inside their shop. For their 10th wedding anniversary the couple decided to take a long overdue honeymoon and booked a round the world trip, perhaps to acquire yet more pieces or perhaps with a view to scouting out somewhere warm to retire to.
Copy of Esta Henry’s entry card into Brazil, issued by the Consul General in London on 10th December 1962It was for this reason that they were in Sao Paulo, en route to Rio de Janiero on January 15th when Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul Flight 144 came down shortly after takeoff, killing them both. The long reign of the Queen of the High Street was over and the Brazilian authorities had her buried together with her Prince in Sao Paulo. Back home her vast collection of treasure that formed the bulk of her estate was split up and sold off. Her shop became home to a succession of trinket and tourist businesses but her flat above fared better, remaining in the care of the Cockburn association before being restored by a wealthy American benefactor and in 2012 gifted to the nation under the care of Historic Environment Scotland.
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