Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

Half-way through Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington’s soulful version of In a Sentimental Mood is interrupted. Suddenly, we see and hear Malcolm X giving a speech at New York’s Harlem Square in 1960. It’s like being shaken from a delicious reverie and thrown into the ice bath of reality.

“You’ll never get Mississippi straightened out,” Malcolm X snaps at the Harlem crowds, “until you start realising the connection with the Congo.” The curious connection between Black Americans’ fight for civil rights and the second-largest country in Africa is the subject of Johan Grimonprez’s documentary.

Early on, his film quotes political philosopher Frantz Fanon: “Africa is shaped like a gun, and the Congo is its trigger.” Described thus, the Congo doesn’t sound a peaceful place. “It isn’t,” says Grimonprez. “The Congo was long raped and plundered for its raw materials. It still is. You wouldn’t have your Teslas or your iPhones without raw material from the Congo.

“And I don’t mean rape just metaphorically. If you made a map of the east Congo showing where the mining is and the statistics of how many women are raped, it’s a one-on-one correlation.”

An interesting overview of this CIA document which, if you’ve spent much time discussing politics on Lemmy, you’ve probably heard of. But the existence and meaning of the document is not as simple as many believe.

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Onesimus was an African man who was instrumental in the mitigation of smallpox in Boston by teaching the variolation method of inoculation, which prevented smallpox and laid the foundation for the development of vaccines.

After a smallpox outbreak began in Boston in 1721, Mather proliferated Onesimus's knowledge to advocate for inoculation in the population. This practice eventually spread to other colonies.

Historian Ted Widmer of CUNY's Macaulay Honors College noted that "Onesimus reversed many of [the colonists'] traditional racial assumptions... [h]e had a lot more knowledge medically than most of the Europeans in Boston at that time."

More broadly, I was taught in Murder Machines (schools) that Edward Jenner developed vaccines, but I'm recently learning that it was common knowledge in the Ottoman Empire and Africa before Jenner.

Variolation was also practiced throughout the latter half of the 17th century by physicians in Turkey, Persia, and Africa. In 1714 and 1716, two reports of the Ottoman Empire Turkish method of inoculation were made to the Royal Society in England, by Emmanuel Timoni, a doctor affiliated with the British Embassy in Constantinople, and Giacomo Pylarini. Source material tells us on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; "When Lady Mary was in the Ottoman Empire, she discovered the local practice of inoculation against smallpox called variolation."

Part of a series entitled “Rise of Hitler” by two historians.

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Current policy in Israel used by Nazis. Discussion.

Hey I was watching Shogun for the third time and noticed this in Blackthorne's ship. Looks like a fondue fountain but with moving water. I was wondering if anyone knows what it is or what is called to learn about it. Got curious, you know. Thanks.

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Hi, I'm amateur, but interested in history. I'm trying to catch up on XX century (now watching The Vietnam War) and one of the more intriguing people is H. Kissinger. I know he had a large impact on the world, but lately I just see heavy critisim of his policies and ideas (e.g. John Oliver's jokes).

I wanted to ask for a good book recommnedation (or documentary) that would explain what he did wrong (and what he did well). I bought years ago his book "Diplomacy" in some supermarket, but I'm worried that it's not a good starter point to learn about something I have no real knowledge about - his own book will probably set me on really subjective path.

I'm interested in either something about Kissinger himself, but maybe more about the general world politics of his time. I would appreciate any recommendation (if book would be popular enough to be translated Polish that would be a plus, but not requirement) :)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16753141

"Columbia demands her children!" Anti-Lincoln, anti-civil war propaganda (US, 1864)

Sourced from the US National Library of Congress

An impassioned attack on Abraham Lincoln and the human toll of the Union war effort. Columbia, wearing a liberty cap and a skirt made of an American flag, demands, "Mr. Lincoln, give me back my 500,000 sons!!!" At the right, Lincoln, unfazed, sits at a writing desk, his leg thrown over the chair back. A proclamation calling for "500 Thous. More Troops," signed by him, lies at his feet. He replies, "Well the fact is--by the way that reminds me of a Story!!!" The artist refers to the false report published by the "New York World" that Lincoln joked on the battlefield of Antietam. (See "The Commander-in-Chief Conciliating the Soldier's Votes," no. 1864-30.)

Author: Baker, Joseph E., approximately 1837-1914.

Created / Published: [Boston : s.n.], 1864.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16751749

UK National Archive

The Householder’s Handbook explained how to prepare a home for nuclear attack: Whitewash the house, tape windows and create a safe core in one of the rooms. It listed medicines, food, and supplies needed and explained what to do if there was a nuclear attack. Householders would be able to occupy themselves and their families in preparing for the worst.

Even before the 80’s version, Protect and Survive and the CND peace movement’s riposte – Protest and Survive, the handbook seemed remarkably naïve. A 20-megaton bomb detonated 500 feet above St Paul’s Cathedral in central London would have created a blast wave destroying or damaging buildings for up to 17 kilometres and deliver a lethal dose of radiation for nearly five kilometres.

A fellow officer said his body was a collander upon seeing him at a bath

34 wounds in total, and lived to 80