Tag: history

historicalagentcarter:

This fantastic little booklet was issued to US troops headed to Britain in 1942. It contains some useful pointers and charming attempts at cultural sensitivity.

On “British Women at War,” the following information is given:

A British woman officer or non-commissioned officer can and often does give orders to a man private. The men obey smartly and know it is no shame. For British women have proven themselves in this war. They have stuck to their posts near burning ammunition dumps, delivered messages afoot after their motorcycles have been blasted from under them. They have pulled aviators from burning planes. They have died at gun posts and as they fell another girl has stepped directly into the position and “carried on.” There is not a single record in this war of any British woman in uniformed service quitting her post or failing in her duty under fire.

Now you understand why British soldiers respect the women in uniform. They have won the right to the utmost respect. When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic — remember she didn’t get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich.

The full text can be read here. Here is a story from LIFE magazine outlining the use of the booklet. eatingcroutons has also posted a photo of this excerpt from the booklet, which you can see here.

the-uncensored-she:

twinkleofafadingstar:

frida kahlo was a disabled politically active woman of color who deliberately fucked with gender roles and don’t you ever forget it

And she was an anti-imperialist, anti-neocolonialist Marxist— NOT some bourgeois, white hipster “feminist” who shops at Urban Outfitters or Forever 21.

oldmosswoman:

Artifacts are the most curious things about old gardens, they tell much about the person who loved them, who gave them to the fairies to play with. Over time the artifacts and stones become the backbone of the garden supporting little biome niches.

merosezah:

Gaza August 19,2014.

“Extended cease-fire ends. Airstrikes resume. More than 30 Palestinians injured and 2  killed in Gaza.”

Israel’s Operation Protective Edge

  • 2,019 Palestinians killed [80% civilians] , including 542 children and 251 women from Israeli bombardment
  • 64 Israeli Soldiers killed in combat and 3 civilians
  • 10,223 Palestinians wounded, including 3,486 children and 1,970 women
  •  UNRWA has exhausted its capacity to absorb displaced persons, and overcrowding in shelters risks the outbreak of epidemics.
  • 122 Palestinian families have lost 3 or more members of their family.
  • UNICEF estimates about 373,000 Palestinian children have had some kind of direct traumatic experience and require immediate psycho-social support.
  • 1.5 million people in Gaza have limited or no access to water supplies. 26 health facilities have been damaged.
  • More than 485,000 internally displaced are in need of emergency food assistance.
  • Shelling and bombing have damaged 142 schools — 89 of them run by the United Nations — , and multiple Israeli strikes on Gaza’s only power plant and other infrastructure have left it beyond repair.The cost of reconstruction will run to “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars,” – Pernille Ironside, the head of the Unicef office in Gaza

Gaza Livesteam

Gaza Updates

Gaza Emergency Appeal

Blacks are not likely to number themselves among the forty-six million Americans today who can trace the origins of their family wealth to the Homestead Act of 1863, because almost all of that land was allocated to whites through restrictions expressly designed to deny access to blacks.’ They cannot include themselves among the major beneficiaries of the trillions of dollars of wealth accumulated through the appreciation of housing assets secured by federally insured loans between 1932 and 1962 because 98 percent of FHA loans made during that era went to whites via the openly racist categories utilized in the agency’s official manuals for appraisers.’ Most blacks know that past discrimination continues to influence contemporary struggles to accumulate assets because wealth is inherited and passed down across generations. In recent years, moreover, changes in the tax code have further skewed opportunities and life chances along racial lines by giving favored treatment to those forms of income most likely to represent the fruits of past and present discrimination like inheritance income and capital gains, while lessening the value of income gained through work. The living legacy of past discrimination combines with the impact of contemporary discriminatory practices in mortgage lending, real estate sales, automobile credit financing, and employment to impose artificial impediments against asset accumulation among African Americans.

George Lipsitz (via dglsplsblg)

owning-my-truth:

You must always remain vigilant in the face of the vile Zionist propaganda about Hamas and all Palestinian organizations.

From Phyllis Bennis’s “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”

maryrobinette:

gehayi:

youmightbeamisogynist:

naamahdarling:

mythosidhe:

Although I have to point out that there was a piece of speculative science fiction called The Blazing World published by one Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1666, slightly predating Mary Shelley.

This is the thing. Women have been doing awesome shit since there was awesome shit to do, we’ve BEEN THERE, if anyone bothered to look.

Oh, they looked. And then maliciously and willfully erased us from the books to keep anyone else from “getting ideas.”

Hell, the first named author in history? Enheduanna, a Sumerian high priestess, poet and lyricist. She’s known as the Shakespeare of Sumerian literature.

The first American mystery novel was written by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, as well as the first dime novel, and the first crime novel..