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1000 results for “robert_said_what”
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The cold blooded murder of an innocent American by the Obama regime:
"Asked about the strike that killed him, a senior adviser to the president's campaign suggests he should've 'had a more responsible father.'
Cornered by reporters with video cameras, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, attempted to defend the kill list that the Obama Administration uses to determine whose body should next be blown apart. American drone strikes have resulted in hundreds of dead innocents in the last four years, even as the program has killed a number of high-level al Qaeda terrorists. There are two remarkable things about the ensuing exchange, which eventually turns into a discussion about a dead 16-year-old kid:
First, it's vital for the uninitiated to understand how Team Obama misleads when it talks about its drone program. Asked how their kill list can be justified, Gibbs replies that 'When there are people who are trying to harm us, and have pledged to bring terror to these shores, we've taken that fight to them.' Since the kill list itself is secret, there's no way to offer a specific counterexample. But we do know that U.S. drones are targeting people who've never pledged to carry out attacks in the United States. Take Pakistan, where the CIA kills some people without even knowing their identities. 'As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen,' the Washington Post reports. 'The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.' The vast majority would never make their way to New York or Washington, D.C., and the Obama Administration would never agree to rules that permitted only the killing of threats to 'the homeland.'
The second notable statement concerns the killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.
Tom Junod gives the back story:He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan. Of course, both Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were, at the very least, traitors to their country -- they had both gone to Yemen and taken up with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Awlaki had proven himself an expert inciter of those with murderous designs against America and Americans: the rare man of words who could be said to have a body count. When he was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administration's public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called 'targeted killing' reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list -- and then to kill him -- was 'an easy one.' But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list.
Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusla. Nor was he 'an inspiration,' as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone 'operational,' as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests. He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.
How does Team Obama justify killing him?"
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#ConspiracyTheories #chemtails #debunked #RFKJr
"A Sky Looming With Danger
Modern chemtrail conspiracies are wrong of course, but they reveal the consequential ways that different belief systems impact the invisible atmosphere.
(. . .)
When Hurricanes Helene and then Milton hit in the autumn of 2024, pundits across social media began speculating that the storms were the product of climatic engineering. Meteorologists attempting to warn local residents even received death threats for supposedly obscuring the government’s role in weather manipulation. Last August, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a tweet about chemtrails, saying: 'We are going to stop this crime.' This year, as the newly minted secretary of health and human services, he said that he suspects these chemicals are being infused into jet fuel by DARPA. Meanwhile, legislators in states like Florida and Alabama have attempted to ban nonexistent chemtrail geoengineering practices.
Attempts by mainstream commentators to make sense of these persistent conspiracies have tended to characterize them as either stubborn fantasy — 'beyond ridiculous,' as Joe Biden put it in an address — or the product of a muddied and fractured media landscape. Yet the rampant misinformation, shameless politicians and profit-driven platforms amplifying these narratives fail to fully explain the allure of these conspiracies.
Conflicting beliefs about the nature of the air predate digital echo chambers and modern environmental disasters. If we look further back, we can begin to develop a deeper understanding of what these aerial controversies really are: not mere delusions to be brushed off or misunderstandings to be fact-checked, not just dangerous misconceptions potentially leading to violent acts. Ultimately, they are the expression of a tension in how humans materialize the world itself.
(. . .)
Both now and then, the question of what is or isn’t in the air is under a spotlight amid political turmoil and social fracture. Air is a magnetic medium for people’s conflicted thoughts and suspicions to express themselves, a blank canvas upon which assumptions about the world and our role in it can be projected."
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#BillMoyers #Journalism #USpol
Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator
i only knew of bill moyers from his interviews with joseph campbell (a tv series and book called “the power of myth”).
thus morning i received an interesting newsletter from mother jones about bill’s legacy, and wanted to share some quotes
_——————-
Moyers was acutely aware, sooner than most, that big money was eating away at American democracy. “Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s important that we reduce the influence of money [in politics],” he said in a 2014 interview. “Yet 91 percent think it’s not likely that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done. When the public loses faith in democracy’s ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game’s almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.” He went on to say that “there are people fighting back [and] if it weren’t for them, I would despair. It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.”
“If the watchdog doesn’t bark… how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.”When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together. I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity...
news is what’s hidden, everything else is publicity…
Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now? Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories…
One of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people. Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats — the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms — while the field hands are left with the scraps…
They have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party…
Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere,” Moyers closed. “When he rode into town, it was ripe for plucking.”…
“…a conviction once expressed by Robert La Follette: “Democracy is a life, and requires daily struggle.” If it weren’t for them, I would despair. There’s a scene in Conrad’s The Secret Agent when the anarchist grows despondent over whether even the detonation of a bomb might arouse Londoners: “What if nothing could move them?”
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a link to the 2014 interview
https://billmoyers.com/2014/05/08/an-interview-with-bill-moyers/
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#BillMoyers #Journalism #USpol
Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator
i only knew of bill moyers from his interviews with joseph campbell (a tv series and book called “the power of myth”).
thus morning i received an interesting newsletter from mother jones about bill’s legacy, and wanted to share some quotes
_——————-
Moyers was acutely aware, sooner than most, that big money was eating away at American democracy. “Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s important that we reduce the influence of money [in politics],” he said in a 2014 interview. “Yet 91 percent think it’s not likely that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done. When the public loses faith in democracy’s ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game’s almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.” He went on to say that “there are people fighting back [and] if it weren’t for them, I would despair. It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.”
“If the watchdog doesn’t bark… how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.”When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together. I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity...
news is what’s hidden, everything else is publicity…
Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now? Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories…
One of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people. Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats — the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms — while the field hands are left with the scraps…
They have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party…
Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere,” Moyers closed. “When he rode into town, it was ripe for plucking.”…
“…a conviction once expressed by Robert La Follette: “Democracy is a life, and requires daily struggle.” If it weren’t for them, I would despair. There’s a scene in Conrad’s The Secret Agent when the anarchist grows despondent over whether even the detonation of a bomb might arouse Londoners: “What if nothing could move them?”
———
a link to the 2014 interview
https://billmoyers.com/2014/05/08/an-interview-with-bill-moyers/
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#BillMoyers #Journalism #USpol
Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator
i only knew of bill moyers from his interviews with joseph campbell (a tv series and book called “the power of myth”).
thus morning i received an interesting newsletter from mother jones about bill’s legacy, and wanted to share some quotes
_——————-
Moyers was acutely aware, sooner than most, that big money was eating away at American democracy. “Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s important that we reduce the influence of money [in politics],” he said in a 2014 interview. “Yet 91 percent think it’s not likely that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done. When the public loses faith in democracy’s ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game’s almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.” He went on to say that “there are people fighting back [and] if it weren’t for them, I would despair. It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.”
“If the watchdog doesn’t bark… how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.”When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together. I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity...
news is what’s hidden, everything else is publicity…
Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now? Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories…
One of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people. Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats — the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms — while the field hands are left with the scraps…
They have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party…
Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere,” Moyers closed. “When he rode into town, it was ripe for plucking.”…
“…a conviction once expressed by Robert La Follette: “Democracy is a life, and requires daily struggle.” If it weren’t for them, I would despair. There’s a scene in Conrad’s The Secret Agent when the anarchist grows despondent over whether even the detonation of a bomb might arouse Londoners: “What if nothing could move them?”
———
a link to the 2014 interview
https://billmoyers.com/2014/05/08/an-interview-with-bill-moyers/
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#BillMoyers #Journalism #USpol
Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator
i only knew of bill moyers from his interviews with joseph campbell (a tv series and book called “the power of myth”).
thus morning i received an interesting newsletter from mother jones about bill’s legacy, and wanted to share some quotes
_——————-
Moyers was acutely aware, sooner than most, that big money was eating away at American democracy. “Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s important that we reduce the influence of money [in politics],” he said in a 2014 interview. “Yet 91 percent think it’s not likely that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done. When the public loses faith in democracy’s ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game’s almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.” He went on to say that “there are people fighting back [and] if it weren’t for them, I would despair. It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.”
“If the watchdog doesn’t bark… how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.”When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together. I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity...
news is what’s hidden, everything else is publicity…
Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now? Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories…
One of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people. Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats — the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms — while the field hands are left with the scraps…
They have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party…
Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere,” Moyers closed. “When he rode into town, it was ripe for plucking.”…
“…a conviction once expressed by Robert La Follette: “Democracy is a life, and requires daily struggle.” If it weren’t for them, I would despair. There’s a scene in Conrad’s The Secret Agent when the anarchist grows despondent over whether even the detonation of a bomb might arouse Londoners: “What if nothing could move them?”
———
a link to the 2014 interview
https://billmoyers.com/2014/05/08/an-interview-with-bill-moyers/
-
#BillMoyers #Journalism #USpol
Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator
i only knew of bill moyers from his interviews with joseph campbell (a tv series and book called “the power of myth”).
thus morning i received an interesting newsletter from mother jones about bill’s legacy, and wanted to share some quotes
_——————-
Moyers was acutely aware, sooner than most, that big money was eating away at American democracy. “Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s important that we reduce the influence of money [in politics],” he said in a 2014 interview. “Yet 91 percent think it’s not likely that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done. When the public loses faith in democracy’s ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game’s almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.” He went on to say that “there are people fighting back [and] if it weren’t for them, I would despair. It’s the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there’s still hope.”
“If the watchdog doesn’t bark… how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.”When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together. I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity...
news is what’s hidden, everything else is publicity…
Q: We’ve always had an upper class in America. What’s different now? Moyers: The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories…
One of our two major parties is dominated by extremists dedicated to destroying the social contract and the other party has been so enfeebled by two decades of collaboration with the donor class it can offer only feeble resistance to the forces that are devastating everyday people. Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats — the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms — while the field hands are left with the scraps…
They have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party…
Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere,” Moyers closed. “When he rode into town, it was ripe for plucking.”…
“…a conviction once expressed by Robert La Follette: “Democracy is a life, and requires daily struggle.” If it weren’t for them, I would despair. There’s a scene in Conrad’s The Secret Agent when the anarchist grows despondent over whether even the detonation of a bomb might arouse Londoners: “What if nothing could move them?”
———
a link to the 2014 interview
https://billmoyers.com/2014/05/08/an-interview-with-bill-moyers/
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https://www.texasobserver.org/staying-afloat/
>“We need to have a culture of efficiency in our state,” Walker said. There are plenty of ideas for conservation and reuse of water in the State Water Plan that need funding, she said, especially in smaller rural communities that don’t have as much technical expertise as larger cities and their utilities. “There’s a lot of good things we can be spending money on.”
>
>While both the proposed legislation and the current state water plan acknowledge that Texas also needs to conserve water and fix existing water systems, so far leaders seem more focused on grander plans to build new infrastructure.Until Texas bans lawn watering state-wide, we ain't fuckin' serious about the water crisis.
>These days, SAWS [San Antonio Water System]—which serves 2 million people in Bexar, Medina, and Atascosa counties—has nine different sources of water. The utility can now draw from four additional underground aquifers, its own recycled wastewater, and three reservoirs, including Medina Lake. But because of drought, San Antonio hasn’t used Medina Lake for years.
>
>SAWS has invested instead in its “advanced storage and recovery” system as a better insurance policy. The utility doesn’t always use its full annual water rights from the Edwards Aquifer, especially during rainy times. So SAWS has turned to injecting extra Edwards water into a different rock formation directly below the H2Oaks Center, the Carrizo Aquifer, to use later during dry summers and droughts. Utility staff refer fondly to this reserve as “the bubble.”
>
>All this water used in homes, businesses, and public buildings throughout San Antonio eventually flows from drains and toilets downhill to the city’s lowest elevation point, where SAWS has built its wastewater recycling plant. Here, trash—mostly “flushable” wipes that in reality are not at all flushable—gets screened out of the water, and the plant’s workers diligently cultivate microbes that eat the city’s biological waste.
>
>At the end of this lengthy process, the treated water flows into the Medina River, just above where the Medina itself flows into the larger San Antonio River. The water entering the river looks clean, like a small waterfall more than anything. Trees surround the wastewater plant’s outfall, the air smells fresh, and birds fly by.
>
>“You should take us for granted,” said SAWS CEO Robert Puente, who previously served in the Texas Legislature and chaired the House Natural Resources Committee, in an interview with the Observer. The utility has plenty of water for at least the next decade, and longer if San Antonio’s recent population growth levels out, he said.Excellent! So we already have a model for what every other city needs to be doing.
#water #hydrology #texas #drought #Municipal #utilities #SanAntonio #TexasObserver @TexasObserver
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US urged to ‘think bigger’ on healthcare amid Trump onslaught on sector
An academic journal may inject some optimism into US health policy – a scarce commodity amid the Trump administration’s mass layoffs, funding freezes and the ideological research reviews.
A new issue of Health Affairs Scholar argues the conversation around healthcare can change – and radically – if academics think “bigger” and policymakers invest in their communities.
“We saw what happened in the public outcry of the murder of the United HealthCare CEO,” said Dr Victor Roy, a family physician and director of the health and political economy project at the New School in New York City.
“There is a sense people are fed up and people are looking forbigger alternatives. People have really visceral feelings around these issues and we have a way to tackle them if people come up with ideas on the scale of the challenges people are experiencing.”
Health policy has quickly become a major touchstone of the Maga-right, as the Trump administration undertakes a shock and awe campaign that has dramatically altered public health institutions.
In just a few weeks in office, the administration has scrubbedgovernment health websites of information on women and racial minorities, reviewed billions in scientific grant applications for conformity to the president’s agenda, and confirmed the nation’s foremost vaccine critic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the nation’s top health leader at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The administration has also said it will pull the US out of the World Health Organization (WHO), which it helped found in 1948.
Additionally, congressional Republicans have floated major cuts to Medicaid, a health insurance program for the low-income and disabled that insures about 72 million Americans, to extend tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy.
But even outside recent upheaval, the scale of challenges to American healthcare is something to behold:
the US spends more on healthcare than almost any other country as a share of gross domestic product,
yet has some of the worst outcomes among developed democracies.It is a global outlier for failing to offer universal healthcare and one of the few countries that allows its citizens to be bankrupted by medical debt.
How to fix it?
Don’t tinker around the edges, Roy argues.
Instead, look upstream for solutions to health problems.
Abandon narratives about “deserving-ness”.
Examine what is working in cities and states.
In an interview, Roy cited the example of the "Philadelphia Joy Bank" – a small program that provides pregnant and postpartum women with a $1,000 basic income.
This money comes with no questions asked, which is a world of difference from traditional “welfare”, or temporary assistance for needy families ( #TANF ).
TANF once provided temporary cash assistance to the poor. Since Clinton-era welfare reforms,
the program has been drained of resources;its scant payments have lost venue with inflation and work requirements have saddled many with insurmountable bureaucratic barriers.
In Connecticut, lawmakers established first-in-the-nation
“baby bonds”,
a small investing account for each low-income child born in the state.The program provides $3,200 per child that is invested in the market, and can be used to buy a house, start a business, or pay for higher education or retirement.
In Washington DC, reformers at the American Economic Liberties Project are using the lessons of recent anti-trust victories to push for a proposed
“Glass-Steagall for healthcare”.The initiative, called "Break Up Big Medicine", refers to the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall legislation that separated investment banks from commercial banks.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/22/us-healthcare-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other -
Hegseth’s Proposed Pentagon “Budget Cuts” Seemingly Won’t Reduce Spending at All
(The Defense Department quickly reframed plans for an 8 percent annual reduction in military spending as “offsets.”)
Hegseth, in an internal memo, ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years,
-- and instructed officials to hand in their proposals by this coming Monday.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), long a vocal proponent of cutting the military budget as it approaches $1 trillion a year,
agreed on social media that “when the Pentagon cannot complete an independent audit,
we should cut military spending by 8% a year over the next five years.”⭐️That is not what the administration appears to have in mind.
While headlines in major media outlets characterized Hegseth’s memo as a striking call for #cuts ...
🔥Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Salesses described the proposal as a push for #offsets ...
⚠️that could be used to fund other military-related efforts favored by President Donald Trump,
including an “Iron Dome for America” that experts have ridiculed as a wasteful “fantasy.”“The department will develop a list of potential #offsets that could be used to fund these priorities,
as well as to refocus the department on its core mission of deterring and winning wars,”
said Salesses.“The offsets are targeted at 8% of the Biden administration’s FY26 budget,
totaling around $50 billion,
which will then be spent on programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities.”The U.S. military budget for Fiscal Year 2025 is roughly $850 billion.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-pentagon-cuts -
#RepairCafés breathe new life into broken household items, teach people to fix on their own
November 20, 2024
"Twice a month in #EvanstonIllinois, volunteers sit face-to-face with people troubleshooting and diagnosing the symptoms of a beloved but broken household gadget.
"Much like a hospital for all things broken, they're trying to find a way to mend and breath new life into the item.
"The Evanston Repair Café is held every fourth Tuesday and every first Saturday at the Robert Crown Center.
"'The most popular item is our lamps, people always have broken lamps,' said Anne Opila, a co-coordinator of the cafe. 'In the summer, we'll have a lot of fans, we get toasters, we get clocks, we get vacuum cleaners.'
"There are more than 3,000 similar Repair Cafés around the world, with a mission to reduce waste, promote community, and preserve traditional repair skills.
"'Patrons come in and they work together to repair their item. It prevents us from throwing things away that fills up our landfills so that we can continue to use them, and they go on to live a happy life,' said Opila.
"Known as a volunteer #RepairCoach, John Martin is a retired maintenance mechanic working in the general repair section of the café.
"'People are not aware that they can fix things, they figure, the philosophy in this country is buy, buy, buy, if it's not working get rid of it,' explained Martin.
"But with a little help from a handy neighbor or a retired and skilled volunteer almost anything can be fixed.
"'What we're doing here is trying to encourage people to fix stuff themselves and give them the skills and knowledge to be able to not only do it themselves and maybe pass it on to somebody,' said Martin.
"'I have this Smeg toaster, and I dropped it,' explained customer Coco Colin. 'It's such a nice piece I don't just want to throw it away.'
"Beyond general repair, they also have #sewing coaches to help #mend or #hem clothing.
"'On Saturdays, which is our busier day we also have #JewelryRepair, #KnifeSharpening, plant advice, paper conservation, musical instrument advice. So we really bring in all the skills that people are willing to volunteer for and then people can take advantage, they're all free and all available,' said Opila.
'"It's like a mission because there's so many things need to be done for the environment this some little thing i can do,' said Martine."
Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-59135413Evanston Repair Café
https://www.epl.org/repair/
#SolarPunkSunday #RepairCafes #RightToRepair #FixIt #DIY #RightToRepairMovement #CircularEconomy #RepairCafesIllinois -
How #LeonardPeltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change that
Mike Baughman July 20, 2016
"So much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years confined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice.
"Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, called Matthiessen’s book 'the first solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.'
"The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced affidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the affidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony.
"Amnesty International classifies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary film exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford.
"Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He’s been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and finally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants 'is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that dignified black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.'
"When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024.
"Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in office pardoned a financier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon 'a sign of corrupted values.'
"On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justifiable reason opened fire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the firing finally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor.
"There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. "
Original article:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/48-12/how-leonard-peltier-has-unjustly-spent-forty-years-in-prison-and-why-its-time-to-change-that/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NPKLS#FreeLeonardPeltier #MabelPoorBear #PineRidge #WoundedKnee #PineRidgeReservation #FBI #ACAB #BuryMyHeartAtWoundedKnee #InTheSpiritOfCrazyHorse #PoliticalPrisoner #AIM #PerjuredTestimony
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How #LeonardPeltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change that
Mike Baughman July 20, 2016
"So much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years confined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice.
"Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, called Matthiessen’s book 'the first solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.'
"The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced affidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the affidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony.
"Amnesty International classifies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary film exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford.
"Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He’s been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and finally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants 'is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that dignified black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.'
"When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024.
"Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in office pardoned a financier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon 'a sign of corrupted values.'
"On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justifiable reason opened fire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the firing finally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor.
"There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. "
Original article:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/48-12/how-leonard-peltier-has-unjustly-spent-forty-years-in-prison-and-why-its-time-to-change-that/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NPKLS#FreeLeonardPeltier #MabelPoorBear #PineRidge #WoundedKnee #PineRidgeReservation #FBI #ACAB #BuryMyHeartAtWoundedKnee #InTheSpiritOfCrazyHorse #PoliticalPrisoner #AIM #PerjuredTestimony
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How #LeonardPeltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change that
Mike Baughman July 20, 2016
"So much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years confined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice.
"Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, called Matthiessen’s book 'the first solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.'
"The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced affidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the affidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony.
"Amnesty International classifies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary film exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford.
"Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He’s been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and finally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants 'is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that dignified black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.'
"When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024.
"Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in office pardoned a financier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon 'a sign of corrupted values.'
"On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justifiable reason opened fire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the firing finally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor.
"There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. "
Original article:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/48-12/how-leonard-peltier-has-unjustly-spent-forty-years-in-prison-and-why-its-time-to-change-that/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NPKLS#FreeLeonardPeltier #MabelPoorBear #PineRidge #WoundedKnee #PineRidgeReservation #FBI #ACAB #BuryMyHeartAtWoundedKnee #InTheSpiritOfCrazyHorse #PoliticalPrisoner #AIM #PerjuredTestimony
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How #LeonardPeltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change that
Mike Baughman July 20, 2016
"So much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years confined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice.
"Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, called Matthiessen’s book 'the first solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.'
"The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced affidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the affidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony.
"Amnesty International classifies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary film exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford.
"Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He’s been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and finally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants 'is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that dignified black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.'
"When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024.
"Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in office pardoned a financier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon 'a sign of corrupted values.'
"On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justifiable reason opened fire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the firing finally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor.
"There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. "
Original article:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/48-12/how-leonard-peltier-has-unjustly-spent-forty-years-in-prison-and-why-its-time-to-change-that/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NPKLS#FreeLeonardPeltier #MabelPoorBear #PineRidge #WoundedKnee #PineRidgeReservation #FBI #ACAB #BuryMyHeartAtWoundedKnee #InTheSpiritOfCrazyHorse #PoliticalPrisoner #AIM #PerjuredTestimony
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How #LeonardPeltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change that
Mike Baughman July 20, 2016
"So much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years confined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice.
"Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, called Matthiessen’s book 'the first solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.'
"The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced affidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the affidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony.
"Amnesty International classifies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary film exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford.
"Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He’s been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and finally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants 'is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that dignified black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.'
"When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024.
"Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in office pardoned a financier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon 'a sign of corrupted values.'
"On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justifiable reason opened fire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the firing finally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor.
"There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. "
Original article:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/48-12/how-leonard-peltier-has-unjustly-spent-forty-years-in-prison-and-why-its-time-to-change-that/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NPKLS#FreeLeonardPeltier #MabelPoorBear #PineRidge #WoundedKnee #PineRidgeReservation #FBI #ACAB #BuryMyHeartAtWoundedKnee #InTheSpiritOfCrazyHorse #PoliticalPrisoner #AIM #PerjuredTestimony
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🆘 Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is ♦️Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
Renaissance is spectacularly successful
—Investopedia named Renaissance Institutional Equities, the LLC’s largest entity,
the top-performing hedge fund of 2016,
after it yielded investors a return of 20 percent for the year.Mercer’s genius as a data and systems geek is part of the super-secret sauce of this “quant fund”
that turned other people’s assets-minus-liabilities into riches for his investors.It’s like a very complicated version of counting cards at the blackjack table.
But the best-performing fund at Renaissance is one that only its employees can join
—and indeed they must in order to actualize their full compensation package.Bloomberg’s Katherine Burton described the employee-only Medallion fund as
“finance’s blackest box.”
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/what-we-do-is-secret-stan -
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar
But some dollars are different, because of how their owners obtain them and move them about.These are the dark dollars of private companies, dollars slithery in their expert avoidance of taxes, their paths rendered invisible by the absence of footprints.
Critics of the Trump White House point to the obscene levels of wealth that you find among the inner circle of President Trump’s appointees and associates.
Just as striking, though, is the provenance of all this loose cash:
Trump’s trusted advisers have come into much of this wealth through private companies,
whose financial balance sheets and so much more are shielded from public view.At least ten of Trump’s close political associates, including some of his cabinet picks, hail from the carefully shrouded world of private capital.
💥Private companies play by a different set of rules than those governing firms that trade their shares on stock exchanges.
Unlike their publicly traded counterparts, private companies don’t have to worry about facing irate shareholders.
That’s because a private company’s principals have chosen those shareholders, who are often drawn from a founder’s family.
No proxy fights or hostile takeovers to worry about; no bending to the will of big institutional investors.
This is not to say that there are no big donors to Democrats who don’t also get their dough from private companies.
For example, Democrats have long enjoyed the largesse of the Pritzker family, who took their Hyatt Corporation public only in 2009.
Until then, it was a closely held private company.
But no Democratic administration was ever dominated by the owners of privately held entities,
and no administration of either party has ever represented so much wealth derived from such secretive entities.👉Little in the way of financial disclosure is required of privately held companies. When it comes to financial regulation, these companies reap the benefit of the government’s failure to call them to account.
The same is true of private companies as large as the Koch Industries conglomerate or as adorably tiny as a startup founded by a lone millennial in a stocking cap.
Sanctums of Privilege
This is not a screed against private companies. As a red-blooded American, I revel in tales of heroic entrepreneurship
—of hatched-in-the-garage ideas that yield their underdog executors an unlikely pot of gold.This is, rather, a scream, the wail of a blues tune sung to my fellow red-blooded Americans:
🆘 Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is ♦️Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
-
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar
But some dollars are different, because of how their owners obtain them and move them about.These are the dark dollars of private companies, dollars slithery in their expert avoidance of taxes, their paths rendered invisible by the absence of footprints.
Critics of the Trump White House point to the obscene levels of wealth that you find among the inner circle of President Trump’s appointees and associates.
Just as striking, though, is the provenance of all this loose cash:
Trump’s trusted advisers have come into much of this wealth through private companies,
whose financial balance sheets and so much more are shielded from public view.At least ten of Trump’s close political associates, including some of his cabinet picks, hail from the carefully shrouded world of private capital.
💥Private companies play by a different set of rules than those governing firms that trade their shares on stock exchanges.
Unlike their publicly traded counterparts, private companies don’t have to worry about facing irate shareholders.
That’s because a private company’s principals have chosen those shareholders, who are often drawn from a founder’s family.
No proxy fights or hostile takeovers to worry about; no bending to the will of big institutional investors.
This is not to say that there are no big donors to Democrats who don’t also get their dough from private companies.
For example, Democrats have long enjoyed the largesse of the Pritzker family, who took their Hyatt Corporation public only in 2009.
Until then, it was a closely held private company.
But no Democratic administration was ever dominated by the owners of privately held entities,
and no administration of either party has ever represented so much wealth derived from such secretive entities.👉Little in the way of financial disclosure is required of privately held companies. When it comes to financial regulation, these companies reap the benefit of the government’s failure to call them to account.
The same is true of private companies as large as the Koch Industries conglomerate or as adorably tiny as a startup founded by a lone millennial in a stocking cap.
Sanctums of Privilege
This is not a screed against private companies. As a red-blooded American, I revel in tales of heroic entrepreneurship
—of hatched-in-the-garage ideas that yield their underdog executors an unlikely pot of gold.This is, rather, a scream, the wail of a blues tune sung to my fellow red-blooded Americans:
🆘 Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is ♦️Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
-
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar
But some dollars are different, because of how their owners obtain them and move them about.These are the dark dollars of private companies, dollars slithery in their expert avoidance of taxes, their paths rendered invisible by the absence of footprints.
Critics of the Trump White House point to the obscene levels of wealth that you find among the inner circle of President Trump’s appointees and associates.
Just as striking, though, is the provenance of all this loose cash:
Trump’s trusted advisers have come into much of this wealth through private companies,
whose financial balance sheets and so much more are shielded from public view.At least ten of Trump’s close political associates, including some of his cabinet picks, hail from the carefully shrouded world of private capital.
💥Private companies play by a different set of rules than those governing firms that trade their shares on stock exchanges.
Unlike their publicly traded counterparts, private companies don’t have to worry about facing irate shareholders.
That’s because a private company’s principals have chosen those shareholders, who are often drawn from a founder’s family.
No proxy fights or hostile takeovers to worry about; no bending to the will of big institutional investors.
This is not to say that there are no big donors to Democrats who don’t also get their dough from private companies.
For example, Democrats have long enjoyed the largesse of the Pritzker family, who took their Hyatt Corporation public only in 2009.
Until then, it was a closely held private company.
But no Democratic administration was ever dominated by the owners of privately held entities,
and no administration of either party has ever represented so much wealth derived from such secretive entities.👉Little in the way of financial disclosure is required of privately held companies. When it comes to financial regulation, these companies reap the benefit of the government’s failure to call them to account.
The same is true of private companies as large as the Koch Industries conglomerate or as adorably tiny as a startup founded by a lone millennial in a stocking cap.
Sanctums of Privilege
This is not a screed against private companies. As a red-blooded American, I revel in tales of heroic entrepreneurship
—of hatched-in-the-garage ideas that yield their underdog executors an unlikely pot of gold.This is, rather, a scream, the wail of a blues tune sung to my fellow red-blooded Americans:
🆘 Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is ♦️Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
-
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar
But some dollars are different, because of how their owners obtain them and move them about.These are the dark dollars of private companies, dollars slithery in their expert avoidance of taxes, their paths rendered invisible by the absence of footprints.
Critics of the Trump White House point to the obscene levels of wealth that you find among the inner circle of President Trump’s appointees and associates.
Just as striking, though, is the provenance of all this loose cash:
Trump’s trusted advisers have come into much of this wealth through private companies,
whose financial balance sheets and so much more are shielded from public view.At least ten of Trump’s close political associates, including some of his cabinet picks, hail from the carefully shrouded world of private capital.
💥Private companies play by a different set of rules than those governing firms that trade their shares on stock exchanges.
Unlike their publicly traded counterparts, private companies don’t have to worry about facing irate shareholders.
That’s because a private company’s principals have chosen those shareholders, who are often drawn from a founder’s family.
No proxy fights or hostile takeovers to worry about; no bending to the will of big institutional investors.
This is not to say that there are no big donors to Democrats who don’t also get their dough from private companies.
For example, Democrats have long enjoyed the largesse of the Pritzker family, who took their Hyatt Corporation public only in 2009.
Until then, it was a closely held private company.
But no Democratic administration was ever dominated by the owners of privately held entities,
and no administration of either party has ever represented so much wealth derived from such secretive entities.👉Little in the way of financial disclosure is required of privately held companies. When it comes to financial regulation, these companies reap the benefit of the government’s failure to call them to account.
The same is true of private companies as large as the Koch Industries conglomerate or as adorably tiny as a startup founded by a lone millennial in a stocking cap.
Sanctums of Privilege
This is not a screed against private companies. As a red-blooded American, I revel in tales of heroic entrepreneurship
—of hatched-in-the-garage ideas that yield their underdog executors an unlikely pot of gold.This is, rather, a scream, the wail of a blues tune sung to my fellow red-blooded Americans:
🆘 Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is ♦️Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
-
Daily writing prompt How do you balance work and home life? View all responsesI often find myself thinking in song titles. Sometimes it is movies or TV quotes, but often it’s song titles. It just happened to me as I read today’s prompt. King Crimson has an improvised instrumental track on the Starless and Bible Black record called “We’ll Let You Know.”*
When we figure out how to balance work and home life, we’ll let you know. When I am at work I am working. When I am at home I am not working. Does that make sense? That’s how it should be, shouldn’t it? Why is it so hard to do? Why is so much at home time spent thinking about work and so much at work time spent thinking about home? What’s the deal there, Robert?
It’s a problem, but it’s more of an existential problem as one rarely gets in the way of the other when something important comes up. In priority situations I am able to keep the two separated. It’s the quiet, non-priority moments that the mind wanders across the divide.
So like I said, if I figure it out… I’ll let you know.
*Just noting that both the guitarist and the drummer on this song had birthdays this week.
The song is an instrumental so there are no lyrics to tie into this discussion. Also, it was improvised on stage so they probably only ever played it once. There’s a moment in this when the bass and the drums lock together in one of the sickest grooves ever.
-
Daily writing prompt How do you balance work and home life? View all responsesI often find myself thinking in song titles. Sometimes it is movies or TV quotes, but often it’s song titles. It just happened to me as I read today’s prompt. King Crimson has an improvised instrumental track on the Starless and Bible Black record called “We’ll Let You Know.”*
When we figure out how to balance work and home life, we’ll let you know. When I am at work I am working. When I am at home I am not working. Does that make sense? That’s how it should be, shouldn’t it? Why is it so hard to do? Why is so much at home time spent thinking about work and so much at work time spent thinking about home? What’s the deal there, Robert?
It’s a problem, but it’s more of an existential problem as one rarely gets in the way of the other when something important comes up. In priority situations I am able to keep the two separated. It’s the quiet, non-priority moments that the mind wanders across the divide.
So like I said, if I figure it out… I’ll let you know.
*Just noting that both the guitarist and the drummer on this song had birthdays this week.
The song is an instrumental so there are no lyrics to tie into this discussion. Also, it was improvised on stage so they probably only ever played it once. There’s a moment in this when the bass and the drums lock together in one of the sickest grooves ever.
-
Daily writing prompt How do you balance work and home life? View all responsesI often find myself thinking in song titles. Sometimes it is movies or TV quotes, but often it’s song titles. It just happened to me as I read today’s prompt. King Crimson has an improvised instrumental track on the Starless and Bible Black record called “We’ll Let You Know.”*
When we figure out how to balance work and home life, we’ll let you know. When I am at work I am working. When I am at home I am not working. Does that make sense? That’s how it should be, shouldn’t it? Why is it so hard to do? Why is so much at home time spent thinking about work and so much at work time spent thinking about home? What’s the deal there, Robert?
It’s a problem, but it’s more of an existential problem as one rarely gets in the way of the other when something important comes up. In priority situations I am able to keep the two separated. It’s the quiet, non-priority moments that the mind wanders across the divide.
So like I said, if I figure it out… I’ll let you know.
*Just noting that both the guitarist and the drummer on this song had birthdays this week.
The song is an instrumental so there are no lyrics to tie into this discussion. Also, it was improvised on stage so they probably only ever played it once. There’s a moment in this when the bass and the drums lock together in one of the sickest grooves ever.
-
Daily writing prompt How do you balance work and home life? View all responsesI often find myself thinking in song titles. Sometimes it is movies or TV quotes, but often it’s song titles. It just happened to me as I read today’s prompt. King Crimson has an improvised instrumental track on the Starless and Bible Black record called “We’ll Let You Know.”*
When we figure out how to balance work and home life, we’ll let you know. When I am at work I am working. When I am at home I am not working. Does that make sense? That’s how it should be, shouldn’t it? Why is it so hard to do? Why is so much at home time spent thinking about work and so much at work time spent thinking about home? What’s the deal there, Robert?
It’s a problem, but it’s more of an existential problem as one rarely gets in the way of the other when something important comes up. In priority situations I am able to keep the two separated. It’s the quiet, non-priority moments that the mind wanders across the divide.
So like I said, if I figure it out… I’ll let you know.
*Just noting that both the guitarist and the drummer on this song had birthdays this week.
The song is an instrumental so there are no lyrics to tie into this discussion. Also, it was improvised on stage so they probably only ever played it once. There’s a moment in this when the bass and the drums lock together in one of the sickest grooves ever.
-
Daily writing prompt How do you balance work and home life? View all responsesI often find myself thinking in song titles. Sometimes it is movies or TV quotes, but often it’s song titles. It just happened to me as I read today’s prompt. King Crimson has an improvised instrumental track on the Starless and Bible Black record called “We’ll Let You Know.”*
When we figure out how to balance work and home life, we’ll let you know. When I am at work I am working. When I am at home I am not working. Does that make sense? That’s how it should be, shouldn’t it? Why is it so hard to do? Why is so much at home time spent thinking about work and so much at work time spent thinking about home? What’s the deal there, Robert?
It’s a problem, but it’s more of an existential problem as one rarely gets in the way of the other when something important comes up. In priority situations I am able to keep the two separated. It’s the quiet, non-priority moments that the mind wanders across the divide.
So like I said, if I figure it out… I’ll let you know.
*Just noting that both the guitarist and the drummer on this song had birthdays this week.
The song is an instrumental so there are no lyrics to tie into this discussion. Also, it was improvised on stage so they probably only ever played it once. There’s a moment in this when the bass and the drums lock together in one of the sickest grooves ever.
-
@avril_lavigne
Follow Avril Lavigne:
- Fediverse: https://tube.reck.dk/a/avril_lavigne @avrillavigne
- Watch more music videos by Avril Lavigne: https://tube.reck.dk/c/avrillavigne/videos
- Listen to Avril Lavigne: https://tube.reck.dk/a/avril_lavigne/videos
- Listen to "Let Go" 20th Anniversary: https://tube.reck.dk/w/p/2Mg3sEdH3XeU8mBkNV2SFM
- Subscribe to the official Avril Lavigne channel: https://tube.reck.dk/c/avrillavigne
Lyrics:
Just lay your head in daddy's lap, you're a bad girl
Bad girl
One, two, three, four
Hey, hey, I'll let you walk all over me, me
You know that I'm a little tease, tease
But I want it pretty please, please
You know, you know, you know I'm crazy
I just want to be your baby
You can fuck me, you can play me
You can love or you can hate me
Miss me, miss me, now you wanna kiss me
Choke me 'cause I said so
Stroke me and feed my ego
I've been a bad girl, don't you know?
(Don't tell me what to do)
Come get it, now or never
I'll let you do whatever
I'll be your bad girl, here we go
(One, two, three, four)
Miss me, miss me, now you wanna kiss me
(Mmm, you're a bad girl)
Baby, you know I want a little taste, taste
So let me take you all the way, way
You know you'll never be the same, same (you fuckin' bad girl)
One night, you won't forget the rest of your life
So come on over to the wild side
Buckle up, and baby, hold on tight
Miss me, miss me, now you wanna kiss me
We both know that you love me 'cause I'm so bad (you're so bad)
Choke me 'cause I said so
Stroke me and feed my ego
I've been a bad girl, don't you know?
(Don't tell me what to do)
Come get it, now or never
I'll let you do whatever
I'll be your bad girl, here we go
(One, two, three, four)
I've been a bad girl
I've been a bad girl
I'll be your bad girl (bad, bad, bad girl)
I'll be your bad girl
I've been a bad girl
I've been a bad girl
I'll be your bad girl
I'm such a bad girl (one, two, three, four)
Choke me 'cause I said so
Stroke me and feed my ego
I've been a bad girl, don't you know?
(Don't tell me what to do)
Come get it, now or never
I'll let you do whatever
I'll be your bad girl, here we go
(One, two, three, four)
Bad, bad, bad, bad girl
Written by: #Avril #Ramona #Lavigne, #David #Hodges, #Chad #Robert #Turton
Album: Avril Lavigne
Released: #2013
#AvrilLavigne #AvrilRamonaLavigne #googleFree #youtubeFree #lyrics #musicVideo #popMusic #rockMusic #music #alternativeRock #femaleMusic #femaleMusicians #femaleMusician #femaleSinger #femaleVocalist #OfficialVideo #OfficialAudio #2010s -
“In all time coming for the use of the public”: the thread about Leith Links
There was a Council consultation that closed on October 21st on the topic of an Activity Park for Leith Links, so what better time to have a quick thread on Leith Links and its history as a place of leisure? When I said this is quick, it’s actually going to be quite long, so if you’d like to jump to a particular section you can use the section links below.
- Golf
- Cricket
- Bowls
- Unusual pursuits: Cock-fighting and Quoiting
- Football
- The Bandstand
- Putting and Tennis
- Playparks
- Explore Threadinburgh by map:
So first up, what is a Links? Links (from the Old Scots Lynkis, from the Old English Hlinc) are the characteristic sandy, undulating, raised (usually) coastal beaches covered in scrubby and grassy vegetation that are commonly found on the east coast of Scotland (they are also found in other places too).
Dunes, North Berwick West Links. CC-by-SA 2.0 Richard Webb via GeographLinks were often the common of the nearest town, as is the case with Leith, and it was as frequently called the Links of Leith as Leith Links. They are also inextricably associated with golfing, a game which goes back to late Medieval times in Scotland; as such, many Scottish golf courses are known as Links. Again, this is also the case with Leith.
Ainslie’s 1804 Town Plan, showing Leith Links as “a Common for Playing at the Golf”. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandGolf
So I’m sorry if you think golf is just a way to “ruin a good walk“, but you can’t do the history of Leith Links without also doing the history of golf… Indeed, one of the earliest good pictures we have of them is as the backdrop to a golfer! In the background of David Allan’s 1780s painting of William Inglis (click here to view it, and zoom into the detail) we see people at play on the undulating, scrubby Links above the beach of South Leith Sands. Beyond that we can see (left) South Leith Kirk and towards the centre the prominent cones of its glassworks kilns and some of its finer villas.
William Inglis, c. 1780s, by David Allan. Cc-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandAn earlier engraving by the landscape artist, surveyor and cartographer Paul Sandby shows a 1751 view of Leith from what is now known as Easter Road. In it, we can faintly but clearly discern characters on the Links amongst the hillocks with what appear to be raised clubs.
Detail showing Leith Links and what appears to be golf at play, from “Leith from the East Road”, Paul Sandby a 1751 Etching. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland.But golf goes back much further than the 18th century in Leith. Folk were so mad for it that in 1592 Edinburgh Town Council had to ban its playing on the Sabbath. The books of the Kirk Session1 of South Leith is full of offenders who golfed during the “tyme of preaching or tyme of sermons“. In 1608, John Henrie and Patrick Bogie were “accusit for playing of the Gowff on the Links of Leith everie Sabboth the time of the sermounes, notwithstanding of the admonition past befoir“. That means they were accused of playing golf on Leith Links every Sabbath at the time of sermons, despite being previously admonished for it. For their troubles they were fined £20 each and put under caution that any subsequent offences would get £100.
John Dollman, 1896, “The Sabbath Breakers”, John Henrie and Patrick Bogie discovered by the Minister and a Kirk Elder playing golf on Leith Links. © The Trustees of the British Museum, 1938,0617.5- In the Kirk (the Church of Scotland), the Session was the body of the elders that formed an ecclesiastical court for the parish that had responsibilities for the administration – and discipline – of the congregation ↩︎
It wasn’t just the ordinary folk who golfed at Leith – the nobility, clergy and royalty loved it too. Both James VI and Charles I ordained that after church, people should not be prohibited or discouraged from their “lawful recreation“. Indeed Charles I is reputed to have been golfing on Leith Links in 1641 when he received news of the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion that would lead to the Irish Confederate Wars (part of the complex series of interlinked conflicts known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms that would ultimately see Charles lose his throne and his head).
“Charles I, While Playing Golf on Leith Links, Receives News of the Breaking Out of the Irish Rebellion”, John Gilbert, 1875Governments, wars and heads of state, came and went, but inevitably the people were drawn back to golfing on the Links. In 1682, the “first international game of golf” took place here, when a scratch pair representing Scotland beat a pair representing England. The Scottish twosome was composed of John Paterson, a cobbler in the Canongate and reputedly the best golfer in the City, and one James Stuart, Duke of York (Later James VII and II). They played a pair of English gentlemen to settle a wager over which country had a longer association with the sport.
“The First International Foursome”, (lithograph after Allan Stewart 1919 ). The Duke of York looks on as cobbler John Paterson plays a stroke against the two English Gentlemen. Note that while the gentlemen and Duke may be appropriately attired for the period, the style of Paterson’s bonnet and their caddy’s kilt are rather 19th century.Leith’s association with golf was very strong; an epic poem, The Goff, was written and published in 1743 by Thomas Mathieson detailing the story of a game on the Links. It was the first book published that is devoted entirely to the game, and describes the Links thusly:
North from Edina, eight furlongs or more.
The Goff, Thomas Mathieson, 1743
Lies that famed field on Forth’s sounding shore.
Here Caledonian chiefs for health resort —
Confirms their sinews in the manly sport”In the 18th century, the golfers of Leith Links were said to be “the greatest and wisest of the land… mingling freely with the humblest mechanics in pursuit of their common and beloved amusement. All distinctions of rank were levelled by the joyous spirit of the game…“. In 1744, the “gentlemen golfers” decided to organise themselves into a club under the patronage of the Magistrates of Edinburgh – The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. They were not the first such club in the city, but they were perhaps the most prestigious. The City provided a prize to the new institution, which was to be competed for on Leith Links annually, a silver club valued at £15. This is why David Allan’s painting of William Inglis, which we saw earlier in the thread, has the Links as its backdrop. The prize club was drummed through the city, carried by a Baillie (senior official of the City), to announce the competition, and Allan includes this scene in the painting (look to the right of Inglis) and also as one of his exquisite watercolours of the occupations of the city. The winner of the trophy became Club Captain (Captain of the Goff) and President for the year and was required to fix – at their own expense – a silver golf ball to the prize club with their name on it. These are the balls on the club we see in Allan’ s paintings.
Prize of the Silver Golf at Edinburgh, 1787, David Allan. Cc-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandThe first winner and therefore captain was a surgeon, John Rattray, whose statue stands on the Links. The Goff describes him (thank you to Jan Barker for highlighting this to me):
Rattray for skill, and Corse for strength renowned,
The Goff, Thomas Mathieson, 1743
Stewart and Lesly beat the sandy groundIn 1744 it was he who signed the first ever formal, written set of rules and regulations for the game – the “Articles and Laws“. This is used to substantiate Leith’s claim as “home of Golf” over St. Andrews and a statue of Rattray was recently place here. While rules and practices of the game were slightly different, the principles are recognisably the same. A big difference for instance at Leith Links was that there were 5 long holes of 400 yards each, which took around 6 or 7 strokes to complete. They were played 4 times for a full game, or 20 holes vs. the modern 18.
John Rattray statue, Leith Links. CC-by-SA 4.0 StephenCDicksonBut as a course the Links was far from ideal – it was wet, windy and poorly drained. There was the ever present difficulty of encroachments by people exercising their right to the common – bleaching laundry promenading, or grazing their animals. The military too liked to use the Links, where wappenshaws (literally “weapon showings,” musterings) had long taken place. As a result, golf began to wane here in the early 19th century. Most of the Leith clubs and even the veritable Honourable Company folded for lack of interest and finance, although the latter reformed in Musselburgh in 1836 before moving to Muirfield. In 1867 the game was rejuvenated somewhat on the Links after a high profile national prize tournament of professional players was held here. The game played according to Leith Thistle rules, 4 rounds of 7 holes. Old Tom Morris, “the Grand Old Man of Golf” was there, but the £10 first prize was won by Robert (Bob) Ferguson of Musselburgh. But even though it continued to be played with some enthusiasm on the Links, golf would never again be as important or prominent a pastime as it once had been. It found itself being edged out by competing demands for the space, from newer and more fashionable sports crazes.
“Grand Golf Tournament, by professional players on Leith Links, 17 May, 1867”. CC-by-NC 4.0 Image Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library, ID GMC-48-10-3Putting the use of the Links to one side, let’s look at the ownership and legal status of the them. The superiority of Leith and its Links had long been owned by the City of Edinburgh, but by 1833 the latter was broke, having greatly overextended itself by borrowing for building Leith Docks and imprudent financial management. In the words of the government, the city found its affairs “for some years past been in a state of great embarrassment” and in need of a bailout. Various conditions were attached to this, including some of the land set aside for docks being ceded to the Admiralty and the rest put into the trust of the Leith Dock Commissioners. The town of Leith also got the chance to buy itself off of Edinburgh under the provisions of The City Agreement Act (1838) – “An Act to regulate and secure the Debt due by the City of Edinburgh to the Public; to confirm an Agreement between the said City and its Creditors; and to effect a settlement of the Affairs of the said City and Town of Leith“. And so it was that Edinburgh’s long standing, jealously guarded and bitterly resented municipal control of Leith came to an abrupt end.
Section 33 of the aforementioned Act “requires the Town Council of Edinburgh to convey the Links to the former [Leith] for an annual payment of £25” and empowered it to buy the Links completely for £625, which it would do in 1856 after letting them for 18 years. It also stipulated “said Links… shall be preserved and remain as an open area in all time coming for the use of the public, as now existing and enjoyed“. For the first time, the Links was legally designated as – and protected as – a place of municipal leisure. A prominent citizen of Leith, Andrew Gibson of Middlefield, writing to the Leith Herald in 1890 made it very clear that in the opinion of the townsfolk, “the Links of Leith belong to Leith and to Leith only. The Town Council of Edinburgh have nothing to do with the proprietorship… The Town Council of Leith” he said “are the exclusive owners of Leith Links; but, by law they are bound to keep the Links up in a certain manner for the use of the public generally“.
After the purchase was made and the Town Clerk of Leith had the titles safely in his office, the Town Council set about transforming the Links by making provision for two of the up and coming, mass-participation sports of their day (1857).
Cricket
The first of these was cricket, a sport that had been played on the Links since at least 1806, when the first game is recorded as being 3 innings between “the Gentlemen who play on the Calton Hill” and the “Edinburgh University Club“. The latter won by 11 wickets and 32 runs and both sides agreed to meet again. A Leith cricket club was established on the Links in 1828, “it numbers about thirty members, including many of the most respectable and spirited young gentlemen in Leith” and played thrice weekly at 6AM. The Leith Franklin club was formally constituted in 1852 by workers from Fullarton & Co.’s printers on Leith Walk and was named for the inventor and printer Benjamin Franklin. The club is now Leith Franklin Academicals, having merged with Leith Academicals in 1988, and is still going to this day – there’s a good chance that it is Leith’s longest established sports club.
Cricket in 1850 – a game at Castle Howard, North YorkshireThe new pitches were inaugurated by a match between Leith Caledonian and the Royal Artillery from Leith Fort. The Artillery won my 52-41 runs in a single innings game. Cricket, a sport not often associated with Scotland, was hugely popular at the time – there were 14 clubs on the go in Leith alone.
Bowls
The other up and coming game at the time was lawn bowls. This had long been popular with the nobility in centuries gone by. Leith had greens in the 16th century, from where West Bowling Green Street takes its name, and the Honourable Edinburgh Golf Club had one too adjoining their clubhouse on the Links. But now it was a game of the urban working class. Leith had purchased an extra strip of land to the north of the Links from Edinburgh and in 1857 opened the first public greens there. The annual opening of these greens was a civic event. They were, in the words of the Provost, “inferior, perhaps, to none in Scotland“.
A game of Bowls, 1845 calotype by John Muir Wood. This is from a series of images “at Leith”. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandBowls went from strength to strength and at its peak in 1910, there were 7 greens on the Links. The original two on the north, 4 more at the western end which had been opened to accommodate demand in the early 20th century and the private club of Seafield at the east end (where my Nana used to bowl). The game was the mass participation sport of the urban working class and many big works had their own clubs. Many of these have outlasted their employers and names such as Ferranti, London Road Foundry and Fountain Brewery live on in them. Its popularity only really began to wane in the 1980s as an aging user base dwindled, and many of the public greens have shut including those on the Links, where only Seafield Club is now active.
Old postcard – bowling on Leith Links. The old building of Leith Academy, now the primary school, is prominent in the back ground.Unusual pursuits: Cock-fighting and Quoiting
There were other more unusual leisure pursuits that have had popular followings on the Links. One of the first recorded cock-fights in Scotland took place on Leith Links in 1702. The Leith Cock-pit charged 10d for front row seats, 7d for second, 4d for third. The Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh’s principal newspaper in much of the middle part of the 18th century, is full of adverts for cock-fights in Leith, with silver cups offered as trophies. The proprietor of the cock-put was a Charles Liddell, and tickets could be had “at Mr John Mellegan’s, next Door to the Laight Coffee House… and at said Charles Liddell’s, at One Shilling each“.
“Thus we poor Cocks”, satirical etching by John Kay, 1785. Between the men of East Lothian and of Lanarkshire, in the unfinished Assembly Rooms on George Street.Another popular game, particularly amongst dockers, was quoiting. It had been played on the Links since the 18th c. and was revived in 1839. A new quoiting ground was opened at the east of the Links in 1895 and it was one of the last holdouts of a once popular game in the 1930s. This was one of a number of traditional games which went under names such as quilts, skittles, kyles and 9-pin. Indeed, the 1980s housing development at the western end of Great Junction Street in Leith takes the name The Quilts after these games, as there had been a green for playing them here in the 16th century. A related game was Rowly Powly which was long a favourite on the Links (particularly betting on it) during the annual Leith Races. Walter Geikie was there to capture this scene for us:
Rowly Powly on Leith Links. The player has thrown his stick towards the pins infront of the men in the middle of the image. Others to his left await their turn. A posthumous print of 1841 after Walter GeikieWith all this leisure use of the Links they were increasingly managed for the purpose and needed maintenance. The rough and hummocky ground was gradually levelled and tidied up and its pastures mowed to become a flat public park with formal paths set out that we are familiar with today. Grazing had finally been banned in 1862 after a woman was attacked by a cow and had to be rescued by two golfers who broke their clubs fending it off. Horses had been banned in 1839 on account of the boys who would torment them and make them stampede off.
“A Lady Attacked By a Cow ” – reprinted in Stonehaven Journal – Thursday 9th October 1862The Leith Improvement Scheme of 1880 saw further wholescale changes, with the surface levelled again, ashes from the gas works used to surface the paths and trees planted. Leith Burghs MP Munro Ferguson provided 100 saplings from his own nursery and the Town Council enclosed the park with railings.
Football
The next popular pastime to take to the Links was that other “national game” – football. The first recorded matches go as far back as 1851, when the students of Edinburgh University played the gentlemen of the Veterinary College (thank you to Andy Mitchell for this information). The University won the first 2 games (which lasted 40 minutes and two hours respectively) and a third was abandoned. In 1866, 200 striking dockers congregated and “several well-contested games were played in the presence of a great many people.”
1872 engraving of a football match between Scotland and England.Regular league games did not start on the Links until 1880. In an newspaper report of one of these first matches, Edinburgh Caledonian beat Leith Trafalgar 5-0 and 1st Midlothian beat Leith Harp 3-0. But the game, particularly its popularity, was soon causing problems. The main complaint aimed at it was that it ruined the surface of the park, exposing the sandy soil below which blew away on the wind. But when the Town Council attempted to regulate its play, it found that it had no powers to do so. So in 1886, under the General Police Act 1862, they applied for and received a provisional order from the Scotch Secretary (as the office was then titled) allowing them to make bye-laws on the Links. In 1887 an attempt was made to ban football entirely, the petitioner’s hyperbolic claim stating it was “a very unnecessary and injurious game, and the town had suffered very much during the past years from it. The game did not command the respect of anyone outside those engaged in it and it had caused the death of many persons” (I have not found a record of any, never mind many, persons being killed in games of football on the Links). Another complaint levied against the footballers was “the language used [by them] was disgraceful, and besides they stripped themselves almost naked in front of the windows.”
Hyperbole aside, the issue of the game turning the Links into a “sandy desert” was felt to be real, and so football was confined to a designated western corner and was banned entirely in the summer (and on Sundays, of course). Parkies were charged with keeping footballs and footballers away, with the newspapers frequently reporting on boys being hauled infront of the magistrates for playing it. In 1922 a mother on Balfour Street complained to the Evening News that a parkie had taken her son’s new football off him and where were the children meant to play the game? By 1925, football was at crisis point, not just on the Links but in Leith as a whole. It was noted that the town had 86,000 residents and not a single official public football field, even though the terms of the 1920 amalgamation had obliged Edinburgh to provide one within 5 years. Leith Athletic, the “local” team, were obliged to move around, and played variously at Logie Green, Powderhall, Marine Gardens and Meadowbank.
Leith Athletic FC, league winners in 1924. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn 1932 Baillie Young dismissed 6 youths accused of playing football in the streets of Leith and urged them to petition the Town Council for pitches. It was not until 1938 that the Council finally relented and allowed football to be played on the Links. Wartime games were a popular attraction but by 1944 the military had taken over the ground and they had stopped – Leith Victoria FC had to play in distant Gilmerton.
The Bandstand
Proposals in 1847 for skating and curling ponds came to nothing, as did an 1895 proposal for a model boating pond. A bandstand was proposed in 1887 but was not erected until one was gifted to the Town in 1898 by an anonymous local donor to mark the coming of municipal mains electricity.
The bandstand in 1900, note how rough and sandy much of the ground is around it. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe bandstand brought controversy in 1904 when an open air Sunday concert was organised of the band of the Life Guards by the Edinburgh Sunday Society – a secular organisation to “promote the rational observance of Sunday” – they were Sabbath breakers! It incurred the wrath of the sabbatarians as a result, who wrote to the newspapers that this was “a new departure, which will, it need not occasion surprise, awaken genuine grief and pain to all who have contended for the maintenance and sacred character of our Christian Sabbath… [it] appeals to men who are asking for bread, but only offers them stone. It is the thin end of the wedge.” The Town Council enacted a hasty resolution “forbidding the playing of music on the bandstand during recognised church service hours“. The concert went ahead nevertheless, later in the afternoon, and 10,000 people gathered to hear the “pleasant, healthful and harmless Sunday recreation“. The City voted to spend £100 in 1966 to dismantle the neglected bandstand.
Putting and Tennis
By the turn of the 20th century, the Links were so busy that Golf had “become a public nuisance” and was banned in the summer months and during the middle hours of the day. In 1904 it was prohibited entirely and had to wait until 1908 for the new municipal course to open at Craigentinny on the former irrigated meadows. It made a partial return in 1925 when the Council opened an 18-hole putting green. Lord Provost Sleigh, Councillor White, convenor of the Parks Committee and Judge Keddie of Leith North Ward had the inaugural game. The Lord Provost won by 3 strokes.
The opening of the Leith Links putting green, May 1925, Evening News photo. L-R are Lord Provost Sleigh (playing), Judge Keddie and Councillor White.On that same day, the Lord Provost also opened the Links’ tennis courts. These were first proposed in 1913 but war intervened. Tennis had become incredibly popular, by this time there were 74 public courts in Edinburgh with 150,000 players bringing an annual profit of £2,000. The courts were grass surfaced and for summer use only but in 1955 they were converted to an all weather blaes surface (crushed shale waste). It was not until 1964 that Sunday tennis or putting was allowed. The old tennis courts are now home to the Earth in Common Community Croft and the tennis courts are on some of the former bolwling greens.
The opening of the Leith Links tennis courts, May 1925, Evening News photo. L-R are Mr K. Smellie, Miss M. M. Ferguson, Lady Sleigh and Lord Provost Sleigh, Mrs T. Welsh and Mr A. H. Harley.Playparks
In 1935 the park Superintendent, John G. Jeffrey, reported that on the Links there were 2 cricket pitches, 4 bowling greens, 6 tennis courts, a putting green, childrens playground and a sand pit. However the latter was felt to be unhygenic and was to be removed. In its place the council opened a paddling pool; six inches deep at its edges with a deep end of nince inches. It was an instant success, in 1936 the Evening News wrote “delighted boys and girls… ‘from early morn till dewy eve’, disport themselves at the Links pool for hours on end“.
Evening News, 24 August 1935The year 1938-9 was probably a peak of the most sustained public investment in the Links – with a tramway shelter and public toilets financed, £880 set aside for painting the railings and tarmaccing paths and a shrubbery and rockery planted around the bandstand. The park has seen investment here and there, but its public facilities have been in long term decline. There are no public toilets, the bowling greens have been abandoned almost a decade and the pavilion locked.
Leith Links Activity Park proposal concept, with a BMX pump track, a skate park, open air gym, ping pong, petanque and bouldering around the 3 current tennis courts and a rehabilitated pavilion.Note 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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Soldier-turned-forger: the thread about the farcical execution of John Young
“Drawn at The Execution of John Young in the Grass Market, Edinbr., 1751” The description says “a crowd… in the foreground, beyond them the gallows officers with the condemned man on a platform“. Except that’s not quite what’s going on here… Let’s find out more!
Drawn at The Execution of John Young in the Grass Market, Edinbr., © The Trustees of the British MuseumThe image is by the hand of Paul Sandby, the young English draughtsman who came to Edinburgh in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion to turn the triangulations of William Roy’s survey of Scotland into the incredible illustrated map. Sandby also proved to be quite the artist and with his little gang of esteemed friends (including John Clerk of Eldin and Robert Adam) in his free time he would sketch the street scenes of the city. But this isn’t a thread about Paul Sandby, it’s a thread about the scene he drew and how not is quite what meets the eye.
John Young was an Irishman, born into a lower middle-class protestant family in Belfast. He had a good start in life, was educated and apprenticed to a linen draper. But when his master died, he ended up having to go to London for work, which he found as a clerk. But he had to abandon this position in a hurry however and fled London in disgrace after he got his master’s serving maid pregnant. On the road, with no prospects, he was easy prey for the Army’s recruiting sergeants and with liberal application of intoxicants he took the King’s Shilling
Soldier of the King’s Own / 4th Regiment of Foot, 1742This was about 1744, the War of the Austrian Succession was raging, and the Army was in need of recruits. Being educated, intelligent and amenable, the officers liked him and the disgraced clerk actually found that military life in the ranks suited him. It was (apparently) the 4th Regiment of Foot (The King’s Own) that he joined and his manners and abilities quickly saw him promoted into the first sergeant’s vacancy that came along.
Shipped off to Flanders, John was said to be at Fontenoy when the Allied Army, the British contingent under the Duke of Cumberland, were defeated by the French under Louis XV. However most of the 4th missed the battle as they had been detached beforehand. Wherever he was, and whichever Regiment he was with, he apparently acquitted himself with bravery and was rewarded with promotion to company paymaster and with being sent back to England with a recruiting party to help replace the Army’s losses in Flanders.
Battle of Fontenoy 1745, by Pierre L’EnfantIt turned out that recruiting was also something John took to naturally. He signed men up on honest and frank terms and didn’t swindle them (or their families) out of their sign-on bounty. Again he was recognised by his superiors and a promotion to Sergeant Major was forthcoming. He rejoined his regiment in a hurry, as they had been shipped back to Britain along with the Duke of Cumberland to help put down the Jacobite Rebellion. (This fits with him being in the 4th). He was at the Battle of Falkirk Muir in January 1746, and apparently accounted for a few Jacobites with his Sergeant Major’s halberd. Although it was a Jacobite victory, it was a hollow one and they retreated from it.
The Battle of Falkirk Muir, 1746John marched on with his Regiment after the retreating Jacobites and was at the bloody Battle of Culloden in April. Circumstances fit that he was in the 4th, the Grenadiers of whom are prominent in David Morier’s well known painting of that battle. The 4th were hit hardest of the Government units by the Highland charge, taking 25% losses.
An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745 by David Morier.But John, and the 4th, survived the Jacobites and survived the battle. As a result of its performance and losses, the regiment remained in Scotland for “mopping up” duties, before being sent to garrison Edinburgh castle. John was sent off recruiting, reaching as far south as Bristol. Coming back to Edinburgh with plenty of recruits, he was sent off again, this time to Yorkshire. But it wasn’t just recruits who followed him back to Edinburgh on this occassion, he also had an innkeeper’s wife, with whom he had fallen in “criminal intercourse” with.
That might have been that, except the woman had cleared out her husband before fleeing. It wasn’t long before an aggrieved Yorkshire innkeeper pitched up in Edinburgh on the hunt for his wife, his money and a licentious recruiting Sergeant He didn’t take long to find all three; but John was saved from punishment on account of his having been ignorant of the wife’s theft and having not conspired with her, and the fact his officers liked him; he was a good soldier, and the army needed such men.
The 4th were shipping out anyway, so John was sent off with them to Inverness and (the first) Fort George, garrisoning the remains of it while preparations were made to build the bigger replacement at Ardersier. Coincidentally, Paul Sandby made a reconstruction illustration of it as it would have looked before the retreating Jacobites blew much of it up .
Fort George as it was in 1744, illustration (c. 1780) by Paul Sandby. Royal Academy of ArtsIt was in Inverness that John became familiar with one of his new recruits, a man by the name of Parker who had served some time as a printer. John was company paymaster, and when assisting him one day, Parker mentioned how easy it would be to copy the bank notes if you knew how. John knew better than to continue the discussion in public, but managed to get Parker aside in a tavern and pick his brains. It would be easy, said he, if you could just get a note to copy, somewhere safe to copy it, and the materials to engrave a printing plate. John could do all three, and he took on a private room where Parker and another could work, “borrowed” a Royal Bank of Scotland note from the company purse, and acquired all the materials a forger might need from the Garrison’s supplies.
Parker was good to his word, soon he had produced some Royal Bank notes that couldn’t easily be told apart. They could get away with things for a reasonable time, if they were clever, as such promissory notes would circulate in the local economy for a good long while, rather than being sent back to Edinburgh to be reconciled with the accounts against which they were issued. And although he was a mere Sergeant Major, as a paymaster it was not unusual for John to have reason to be carrying and exchanging paper money.
Royal Bank of Scotland 20 Shilling note, 1745, of the sort forged by Young and ParkerThey got away with it for at least 6 months, before their regiment got notice that it was leaving Inverness. It now seems that he may have been with the 24th Foot, the Earl of Ancram’s, rather than the 4th.
Soldier of 24th Regiment of Foot, 1742The hitherto cautious John now over-reached himself, and before leaving Inverness he had an Aberdeen stocking manufacturer, Mr Gordon, convert £60 worth of notes into Sterling. This suited Gordon as it was safer than carrying “real” money on his journey home. Gordon left a merry trail of counterfeit paper notes across the north of Scotland as he made his way home from town to town and tavern to tavern. He was horrified to get back to Aberdeen and find notices in the newspapers from the directors of the Royal Bank that they were advising merchants in the north of Scotland that they were aware of counterfeit notes circulating and to please be on the lookout for them
Realising he had been swindled, Gordon went straight back to Inverness and called upon the Sheriff. It didn’t take long to put the facts together, and news was sent chasing along after the 24th that the law would like to ask one of their Sergeant Majors a few questions. The law caught up with the Regiment, and with John, in Glasgow. When arrested, he had the copper plate and 300 forged notes on his person.
He was sent to Edinburgh to stand trial. He was optimistic that he might be let off or treated leniently, but the embarrassed bankers of Edinburgh wanted an example made of him, and so it was. Parker and the other accomplice turned King’s evidence. The trial on November 9th 1750 lasted all of a day. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang. John prevailed upon his officers to intercede, on account of his good record, but they couldn’t, wouldn’t, or were of no avail. He was sent to the Tolbooth to await his fate.
Henry G. Duguid, The Old City Tolbooth and St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. CC-by-SA NGSOn the evening of 19th December, as was the custom, he was chained in the Iron Room, the “escape proof” cell where the condemned of Edinburgh spent their last night before the final walk to the gallows. The following morning, the magistrates and 2 ministers awoke him to read him his sentence. Did he have any objections? No he did not. Would he like to speak with the ministers? Yes he would. He asked to be excused with the latter for some “ghostly consolation” for a while.
Hall of the Old Tolbooth, c.1795, by William Clark © Edinburgh City LibrariesBut John was less concerned with spiritual matter, his quick mind was instead hatching a plan. His sentence, which had just been read to him, had stated that he would be hung between 2 and 4 PM that afernoon. Having been misled by other prisoners, he assumed all he had to do was delay proceedings until after 4 and he would get a temporary reprieve. After prayers with the Ministers, he asked the men of God if they might give him a moment’s private contemplation, to prepare himself for his maker. This they readily agreed to. They left the cell, and he quietly pulled the door shut.What nobody was sure how he did it, but somehow he contrived to lock himself in the cell, and the ministers, magistrates and gaolers out of it.
When it was realised what he had done, no amount of pleading, shouting, or beating of the door could get John Young to come to his senses and accept his fate. “No“, said he, “in this place I am resolved to defend my life to the utmost of my power”. As he saw it, all he had to do was buy himself a few hours for another night on earth…
The tradesmen of the City were called, but they said it was impossible to break through the Iron Room’s door or wall without compromising the building. More likely they couldn’t be bothered with such heard work and found it all very funny. Time was ticking away. Perhaps John was going to get away with it. The magistrates summoned the Lord Provost, George Drummond, and together the combined minds of the city administration hit upon a simple scheme to thwart him. They had the town clock stopped!
Clock of the Netherbow Port, 1766, from an engraving by John Runciman entitled “
View of the Netherbow Port of Edinburgh from the West”. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThis bought them the time they needed, and finally they resolved to smash through the floor of the room above the cell and get him out that way. This took 2 hours hard work but once a large enough hole was made, one of the Town Guard poked his musket through to help persuade him out. But John was a battle-hardened soldier and had faced worse than the Edinburgh town guard. Quick as you like he grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it to himself, “declaring, with an oath, that, if any man attempted to molest him, he would immediately dash out his brains“
William Lizars Home, 1800, the Edinburgh Old Town Guard © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe gun however was unloaded, so the guardsman followed through the hole after it. He took the full force of the butt of it for his efforts, knocking him down, and it took 4 of his burly colleagues to subdue John Young. Asking if it was now after 4PM, he was informed that it was, but “he would be hanging even if it was after 8“. Realising the game was up, John resolved to be “no accessory to my own murder” and be uncooperative to his last. It took 8 guardsmen to carry him, head first, out of the Tolbooth. Refusing to walk, a cart had to be sourced, and he rode this, with the noose already around his neck, the short distance down the West Bow to his place of execution in the Grassmarket. James Skene’s sketch of 1827 shows a scene fundamentally unchanged from Sandby’s of 1750. The gallows is on the left, the structure on the right was used as a corn market.
Grassmarket and Bow, James Skene, 1827, © Edinburgh City LibrariesWhat I am pretty sure we can actually see in Sandby’s sketch is not a crowd watching the condemned ascend the gallows, it’s a scene of one waiting, in boredom and anticipation, wondering where is John Young? Where’s the afternoon’s promised gruesome entertainment?
The crowd in Sandby’s scene, talking amongst themselves, looking anywhere but at the “action” going on at the scaffold.The guardsman on the left, the one with the Lochaber Axe, looks positively bored. Is his colleague on the right pushing back the restless crowd? And what – or who – is that arriving in the background on a cart…
Closer look at the scaffold and background in Sandby’s scene.“John Young underwent the sentence of the law in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, about six o’clock on the evening“. Uncooperative to the last, he had to be carried up the scaffold. It apparently took a whole 30 minutes for his desperate cling to life to be extinguished. It is unclear what motivated him; he was not known as a spender of money or an indulger in drinking or gambling. His men and his officers liked him, he was otherwise a good, honest and brave solider, and there seems little in life he desired that his pay could not cover
It is not known either where John Young’s final resting place was. No Edinburgh Kirk recorded his death or burial in their registers that I can find. The newspapers are the only record of his exploits, his final story being printed far and wide. “This poor man had served in the army many years, with reputation, was beloved by his officers, being never before convicted of the least offence, and was said to have been recommended to the first vacant colours in his corps.” In June 1751, the Royal Bank re-issued all its 1750 edition. 20 shilling bank notes.
Note 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.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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O Felicem Diem! the thread about the Leith Banking Company and its unusual banknotes
Today’s auction house artefact is this Leith Banking Company Twenty Pounds note from 1825, issued to the payee James Ker.
Leith Banking Company £20 note dated 1825James Ker of Blackshiels esq. was the general manager of the Leith Banking Co. and lived at a fine Georgian townhouse at no. 24 Royal Circus in Edinburgh. His father, also James Ker of Blackshiels esq., had been one of the founding partners of the bank in 1792. The Kers were Jacobites and kept in the family’s possession an ornamental and incriminating drinking glass engraved with the royal cypher of the claimant James VIII of Scotland. Their predecessor, once again James Ker of Blackshiels esq., had acted as a banker to Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonny Prince and had been financially ruined as a result. But clearly along the lines the family fortune and status had been somewhat restored by the late 18th century (unlike the Stuarts!).
24 Royal Circus in Edinburgh’s New TownSo it’s rather unusual that a note made out to Ker is also signed on behalf of the bank by… Ker! As a director of the bank with which he held an account, he was fundamentally issuing his own pocket money (and that’s what it literally was, paper money that a gentleman could carry on his person)
At this time, banks issued notes to clients of sufficient standing on an individual basis, and the bank would number, sign and date every note by hand. This note has also been embossed with a 2 Shillings stamp, I’m not clear if this added or deducted that value to/from it .
Two Shillings and crown embossed stampAnd the engraving is a typical Leith scene, with a sailing ship entering the harbour. The “windmill” signal tower can be seen.
The Port of LeithBottom left is the mark of the engraver, John Beugo. Beugo is best known as the engraver of the portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Naysmith. While mainly an artistic printmaker and engraver, he did turn his hands to banknotes, also doing work for the Commercial Bank of Scotland and British Linen Banks.
John Beugo’s markThese notes were made on hard-wearing linen paper, which was produced in both Balerno and Penicuik (at mills both named Bank Mill for obvious reasons). Linen rags were a very important feedstock for the paper industry at this time (it’s where rag merchants made their money, see my thread about Asa Wass for more on the riches of this trade.) When you presented your note at the bank, it would be honoured. Deductions could be made from it, and interest or dividends paid on it, this was all noted down (by official stamp and by hand) on the back.
Various endorsements on the rear of an old banknoteThese rather plain notes were promissory notes issued to the gentlemen of means that were customers of the bank. General notes of a fancier design were also issued. In 1822 the Leith Bank issued the world’s first commemorative note to mark the arrival of King George IV. The main image was based on Alexander Carse’s painting, which hangs in the Trinity House in Leith.
Leith Banking Company commemorative George IV One Guinea noteExcerpt from Carse’s paintingTwo interesting features on this note. Firstly, at this time the Leith motto of “Persevere” was not in official use, instead the Latin “O Felicem Diem” just means “oh happy day!” in reference to George IV’s visit. And bottom left, “Fàilte don Rìgh“; “Welcome to the King!” I understand that this was the earliest use of Gaelic on a Scottish banknote; the Caledonian Banking Company did not open until 1836 and used “Tir Nam Beann, Nan Gleann, S’Nan Gaisgeach“, or “Land of Mountains, Glens and Heroes“. Walter Scott is known to have been a customer of the bank (from signed cheques that he drew on it), and one wonders if it was his influence on them that stimulated this romantic highland nostalgia in a lowland organisation.
£50 cheque signed by Walter Scott at Abbotsford in 1825 to pay his coachman and confidant, Peter Matheson, care of Scott’s agent, George Craig esq. of Galashiels.Anyhoo, the Leith Banking Company was established in 1792 by 18 merchants of Edinburgh and Leith, who were its partners. It was based in Quality Street . Here we see James Ker (senior) was the original manager. Pattison and Pillans were two of the more prominent merchants in Leith.
Leith Banking Company. Foot of Quality Street.In 1805 it moved from Quality Street to a purpose-built headquarters office in the style of the day, the architect was John Paterson (see also Seafield Baths).
Leith Banking Company HQ, Bernard Street. CC-by-SA 4.0 StephenCDicksonThe Leith Banking Company HQ, an engraving by H. S. Storer in 1820. © Edinburgh City LibrariesAt this time, this was one of only 3 banks in Leith; the other two being the British Linen Company and the Commercial Banking Company of Scotland. All were established very close to each other in the commercial centre of the town, set amongst its finest buildings. The Leith Bank as it was known, prospered for a while, and extended branches to the bright lights of Callander, Dalkeith, Galashiels, Langholm and Carlisle.
Leith Banking Company £5 George IV note. This lacks the crest of Leith, and has a caricature of a sailor welcoming the King on the right, surrounded by “Huzza! O Felicem Diem”. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIt had an agent in Glasgow and a travelling tent that visited provincial cattle and agricultural marts. The Lloyds Bank archives note that the Carlisle branch was registered as an English bank but was illegal according to an Act which forbade English provincial banks from having more than 6 partners! Trouble was brewing though, and the recession brought on by the “Panic of 1837” hit the bank’s business hard. The Glasgow Union Bank offered to buy it out but this was declined.
An American Whig cartoon showing the ill effects of the 1837 financial crisisThe bank soldiered on for a few more years until in 1842 it failed after a run caused debts of £123,582, including £10,000 of Leith notes in circulation. It was one of three Scottish provincial banks to fail that year, alongside the Renfrewshire and Shetland companies. According to newspaper reports of the time:
It was a very old established concern, but the business seems to have been dwindling away for some years, so that it has lately been considered of very little importance. The explanation which it is said has been given is, that one of the shareholders having retired from the concern, took the precaution of advertising his retirement in the newspapers, and that the depositors having taken alarm at this, a run on the bank commenced, and continued till it was deemed advisable to wind up its affairs
Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, April 28th 1842A further report stated that the partners possessed sufficient funds to pay all creditors and that “the public [were] not likely to lose any thing“. The dividends were 13s 4d per £1 on winding up, the partners were left “a reversion, a handsome one, we trust to themselves.” The Bank of Scotland took over the valuable agricultural and country clientèle at the Callendar branch and its remains were divided up by the Clydesdale Bank, its former headquarters on Bernard Street sold off to the National Bank of Scotland. The creditors of the the partners in the bank (JAmes Ker, Henry Johnston, George Craig and John Bisset) did not receive their dividend until 1848.
Footnote – in the archives of the Royal Bank of Scotland, there is something called the “spike file”. This is the sequential record (file) of the payment of promissory notes by the Drummonds Bank from 1781. When a client presented their bank note, the clerk would check their account balance, debit the relevant amount and cancel the bank note (the promissory notes were single use only) by defacing it, with a punch or cutting off a corner. It was then “filed” on a giant iron spike
The Spike File © Natwest Group ArchivesThe spike was retained as a record in case there was any quibble over payment, you could always go back to it and retrieve the note, on which the date and details of its payment would have been written by the clerk. The Drummonds’ spike got “filed” in a basement cupboard and forgotten about, which was then later walled up and forgotten about a bit more until recovered during renovations centuries later by which time the owner was the Royal Bank of Scotland.
And to bring us back round in a circle, Andrew Drummond of Drummond’s Bank was an Edinburgh goldsmith and financier who later established a bank under his name in London. Like the Kers, the Drummonds were Jacobites; his father was outlawed in 1690 for supporting James II, his brother died at Culloden.
Andrew Drummond, by Johan Zoffany, c. 1769The (Andrew) Drummonds were not the same as the (George) Drummonds who were – appropriately – Hanoverians, supporters of King George. It is George Drummond for whom Drummond Place and Drummond Street in Edinburgh are named. George Drummond was a government loyalist who helped negotiate the Act of Union, was a 6-term Lord Provost of Edinburgh, a driving force behind the New Town and other public works of the “Modern Athens” such as the North Bridge and Royal Exchange – and ironically one of the founders of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Lord Provost George DrummondNote 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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