richardmurray

What she misses is a crossroads of three things. First, the studios want to maximize profit, which means they want to use media properties they already own and attract the most sales. Second, the properties studios own are quite old, decades old, centuries old and tend to be created by white people of european descent filled with mostly characters described in appearance or culture as white of european descent, which has the problem of not being as attractive to non whites than non white characters. Third, the modern buyers of media content are not overwhelmingly , overwhelmingly meaning seventy five percent or more , of white European descent and the studios want to cater to them. The three elements show the problem. The studios always want to save money+ not risk money, which means the studios are not going to buy new non white European characters or use lesser known non white European characters that many, including many non whites of European descent, don't know. So with the desire to maximize profits + risk least investment revenue this means changing white European characters they already own into non white European characters is most efficient. This is what I think many, Black or non black are missing. When I think on most popular movies in the last thirty years, few are of a new property. Every star wars/star trek/marvel/dc film is of an old property. Every biopic is of an old property, that being a famous person. Little that makes the most money is new, is unheard of. Even nosferatu which has made a splash is again, is old. So, if old properties are the fans are buying, and all the old characters owned by studios is white, simple arithmetic to save money or risk less revenue is to change characters already owned to fit the non white European buyer. And again, prove the studios wrong, not with artistic judgement videos or human communal statement videos but by sales. Consider DC has access to Milestone and yet, it never occurred to them to give milestone characters their own movies. Here is a comic imprint made by non white Europeans, mostly blacks, that has a gallery of non white European characters made by non white Europeans. DC made birds of prey changing white European descent characters. Marvel treats black panther as their non white world movies. Black panther 1 had more black people in an action sci fi adventure than ever before. black panther 2 added first peoples of the Americas taking namor the submariner and changing his character's design dramatically. But this was cheaper, and the profits prove the studios right. The biggest problem with this issue is, and I can speak of this as a writer. New characters or lesser known characters haven't proven to have big money legs. Notice I didn't say they couldn't they haven't proven it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czf2k-WJ6iU MY COMMENT The problem the studios have is they want to always save money + risk the least revenue developing+ gain the most buyers in modernity which has many more buyers not of white european descent than ever before, and based on financial results of films, year in and year out, it only leads to one conclusion and that is race swapping. To restate my point, the financial returns of the film industry prove their race swapping actions correct, against other options. TRANSCRIPT 0:00 before we get started I have a brand new 0:02 short film that is releasing on this 0:04 channel very soon I love this short film 0:06 I think it's the best one I've done yet 0:07 and I really need your guys' help for 0:09 feedback for this short film so if when 0:12 I drop it which is going to be before 0:14 the end of January I would really 0:16 appreciate if you would give it a watch 0:18 and please I highly recommend you watch 0:21 this short film to the end because it's 0:23 the best one I've done so far so without 0:25 further Ado let's get on to the video 0:27 one of the big controversial things 0:29 that's been going on and talked about a 0:31 lot for years now is racebending 0:34 characters and I haven't really thrown 0:37 my hat in the ring to talk about it yet 0:39 other than saying you know talking about 0:41 things like Batman cape Crusader that 0:43 just because you race bend a character 0:45 does not mean that the show is going to 0:47 be bad or that it needs to affect 0:49 anything but there were a couple maybe 0:52 three things that I read and that had 0:54 happened that made me finally want to 0:57 make this video because something really 1:00 got under my skin regarding this entire 1:03 conversation now race bending characters 1:06 it's very controversial does it ever 1:08 affect story is it wrong to ever race 1:10 bend a character we've seen it happen a 1:13 lot with some very iconic characters 1:15 lately that they get race Bend and it 1:17 causes a lot of tension and infighting 1:20 over this now when I was growing up 1:22 there were a lot of projects that did 1:25 have technically race bent characters 1:27 that I loved one of my favorite movies 1:30 growing up and what I think might even 1:31 be the best adaptation of Cinderella 1:34 ever was with Brandy and Whitney Houston 1:37 when they did the Roger and Hammerstein 1:39 or Stein's version of it and that was an 1:41 insanely successful movie when it aired 1:44 on TV and I loved watching it growing up 1:46 also in my teen years getting into the 1:49 Avengers and all that you had Samuel L 1:51 Jackson as Nick Fury and that is a race 1:53 bent version of the character from the 1:56 comics but everyone seemed to love 1:58 Samuel Jackson as Nick I don't remember 2:00 there being any sort of controversy over 2:03 it and so you can see that in the past 2:06 there were these times when race bending 2:08 a character would not be a big deal and 2:12 most people I think just assumed you 2:13 must have gotten the right person for 2:15 the role and would go from there but 2:18 however I would like to point out for 2:19 something like Nick Fury in uh The 2:22 Avengers I don't doubt that there was 2:24 some conversation behind the scenes 2:26 going on about you know the Avengers the 2:28 original six were six white people let's 2:30 get somebody in here who's non-white 2:32 somebody like a high caliber actor so um 2:36 we can maybe get a different sort of 2:38 audience because Hollywood has had that 2:39 thinking of for decades that they need 2:41 to introduce non-white characters to get 2:44 different demographics to hopefully 2:46 watch their film so that was the way it 2:49 was it wasn't really seen as a big deal 2:51 and I think we just went through a 2:53 period of time when racebending any sort 2:55 of character like it it didn't really 2:57 seem to anger people enough or make that 3:01 much of a controversy for Hollywood when 3:03 they did it for example you had Jessica 3:05 Alba as a Latina actress um playing Sue 3:09 storm who's a white character they did 3:11 make her wear makeup to whiten her face 3:14 a bit and that would not fly today you 3:16 had oh I can't remember the name but 3:18 Michael Clark Duncan but he did a RAC 3:20 bement version of Kingpin for Ben 3:23 Affleck Daredevil and then you have um 3:26 ight Shyamalan decided for whatever 3:28 reason to get white actors to play the 3:30 characters in his Avatar movie which I 3:34 definitely do not approve of because you 3:37 know you should have gotten Asians to 3:39 play Asian characters but anyway uh for 3:42 whatever reason he got away with it at 3:43 the time and so I think that that just 3:45 shows that there was a time in history 3:48 where race bending was just like for 3:50 whoever it was being done to it was not 3:52 seen as such a huge deal that it would 3:54 prevent it from happening in the first 3:55 place and this was after a time where 3:57 decades ago it used to be very difficult 3:59 for for a non-white actor to get a good 4:01 role it there there were very very 4:03 limited roles back then decades ago and 4:06 if you go and listen to actors doing 4:08 interviews it was very limiting the 4:10 kinds of roles they were offered if you 4:11 weren't a white person so we can see how 4:13 it's changed over time but now uh the 4:17 race bending of White characters has 4:19 become super controversial and why is 4:23 that well because they've pushed it so 4:25 hard and they've pushed it in such a way 4:27 that it's in ently cause tension like 4:31 for example um another thing I can say 4:34 growing up is that there used to be some 4:36 cartoon characters that occasionally 4:37 would be raceman like Liz Allen from 4:40 spectacular Spider-Man that cartoon in 4:42 the original uh comic she is a Caucasian 4:45 blonde girl and they made her a Latina 4:48 in the cartoon and I never had a problem 4:51 with that I enjoyed that version of Liz 4:53 Allen and I never heard anyone who 4:54 didn't have a problem with that and why 4:57 well Liz Allen that look for the 4:59 character it isn't as well known and so 5:01 I don't think people notice it as much 5:03 also there was justification and once 5:05 again they've been trying to 5:07 diversifying things like that for years 5:08 now but there was justification for Liz 5:10 Allen because she was another white 5:13 blonde character from Spider-Man she had 5:15 the same look as Gwen Stacy so changing 5:18 her per race making her look different 5:20 that it just it just act added an actual 5:23 diversity to the cast so that every 5:25 character had their distinct look 5:26 different ethnic background and I think 5:28 that that really worked another 5:30 character that was race bent in a 5:32 cartoon X-Men evolution Amara AKA magma 5:35 she was a character who was another 5:37 Caucasian blonde from the comics but 5:39 there were already a lot of Caucasian 5:41 blondes on the New Mutants team that she 5:43 originated from and they made her Latina 5:46 in X-Men evolution and once again 5:48 probably trying to diversify with that I 5:50 thought it worked though you know it was 5:52 helpful the characters all have their 5:54 distinct looks I actually really like 5:56 that version of Amara so you see in the 5:58 past it can work and not cause 6:01 controversy so how did race bending 6:03 characters start to become so 6:05 controversial for a couple different 6:06 reasons number one you'll notice when it 6:08 comes to characters like magma or Liz 6:11 Allen these were characters that weren't 6:13 very well known or I would even say in 6:15 the case of Nick Fury it was a 6:17 combination of even Nick Fury wasn't 6:19 that well known also um back then they 6:21 didn't do race bending as much they 6:23 didn't push it as hard I don't think 6:25 that people expected anything other than 6:27 they probably just got the right actor 6:29 for the role 6:30 but the problem that has happened these 6:32 days is they have been doing it to more 6:34 and more iconic characters like Mary 6:37 Jane Watson that is a character who is 6:39 very very iconically a redhead a white 6:43 redhead that is an iconic look for the 6:45 character it is really it really defines 6:48 her so when you did that when you cast 6:51 Zena as the character in culture 6:53 Michelle Jones but she's sort of pseudo 6:55 MJ it caused a lot of backlash and this 6:58 is what you see 7:00 when they race Bend characters that are 7:02 more wellknown why well because people 7:04 have an expectation for the character to 7:07 look like they do in the source material 7:09 when it's that iconic like I would say 7:12 the same thing and I've talked about 7:13 this before when it comes to like you 7:15 know Brandy and Cinderella I love that 7:17 movie I love her take on Cinderella 7:19 Cinderella is a story that's been told 7:21 by every culture every ethnicity it 7:23 really doesn't matter fairy tales can be 7:25 a lot more loose than that and I would 7:27 say the same for a lot of the fairy tals 7:30 from Disney but and while I would say 7:33 please like no one should attack the 7:34 actors and actresses over this stuff I 7:37 do think that Disney has set up their 7:39 actors and actresses up to fail when 7:42 they choose to race Ben characters in 7:44 their liveaction Disney movies why well 7:47 because while you can tell a new story 7:50 with these characters and these versions 7:52 but there with the Disney Live Action 7:54 remakes with the people who watch them 7:56 they want the whole thing with them is 7:58 that they're shot for shot remakes of 8:00 the original they're supposed to be 8:01 remakes of the original so when you set 8:03 up the expectation that this is Ariel 8:05 for example in the RAS B that character 8:08 then you start to cause controversy 8:11 there is why doesn't this character look 8:13 the way she does in the original and 8:15 does it matter that much well in this 8:18 case when I'm talking about the little 8:19 mermaid no it doesn't there's no reason 8:21 why someone couldn't play a good version 8:23 of uh The Little Mermaid that's a 8:26 different race but the problem with it 8:28 is that here's what happens you'll get a 8:30 character like Mary Jane or Ariel or 8:33 whoever it is you'll get a character 8:34 where people have a certain expectation 8:36 of how they're supposed to look uh based 8:39 on how they were from the source and 8:41 people might be critical because it 8:43 doesn't look the way that it does in the 8:44 source and that's just fandom you know 8:47 like fans want things to look the way 8:49 they were in The Source material they 8:50 want events to play out the way they did 8:52 in the material uh we'll have more 8:54 examples of that in a minute but like 8:56 that is a part of fandom when they 8:57 things are iconic from the mat material 9:00 The Source material they want that to be 9:01 reflected and here's what I've seen 9:03 happen over and over and over again in 9:05 the past decade is that they will they 9:07 will race been an iconic character 9:09 people will get upset by it and then the 9:12 response will be like you're just racist 9:15 like the only reason why you could 9:17 possibly dislike this change or find it 9:19 questionable or just not be really into 9:22 it is because you're are racist you just 9:25 cannot stand seeing a black person get a 9:28 role like this get a big role like this 9:31 and that is the only reason why you 9:33 don't like it and so because disliking 9:36 something like that gets you called a 9:37 racist you know that's a very 9:40 inflammatory terrible word to call 9:42 someone or to be accused of that in 9:45 invites anger that invites Anger from 9:47 the people who initially perhaps just 9:49 wanted a character to look the way they 9:51 did in the source material and now all 9:53 of a sudden they are in have been called 9:55 an inflammatory term that creates anger 9:57 that feeds it back to more anger at the 10:00 person that they cast in the role where 10:02 it was race bent which indeed I I 10:04 imagine I can I don't have to imagine 10:06 the people who' have been casting these 10:08 roles do not like having anger pushed 10:10 back at them so that will come back to 10:12 the way that they communicate with the 10:14 fan base or the audience and so on and 10:17 on and on it goes on like that and the 10:19 tensions rise now once again be before 10:22 it wasn't really controversial to race 10:25 benen characters so much now part of it 10:27 once again is happening because they 10:29 started doing it to more and more iconic 10:30 characters they start doing more 10:31 frequently and the other problem is they 10:34 grandstand about it so much because once 10:36 again I think before people would just 10:38 assume that if you got a role it was 10:40 because you were the right person for 10:41 that role but now Hollywood has just 10:44 grandstand it so much about look at us 10:47 we we put uh non-white characters in 10:50 this project we're putting more 10:51 diversity more non-white characters look 10:53 at us aren't we good people aren't 10:55 aren't people just going to be so happy 10:57 to be represented it's always BR 10:59 standing from Hollywood posturing about 11:01 how good they are doing this stuff and 11:02 the more they've talked about it the 11:04 more they've called attention to it it's 11:06 made people realize this is not just 11:08 happening because they happen to find 11:10 the right person for the role it's 11:12 happening because they have institutions 11:14 behind the scenes that demand this 11:15 they're doing this because of agendas 11:18 not because they just found the person 11:20 for the role and that once again blows 11:22 it up to be much more than just you 11:24 wanted to see this character look the 11:26 way it was in The Source material it 11:27 starts to become about modern-day 11:30 politics it starts to become about 11:32 agenda pushing it starts to become about 11:34 something so much bigger than that there 11:36 people are now seeing that these things 11:37 are not happening just because they 11:39 found the right person for the role and 11:41 that makes you think you know you could 11:43 have gotten the right person for the 11:44 role maybe or the person who looks the 11:47 way you wanted that character to if they 11:49 didn't have these institutions if they 11:51 weren't posturing about this and once 11:53 again that feeds more tension that is 11:56 all that has happened with this stuff is 11:57 feeding more tension to the point where 12:00 we now see explosions if ever any person 12:03 is playing a race bent character whereas 12:05 before it didn't used to be such a big 12:08 deal now I've been of the opinion for 12:10 years that it doesn't it shouldn't 12:12 matter that much race spending a 12:14 character usually if it doesn't affect 12:16 the story if they found the right person 12:18 for the role like once again Jeffrey 12:20 Wright playing Commissioner Gordon he 12:22 did such a great job at that character 12:25 as that character but some things have 12:28 made me change my mind a little bit 12:30 because of the hypocrisy I see and these 12:33 are some of the things that made me want 12:35 to make this video for example the other 12:37 day I was talking about how I do not 12:39 understand why people want Kiki Palmer 12:41 to play Rogue not because of her race 12:44 but because I just don't see the 12:46 character in her maybe she's been in 12:48 something that I haven't seen where she 12:49 reminds people of the character I just 12:51 don't see it and the point of me saying 12:53 that it's not about her race is me 12:55 saying that if there was an actress that 12:57 just completely embodied the role and 12:58 she happened to be A different race then 13:00 I could understand it but I didn't 13:02 understand this one and someone under 13:04 that Community post wrote that um it it 13:08 should it that race never matters to a 13:11 white character story that it rarely 13:13 ever is relevant to a white character 13:14 story and that that's why it's okay to 13:17 race Bend White characters obviously 13:19 that's what we're talking about here 13:20 because in this day and age they would 13:22 never dare to try to race Bend uh or 13:25 outright race bend a black character and 13:29 that got under my skin a little bit 13:31 because I'm like but it has happened 13:33 when it's relevant to the story Snow 13:35 White that was a big one they had to go 13:38 in and you they already revealed this in 13:40 the international trailer completely 13:42 changed the story to explain a different 13:44 reason why she's called Snow White 13:46 because they had to ca cast a brown 13:48 actress to play her because um for a 13:51 character who's described as Skin as 13:53 white as snow that's how she's defined 13:55 as but Disney in the day and age when 13:57 this was made just would not have a 13:59 white lead as this character so they had 14:02 to change it to honor the day I was born 14:06 my father named me Snow White and this 14:09 is an example a prime example where they 14:12 had to change the story because they 14:14 couldn't cast a white actor for the 14:15 character and it got nothing but 14:17 ridicule once again I don't know what 14:19 they're thinking about this it got 14:20 nothing but ridicule this decision 14:22 another example they did is the 14:24 Fantastic Four uh years ago they cast 14:27 Michael B Jordan to play Johnny dorm and 14:29 that creates problems because uh 14:31 Invisible Woman They cast as a blonde 14:34 white woman like she was in the comics 14:36 but um they're supposed to be biological 14:39 brother and sister but they had to 14:40 change that for Fant for stick because 14:43 they couldn't have four white leads and 14:45 if you think that this isn't happening 14:46 this has been a major conversation stuff 14:49 happening behind the scenes in Hollywood 14:51 that is part of the reason why they had 14:53 such a hard time casting for the new 14:54 Fantastic 4 is they're having a hard 14:56 time with a movie that has four white 14:59 characters as they are in the comics and 15:02 they can't have that they can't have a 15:04 movie with four white leads anymore but 15:06 you see it did change the source 15:08 material this does happen when you're 15:09 changing the source material for me 15:12 personally though it's like you know 15:14 true diversity in real life is sometimes 15:17 imbalanced like in the 90s and and the 15:20 these are shows I grew up with Loving 15:22 Family Matters all black m cast Fresh 15:25 Prince all black main cast I think 15:27 sometimes they brought in a white 15:28 characters like a villain or something I 15:29 didn't care Disney was really patting 15:31 itself on the back of being like we 15:33 hired an all Asian uh cast for Mulan and 15:36 I'm like yeah you should have because 15:38 Mulan is set in China centuries ago you 15:41 know sometimes you're going to have it 15:43 where your cast is disproportionately 15:45 black or Asian or white in fact that's 15:48 just the way it is that's what diversity 15:49 truly looks like we don't all have 15:52 perfectly uh uh quotas filled out in 15:55 real life that's just the way it is and 15:57 if you're not a racist that shouldn't 15:59 bother you that's just the way life is 16:02 so it's like there shouldn't be a 16:03 problem if you just happen to have four 16:06 white leads for Fantastic 4 as is 16:08 accurate to the source material cuz 16:10 there's other stuff like black panther 16:12 that should be a black man cast like 16:14 that's what true diversity looks like 16:16 but you know that comment that person 16:18 made bothered me because it's like no 16:20 one would ever say that blade or cyborg 16:24 should ever be A different race and I 16:26 would agree cuz those are who the 16:27 characters are so it's like for example 16:29 with Rogue yeah I would like I could 16:33 like in the past I could completely 16:34 understand you found the right person 16:35 for the role the the super official 16:37 races the change but you found the right 16:38 person so it's fine but I'm like yeah I 16:41 would like Rogue to hopefully be played 16:43 by a white actress why because she's 16:46 been white in the comics for 40 years 16:49 yeah that that because it's accurate to 16:51 the source material I would like sorg to 16:53 be black because that's accurate to the 16:55 source material in terms of race 16:56 spending there has been controversy 16:58 about colorism about are they hiring 17:01 light brown skinned actors to play Black 17:04 characters uh there's been some 17:06 controversy about that like Sunspot in 17:08 the various adaptations he's had he's 17:10 supposed to be black in the comics and 17:12 it's important to his character and his 17:13 origin for him to be black and fans of 17:15 that character have been upset that he's 17:17 always lighter brown skin and AD ad 17:19 adaptations and I would agree with them 17:22 why because I know what Sunspot is 17:24 supposed to be in the comics people want 17:26 storm to be cast by a darker skin 17:29 black actress and I'm like yes because 17:32 she while storm and the comics was born 17:35 in Harlem she grew up in I think she 17:37 moved to Cairo Egypt she grew up in 17:39 Kenya for a time like that should be the 17:41 characters now from that I think that 17:43 it's okay for someone to also say I 17:45 would like this character to be white 17:48 solely because that's the way that they 17:50 are in the source material and that's 17:52 fine because all this race bending has 17:55 done is it's caused tension it's caused 17:57 hate to the actors that they do it to 18:00 it's caused a lot of division and and 18:02 things blowing up out of proportion to 18:04 become even bigger than just a simple 18:06 casting in a show you know here's the 18:08 real big Crossroads of thinking is for a 18:11 long time I've always been like you know 18:13 if you've just found the right person 18:14 for a role then race bending is okay but 18:17 the problem is that it only ever goes 18:19 Runway like back in the day when they 18:21 cast uh mostly non-puerto Ricans in fact 18:24 only one Puerto Rican to play a Puerto 18:25 Rican character in Westside Story um uh 18:28 one could also say that the actors did a 18:30 good job with their roles but would it 18:32 be was it still right for them to take 18:34 roles away from Puerto Ricans no and so 18:37 that's sort of the crossroads I come to 18:39 with my thinking on this stuff is that 18:41 there is a double standards with it and 18:44 recently the latest controversy over Ray 18:46 spending came over the upcoming 18:47 Spider-Man cartoon where Norman and 18:49 Harry Osborne are black and all I saw 18:52 for this was ridicule not from white 18:55 people so much but black people I just 18:57 saw so many people on YouTube or Twitter 19:00 and these accounts of from black people 19:02 making fun of this because they don't 19:04 actually want it and it was a completely 19:06 an unnecessary change and I watched a 19:08 video that was actually from a black 19:10 person and and he said something that 19:12 really stuck out to me in it and it was 19:15 that um they keep saying this doesn't 19:16 matter it doesn't matter it doesn't 19:18 affect the story so why should it bother 19:19 you and he said if it doesn't matter 19:22 then why do it and it's insulting 19:24 because it makes me feel as a black 19:27 person that you don't see me me as 19:29 legitimate unless I have to have 19:30 something else that came from a white 19:32 person it's annoying and there's going 19:34 to be people saying oh it doesn't matter 19:36 calling demingo is a good actor and he's 19:38 voicing the character you are 100% right 19:41 so if it doesn't matter why do it and 19:45 and that's the whole thing with this 19:46 race bending is so many times it's been 19:49 uh forced and unnecessary and people see 19:52 that and all it's done is drive up 19:53 tension so here is my proposal How about 19:56 if a character is supposed to be black 19:58 then cast a black person if a character 20:00 is supposed to be white cast a white 20:02 person and that way you won't have so 20:04 much tension from groups and and all 20:06 this infighting and arguing and and you 20:09 don't have to focus so much on people's 20:12 race all the time and I think that's 20:14 where we're headed right now you can 20:15 really see how Disney has been affected 20:18 by this and the Tangled live action 20:20 remake and I am completely against a 20:22 tangled liveaction remake but all of the 20:24 the rumored castings for it has then 20:26 Sabrina Carpenter or Florence Pew so a 20:29 white blonde woman to play a white 20:31 blonde woman good fine I think that 20:34 Disney has learned from the Snow White 20:36 movie that it is just ridiculous to 20:37 force it when it doesn't make sense and 20:39 at this point you know it's it is a 20:41 little crazy because as I said race 20:44 bending used to not be a big deal he 20:45 used to get away with it used to be able 20:47 to do it it used to not be a big deal to 20:49 see a non-white person play a 20:51 traditionally white character but they 20:53 made it a problem they made it so that 20:56 now people see it as Force they see it 20:58 as just agenda pushing they don't see it 21:00 as natural to the story they don't 21:02 assume that the person must have gotten 21:03 it because they were right for the role 21:05 they've spoiled it in effect because a 21:08 lot of this stuff that we've been seeing 21:09 this activism in media is just there and 21:12 it just spoils the very thing that 21:13 they're trying to promote so um yeah 21:16 that's my stance on Race bending 21:17 characters I think once again you could 21:19 have gotten away with this uh once upon 21:22 a time I think that there is a big 21:24 minutia in it and it just kind of 21:25 depends on the standards of the day 21:27 about um what is considered morally 21:29 acceptable or not but at this point it 21:31 would just be best to cast people the 21:34 way they were from The Source material 21:35 so you won't have such a fury about it 21:38 but that's all I got for you guys today 21:39 are you mad about me I was nervous about 21:41 talking about this topic but I figure my 21:44 maneuver ears resolution going forward 21:46 is to not be so scared of talking about 21:48 these hot button topics and the more 21:50 that we talk about it and they're just 21:52 normal about it I think the less the 21:54 people out there who will just scream 21:56 racist at you will be able to be 21:58 prominent but that's all I got for you 22:00 guys today what do you think of this 22:01 video yell at me in the comments thank 22:03 you patrons as always for supporting me 22:05 even as I'm covering these topics uh 22:07 once again new short film coming out 22:08 soon and I will see you guys next time Prior Post https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11424-economiccorner008/ POST URL https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11444-economiccorner009/ PRIOR EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/144-economic-corner-8-january-15th-2025/ NEXT EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/166-economic-corner-10-online-divestiture- 01282025/

Miss Evers Boys from Movies That Move We -01/2/2025 my thoughts and trasncript + video https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2835&type=status my thoughts 1932 to 1972 the Tuskegee experiment went on. I learned of Tuskegee in the home and community centers at elementary age and in high school in the educational system. ... I remember a scene in the film Giant 1956 when the character played by rock Hudson says to the character played by Elizabeth taylor that the white doctor of the family is not for public use or use for other people, other people in this case were Mexican immigrants in Texas. That scene encapsulates the overall problem. The healthcare industry in the usa has always been a business that is used by whites to display biases toward the non white. The movie Alice 2022 shows this in multiple ways. And the problem with healthcare as an industry is it is historically expensive. Healthcare is not cheap. Consider that car company workers/steel company workers/government workers, the cost of their healthcare overtime is the biggest bill. in amendment or commented Healthcare has always been historically for the have's not all, and you see that throughout humanity even today, even in countries in western europe deemed universal in care. I can't wait for your first show in black history month:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJrcIlzfQhc TRANSCRIPT 0:13 [Music] 0:25 [Music] 0:30 hey everyone welcome back to another 0:32 edition of movies that move we today we 0:37 will be talking about Miss ever's boys 0:41 um now I hope you not not like me if you 0:43 hadn't heard about this film before and 0:45 thought it was about medar Evers and his 0:48 mom and them it's not it's not this is 0:52 um it's a fictionalized telling of the 0:58 Tuskegee uh project 1:00 and if you don't know what that is let 1:03 me tell you a little bit about it um 1:05 Tuskegee Alabama there was 1:08 a pretty decent population of black men 1:12 who had 1:14 syphilis and um you know the government 1:17 saw it and said hey perfect opportunity 1:20 for us to explore how this the progress 1:25 of this 1:27 disease and so they 1:30 setup shop in 1:32 Tuskegee told these men hey we're going 1:35 to treat you for the condition they 1:38 didn't tell them that they were research 1:40 subjects they didn't tell them they 1:42 weren't getting 1:43 treatment and these men did not give 1:47 consent to basically be used as guinea 1:51 pigs this project ran from was it 1:57 1932 to 2:00 19 no 1932 to 2:05 1972 okay so they were allowing men with 2:08 syphilis black men with syphilis to just 2:13 ride the disease out um and it's not a 2:16 comfortable disease you you can get it 2:19 it can go 2:21 dormant it can come back up there's like 2:24 five stages to the condition you'll end 2:27 up with skin lesions there are some 2:29 people who who survived it the biggest 2:32 problem here beyond the fact that they 2:35 were experimenting on black bodies was 2:38 that when it was found out that 2:41 penicillin was The Cure none of these 2:44 men were given the option never told 2:47 that some of them would die if they like 2:49 took it well no in reality no yeah but 2:53 I'm just saying in the movie like that's 2:55 what they were they were telling them 2:56 that if if you take it you you could die 3:00 which wasn't true but talking about the 3:04 movie this is it's not based on a 3:07 specific story but it is inspired by a 3:12 nurse who did work with some some 3:15 patients during that time so we have in 3:19 the role of nurse Evers um Alfrey 3:25 Woodard Caleb humph is her love interest 3:29 who is is played by Lawrence Fishburn 3:31 and I believe he's one of the producers 3:33 of the film um Dr Douglas is played by 3:37 Craig Sheffer and he is the white Doctor 3:40 Who is leading the um experiment um we 3:46 have Dr Sam brus who's played by uh Joe 3:50 Morton AKA Papa Pope those of you who 3:53 know no um he is the black doctor that 3:58 is leading it because of you have 4:00 something like this going on you got to 4:01 get black people to talk to black people 4:04 um Willie Johnson is played by Oba Baba 4:09 tund hodman Bryan is played by Van 4:13 couter Ben Washington is played by Tom 4:16 gosam Jr so 4:20 Caleb uh Willie hodman and Ben they're 4:25 referred to as Miss ever's boys and all 4:29 of them them were 4:31 participants in the study in this film 4:36 um and then the late great aie Davis 4:39 played um Alfrey woodard's father Mr 4:43 Evans so this is going back like I said 4:48 1930s 4:50 Tuskegee black people were still working 4:52 in the fields there were still 4:54 sharecroppers um and it was a big deal 4:57 that 4:58 she uh Unice Evers was a nurse you know 5:03 she's working in the hospital she's 5:05 working with doctors she wasn't a 5:07 servant or anything like that she 5:10 recognized it her father recognized it 5:12 it was the type of career that could 5:14 have taken her 5:15 anywhere um when this came up she was 5:19 the head nurse 5:22 under Dr broadis so Joe Morton she was 5:27 working with him and he said hey 5:30 I'm taking you with me we're going to to 5:33 Tuskegee there's something happening 5:35 down there that they want us to be a 5:37 part of that happened to be the area 5:40 where she grew up so Caleb she was 5:43 already familiar with because he used to 5:46 pull her Pigtails in 5:48 class so there was some relationship 5:52 there and her relation built with the 5:55 other three men to the point that you 5:57 know they were performers in the 5:59 community Comm they name their band 6:01 after her um the whole thing gets 6:05 sticky because at a certain point she 6:09 realizes that wait a 6:11 minute we're we're not treating them 6:14 we're just doing research and she was 6:17 excited at first because the 6:20 government's paying for it they're 6:21 giving these guys they're they're going 6:23 to help the black people and there were 6:25 a handful of people who were wey but 6:27 when they heard what I get a free meal I 6:31 can get free rides and all this other 6:34 you know the government is catering to 6:35 me they were like all right sign me up 6:38 so I'll let you take it from here what 6:40 what were your thoughts about well first 6:43 of all I'm going to ask the question I 6:45 usually ask is this something you 6:47 learned about in school no not at all 6:50 and what was crazy was when I when 6:53 I because I was actually the one that 6:55 chose the 6:57 movie when I saw it 7:00 I never even really heard about it but 7:04 when I saw it I was like oh you know 7:05 what based off the description I was 7:07 like this might be a good watch it seems 7:09 like 7:10 something that um might be educational 7:13 because this is something again we 7:15 weren't taught about in school so to 7:18 watch it and then like even down to the 7:22 way things were kind of broken down to 7:25 these men when they're coming into their 7:27 community and telling them what they're 7:29 going to do and how the government is 7:31 funding this and everything like that it 7:34 was 7:35 so it was kind of surreal for me to 7:38 watch cuz it's just like they really 7:40 kind of felt like they had to not only 7:43 bring Miss Evers and the doctor in the 7:46 black doctor in 7:48 to kind of facilitate or help facilitate 7:52 these conversations with these men but 7:55 it was almost 7:56 like oh we have to kind of dumb it down 7:59 for them too because whereas the white 8:02 doctor that came in was kind of like hey 8:05 you know I want to get technical with 8:07 these guys and let them know the exact 8:09 diagnosis Miss Evers and the other 8:11 doctor involved were like no we should 8:15 probably kind of tell them something 8:18 different I don't think they were 8:21 dumbing it down I 8:24 think okay let me not say that yes they 8:26 were but by saying blood like oh well 8:29 it's something in your blood like I'm 8:32 and she explained that what she said to 8:34 to the doctor 8:36 was you have to talk to them in their in 8:41 their language if you tell them that 8:45 they have a virus they're going to panic 8:48 and we won't have anyone to complete the 8:50 study with so they understand illness is 8:54 something in the blood so that's what 8:57 we're going to tell them that there's 9:00 something in the blood we're gonna give 9:02 them some treatments to to help heal 9:06 them and they'll be more willing to go 9:09 along with it if we phrase it in terms 9:11 that they comprehend okay okay that's 9:15 like a lawyer trying to speak to you in 9:18 legal vernacular and you're going my 9:19 rights or what and there was a scene in 9:21 the part or there was a scene in the 9:22 movie 9:23 where the the white doctor is like 9:26 telling them what he's about to do and 9:28 what testing they're about to kind of go 9:31 through and everything and why they're 9:32 being tested for this and they're just 9:34 all sitting there looking at him like 9:37 you going to do what and Miss Evers kind 9:40 of had to step in but I just felt like 9:42 throughout the whole 9:43 film there were so many things that and 9:47 what was crazy was there was kind of 9:48 like that little bit of a contrast 9:49 because here it is you know they're kind 9:51 of talking like that to the rest of them 9:53 they're not giving them full information 9:56 as to what's going on and Lawrence fish 9:59 Burn's character um Caleb Caleb 10:04 he he actually was kind of already 10:07 educating himself you know he let Miss 10:09 Evers know look like you don't think I 10:12 can read I'm going to the library and 10:14 I'm looking this stuff up myself yeah 10:17 and he asked for a book cuz he was like 10:19 I want to know more about this exactly 10:22 so he kind of even though he was also 10:24 not giv a lot of 10:26 information Miss Evers did kind of offer 10:28 up a little little bit of information to 10:30 him in the beginning 10:31 but he kind of already knew in the back 10:34 of his mind certain things and something 10:36 wasn't right yeah so he was kind of 10:38 already hip to what was going on but 10:42 unfortunately these other guys that were 10:44 involved in this process they just 10:46 didn't know and they kind of like leaned 10:49 on Miss Evers a little bit to kind of 10:51 take them through this process yeah um 10:55 and it's unfortunate because if they 10:58 were a little bit more 11:00 honest and even a little bit more 11:03 instead of using them as guinea pigs 11:05 actually got them the help that they 11:08 needed they would have been fine you 11:11 know they would have lived normal lives 11:12 you know um oh my gosh I keep drawing a 11:16 blank with his name Caleb when he went 11:18 to the military he said look I got that 11:21 penicillin shot because one this was my 11:24 only way to get into the military 11:27 properly but two like I'm not messing 11:29 around my health like I'm doing whatever 11:31 I have to do and he was kind of trying 11:34 to encourage the other men to do the 11:36 same 11:37 but the the the role of the medical team 11:42 in this 11:44 situation was to just monitor the 11:47 progress of the disease and keep them 11:51 from getting treatment elsewhere yeah 11:54 and there's a scene in the film where 11:56 one of the guys um he's like I can't 11:59 take it anymore Caleb takes him to a 12:03 hospital to get the penicillin and the 12:05 nurse turns around looks at the 12:07 clipboard and says no you can't have it 12:10 and they were like why can't he get it 12:14 and she said because you're on the list 12:16 I can't give it to you cuz he was a part 12:18 of this experiment so all of the 12:20 hospitals in the area had the names of 12:23 all of the the the men who were being 12:27 researched and they refused them care 12:31 when they came to it and in this 12:33 situation it 12:35 was uh Willie Willie was the dancer in 12:39 the group you know he was hopping up and 12:41 down you know dancing like they do at 12:43 the Cotton Club and he had dreams of 12:44 getting there and it started to affect 12:47 his Mobility so he was like I can't I 12:49 can't live like this I need to to have 12:53 it fixed Caleb didn't tell him exactly 12:57 what was going on even though though he 13:00 had an 13:01 ankling and he did try to talk to Unice 13:05 about it and say okay what aren't you 13:07 telling me and she was like I can't I 13:10 can't and I think part of the reason why 13:13 she said she can't a um she was told 13:17 that she can't she shouldn't and then 13:19 the other part was she was ashamed 13:21 because once she 13:24 realized what this really was MH she was 13:30 like I I can't tell anybody that I'm 13:33 knowingly a part of this and she was 13:38 offered an opportunity she was about to 13:41 take the opportunity to go back up north 13:45 for for 13:47 work and she changed her mind because 13:50 she was like these guys need me I can't 13:54 leave them in other words I help put 13:56 them in this predicament I can't aband 13:59 she went through a tremendous like 14:01 internal struggle to the point where it 14:04 even affected the relationship she had 14:05 with Caleb because it was like here it 14:08 is they were in love they kind of wanted 14:10 to go away together and all that but she 14:13 had the guilt of kind of how this whole 14:16 process started and then the guilt of 14:18 like kind of what happened after that 14:21 how these men were affected and then 14:24 here it is you know Caleb comes back 14:25 from the war and everything and he's 14:27 like look like you know it the deed has 14:30 been done this is already happening like 14:32 we need to just go start our lives and 14:34 she's like I can't leave these guys 14:37 behind like I just can't do it and it it 14:40 it unfortunately affected their personal 14:44 lives because it's kind of 14:46 like had this experiment not even 14:49 happened none of them would be in this 14:51 predicament at all so right and so um 14:57 back to reality 14:59 um a lot of things came out of this time 15:05 period rules were put in place um once 15:09 this was re was revealed and you know 15:13 the public expressed outrage over it new 15:16 policies were put into place to make 15:19 sure that you know people were aware of 15:24 when they were a part of medical 15:26 research so now you are in invited to 15:30 clinical studies you don't just become a 15:33 guinea pig because someone says you know 15:35 what I want to see how long this person 15:37 survives if they have XYZ disease you 15:42 have to be offered you have to be 15:44 compensated you have to be treated like 15:47 a human being and not a lab rat that's 15:50 required by law um there are 15:55 institutional review boards so one set 15:58 of do s can't come up with this 16:00 experiment run it privately and then do 16:04 what they want with the information if 16:05 you're going to have a clinical trial 16:08 then there's a review board to make sure 16:10 that you are following all processes and 16:13 protocols that are laid out to make sure 16:15 that the patient is cared for um and you 16:20 know this this movie kind of speaks to 16:23 and you being a Med medical professional 16:25 you're aware of some of this um it kind 16:29 of speaks to what impacts uh mortality 16:33 rate amongst 16:35 African-Americans and while it has 16:39 improved there's still room for 16:43 improvement plenty of room for 16:45 improvement because the mortality rate 16:48 birth rate between black women and white 16:51 women there's still a gap there same 16:54 thing for breast 16:57 cancer there's still a gap there and 17:00 even and I can speak from my own 17:02 experience when trying to get um 17:06 assistance with health 17:08 issues you probably going to have to go 17:10 through as a a black woman you're 17:12 probably going to have to go through a 17:14 few doctors before you can get yeah what 17:18 you need I had a talk with my doctor the 17:20 other day and she was like oh I 17:22 recommend this doctor and I was like 17:25 uhuh went to them and I didn't even get 17:28 into it with her about why how racist 17:32 this doctor was towards me I just said 17:36 no and I think that's where I related to 17:40 Caleb because he was like I'm advocating 17:44 for myself for myself I'm here but I 17:47 have a lot of questions that I need and 17:49 I love you know I love that about his 17:50 character because I feel like and I try 17:52 to kind of impress this upon the 17:54 patients I work with in general because 17:57 as a human being like you have to be you 18:01 have to be researching you have to be 18:04 thoughtful and thorough with your own 18:06 health care like you have to be 18:08 questioning these doctors you know and 18:10 asking them about this stuff because 18:13 they don't know it all they don't know 18:15 at all there are some doctors that go by 18:17 the book or they are just trying to sell 18:20 the these you know medications to to get 18:25 perks and things like that it's kind of 18:27 like you have to be your own Advocate 18:30 you have to research yourself because 18:32 here it is in this scenario it's like if 18:35 he didn't do that research on his own 18:37 and like kind of take that extra step 18:40 and try to figure things out on his own 18:42 he would have been just like some of 18:43 those men that that ended up dead 18:46 because it's like you know you got to 18:48 kind of ask more questions and care more 18:50 about your health and not just listen to 18:53 what a health care provider or whatever 18:55 is telling you all the time yeah there 18:58 was one guy and I I didn't write his 19:00 name down in the notes did all the 19:02 research looked him up his name was 19:06 Charlie I can't remember his last name 19:09 now I'll try and put up a picture of him 19:12 but he was one of the um last survivors 19:16 of the Tuskegee 19:19 experiment and the reason why I 19:22 remembered him is because they they did 19:24 a a report about him and he 19:29 wore a hat at all times because again 19:32 when you get syphus you if it's not 19:34 treated or treated quickly you start to 19:37 get lesions and they they kind of 19:38 represented that in the um in the movie 19:42 where these guys had like marks on their 19:45 face he had marks on his 19:50 scalp and so he used to wear a hat to 19:53 hide 19:54 it but he was and which president was it 19:58 I don't remember if it was no no no no 20:01 no no cuz this was in like the '90s 20:03 shortly before he passed but he was 20:07 given some kind of medal okay by the 20:10 president 20:11 for um his his involvement and survival 20:16 because black people are rewarded for 20:18 surviving um he was given a reward for 20:22 that but that man suffered through all 20:26 of that and you know I think he died in 20:30 I want to say he passed away in 20:33 2009 darn I wish I had notes on it but 20:35 I'll try and put that up at the 20:37 end all in all as far as historical 20:42 content I feel like this was pretty 20:45 accurate even though it's a 20:46 fictionalized movie I think it was 20:49 pretty accurate if you're not aware of 20:52 the Tuskegee experiment I definitely say 20:56 watch it go down the rabbit hole get 20:59 online do the research um and once again 21:04 sit your kids down to watch it you know 21:08 I think the news just broke today that 21:10 apparently at the federal level Black 21:12 History Month is being cancelled 21:15 so look don't let it be canceled in your 21:18 house celebrate educate make sure you 21:22 know about stuff like this because as we 21:24 can see history is starting to repeat 21:26 itself in a very backwards way so that 21:30 being said hope you enjoyed this review 21:33 don't forget to like share follow 21:35 subscribe to our YouTube page also our 21:39 Facebook page even though I'm trying to 21:41 move us off of meta completely because 21:45 reasons um our group on Facebook is 21:48 called movies that move we you can also 21:51 find me on the spill app download it 21:56 it's aiv it's nice and quiet over there 21:58 under my page which is Nay wres n i ke 22:03 wri I Tes and also on fan base same name 22:08 nay 22:10 writes and YouTube where movies that 22:13 movie is the name of the playlist we 22:15 have more than two years of uh movie 22:19 discussions that you can check out and 22:21 hey we like comments on the old stuff so 22:23 feel free but definitely let us know 22:26 what you thought of this movie and and 22:29 um what are we doing I don't think we've 22:30 decided on the next movie we haven't 22:32 decided on the next movie but there are 22:35 some Runner UPS I know the next two that 22:39 we're looking at is um the piano lesson 22:43 and fences those are like the top two 22:46 options for the next Go Round right and 22:49 so we'll keep you posted on that there 22:52 will be no show next week but the first 22:55 week of 22:56 February we're going all in we're 22:58 celebrating black history mon over here 23:00 we are we don't care who don't like 23:03 we're celebrating 23:05 ourselves anyway thank you so much for 23:07 joining us and until next week we'll see 23:10 you later bye bye

Year of the Snake Chinese New Year in 2025- Jan 29 2025 The year of the snake is meant to be a year of intelligence + inconsiderateness. Remember the idea of yin-yang is very present in many chinese schools of thought so it isn't merely what is emphasized that is positive but also what is negative. Intelligence in this case means search for knowledge which at its most negative is inconsiderate to the ramifications of such searches. Dynamite with the noble prize, the nuclear bomb by oppenheimer, the 1900s computer by turing, all of these were acts of knowledge, the person that started these technologies wasn't a warrior but each regardless to their intentions had an inconsiderateness in their quest for knowledge to the dangers and destruction their technology in its form or advanced would bring. Turing was punished for being a homosexual, at least in my view, so he took his life after the second phase of the war of white european empires. Oppenheimer had a role in giving the nuclear tech to russia to make sure the usa alone didn't have the technology which post hiroshima + nagasaki , which I can tell you from a first hand source was not needed militaristically, the usa proved it shouldn't have possession of any nuclear weapons and at the least none alone. Noble has a prize still awarded in his name, dynamite did tons of damage on the battlefield or to environments. I know some in the knowledge community, science[from the latin] means knowledge not wisdom or arithmetics [mathematics [[from the hellenistic]] means knowledge too, not arithmetics or wisdom],view the acquisition of knowledge is to be achieved regardless of how it is used. It is inconsiderate of inconsiderations , assuming a faith based notion to it. So the most positive outlook is to help those you can with your knowledge, embrace the erudition to derive more knowledge, and be careful of inconsiderations. It is a wood year, so wood is strongest at springtime, the colors are greens or blues. Wood deals with growth, which at its best can be a time of great advancement at its worst can be a time where one is.. to big for their britches. ORchid or cactus are lucky flowers.The fourth lunar month is the month of the snake. So it is strongest then, any babies born from april 20th to may 21st

A Spoils of war government 1/26/2025 https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2833&type=status IF YOU DIDNT CLICK THE LINK ABOVE The USA is based on slavery and all that entails. MY THOUGHTS What is most unfortunate about the united states of america u.s.a. is people like me and others who live in modern times, circa 1970 to today, were raised with a u.s.a. that culturally engineered itself to blockade the past. Yes, as a child of two book reading black parents who love true history i was raised knowing about the way the usa federal government operated not too long ago. But, this needs to be in schools. Instead you have parents , preach merit or earned living to children when the usa was founded and lived through its entire life to modernity on nepotism in one form or another. Yes the usa is fiscal capitalistic, but from its beginning fiscal capitalism was merely a cover story for imperialism, where whites absent the regal lineages could claim warrant of position, as opposed to Europe where at he time the usa was born, wealth was still connected to regal bloodlines more than fiscal capitalistic value. Sequentially, the whites of the usa always find ways legal or illegal as per their tradition to maintain their fiscal capitalistic wealth , regardless of their lack of merit or earnings. This has not changed. In parallel, blacks through the black church created this tradition of merited value in the usa which only allows for power or growth for black individuals while the black populace suffers under the machinations of white spoils. THE ARTICLE Sunday Morning How a president's death helped kill Washington's "spoils system" sunday-morning By Mo Rocca January 26, 2025 / 9:52 AM EST / CBS News "To the victor belong the spoils." For decades in the 1800s, that phrase was more than a slogan; it was the official hiring policy of the U.S. government. "You win the election, you're entitled to put all your own people in there," said journalist and historian Scott Greenberger. He says that under that "spoils system," the main job requirement for most federal employees was … loyalty. It was a system inaugurated by Democratic President Andrew Jackson. "When he came in, he was – and this will sound familiar – he was afraid that sort of entrenched bureaucrats would resist his policies. And so, he cleaned everybody out." Were people aghast at this? "I don't think they were aghast when it began," Greenberger said. "But by the time we get to this 1870s and the 1880s, it was the one of the top issues on the national agenda." This was a period of abundant wealth and corruption in American politics. "It's a fascinating period with so many parallels to our own time," said Greenberger. But a fight was underway to replace the spoils system with the hiring of qualified government workers, regardless of their political views, whose job security did not depend on whoever was president. "Civil service reform," as it was known, may not sound sexy, but it was one the hottest political issues of the Gilded Age, even attracting the attention of America's foremost author. In 1876, the same year he published "Tom Sawyer," Mark Twain participated in his first political rally in Hartford, Connecticut, said local historian Jason Scappaticci. It was a big deal: "He had voted, but he had never campaigned for anybody," he said. After marching through downtown in support of Republican presidential nominee Rutherford B. Hayes, the legendary humorist called for an end to the spoils system. "We will not hire a blacksmith who never lifted a sledge," he said on September 30, 1876. "We will not hire a schoolteacher who does not know the alphabet … but when you come to our civil service, we serenely fill great numbers of our minor public offices with ignoramuses." The speech landed on the front page of The New York Times. "That just goes to show how vital he is, how big his name is," said Mallory Howard, assistant curator at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. She's not surprised that Twain would have been so horrified by the spoils system: "I think he felt it was embarrassing putting people in office who are not prepared. I think it doesn't make sense to him." Hayes made it to the White House, but little progress was made on civil service reform during his single term. Hayes was succeeded by President James Garfield, who ran on reform. But only months after being sworn in, the spoils system exacted its most horrifying toll. Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled and delusional office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. In 1881 Charles Guiteau sought a position in the administration of newly-elected President James Garfield. When his entreaties for a post were rebuffed, Guiteau shot the president. Three Lions/Getty Images Guiteau had campaigned for Garfield, and believed that the president "owed" him. Worse still for reformers, Garfield's vice president, Chester Alan Arthur, suddenly elevated to the top job, had climbed the ranks of dirty machine politics, enjoying the fruits of the spoils system along the way. "This was a nightmare scenario for the reformers," said Greenberger. "And then all of a sudden, here he is, he's President of the United States, and he expresses support for civil service reform, which shocked everybody." Yes, in a surprising about-face, in 1883, President Chester A. Arthur – contrite, by some accounts, over the murder of Garfield – signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the first of its kind in U.S. history. The law was strengthened over time, laying the groundwork for a professional bureaucracy responsible for everything from food safety to financial regulation. Greenberger said, "It really paved the way for a more active federal government." Of course, the federal government of the late 1800s, with about 50,000 employees, looked like a lot different than today's workforce of more than two million. And critics, including President Trump, believe the numbers – and the protections afforded those civil service workers – have gone too far. Hence, President Trump's executive order this past week aiming to make it easier to fire some federal workers. "We're getting rid of all of the cancer," he said. Scott Greenberger says maybe the time has come for another debate about the role of the civil service: "Yes, you should be able to fire people who aren't doing their jobs. And the protections shouldn't be such that someone who's incompetent is allowed to stay in a job. At the same time, if you eliminate those protections entirely, then you go back to the sort of system that we had in the 19th century, where only political loyalists are serving these positions." A system undone by an unlikely hero who most people don't even remember was president … one that even Mark Twain put on a pedestal. "It's funny that we hardly remember the guy today," Greenberger said. "But when he died, people, including Mark Twain said, 'Wow, that guy was the greatest president we'd ever had!'" Uniform Resource Locator https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-garfields-assassination-and-the-birth-of-the-civil-service/

Story Pitch Contest January 2025- 01/26/2025 the three winners are picked for the https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1151773450 CONTENT IF YOU DONT CLICK THE LINK ABOVE Story Pitch The Other Immigrant is a 20,000 word philosophical coming of age political fiction for adults about displaying the variance between one's unelectronic self and their publicly recorded identity using the journey of Marta told through epistle/narrative pairs in chronological order from her being a baby being held by parents crying at the termination of an immigration app to her election day success to become the president of the United States of America. Added information I had other ideas but a friend was discussing this and they conveyed the app and presidency to me. i thought it was a nice current event aspect, which fits pitches. Title: The Other Immigrant Gere: Philosophical coming of age political fiction Audience: adults word count: 20 ,000 words what story is about: Displaying the variance between one's unelectronic self and their publicly recorded identity using the journey of Marta told through epistle/narrative pairs in chronological order from her being a baby being held by parents crying at the termination of an immigration app to her election day success to become the president of the United States of America. IN AMENDMENT I argue, Monsignor with Christopher reeves did better in going into a crisis of faith or the journey a catholic has with their faith, and the side characters go into the various qualities of faith.

CENTO Series episode 88 May it be months or years, I once feared you, but I no longer wish to. Life has brought me undeniable anguish, It is all I have that is of value, Take it all, I insist. Nimue was a wielder of the sword, after all. https://www.deviantart.com/themysteriouspoet/art/Baby-Nimue-1009233727 a snow owl pokes my ribs it disappears in the flurry of snow beating with the heart at unison; a wasteland catharsis https://www.deviantart.com/lorian-aindal/art/Mute-and-Deaf-1020987189 Epub series https://www.kobo.com/us/en/series/richard-murray-short-story-collection Audiobook series https://www.kobo.com/us/en/series/richard-murray-tip-jar-audios To get a microcalligraphy signature go to the following pay page https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/commission/Microcalligraphy-signatures-1487995

BGEDOV- Black Games Elite Deviantart Oembed Viewer - January 24th 2025 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/480-bgedov-black-games-elite-deviantart-oembed-viewer/ If you need links to test, copy and paste the following https://www.deviantart.com/kiratheartist/art/Little-Friend-1113175550 and to find more to copy and paste go to the following https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/favourites IN AMENDMENT Star Trek Deep Space Nine is the best written star trek series. Second best is Discovery. Deep Space Nine even had prescience https://www.tumblr.com/spockvarietyhour/738407716519870464/star-trek-deep-space-nine-past-tense-pt-1

Tiktok and Fanbase january 24th 2025 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11431-tiktok-service-restored-ban-suspended/#findComment-71288 IF YOU DONT WANT TO CLICK THE LINK ABOVE @Pioneer1 tiktok was never owned by the chinese government, the firm that owns it in china is bytedance. The issue with china is the chinese constitution which is not in its first iteration but fourth, specifically gives, from the first iteration, the chinese government control over any firm for the interest of china. This stems from the china being split into parts by outsiders including the usa before mao. No firm doing business in china or based in china is about the chinese government, it is their law, from their first constitution and has survived each constitutional restructuring. The reason is simple, most foreign websites simply don't do well. If you look at the internet all the major english speaking websites are from the usa, france/germany/uk/russia have all tried but the english market is dominated by usa websites until bytedance took their short video social media service, duayin [bad anglicized spelling] and made tiktok. Then the implications hit the usa government. The funny thing is, in parallel, the chinese government by its own law, can never allow a firm to do business in china that doesn't have a security arrangement with the government of china. Remember the usa federal government from its very infancy was never designed to be proactive. Rememeber, the articles of confederation was the first idea, and that was merely a militaristic function and nothing more at the federal level. Yes, the constitution gives the executive branch powers, but from the cia/fbi to executive order usa growth, to the expansion of the federal military and the expansion of powers to the president under national security or others, the federal government has grown beyond what it was intended. The idea was the governments of the states would be strong and the federal government would be this military protector to them. The federal government of the usa was never designed to be a centralized authority, like the chinese government from mao. Outside of military affairs the usa federal government is very reactionary, meaning let problems occur in the market and then fix them. @Troy Tiktok is for adults. It has the best numbers for youth among the big websites, especially in the usa but tiktok is heavily used by adults to. From my point of view, it is what twitter is to blogging. The short video si what youtube never was able to implement correct. Tiktok got it correct and the algorithm tkiktok uses is key.I know quite a few artists , adult artists of various genres on there. Email newsletters is the way do you want a follow on fanbase? tell me how the migration goes for you, i have far less tiktok content rmemeber when facebook went down for a day.. this is the modern reality, people who have their money or their lives tied into the esocial services such that their pausal is devastating @ProfD whining:) the influencer industry is a multimillion dollar industry:) I wonder why you use the word whining? Ahhh the I am late so all his talk of early is wasted https://www.fanbase.app/@RMfanbase UPDATES Fanbase has audio rooms https://www.fanbase.app/audio/room2_a0e97793-0be3-45ae-bb56-d51802db3eb9 and Tiktok now has been sold to a private set of investors in a private contract, with Oracle of Austin Texas, who handle networks for CIA+FBA+NSA+others handling some data storage systems. But the full details I don'tknow. 1/24/2026 Citation https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12355-black-owned-online-social-media-websites-future-what-is-their-future/#findComment-79623 sted just now @ProfD 4 hours ago, ProfD said: Producing a Black-owned social media website is relatively easy. Getting Black foks to use it is the bigger challenge. really? monthly rent for hosting data, data transmisions, cost more than a dollar? if the site becomes popular you have to support that popularity with more expensive backend. the likes of facebook and tiktok have huge silos or network systems all over the world to simulate instantaneous use, that is easy? the money to get that is easy? ok, i don't think it is easy at all. And, considering how many websites have failed @Troy what percent of websites have succeeded that have been made since the 1990s in the internet? I say less than one hundreth of a percent. I think that proves getting anyone to use a website is a challenge. Which makes sense to me. A website has to have a function. Tiktok does short videos. youtube does long videos. twitter does bylines. facebook is where whole clans are connected online. instagram does photos. google is a search engine. Each major website serves a strict function. yes, you have niche players, like a tumblr/aalbc/deviantart that all serve specific or more detailed functions. yahoo search is still active. but I think most websites are failures so I don't see why most black websites being failures is anamolistic? @Pioneer1 3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: I've said time and time again that one of the problems a lot of our people...especially a lot of women....have with this site is that there is too much personal freedom to post and say what you like with very little moderation. Troy is very light handed when it comes to being a moderator. Conventional wisdom would say that having the freedom to post your opinions freely is a good thing that would attract people by the thousands. A true expression of freedom of speech and thought. However because of the angry and vindictive nature of a lot of our people, this produces the opposite effect. People like to be able to get you in trouble. They like to get your posts deleted or even get you blocked/banned if you say something they don't like. You see it all over social media where you come on a channel or show and you say something the crowd doesn't like or agree with....instead of ignoring you or tolerating you....they alert the moderators and tell them to block or ban you. It's the culture now. A culture of intolerance. Those same people get mad as hell for being blocked for expressing THEIR opinion on a matter, but they'll then turn around and insist that it's fair and demand the same punishment for other of a differing opinion. This is the very juvenile and extreme thinking of a lot of people. So a site where they can't run and tattle tale to a mod or point the finger at somebody and make them vanish isn't very attractive to them. Some of the things you and I have said on this site....we would have been banned our first WEEK on Lipstick Alley, lol. Plus....let's keep it real..... A lot of our people don't like sites where Black men are in charge. Going back to our sistaz again. Some of our sistaz don't like spaces where the ultimate authority is a Black man. They'll accept it from a White man or even another Black woman, but the idea of a Black man holding power over what goes on or who goes and who stays....they don't like. I've known some who didn't want to even WORK for a Black man. Nearly all of them had daddy issues. But the very idea that a Black man signed their pay check and told them what to do and could punish them, they didn't like at all. They were so used to dissing Black men growing up and telling them to kiss their ass....for a brutha to have that type of authority didn't sit well with them. I know what I'm saying may sound extra, but it's the real deal when it comes to why the traffic on this and other Black ran sites are often light. Expand I am paraphrasing the mariner from the film waterworld, "I have traveled farther than most online and I have never seen a websites failure based on anything but its effectiveness" In my travels, I have seen a number of chinese websites fail, japanese websites fail, french websites fail, brasilian websites fail. usa websites fail. What they each have in common is not some demographic group hurting them, but each failed or has failures or has become niche because the function they served another website served better or more robustly. When I look at black owned websites online. First and foremost I can't recall one black owned website that had a technological edge or focus. Youtube emphasized videos. Tiktok short videos. Google search. Neither was the first to do it. Other websites before youtube did videos but they didn't emphasize the technology, the investment was small, it was more toy than function. Tiktok the same. youtube literally did a short video service three years before tiktok, it failed and youtube shut it. Now youtube has shorts in response to tiktok, but what is the point. Tiktok invested in short video in a scale that gave it an edge or focus. Google wasn't the first search engine but again they focused on it, gave it an edge that others didn't. When I look at Yahoo for example, which started as a web directory. Yahoo's great flaw in their financial history was that they gave up on web directories. they assumed falsely, that the growth of the internet would make a directory unfeasible but I think they were wrong. I argue the internet could use a great web directory. And then yahoo led in email but again, didn't implement email's better over time. Blackplanet never had a technological edge, its whole selling point was a place for black people but it didn't offer a technological edge. So most black people looking to make videos went to youtube. Wanting a search used google. Sharing photos on the phones used instagram. Chatgpt, right? it is the llm use. Technological edge first and foremost leads people to anywebsite and for all the black engineers who are lauded in media for graduating from MIT or working for Goldman Sachs , I don't see any of them with any websites ideas. And yes, tech cost money on the backend, but again, this isn't 1926, 2000 wasn't 1900, some black people were billionaires so....no excuse. AALBC doesn't have a technological tool that isn't present anywhere else, if it did, that would help. Second, when I look at the internet and websites that are communally driven, most work because the culture of the particular peoples is out the sphere of anglo media. Meaning what? Overdrive was supposed to be France's answer to the social media, but most people in france went to facebook/instagram/twitter? why? is it because white people in france don't like themselves. No, it is , because the way they communicate wasn't different enough, their culture wasn't different enough than what was offered in anglo media. Black owned websites offer the same reality. Black people's culture or communication fits well enough in the anglo websites to exist. But if you are japanese/chinese who tend to have cultural websites because they have cultures/communication that doesn't fit the anglo internet as well. India doesn't have one major website, and how many firms in the usa have indians all through them? why. because indians are usually anglophiles, who culturally fit well into anglo media. Indian or French websites aren't being hindered by the women in their community , their online populace simply fits well enough in anglo websites and it makes all of their websites niche, like aalbc. I have tried to find a black populace that needs an outlet, that would help aalbc to serve a particular black populace. Third, userbases, Cristiano ronaldo is the most followed person online, he gets paid by websites for his presence. And why do the websites pay, because his presence brings users, and the greater the userbase, the greater the ad revenue, the greater the userbase, the greater the views to posts in general. AALBC hosts black authors, who are barely in the forum. If Troy paid them they would be more, as in the big websites who pay millions to people like barrack obama to be active on their websites, which helps their userbase. Now, AALBC as a niche website doesn't have to do that. But that is the reality. Tiktok/Facebook/Instagram/Youtube/twitter/even schrumpfs truth social all have big users who attract casual users. That is reality. It is uneven to ask AALBC or specifically Troy to pay people to engage. And you see this all over the internet. It isn't something rare. So, the userbase of AALBC absent attractors has limits of growth.If Beyonce+ Oprah+Neymar + Paul Kagame were on AALBC, I think this website would have a huge increase in usage. So, I don't see any blame in black women for AALBC's usage or lack thereof. I commend Troy for maintaining this large rent. As most people who own a restaurant will tell you, I am not doing this for the money, I am doing this cause I love it. But if AALBC could find a technological edge. If aalbc could reach a particular black populace whose culture was away from the anglophone, and needed particular attention. if AALBC could afford to pay for big attractors. That would change the volume, not necessarily quality, of activity on the website in a positive way. @Troy Interesting, how pervasive is lurking online? I see in discord many talk of lurkers. how many lurk online? 1/25/2026 Citation https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12355-black-owned-online-social-media-websites-future-what-is-their-future/#findComment-79700 osted just now @ProfD 16 hours ago, ProfD said: F*cebook was started by a teenager in a college dormitory. M*crosoft was started by a college dropout. Apple was started by a marketing wizard & his friend who was a wiz with electronics. Y*hoo & G**gle were started by nerds in silicon valley. Sure, these companies have grown into sprawling behemoths but they came from the proverbial mustard seed. IMO, Black folks have the aptitude to invent things. Too few lack the entrepreneurial spirit. Seems easier to trade labor for wages. Expand Filo + Musk who started yahoo are the only ones from truly financially humble beginnings. And, to be even, they got lucky. Again, less than 1% of all websites failed. So, the entrepreneurial spirit you are talking about failed many non blacks. so.. your argument on the whole is unfounded but... I continue Zuckerburgs father offered his son a mcdonald's franchise , how many black parents can do that or euqivalent for their children? please don't say it is common for black parents to offer the next generation wealth. Gates parents have always been on the boards of big companies, how many black parents are on the boards of large companies while their children are in high school? please don't say it is common. And don't insult black history, again, black people have been blockaded from financial wealth by whites in the usa from1 492 to 1980 nearest holistically. Jobs father is from a fiscally wealthy syrian family. wozniak's father was an engineer for lockheed. Please don't say that they are financially common. Page and BRin for Google had well connected and well off parents. working as engineers for nasa or colleges in the usa. How many black engineers have not been accepted at Nasa? that had every single thing a white engineer did. Nasa is a great job for an engineer. You are connecting with big financial channels. All of them through their relatives or communities, many are white jews or have white jewish background which has a financial aspect to it, some are simply nepo babies, that have money or access to money, like Musk, who is also from a financialy wealth white clan. You mention entrepreneurial spirit but don't mention lack of fiscally capable parents. I know few black people have fiscally aiding black parents. I know that. it is interesting to me how so many black people in the usa accept white power or white advantage but then in assessing black people, blame ourselves as if the white people who are wealthiest in the usa, aren't assisted by white power or white advantage but simply have the entrepreneurial spirit. It is very imbalanced, or uneven thinking. @Pioneer1 I give blood to a blood bank, five times a day. @Troy 1 hour ago, Troy said: 90% of social media visitors are lurkers. It is probably higher than that on some platforms. How many of you actually created TicTok or YouTube video for the public but have used the platform. The number of lurkers here is probably higher than 90% because of some very popular posts generate a lot of traffic. I have created youtube or tiktok videos to share my art, but I am not the biggest user of either platform. There are a few youtubers I like because they are informative or interesting in the arts. I like Mayowa's world cause she is a black natural haired woman who has insightful positions on black identity, accented cinema cause he makes great posts on asian cinema. I like shadversity cause they develop weapons and test them and have helped me think on weapons in my own stories. So i admit as an artist youtube has some great educational folk. What are your thoughts on what to do about lurkers? any ideas. I comprehend that bots have always been used to augment perceived activity on websites, from the early 1990s. Thinking on it for a minute, from bots to paid real members of websites to now the llm identities, the children of the bots, so much activity online is augmented... two questions come to mind. 1)Of the facebooks/twitter/youtubes/google searches/netflix or other, how many of them used bots to augment their activity to appear positive? In my mind I begin to wonder, how many websites failed cause they didn't invest in bots, didn't invest in ways to augment popularity? If you augment popularity even if you aren't making money, maybe you can keep the investments running, especially in the dot com craze days, the earlier eras of the internet when money flowed to these bleeding firms. 2) what activity online has the least lurkers? I comprehend if one is online it invites de facto lurking, at least the possibility. I guess email, but I imagine you know, if not through experience through conference with others. 3) should black owned websites invested in lurking more ? I remember when beyonce or jay-z had some media thing and it was found out it had a bunch of bots, but it seemed so late in the internet, like an old style bot drive that white people used ten years earlier? 1/25/2026 Cittion https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12355-black-owned-online-social-media-websites-future-what-is-their-future/#findComment-79704 osted just now @ProfD 1 hour ago, ProfD said: The successful keep getting back up & trying again. 2 hours ago, richardmurray said: And had help, you never mention with the people you call financially successful, why do you always omit the help they got? What is that about? 1 hour ago, ProfD said: Black folks collectively have enough wealth to invest in businesses including social media platforms. really, again, i have done economic corners going through the labor numbers white people themselves state, most people in the usa aren't employed to live on their own without subsidy, and that is all demographics. And then you add the number of black people in prison, in institutions, in the military which isn't profitable. The numbers don't add up to the wealth you suggest the black populace in the usa has, let alone any populace. the white populace doesn't have the wealth suggested by media. it isn't there. The government gives people money , that isn't their wealth. If you need government subsidy to afford your life you don't have wealth. You and other blacks keep saying financial lies like this on our populace in the usa, I wonder what your agenda really is. Maybe your not black. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: Do not continue trying to tell me how to communicate. My patience isn't that long before I become the most rude & insulting mf'er you could ever read. if you insult, i will call you out as an insulter. I will ask you stop insulting black history if you do it, every single time. I don't give strangers, which is what you are to me, demands. I don't know you. I am not trying to know you. We communicate online only. Now having said that, be the most rude now, you don't know me. so, it is no harm. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: No more excuses. Billions of dollars go through Black folks hands every year. what billions? black prisoners are getting billions, from who? black people on welfare are getting billions, from who? black solders are getting billions, from who? Numbers don't add up. How many black college graduates have thousand of dollars of student debt they will never be able to pay? who has this billions you are speaking of? white man says black people are 50 million people in the usa. so for fifty million to make one billion a month is twenty dollars a month. Now, cut out black children who aren't making any money. White man say twnety seven percent are children. So fifty million minus thirteen million and five hundred thousand gets you thrity six million and five hundred. Now white man says 37% of black people are in prison or in jail in the usa. so... that is eighteen million and five hundred. so let's subtract eighteen million and fife hundred from thirty six million and five hundred which is the total black populace minus the kids who aren't making any money. That gets you eighteen million black people. Comprehend thirty seven percent + twenty seven percent is is sixty four percent, who are children or in jail prison, so no money. Now white man says one million and three hundred and thirty active soldiers are in the military and seventeen percent are black. so thhat is two hundred and twenty six thousand black folk who are making no money as rank and file, black generals are making money but their exact number i don't know and I will ignore. So that is now seventeen million, seven hundred and seventy four thousand. Now white man says twelve percent of black people in the usa are the elderly so between healthcost/rent/food and et cetera whether they use it themselves or have singed away their freedom, willingly or unwillingly , to a prison called an old folks home. that is six million so, seventeen thousand, seven hundred and seventy four minus six million which is eleven million, seven hundred and seventy four thousand. Now, white man says, twenty five percent of black people are on welfare which means they can't financially support themselves without aid from the government. So, we have from the prior calculations eleven million seven hundred and seventy thousand minut twelve million and five hundred thousand. which is negative seven hundred and twenty six thusand. If you notice, between 27% children + 37% in jail+ 12% elderly + 25% welfare that is 101% or one hundred and one part of a hundred, so what does this mean? If we hold the same statistics true from whites that black have billions of dollars per year, it isn't the children, black children earn twenty dollars a month? it isn't the people in prison. Prison labor is real but it is far below market rate, ala slavery. and most prisoners don't work. it isn't the elders with their costs, they are looking for constant savings for rent or food or medicine because they don't have it. it isn't the soldiers, soldiers stipend is over twenty dollars a month. ok, but taking soldiers out doesn't get the numbers positive, and it is well known many/most soldiers use financial assistance. It obviously isn't the people on welfare getting assistance. you can't say you earn money when you need assistance to live. the assistance is allowing what you earn to be spent other ways, that means you are in the red and being augmented, like goldman sachs. That isn't wealth. But then who? As I have always said, and who has always existed in the usa, or the english colonies that preceded it. It is the black one percent. One percent of fifty million is five hundred thousand. Which means each of the five hundred thousand would have to make two thousand a month to get to a billion. yeah, I can see that. The NFL has seventeen hundred athletes , seventy percent are black. five hundred and thirty seven athletes in the nba. successful musicians like beyonce or jayz, yeah. The numbers fit now. Black people like you have been saying erroneously, that somehow the larger village has billions. No, children/in jail/elderly/welfare recipient/soldiers. none of the above can say they earn twenty dollars a month. But the black one percent: entertainers[athletes/musicans/pundits/agents]+ the one percent of black elders with with like black enterprise folk mention+ the black one percent of soldiers who are generals or captains with a nice bit of wealth+ black one percent of elected officials like Barrack Obama and company yeah, they can reach five hundred thousand and each are easily making over two thousand a month. Yeah, your right, ProfD, the Black one percent is making billions per year. So please talk to them, but stop lying on the black financially common or impoverished masses. and as was discussed in this very form, the black one percent are a very financially stringent group, they don't gamble. they don't risk their money. they tend to invest with white cause that is safer than investing their own. So , you already know what the black one percent is doing with their money. So thus ends your points, cause no body else black has money. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: How many engineering firms have Black folks started? I know percy julian had to fight to get his chemistry firm started in the 1900s and he couldn't do it in the usa because of white power, and had to fight constantly for his business to even existeven while in mexico, by white powers of the usa , so if you are asking how many black owned engineering firms were started by DOSers when white folks allowed it in the usa, circa 1980. I imagine many black engineering firms have been started. . I offhand know of a black chipmaker who is in flux, a black owned chemical firm who went out of business. As the cost of starting a business has always risen this isn't easy. And white restriction to black empowerment has never faded away completely. And, I comprehend your larger point, which is terrible fiscal management. Saturation isn't a wise strategy financially. You accept the odds of business success across racial lines plus accept white power exists and is real, though you seem to suggest it is diminished in value today, which is the nitty gritty, but this means you your strategy is over saturation of business startups, but that is financially irresponsible. As someone who has started a business and failed, I don't think black people starting tons of businesses in the usa is close to financially warranted and far from wise. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: The village collectively could invest in its own people. village has no money, black one percent can. if they want to. why don't you ask them 1 hour ago, ProfD said: I don't believe you realize outside of New York there are a high number of successful Black people. new york by white mans own account and my own personal observations has more financially wealthy black people in it than any other city in the usa, but that doesn't mean a majority of black people in the black populace of nyc are wealthy, they are called the one percent. And the black one percent exists all throughout the usa, but again, that isn't the black populace. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: Successful Black people see things from a different perspective. One of the biggest challenges is getting our people to believe they can do better. is that perspective you speak of based on truth or a lie. Belief isn't as important as facts financially. you can't believe money into existence, that is a lie. You can't believe opportunity into existence, that is a lie. You can believe in yourself, but assuming makes an ass out of you. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: Understand that because I'm a successful FBA/AfroAmerican man of average intelligence, I believe other Black folks can do it too. Just a matter of putting in the work. in my opinion, very very few black people doubt black ability, but black people don't doubt their eyes and the truth in their lives. MAdam CJ walker was one hundred years ago, the garveyites were older, black people don't doubt what they can do, at least the black people I am connected too offline. but the black people i am connected too offline don't lie either and I don't ask them to lie. Wherever you live, maybe you want black people to think they can turn water into wine but I don't ask black people to do that. Positive thinking is one thing , false belief or lying to the environment your in or the experiences you had is another. 1/25/2026 Citation https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12355-black-owned-online-social-media-websites-future-what-is-their-future/#findComment-79728 sted just now @ProfD 2 hours ago, ProfD said: Encouraging Black people to do better does not diminish or insult our history. I admit that I am speaking from a life of comfort. It is easy to say people don't need encouragement when one has always been encouraged, helped, supported in their personal life, by family... not sanguine but family whether blood related or not. I do value encouragement less than in the black populace. I think about circa 1865, when african methodist episcopal pastors were preaching encouragements to black people to use a nonviolent methodology. And I am against the heritage that created which persists to this day. The episcopal is a pastor, episcopalians believe in the role and function of the pastor as a guide [this is opposed to the gnostics who believe no one individual can be as knowledgeable about the spiritual affairs, including pastors or popes] anyway, the methodists believe in a life led by a lifestyle, the bushido from the people of nippon is a similar idea. when i look at the AME heritage it fits. Black person acts as a guide to the black group by preaching persisitance to a way of life, in DOSers case, it is nonviolent participation in the usa, regardless of white activity and I admit I am sick of hearing it. I think it is dysfunctional. Black people don't need encouragement, most black people need to presented ideas. The black people who spoke at the million man march was the same encouragement nonsense. A bunch of episcoopals of various religions or no religion, preaching the continuance of the nonviolent method in the usa regardless of the usa or the white people in it.. I am tired of that. 2 hours ago, ProfD said: As I've mentioned before, billions of dollars pass through Black churches every year. From who is my question Black children? no , black children don't earn billions of dollars. Black prisoners? no, how many prisons even have a chapel these days? Black welfare recipients? no, they don't have income to dispose, that is why they are on welfare. They can't pay their standard bills so, no way. Black elders? maybe some, but how many. I can see the black elders who come to the old church in the city every sunday from their home in the suburbs. Quite a few of them, all over the usa. yeah , but they are a fraction of black elders, a definitive minority. But the money is good. Black soldierS? maybe, i know many soldiers are religious. but soldiers have families, tend to complain about cost of living. so i can't imagine too many of them. Definitely, the officers. but rank and file, no way. Then I think about Barrack Obama sitting in that black mega church, that black guy with a mega church "walk by faith not by sight" I recall seeing that somewhere, made me laugh. So, yeah , your right, billions do go through the black churches, from the black one percent. And the black one percent is like the white one percent, this isn't the whole black populace. At this moment in time, It isn't that I challenge the presence of billions in the black populace in the usa, but I challenge its source. It isn't the common black masses, it is the black one percent, the black wealthy. and they are a very small but financially very wealthy populace so... talk to them. 2 hours ago, ProfD said: It isn't the Black 1% pouring billions into churches & gross consumerism. Even enough, I have made my case. The numbers fit in my case. The black one percent isn't a large populace BUT, they have the financial scale to make the multitude of billions per year. It fits them: black officers in the military, black elders of weallth especially from the black churches, black entertainers , black elected officials. black business owners with many of them networked into the other groups. John Starks has one of the biggest dealerships in NY metropolitan area but a millionaire black athlete networked with other millionaire black athletes. I forge tthe former detroit piston who owns a computer programming firm. yeah, it all fits, but they are all black one percenters. the black wealthy. And I am 100% black churchs in NYC, are very tribal. I knwo for a fact that many of them, network opportunities amongst their specific tribes within the black village. I can see the black one percent fueling money into churches. Cause again, NYC's black churches that are standing strong are attached to black one percenters . many black churches have gone under, but those were where regular folk, financially went, thus no money. I am convinced that the black one percent is the source of the billions. Now maybe the white man is lying about the percentages, but based on the percentages the white man has collected and the financial reality of prisoners/soldiers/children/welfare recipients/black one percent, the black one percent is the source of the billions. Black one percenters do spend on vanity like all people with money. A cotillion is expensive. High end clothes are expensive. cars are expensive. I think you fiscally underestimate the cost of homes for the black one percent. Those homes are expensive per month. Those homes they have are gross /large consumerism. Now to be even, the only group in the black populace in the usa who could have any significant consumerism is the black people on welfare. Black Teachers or nurses are on welfare, starting in the 1970s, so black people working while on welfare isn't new it is very old. But, I will not chagrin black poor people,upper poor people, affording themselves something to enjoy, as gross consumerism. Consumerism, yes, but it isn't gross. I am 100% certain with those i know on welfare that 90% of black people on welfare don't have gross consumerism, if gross consumerism is defined as based on the fiscal scale of what is consumed, not the presence of consumerism. Cause I happen to know there are some blacks who like to suggest gross consumerism is consumerism itself, which I oppose. In NYC, it was recently unveiled that over 95% of white children in the orthodox jewish schools can't pass the basic state wide exams while they have schools full of trips around the world and game rooms and swimming pools. So, for any blacks who feel that black children who passed and are passing their state exams at a hell of a higher rate with schools absent any amenities or opportunities can't get a few pairs of sneakers from their parents on welfare, i say fuck off. 2 hours ago, ProfD said: But, when AI puts a whole bunch of Black folks outta work, we'll have no choice. we? well humanity en large is going through a labor movement reality with large language models and other similar computer programs. I don't know what will happen. I see many options, the choices various people need to make haven't been made to see a clear path yet. 2 hours ago, ProfD said: The Black 1% definitely is not exempt from investing in the community. Right, well they are acting exempt in majority and I repeat I don't blame them. Black wealth in modernity comes from struggle and rarely do black people have the fortune to get it through crimes or illegalities, and even when we do, it is absent the ease of whites. So black people tend to be frightened of poverty. For too many blacks poverty is a sign of self, which is hilarious historically. we didn't enslave ourselves into boats. And 90% of the black folk in the boats died over the ocean, they never made any shores so, ... 2 hours ago, ProfD said: It is a fact that Black people can make a lot of money. No assumptions. that is historical fact, sadly it is also a generalization, whom among blacks is where the details reside and the details is where black people tend to make assumptions on other black people based on hope or encouragement, not truth. 2 hours ago, ProfD said: I don't have to convince the Black people where I live that they too can be successful. me neither, common ground, finally

World War Meth - January 23rd 2025 https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2832&type=status IF YOU DIDNT CLIC THE LINK ABOVE World War Speed MY THOUGHTS Great information on the use of drugs in world war two. And how The german government used it heavy and excelled in the war, the british government, general montgomery commissioned heavy drug use. 20 milligrams per day is given to the tank brigades in the break through the german line. Funny how the drug is restricted by germans when the usa enters world war two and eisenhauer looks for millions. Amazing, the story on fake german leather is excellent.and the militaristic culture of germany which always relied on quick attacks and technology. VIDEO UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/preview-world-war-speed/4337/ TRANSCRIPT [ Suspenseful music plays ] -It's long been known that German soldiers used a form of methamphetamine called Pervitin in the Second World War. -[Speaking German] -But have tales of Nazis on speed... [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ...obscured the other side of the story? [ Radio chatter ] [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -Wow! That's amazing, isn't it? -The massive use of stimulants by British and American troops. [ Rapid gunfire ] Did total war unleash the world's first pharmacological arms race? ♪♪ And, in the face of industrial slaughter, what role did drugs play in combat? ♪♪ Now, one historian... -My goodness, look. There's the swastika. -...is on a quest to dig deeper... -You got the machine guns there. You got the tools. So you just do this, you just go...? -Precisely. -A cannon shell is just gonna rip through. -This soldier here that can hardly walk. -Yes. -...and learn the truth behind World War speed. -Stand by. -Eight, seven, six... -The amount of dust was incredible! [ Explosion ] -...five, four... -Oh, my goodness, me. Look at that! -...three, two, -Set, shoot. Fire One. -one. [ Explosions ] -Oh, my god! [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ [ Engine humming ] [ Static crackling ] -[ Speaking German ] -[ Speaking German ] -[ Speaking German ] -[ Speaking German ] -December 1942. A German bomber crew struggles to keep their damaged plane aloft. -[ Conversing in German ] [ Engine buzzing ] [ Ominous chord strikes ] [ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ -Seven decades after it went down, this German Heinkel He 115 bomber is pulled from a Norwegian fjord. [ Oxygen whooshing ] It's an amazing discovery. The only aircraft of its kind ever recovered, from a time when England stood alone against fascism in Europe. [ Poignant tune plays ] The fjord's oxygen-poor water has left the plane remarkably intact and the recovery team will soon discover artifacts inside [ Camera shutter clicking ] in near-pristine condition, including brandy, caffeine-infused chocolate, and speed. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -[Speaking local language] -We're going to see the remains of a Heinkel 115, which is a float plane, a sea plane, that was used by the German Navy. And, not only did they pull up this Heinkel 115, they also found lots of things on it, [ Turn signal clicking ] including, it turns out, a packet a Pervitin. ♪♪ For me, there's a massive difference between just being an armchair historian and actually getting out on the ground, rolling up your sleeves, and doing some proper primary research. ♪♪ You can't really understand a subject unless you actually seen what you're looking at for real, you know, you've touched those pieces of paper, looked at the sites, talked to other people who really know what they're talking about. And it is amazing how it actually then prompts you to ask all sorts of other questions that you might not have thought about in the first place. -James Holland has written nearly 30 books about the Second World War. He's an expert on the blitzkrieg of 1940 and the Battle of Britain, which will prove pivotal chapters in his quest to understand how amphetamine use evolved during the conflict. -[Speaking local language] -Could German amphetamine packets have survived the crash and decades underwater? If so, they may provide unique insight into the role speed played during German bombing missions over England. -You know, I've seen a few aircraft wrecks that have been pulled out of the water, but this Heinkel 115 that's been pulled up out of the fjord was in incredible condition, so good that you could still see the paintbrush marks on the tailplane. So I'm looking at the bomb bay, here, aren't I? -Yeah. Yeah. -Okay, but this was carrying bombs when it was found? -Yeah. Yeah. -So where would they be? -They was in the center section. -And this is a camouflage for going over the dark North Sea. -You know, you wouldn't want it light, would you? You look at that sea from above, you can see how dark it is all the time. ♪♪ -For German bomber crews, night missions from Norway involved a 12-hour round-trip flight over the North Sea. [ Rapid gunfire ] Raving spitfires and flak over England, then, surviving the long trip home. ♪♪ German victories make the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht seem invincible. [ Explosion ] Rumors circulate of German soldiers and airmen fueled by a super-drug that makes them fearless, energized, and able to press on without need for rest or recuperation. [ Tranquil tune plays ] Even Nazi dive-bombers stir theories about so-called Stuka-Tablets, pills that enable fliers to withstand G-force plunges to target no human being could possibly survive. ♪♪ -This is the Heinkel 115 elevator. It was cut in two when the plane crashed, so. -Right. -In the wing, there was a dinghy. -Yes. -And, within the dinghy, there was a rescue package. -It's possible to look at it? -Yes. -Fantastic. So, when I walked in and saw the table full of objects from this escape kit, plus a few other little bits and pieces they found, I, you know, I was absolutely staggered. And, obviously, we've got a brace of machine guns here. These are 17s? -MG 17s, yeah. -You got the machine guns there; you got the tools. You got all this, but this is the bit that's really catching my eye. -Matches. -Yeah. -Cigarettes? -Yeah, it is. -This is obviously chocolate. This has a high caffeine content, doesn't it? -Yes. -And this is the brandy. -Yes, that's the brandy. -I can't believe you haven't tried it. Okay, but there's one item here that, to me, is missing. -Yes, I guess we are missing the Pervitin. -Yes, where's that? -Well, when it came up and we tried to clean it, it started to dissolve and, when we looked back into the box, it was -- There's nothing left, so, it just vanished. Well, I'm sorry, we have only a photograph of it. -The whole reason for coming here is because Pervitin has been found on this plane when it was brought up from the fjord. It was a little disappointing. -Despite Jim's disappointment, the Pervitin's location on the plane may be more important than seeing the package itself. -So this was in the -- this was in the wing? What was really interesting is it wasn't sort of in the cockpit equivalent of the glove compartment, you know. It wasn't found right by the pilot's seat or something, you know. It was actually found in a pre-prepared [ Camera shutter clicking ] emergency escape pack. That made me kind of think that it wasn't used in a kind of sort of casual way, but in a quite pragmatic way. -If the Pervitin pack was kept out of reach, it suggests the drug wasn't meant to keep men awake during flight, but to keep them alive, should their plane go down. -So you've got the brandy, to keep the cold away. You've got some cigarettes to keep you going; chocolate with caffeine in it; and, of course, you've got the Pervitin. We all know what that does. That keeps you going for another 12 hours or so, while you're bobbing around on the North Sea. They were flying in winter, so it's going to be bitterly, bitterly cold. The most important thing is that they don't fall asleep and die of hypothermia. So what's gonna keep you awake? Well, Pervitin's gonna do that. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -Jim's Norway stop has been illuminating and frustrating, all at the same time. [ Bell tolls ] He decides to head south, to a museum in Germany, where you can still see and hold Pervitin samples from World War II. -And I met with Dr. Peter Steinkamp, who's an expert in this. You know, I just really wanted to pick his brains about what this stuff was, how it came to be, and to look at Pervitin packets for the first time. Wow. That's amazing, isn't it? [ Suspenseful music intensifies ] -This was methamphetamine created in the 1930s by a German pharmacologist. He called it Pervitin. This is a version for injection and this is the version for piercing. -And what's this say, here? -"Inject slowly, not too fast." -[Laughing] Oh, goodness, me. Imagine buying, over the counter, vials of stuff to inject yourself, you know, with a Class A drug. I mean, it's just absolutely extraordinary and just so casual. If I took one of those, how long would I be completely wired for? -Well, about two nights. -So this came out in Germany, what, in the late 1930s? -Yes. In 1938, it was first available in drugstores. -So I could just walk in and I could go, "I'll have a packet of 12 Pervitin, please"? -Yeah, really. -Wow! That's amazing, isn't it? ♪♪ -By 1938, Pervitin manufacturer Temmler Pharmaceutical of Berlin had launched a PR campaign modeled on Coca-Cola's global marketing strategy. ♪♪ And, despite Hitler's vehement anti-drug rhetoric, many Nazis, including the Fuehrer himself, were heavy drug users. [ Cheering ] Methamphetamines seemed geared to the modern, tech-embracing Reich that was envisioned. -The Nazi state is all about, "If you work hard, if you strive for a better Germany, then you'll get a better Germany. Come on, get your backbone into it and let's get working. Let's make Nazi Germany, the Third Reich, let's make it a thousand-year Reich. Let's make it brilliant!" You know, and they embraced science and technology, and pharmacology is all tied in with that. That's why it appeals. So it's not much of a step, is it, from day-to-day domestic use to being used in the armed services? -Yes, yes, you're right. The officers said to the medical officer, "Please, now, give Pervitin to our soldiers." ♪♪ -By May 1940, German troops under the influence of Pervitin have already conquered Poland. Now, Hitler's Army masses for another attack, against France. ♪♪ The British and French armies facing them outnumber the Germans in men, artillery, and even tanks, but the German plan is audacious: built on the use of combined arms; using air power as moving artillery; and what some will call a new method of warfare, which really wasn't new at all. -The German way of war, what has become known as blitzkrieg, has always been traditionally depicted as something kind of new. It isn't. It's an extension of the way of war that Germans have always been practicing and, before Germany became Germany in 1871, the Prussians before them. And it's because they're stuck in the middle of Europe. They don't have those resources of bauxite and copper and iron ore and, more latterly, oil, and food, actually, that you need to protract a long, attritional war. So what do you do? Well, you get round that by fighting your wars with overwhelming force at the point of impact, where you first attack, knocking your enemy off-balance, surrounding them and annihilating them, and you do that incredibly quickly. -At this point in the war, the German army is outgunned and outnumbered. To win, they'll have to move swiftly, with no time for rest. And, like the Luftwaffe, the army also has a secret weapon to help defeat the military commanders' oldest enemy: sleep. ♪♪ -I mean, how much Pervitin was used in 1940? -During the war against France in 1940, there was a delivering of 35 million pills -Ha! -of Pervitin to the Wehrmacht. -Wow. So, literally, just in sort of 10, 12 weeks, they're issuing 35 million tablets of Pervitin? -Yeah, yes. -You know, all-in, there's only about 3 million troops involved in the whole thing. [ Rapid gunfire ] -In the end, the German army pulls off what seemed impossible, even to Hitler. [ Rapid gunfire ] Wehrmacht tanks and foot soldiers managed to fight and march for 10 days straight... ♪♪ ...trapping the entire British army on the beaches of Dunkirk. ♪♪ [ Gunfire ] German troops move an average of 22 miles a day, [ Flames crackling ] under fire. It's considered one of the greatest feats [ Flames crackling ] in military history. -So, obviously, Pervitin keeps you awake, but what else does it do to you? [ Rapid gunfire ] -When you're taking it and you have to do a duty... ♪♪ ...you are focused on it. There was no fear and you don't think about anything else in that moment. -What other side effects are there? -I talked to some veterans who used Pervitin and they said, after doing the duty, they sometimes got frightened -Oh. -because "We were in fear that we could never, ever, sleep again and, when we could not sleep anymore, we must die." ♪♪ -However the drug affects individual soldiers, the larger outcome is clear: German troops, fueled by methamphetamine, crushed the combined arms of Western Europe in little over a week. Nazi tactics and technology seem unstoppable. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] But did the Wehrmacht truly need a stimulant to achieve victory in 1940? Was marching 22 miles in a single day an amazing pace or has the blitzkrieg tale, like the word itself, been warped into legend over time? ♪♪ Today, Jim's gathered a group of fellow history fanatics to put this question to the test. -The idea is that, rather -- -They start by comparing British and German infantry gear, to see if one was better than the other. -Much more. Just asking. -Taff Gillingham has served as a military consultant for feature films and TV series. -You then don't need to take your eye off the target until you've knocked him over. -He's an expert on Second World War paraphernalia. -Well, Taff, you know, we've got this all laid out. We've got British here, German here. Presumably, this is an ammunition pouch? -That's right. That's the ammunition pouch. You've got three clips in each of those pouches. -I mean, they do love leather, don't they, the Germans? I mean, every bit of it is. It's just leather, leather, leather. -The British had a simpler idea, which was to carry a cotton bandolier, and then you just pull the clips out, ready to push into the rifle. -Hm. ♪♪ -The British kitty is actually pretty quiet because it's all cotton, it's canvas. It doesn't make much noise as you move around. Whereas, the veterans always had this story that you could hear the German Army coming because they sounded like a loose cutlery drawer with all this stuff clinking and clanking away [ Laughter ] as the German -- Exactly. The gas mask tin bouncing around. ♪♪ -I'll take this back. -Next, they'll set out to see just how hard it would've been to cover 22 miles while carrying a 60-pound combat load, with only coffee or tea to keep you going. -That's quite heavy. [laughs] ♪♪ -I can't believe that they'd have walked a long way with a kit like that. -I mean, this is the reason for doing this. It's only when you actually start using this practically that you can understand how people would operate with it back in the day. So the real point of this entire experiment is, after walking 20 miles around here with all this kit, if you've got a drug that can keep you going, can we understand why they're using this in 1940? -Okay. Let's do it. -Let's do it. ♪♪ -My feet are -- Oof. ♪♪ -How's that? -That looks good. -Feels better. Oh, post. ♪♪ Ooh! That's my feet. Now they hurt. ♪♪ [ Grunts ] ♪♪ -Ah! [ Metal clinking ] [ Laughter ] We'll maybe leave that bit out. [ Laughter ] -Two hours and seven miles in, the group breaks for tea. -It's heating up pretty quick, isn't it? -For many Allied soldiers, caffeine was the stimulant of choice. Coffee was so critical to American GI Joes that, today, cup of Joe is synonymous with the drink. -All right, cheers. -I've got my foot out. -Peel your heel off. Where is it? -Just there. -Wiggle your foot. How much am I getting paid for this is all I wanna know. -So, because we're able to take caffeine, we're on these lovely, delicious-looking chocolate, caffeine-enhanced chocolate. So, James, this should send us around the next bit of the march a bit quicker then, eh? -Should do. -Come on, let's go. -Yeah. ♪♪ -They may not be in combat... -Hello, Woofit. -[Barking] -...but they are carrying the same 60-pound load that German and British soldiers would've humped, back in 1940, and it's proving no easy task. -Where's the shortcut, then? ♪♪ -If it's not 100 yards, I'm gonna collapse in a pile, there. [coughing] Oh! Oh. Oh, [bleep] Ow. My feet are broken. ♪♪ My ankles are broke. So, I reckon that 20 miles is achievable, but, day after day, that's a very hard thing to ask for a platoon of soldiers. -Despite bruised ankles, they've logged 14 miles in just under 4 hours. At this pace, they'd have easily hit the 22-mile mark of the Wehrmacht. -You know, they're all trained up for doing this kinda stuff, so you have to think that walking 22 miles a day, over consecutive days, for those guys, really shouldn't have been a massive problem without drugs. [ Band plays march ] I am not convinced that the Germans needed it, at all. ♪♪ -Whether the Wehrmacht needed Pervitin or not, the Nazi victory in France is a stunning one. ♪♪ By June 1940, France has been brought to its knees. ♪♪ The British army lies in tatters and, soon, London itself is ablaze. [ Explosion ] ♪♪ [ Explosion ] [ Flames crackling ] The English are desperate to learn the source of Germany's success... ♪♪ and, when a German plane goes down in the south of England, they find the answer. [ Flames crackling ] Inside, they discover a packet of an unknown substance that holds the key to the Nazis' boundless energy. Lab analysis will soon reveal the substance is methamphetamine, Germany's super-drug. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] To find out more about the British side of the story, Jim's meeting pharmacology historian Dr. James Pugh. -So, what have you got here? -So I brought some files along which I thought you might be interested in seeing. -Mm-hmm. -The first is a letter to Winston Churchill, in fact. -Oh, really? -And it's actually from his physician, Sir Charles Wilson, letting Churchill know that the British have discovered that Germany is making use of amphetamines in a military context. -Mm! -And suggesting to him that, perhaps, this is something the British need to consider. -I mean, this is a really interesting line: "In short, it was concluded that the drug would be useful to the majority of men if it is desired to keep them strenuously and dangerously active for 24 hours at a stretch." -Germany has occupied France, by this stage, -Mm. -so anything that the British feel they can do to gain an advantage or to level the playing field again is something that they need to consider and I guess you could characterize this as maybe the beginning of a chemical arms race, I suppose. One of the other ways that the drug was used is in its inhaler form. -Gosh, look at that. God, it's like a Vicks inhaler. So you just do this, you just go...? -Yeah, I probably wouldn't do that, at this point, but. -[laughs] No, but I mean, that's the process? -Yeah. -The Allied version of Pervitin was called Benzedrine and, like German speed, it was already used by civilians before the war began. Both drugs make users intensely alert, flooding them with a sense of euphoria. With its added methyl group molecule, Pervitin races across the blood-brain barrier a bit faster than Benzedrine. Otherwise, the two drugs have virtually the same impact. ♪♪ During the battle of Britain, exhausted Spitfire pilots were getting Benzedrine, unofficially, from local pharmacies, but Churchill seems to push things to another level. -So one of the very interesting things is that this is being sent to Churchill and what's important about that is he's a man of science. He's very interested in novel developments and new technologies and stuff and so drugs kind of fit that bill for him. -Soon, the Royal Air Force begins testing Benzedrine under combat conditions. They turn to a 30-year-old flight surgeon, named Roland Winfield, to administer the drug to British air crew and record the reactions. ♪♪ By late 1941, Allied bombers are hitting back. [ Bombs whistling ] [ Explosions ] ♪♪ Long night missions over Nazi Germany, with a fatality rate of more than 45%, are a terrifying ordeal. ♪♪ -You know, that's one of those things where, obviously, so if that can keep you awake and keep you alive, then, you know, clearly, that's a good thing. -I suppose, on the other side of it, too -- -Later, Jim and James head out to explore a British Lancaster bomber, the same type of aircraft in which Roland Winfield conducted the only known combat tests of amphetamines during the war. ♪♪ -These bomb bays are pretty impressive, aren't they? -My goodness. [laughing] That's gigantic. -They can take 6.5 tons. -6.5 tons?! -Yeah. And they can be adapted to take a Grand Slam, which is 10 tons. -10 tons. -I mean, it is incredible, the lift of this. -Just absolutely overwhelmed by the size of it. This is gonna be tight, I reckon, for you, James. -I mean, look at it. [ Knocking, hollow ] It's a tin can, isn't it? -So there's no armor here or anything like this. -No. No. -This is just thin. -And, you know, a cannon shell or a bullet's just gonna rip through. -Rip straight through. -On that Lancaster, you're just thinking, "This is a piece of tin. I'm gonna be shot at. I'm gonna be scared. If I need to escape quickly," [laughs] you know, it's just next to impossible. There are very few concessions to human comfort. -Yeah, yeah. -For me, this is designed for one thing, and one thing only, and that's dropping large amounts of bombs. -Goodness, me, yeah. [ Bomb whistling ] [ Explosions ] -Physically exhausting and terrifying. In the air war over Europe, aviation technology pushes men beyond the limits of human endurance. ♪♪ -You know, I can understand why you would take a Benzedrine pill, you know? -I think I can as well. Just going past the navigator's desk, here. -Again, I mean, look how cramped it is. -It is. And, as you emerge into the cockpit, there's a little bit more space here, I suppose, [laughs] until you try and get in the seat. Case -- Oh, my goodness! This is snug. -Yeah, it really is, isn't it? -[laughing] Yeah, this is snug. -So tell me about Winfield's tests that he was doing. -Yeah, he actually flies with the crews. He administers the drugs in flight, you know; he also administers placebos. And then, yeah, he reports back on the experiences the crews have. ♪♪ -In all, Winfield observed troops who were given amphetamines on 20 RAF missions. ♪♪ -[Indistinct] -I mean, just imagine this, James. You know, you're sitting here, you're piloting this plane. -We're over the lake now. -You know, this is unpressurized, this cabin. -Yeah. -You know, -45°, freezing cold. ♪♪ You've gotta watch out for night fighters and you've got lots of flak coming up. -Yeah, yeah. -The whole thing is terrifying. [ Rapid gunfire ] [ Explosion ] [ Explosion ] -So, after crews have dropped their bombs, they will experience what's known as the post-adrenal crash. So their bodies have been flooded with adrenaline for an extended period of time. That adrenaline starts to leave the body at that point and they become extremely fatigued. This is one of the things that Winfield concludes and he recommends in his reports, is, if you take the drug about an hour and a half before you're going to drop your bombs, the drug will start to sort of act upon your consciousness at that point. ♪♪ -Of all Winfield's findings, perhaps the most influential are his reports describing how air crews high on speed show increased aggression under fire. -One of the things that he notes in his report is an example of an attack, which the air crews actually dive down to a very, very low height and attack a flak [indistinct] -Really, they start shooting it up? -Yeah, yeah. Of course, Winfield is also simultaneously concerned by some of this, too. Ultimately, when the RAF come to think about this drug, they're actually concerned about those effects... -Are you all right? You get any of the baddies? -...where the crews will start to lean on the drugs, as opposed to using them as a tool to help manage their wakefulness. ♪♪ -But if the RAF sees these side effects as a potential problem, the British army sees them as a benefit. ♪♪ Even more than keeping troops awake, British ground commanders want a pill that can make the men fearless. [ Explosions ] ♪♪ By 1942, the Allies are losing massive numbers of soldiers to a byproduct of industrial warfare: shell shock, known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Over the course of the conflict, as many as one in three frontline soldiers will be incapacitated by it. -Oh, God, listen! -Benzedrine, it is hoped, might offer a solution. [ Suspenseful music fades ] [ Piano plays melancholy tune ] For this hidden side of the story, Jim's traveling to a small museum connected to a hospital that first treated thousands of shell shock victims during the previous World War. ♪♪ -Well, I suppose, when we think of, well, the concept of war neurosis, shell shock, it really goes back to the first World War, doesn't it? And is that the first time that it starts to become recognized? -I think the stress of combat has always been recognized, certainly from the Crimean War onwards, but what happens in the first World War, is that industry has intensified killing power, so large numbers of soldiers, 60%, are killed by shrapnel, by artillery, by mortars. ♪♪ After the Battle of the Somme, when there's been something like 420,000 casualties, a significant number of those, maybe 50,000 to 60,000, would be shell shock. So it's not only a medical problem, it's also a military problem because this is a war of attrition and, if you're losing large numbers of men to battle exhaustion, to psychiatric breakdown, and you're not able to treat them, then it's eroding your fighting strength. -So, in the treatment of combat fatigue, when do they start looking at drugs? When do they start looking at pharmacology and Benzedrine? -Well, Benzedrine has been introduced to the UK in 1935, but as the war gets closer and closer, senior doctors and commanders recognize that this could have a major beneficial, you know, use, in all three services, in keeping soldiers awake, alert, and boosting their morale in times of stress, so I think the British army used Benzedrine to keep people awake, but also to lift spirits. -So Dr. Jones was very interesting about the use of Benzedrine, not just as a wakey-wakey pill, which is what is was sometimes referred to, but also one that would improve morale, that would give those who took it a sense of kind of well-being and greater physical courage. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -Jim's Glenside visit has given him critical insight. By using the drug as a tool to heighten aggression and lift morale, Britain is raising the stakes in the pharmacological fight against the Nazis, who still primarily see amphetamine as a way to offset fatigue. By 1942, British troops in North Africa are in desperate need of a morale boost. They've retreated across 600 miles of desert, chased by Germany's renowned Africa Corps, and are dug in around a tiny trading post: El Alamein. But in October, a feisty new commander, who is likely familiar with the RAF amphetamine tests, arrives: Bernard Montgomery. He is ready to go on the offensive. -When Montgomery took over, morale in British 8th Army was at rock-bottom and it was one of the things he realized that he had to turn around, by the way he was talking. -I want to impress on everyone that the bad times are over. -And, you know, "There'll be no more retreats," you know, "You're really well-equipped. We're gonna smash the Germans and the Italian forces," and trying to give them a greater sense of self-belief. -We can't stay here alive. They'll never stay here dead. -But if there's a pill that could do part of that job for you, then it's gotta be worth taking. ♪♪ -It's always been a bit of a mystery whether Monty, himself, brought Benzedrine to the desert and whether he truly saw it as a morale builder, but Jim's recently discovered a document from Montgomery's medical officer, QV Wallace, which proves orders for Benzedrine came straight from the top. [ Suspenseful music climbs ] -I've never before seen any direct, written reference in any official capacity, to the mass use of Benzedrine, but Brigadier Wallace's memo absolutely knocks that into touch because there it is, absolutely spelled out. The troops that were involved in the opening stages of the Battle of Alamein were given Benzedrine, not just to keep them going, not just to keep them awake, but also to give them resolve, to give them confidence, to bolster their morale. ♪♪ -By late 1942, the Americans still have not put any boots on the ground in the West, but they do provide a new tank, which will give the British a technological edge in battles to come. ♪♪ -The Sherman is incredibly important when it comes in. They get 300 of them straight into Egypt and they're kinda tested up and made battle-ready. At the time, it is the best tank on the battlefield. You know, it's got this incredibly accurate gun. It's pretty well-armored. It's very easy to maintain. This is a very good tank, which is now entering battle on the British side. -Just like long-range bombers, modern tanks, like the Sherman, were now pushing men to the limits of human endurance, so how welcome would a pill that could offset these conditions be, to those who served? Jim visits an old friend who might be able to help him find out. ♪♪ -Okay, so Jim Clark is a restorer of wartime military vehicles and he's got a whole host of stuff. He's got Jeeps; he's got trucks. But he's also got a Sherman tank. ♪♪ So Jim, one of the things I'm trying to find out a bit is, I mean, obviously you know, when you're in a tank, you're gonna get shot at and that's quite traumatic, but the other thing I'm quite interested in is just what it's like, sort of existing and operating in these tanks 'cause -Yeah. -it's a confined space. You know, man's not really designed for this. Ah! -All right? -We're in! -Right. [ Engine wheezing ] [ Engine starts ] [ Engine revs ] [ Whimsical tune plays ] ♪♪ -It's not an environment that is comfortable, in any shape or form. ♪♪ The smell of the fumes was immense. Very quickly, you start to kind of catch your throat. Oh, dear, I gotta say, the amount of dust is incredible! -The fan that cools the engine -Yeah. draws the air in through the crew compartment. -it gets drawn over you, -[Laughs] -so you get covered in it. ♪♪ -If I'm feeling this amount of grit going into my eyes and up my nose, just from going down a short stretch of track in the middle of winter in England, what's it gonna be like in the desert? It must've just been absolutely impossible. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -"Tank men," wrote one veteran, "fought their war in an enclosed, suffocating, noisy metal box, fearful of being struck and burned alive by an enemy they could not see." [ Explosion ] [ Explosions ] ♪♪ -You really do get a feel of how physically draining it must be to just operate one of these things. ♪♪ So, you can see, can't you, the stress and strain -Yeah. -of doing that? You know, quite apart from the fact that you're, almost on a daily basis, been in battle. -Yeah. The toll of fightin' all day long and then no proper sleep, no rest. Um -- Even if you're sleeping at night, there's probably shelling goin' on, so you probably didn't have much decent rest. [ Gunfire ] -[laughing] And this is just stuffed full of highly explosive material. -Yeah. In the turret basket, I think there's about 15 or rounds. There's probably 20 or 30 on each side. -Yeah, it's a good number. -Yeah, a good number, yeah. Then, there was .50-cal rounds in the base. Then, you got your 160 gallons of fuel. Like a mobile bomb, basically. [ Explosion ] ♪♪ -At El Alamein, the British 24th Armoured Tank Brigade is given the job of punching through German defenses. As the Wallace memo makes clear, on the eve of the attack, each man is given a huge dose of Benzedrine: 20 milligrams per day, twice he amount recommended to RAF pilots. -I know that the 24th Armoured Brigade were issued with Benzedrine because he wanted them to keep going. You know, what he said was the first bit of the battle was gonna be the dogfight. It was gonna be the grinding, attritional battle, and, for that grinding, attritional battle, he wanted his men to keep going. [ Explosions ] -Unlike modern pills, Benzedrine tablets in '42 have no slow-release coating. The full dose will hit all at once. For some soldiers, alertness and euphoria will give way to a false sense of power. ♪♪ In the coming days, the men of the 24th will prove exceedingly aggressive, fatally so. Because, for crewmen of either side, the use of amphetamine will do more than make them more alert. It may suppress a natural reaction in combat: fear. -Fear is about self-preservation. You're scared because you don't want to die. If you take that away and you sort of don't care quite so much, you're not quite so careful. The problem of being charged up on Benzedrine is that your ability to make rational decisions and that normal preservation instinct which kicks in as a result of fear might be absent if you're absolutely pumped on speed. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ -Even with their new Shermans, hopped-up British soldiers face an array of lethal German anti-tank guns. [ Blast ] [ Explosion ] -What the Germans have is the infamous 88-millimeter, which is a dual-purpose antiaircraft gun. This is something that can hurl a shell 24,000 feet, vertically, into the air and can also be used as an anti-tank gun on a horizontal position, straight at something, and this is firing at 2,900 feet per second. ♪♪ -If their judgment was impaired by high doses of Benzedrine, what kind of fate awaited them? Jim's visiting a military explosives range for a demonstration. ♪♪ Trevor Lawrence runs the COTEC live-fire range on Salisbury Plain, where they test all new ordinance for the British military. -Trevor Lawrence had been there, seen that, done it. I mean, you know, this is a guy who's been clearing mines, clearing IEDs, you know, explosives, in Northern Ireland during the, kind of, height of the Troubles but he also served in, you know, Bosnia during the civil war there; and in Iraq, so, you know, he knew a thing or two about explosives. So, Trevor, what we're trying to replicate is the first Sherman tanks. They're arriving. They're in action at the Battle of Alamein in Egypt in October 1942 and they're under attack from German anti-tank guns, either the 75-millimeter Pak 40, or the 88-millimeter. And what we want to do is replicate what it would be like being in that tank, if you were hit by one of those shells. -O-kay. ♪♪ I've arranged a metal framework. -Yep. -What we're gonna attach to that is a sheet of armored steel and that's the sort of steel that you would've seen on a Sherman tank. Now, rather than actually firing a hardened steel projectile into it, what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach an explosive charge to the plate here. -So, for all purposes, Trevor, that is an 88-millimeter anti-tank round? -Absolutely. As the shock wave runs through the explosive, where it hits the plate, it will produce the same sort of force that you'd get from a kinetic energy round striking the plate. -Wow. Okay. And can we put anything behind here, so you can see, actually, the effect of falling shrapnel? ♪♪ -Well, here comes the tank crew. -Here they are, and little do they know the fate that awaits them. We can put some dummies close to it. -These are our tank crew. -Close in the tank crew, but also to get a better idea of what fragmentation we've got, what we tend to use is a sheet of aluminium and the fragmentation that's falling will go through, punch holes in that, and it'll give us a good idea of just how much has been produced. -Wow, that sounds amazing. [ Birds chirping ] -At Alamein, imperceptible desert ridges often concealed German 88s. If Benzedrine led British tank crews to abandon caution and charge recklessly into hidden enemy guns, the results would've been devastating. -Go ahead. -Stand by. [ Birds chirping ] -Three, two, one. Firing. [ Explosions ] -Whoa! ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Oh, my goodness, me. Look at that! -It does not look very well for our driver, does it? -No, it doesn't. Ouch. ♪♪ So, really interesting, when we got there, we had a look at it. You could see that it was just this little kind of marble, small, little kind of circle where it had actually punched all the way through, but then, you look on the reverse side. Oh, my goodness, me. So a huge bit of metal has just disintegrated and it's just shattered. -There we go. -Oh, my god! -Right in the center of the chest. -And look at all these. -But also, look at, see all this other fragmentation. -On the head. -'Cause, although it's come off in one big scab, it's also sent all these other, smaller fragments out. [ Melancholy tune plays ] -Both of them had been absolutely covered with little splinter marks all over, each one of which could've been entirely lethal. That's just the -- -That's just the blast has just smashed his chest in. -Shrapnel melted onto the aluminium, and you can just imagine your crew member, behind these two, all into me, into the shells. -Oh, it would be impossible to survive. Absolutely impossible. -I've interviewed so many people that have been in this situation, that have been in tanks, have served in tanks. ♪♪ What I never fully appreciated was the pressure blast from the force of a shell like that hitting another and penetrating and transferring that huge force into the confined space of a tank. If you're in an environment like a tank, that shrapnel that's falling would've just pinged all around here and you think about all that ordinance we've just been talking about. -Yeah. You know, it's only got one of those that's gotta penetrate one of the propellant charges on one of those shells and it's you're in big trouble, -Yeah. -aren't you? [ Rumbling ] -Having taken huge doses of Benzedrine, the 24th Armoured Brigade sets out for battle. ♪♪ With new Sherman tanks leading the way, troops exhibit hyperaggressive behavior some historians attribute to the drug. ♪♪ By battle's end, the brigade suffers 80% casualties and ceases to exist. ♪♪ -By the end of it, they're absolutely shattered. Where's the escape hatch? Oh, there. -There, yeah. -Jesus. -But you've got seconds to do it. If you think -Yeah. -you may be on fire and maybe your crew members are also in agony and you [indistinct] to save them or save yourself. -Yeah. ♪♪ -Yeah, you know, it's -- [sigh] There's protection here, to a point, but, I don't really wanna be in a tank crew. -No. It is sad. -Yeah. ♪♪ -So, can you see if someone's -- If the medical officer of the regiment said, "Look, here you go. Here's a Benzedrine pill. This will keep you going," you'd be quite tempted to take that? -Yeah. I think, if it works, I think I'd be well up for it. [ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ -On November 8, 1942, a month after Alamein, American GIs finally enter ground combat in North Africa. [ Blasting ] [ Explosion ] [ Gunshot zips ] They carry with them packets of Benzedrine. [ Blast ] After the British victory at Alamein, US General Dwight Eisenhower orders some half-million tablets for American troops. ♪♪ But, just as the Allies are doubling down on speed, the Nazis are reconsidering its use. Ironically, Hitler's Reich health leader has concerns about the addictive nature and dangerous side effects of amphetamine and, although German soldiers will continue to use it sporadically, the drug is severely restricted, especially for civilian use. Still, Hitler's infatuation with science and technology remains strong. [ Birds chirping ] [ Melancholy tune plays ] By late '44, with his navy in tatters, the Fuehrer looks to a bizarre wonder weapon, that, with the help of amphetamines, might turn the tide. ♪♪ In the end, Jim returns to Germany, to visit the site of one of the first Nazi concentration camps. ♪♪ -In November 1944, some 40,000 men are stuck in this camp. -What's it designed for? -10,000? -Okay, so four times more than there should've been. -Four times more. ♪♪ Germany had lost the war -Of course. -already and the sphere of influence of the German navy was reduced to the Baltic Sea. Everything else was controlled by the British. So these small submarines were constructed, mainly for espionage. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -In addition to espionage, Hitler's minisubs were also equipped with single torpedoes, designed to sink Allied ships moving supplies and troops across the English Channel. -They were very small. Only one or two soldiers could sit in it and they have to sit there for 48 hours, without sleeping, without getting up, without anything, so they needed a drug to keep them awake for that time. -God! It's just unimaginable, isn't it? So you need this drug to keep you going and to keep, but also presumably to keep your spirits up as well. -Yeah. They were testing different drugs and comparing it, wanting to find out which drug keeps the people awake for the longest time with the smallest side effects. This is the secret report on the experiments and this gives the four different substances: A, B, C, D. The first is cocaine, [speaking German] in different doses. Second is cocaine in chewing gum. Pervitin in a chewing gum. -But 100 milligrams, I mean, that's a huge dose! -Yeah. It's a huge dose, indeed. The men must have been completely stoned. 100 milligrams is really a lot. -I mean, can you imagine it? You know. You're a young member of the German navy, you've been singled out to man one of these submarines. You're chewing on gum that has been laced with cocaine and methamphetamines. I mean, we're talking crystal meth, here, and you're chewing away on this thing in this tiny, tight little cockpit, and, you know, you're high on speed. I mean, it's just, it's insane. I mean, it is absolutely insane. -To test the stimulants, the German navy decides to force Sachsenhausen prisoners to take the drugs and then carry sacks of rocks around the camp's infamous shoe track. -So this is the testing track. It was. -This one, here? -This, here. It was once around the roll call area and it was covered with different materials. So here you would have sand, the next one is concrete, small gravel. And the reason for setting it up was the testing of artificial leather. ♪♪ Germany did not have leather; they always imported leather -Right. -and, when they started the war, [laughing] nobody wanted to sell them leather, so they ordered companies to develop artificial -- -Fake leather. -Artificial leather, yeah. -God, it's absolutely fascinating. I had no idea. -And it's quite hard to walk on here, isn't it? -It is, yeah. -If you have to march, it's not so easy. [ Melancholy tune plays ] Sachsenhausen was designed by an architect and the architect wanted to give a message with the architecture of the camp. With the one tower as the highest point, every morning, the prisoners had to stand on the roll call area, being counted, and, up here, there was a huge machine gun. For the prisoners down there, looking into the eye of this machine gun up here, the message was, "You're completely in our hands. You're completely helpless and we can do whatever we want." [ Buzzing ] -I mean, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do. I mean, you can feel it, even just standing up here. -Yeah. ♪♪ -What a grim place. ♪♪ -After the minisubs fail and his army falters, Hitler, who may himself have been addicted to drugs by war's end, takes his own life. Luftwaffe commander and heroin addict Hermann Goering does the same. [ Rattling ] But Benzedrine and Pervitin live on. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -During the Second World War, one of the things that it certainly does do is it familiarizes hundreds of thousands of individuals with a drug that perhaps they otherwise wouldn't have used. So it sort of normalizes the use of that drug and it sort of reinforces its position as a useful tool. ♪♪ -By the 1950s, amphetamines are being marketed as a diet pill and mood enhancer. Bennie inhalers are offered on airplane menus. Celebrities, ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Jack Kerouac, are avid users. Soon, millions are abusing speed, in what is now considered America's first prescription-drug epidemic. [ Applause ] One likely user is a young combat vet from Massachusetts, named John F. Kennedy. -Picking this country of ours up and sending it into the '60s. [ Cheering ] -When I first embarked on this investigation, I was a bit scandalized that so much speed was taken during the Second World War and how outrageous that was. -World War II military leaders saw amphetamines as simply another technological tool, like rockets and radar, tools that changed the world forever. -For us, in the 21st century, drugs are bad, amphetamines are bad. Speed is a dodgy word. You've got to see this in the light of the 1930s and the 1940s. World War II takes place over six years. A lot is being expected of the young men [ Gunshots ] of the major combatant nations, and, is it any wonder, in this life-and-death struggle for the future of the world, that people are going to be looking at drugs that can keep people awake, that can keep morale improved? It's absolutely no wonder at all. [ Suspenseful music climbs, chords striking ] 1/25/2026 citation https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12353-with-the-heritage-of-meth-drug-dealing-in-the-usa-from-the-1940s-was-its-current-potency-in-modernity-an-inevitability/#findComment-79703 osted just now @Pioneer1 5 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: I wonder what goes through people's minds when they first try drugs like Meth or Crack. What are they thinking....that THEY won't be addicted? why didn't you mention cocaine? crack is merely cheap cocaine? crack is like those dollar beers fiscally poor people drink at times, it isn't 100 proof vodka , far from it but it does have alcohol in it. Cocaine is more potent than crack and cocaine mountains have always existed downtown manhatten in white offices and homes of the upper or lower rich and upper poor whites. What are white people thinking? I find it interesting you singled out meth and crack but didn't mention opium which is where the opiods from from, or cocaine where the crack comes from? @ProfD 5 hours ago, ProfD said: German soldiers high as a kite were able to brave the elements & sleep deprivation in order to fight & felt nothing when they were killed. don't exaggerate, "felt nothing when they were killed" next you will say, they ate things that made a billy goat puke . no need for all of that 5 hours ago, ProfD said: Ovet the past 50+ years, drugs both legal & illegal has been the most profitable war waged against humans. In my view the most profitable enterprise is enslavement. The key today post jim crow is how enslavement has been finessed into ways, the days of crude, shackle on the throat enslavement is rare to see in the wealhy countries of the world, but slavery is still king for me. Interesting you worded it, war waged against humans... may I know who waged said war against humans? don't say the martians. @Pioneer1 4 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: Look at how many people are addicted to Red Bull and those Monster drinks. Now they're guzzling down those 5 hour energy shot which are straight up drugs in my opinion. ...cocaine in a bottle. lets add gambling, let's not limit addiction to substanced, i argue gambling is far more potent, if you consider how many people play the lotto in humanity, i am speaking of the lotto exists in every country with money, think about that: india/china/russia/usa/england/australia/brazil, every country has lotto or similar forms of gambling, that use of wealth that goes nowhere but to the tables pockets, alot of drugs get daily use and not just powders and elixers. @ProfD 3 hours ago, ProfD said: Follow the money. The economy is fueled by all types of drugs and the conditions, industries & jobs created by demand for it including law enforcement, judicial, hospitals & prisons. well said and I may add, this goes back to the end of the enslavement era in the usa, 1865. and back to the issue of bankruptcy and financial failure. All white wealth in the usa stems from cheating in the marketplace not penalized in contracts /illegalities not penalized in the courtroom/crimes legally allowed. This is financial fact. So it makes sense that any crime legally allowed, like drugging people, or illegalities not taken to courtroom like burning black towns and assaulting black people, will have its versions in the future. OR lastly but very important in the modern, many whites are able to benefit from the wealth gained by their bloodline in the past through various illegalities or criminalities that in modernity are inheritances, which non blacks similarly never or rarely have. BUT, my thoughts go to the black populace in the usa. The relation is simple What is black wealth over time in the usa? Black labor[education or time]+ Black drive[ambition]+ black inheritance[parents or community financing, mostly nonexistent until the 1980s]+Black networking[ connections to those black with wealth] What is white wealth over time in the usa? white inheritance[ existent since 1492 through all means of criminal or illegal behavior]+ White education[labor or time]+White drive[ambition]+White networking[ connection to whites with wealth, ala ivy league schools original purpose] Black wealth over time in the usa by those elements can never be greater than white wealth over time unless one thing happens, white inheritance has to reduce tremendously. With that it invalidates black people who mention black wealth in the usa, because I don't see the numbers add up. White networking has hundreds of years of advantage over black networking which whites wouldn't allow till the very late 1900s. White inheritance has hundreds of years of advantage over black inheritance which whites wouldn't allow till the very late 1900s. so... I don't see how the numbers add up for black people in the usa who talk of financial leaping when the white neighbor has a huge advantage built by their forebears at the detriment to our own over centuries. @Pioneer1 2 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: Now you have to go to a Whole Foods or GNC or some independent health food store to get the real stuff that actually works or that is potent. the answer is grow your own, but again, who stole or took black peoples land int the usa or the colonies that preceded it for hundreds of years... The sad thing about DOSers in particular is we all know if we know anything about our bloodlines history that whites took advantage of us. took land by all sorts of means from our forebears, to make sure we today didn't have land to be inherited. and then now in 2026, after white people took land our forebears could had given us over and over again over centuries, we are supposed just magically acquire land absent any inheritance what so ever. magically gain wealth absent any inheritance. magically just financially come up with gold. 1/25/2026 Citation https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12353-with-the-heritage-of-meth-drug-dealing-in-the-usa-from-the-1940s-was-its-current-potency-in-modernity-an-inevitability/#findComment-79734 ted just now @Pioneer1 3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: street drug yeah drug, i will love for black people to say suburban drug 3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: You must have read that post in between your visits to the blood bank to make your hourly deposit....lol. in for a penny, in for a pound 3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: However gambling usually doesn't pose a danger to others outside of those who are participating....usually. no pioneer, deeper research 3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: You rarely hear about gambling addicts trying to rob a store or selling their children to support their habits. yeah in the same way you rarely hear about white priest crimes or white welfare recipient violence or... well, white opiod addiction not too long ago... when white people commit crimes, most in the usa rarely hear anything about it. but you got to have money to gamble, people of color historically don't have that.

Lucy Worsley on the Gunpowder Plot - January 23rd 2025 https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2831&type=status MY THOUGHTS Vendetta comes from the latin vindicare meaning "force to proclaim" . I modulate into a precise wordage " a tactile nonverbal action to speak". A vendetta is a tactile nonverbal action to speak. The questions is clear, what leads someone to choose speaking with tactile nonverbal action in opposition to other forms? The episode in defense explains the guides: bloody tactile actions that a person can deem as an assault on a member of their community by another community or the government, legal actions that a financially affluent person in a community can deem restrictive or inequal by another community or the government , a vibe to another community or the government that a person in a community is empowered by, an individual in a community who has the will to harm others through tactile means. Guy Fawkes and his accomplices had it all: examples of individuals murdered by the government for being a member of their community in all their memory, government sanctions or restrictions on the wealthy members of their group for being members of their community, an energy in their community to commit acts of violence toward the government, themselves as willing members of their community to commit vendetta. One of the modern tricks of governments, stemming from the usa, is learning how to maintain and embrace the fiscally wealthy in each community such that the financing or resources to vendetta by abused communities, ala first peoples in the usa or black descended of enslaved in the usa, doesn't have their own wealthy backing it. This is a huge deterrent to vendetta occurring in the usa. the group I call the Black fiscal aristocracy in the usa has never been blockaded completely and always embraced more and more by the white fiscal aristocracy or the usa federal/state/city governments the white fiscal aristocracy control. The older governments in humanity allowed union of the fiscal groups in oppressed communities in their borders, the usa and the worlds governments influenced by it, still abuse, still create daily examples of inequal abuse, still has those in abused populae who want to vendetta but the fiscally wealthy in most abused populaces is treated disfavorably but not restricted or blockaded. TRANSCRIPT ♪ Lucy Worsley: Midnight on the 4th of November, 1605. [Wind blowing] ♪ In a cellar deep below Parliament, a man called Guy Fawkes prepares to light the fuse of a deadly attack planned by a small network of men... ♪ determined... [Crackling] to destroy the king and his government. [Cawing] Unstopped, this one explosion... [Crack] could have changed the history of Britain entirely. So what were the steps, the causes, and connections that led these men to attempt to blow up Parliament. ♪ [Explosion] [Cawing] ♪ In this series, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history. Oh, yes, here we go. Man: And now you're face to face with William the Conqueror. Woman: They know that sex sells and that violence sells. Worsley: These stories form part of our national mythology. They harbor mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries. It turns very dark here. Woman: Clearly showing us-- Worsley: Refugees. There are such graphic images of religious violence. But with the passage of time, we have new ways to unlock their secrets using scientific advances and a modern perspective. He was what we would now call a foreign fighter. Worsley: I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses. I'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clues... The human hand. to get closer to the truth. It's like fake news. Worsley: You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence. ♪ [Explosion] ♪ Worsley: I'm deep beneath the streets of London on the trail of a group of men who many would now call domestic terrorists. Ah, here it is. These are the Gunpowder Plotters, the infamous Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, who on the 5th of November, 1605, tried to blow up a packed parliament in the name of their Catholic faith. I think that this image shows just how sanitized this story has become. Every year, much of Britain still celebrates Guy Fawkes Night, his night, on the 5th of November. The Gunpowder Plot has become a nice, family-friendly party night with bonfires and fireworks and an engraving that's safe enough to be shown on the Tube. But this is not a safe story. ♪ Back in 1605 when Guy Fawkes was caught, the ports were closed, people panicked. The state focused all its attention on tracking down and executing the group of would-be killers. ♪ [Chains rattling] ♪ I want to investigate how these men reached the extreme, how they connected with others and came to believe that the answer to their problems was wiping out the seat of power. This was a dangerously radicalized network of men. They were willing to risk everything to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people for their cause, but what made them unite and plan this really monumental act of violence? ♪ We tend to forget the names or even the existence of most of the plotters, yet even as children, they had connections to each other... so to uncover the roots of their radicalization, I'm starting this investigation by going back much earlier than most people do, to their childhoods. ♪ 3 of the future conspirators, John Wright and his brother Christopher Wright, as well as Guy Fawkes, all went to the same school, growing up in the city of York. ♪ [Bells tolling] ♪ Amazing. ♪ This is Saint Michael Le Belfrey Church, which has been active for nearly 500 years. It's currently undergoing a major renovation, but I've been allowed to come in to take a look at the church records. ♪ This book contains the first written record of Guy Fawkes. Here he is, the third one down. It says, "Guy Fawkes, the son of Edward Fawkes, was christened," here in this church in 1570. But there's something else I want to look at in this book to get a sense of Guy's early life. Oh, yes! Here it is. A list of burials from 8 years later, 1578, and among the people who've died is...Edward Fawkes. That's Guy's father, so Guy lost his father when he was still a child, and there's something else here, too. It's quite tricky to read, but it says he was registrar and advocate of the consistory court of the cathedral, so that means he was a lawyer working in the church court. That would have been dealing with cases like the annulment of people's marriages, that sort of thing, and it's interesting because it means that Guy's father was working for the church, and at the time, that meant the Protestant church. ♪ So Guy, who will ultimately die for a Catholic cause, is born a Protestant. ♪ In the late 16th century, faith had the power to dictate life on Earth and beyond. Protestants and Catholics disagreed on the route to salvation. Picking the wrong side meant the difference between heaven and hell. ♪ In the 1580s, Guy's mother remarried into a Catholic family. Around this time, Guy became a convert. When Guy converted to Catholicism, he must have felt that this was the only way to obey God and ultimately to go to heaven, but in the eyes of the state, he was utterly wrong. The Protestant Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, and by the 1580s, when the young Guy was walking these streets, Catholicism was effectively banned. Not going to Protestant church could mean fines or even prison. Catholic priests were outlaws, and protecting priests meant real danger. When Guy was in his teens, a local woman called Margaret Clitherow-- she was the wife of a butcher-- was accused of hiding priests in her house. As a result of this, she was brought to the middle of York, and she was very publicly killed. ♪ I want to know what effect this event might have had on Guy Fawkes and the other York-based conspirators, the Wrights, who were from a known Catholic family, and there's a tantalizing clue in the city's Bar Convent. ♪ Worsley: Hannah, what is this completely extraordinary object? So we are looking at the hand of Margaret Clitherow. -The hand? -The hand. -The human hand? -The human hand. This is a relic taken at some point by her followers so they had something to remember her by, to keep safe. Can you tell me a bit of Margaret's story? She's somebody who converts to Catholicism in her 20s, and then she runs runs a sort of secret Catholic network, safe homes for priests. She's imprisoned 3 times over a 7-year period, and then in 1585, the law changes, and it makes it a capital offense to harbor a priest, and then under that law, she is prosecuted, so she refuses to plead guilty or not guilty to protect people around her. So the sentence that's actually passed on her is to be crushed until she enters a plea or until she dies. To be--to be what? -To be crushed? -Crushed? -Yes. Yes. -Ohh! That is terrible. Yeah. It's a particularly brutal death. There's a sharp stone put under her back, a door is laid on top of her, and then heavy weights are put on top of the door, so they're constantly added, so it gets heavier and heavier, and obviously, naturally, I think she lasts about 15 minutes. It's a particularly horrific way to die, very public, quite undignified. So she's stripped. She's just in her kind of linen shift. And people are watching this. People are watching. There's a huge crowd watching it. Is it possible that Guy Fawkes was present at this public spectacle of execution? It's very possible. A lot of the Catholics in the city were there. We know that there are accounts of there being a really large crowd. So even if they weren't there necessarily in person at the execution, then we know they would have heard about the story. So we've got the manuscript biography of her life, which was circulated amongst the Catholic community, and then we've got a little sort of picture, as well, which does a similar job. So it's a little engraving of her execution, so the death is happening here at the background. And they're putting the weights on. -Putting the weights on. -Gosh. And again, you could pass this around the community. You could share the story. That's such a powerful image, isn't it? "This is what those Protestants have done to us." It must have been a hugely, viscerally distressing experience for everybody. I think it must have had a massive impact. The two other gunpowder plotters, John and Christopher Wright, they were possibly there, as well. So the men that were to later on become the Gunpowder Plotters, you know, they're in their teens at this point, and then this story becomes a sort of what if that was my mother, or what if that was our family? Changes their whole world to be labeled as a Catholic. It's not just a case of where do they go to church on a Sunday. It's a real sort of everyday struggle. There's constant persecution. I'm thinking if I were a Catholic this might well make me paranoid, but in a sense that paranoia is completely justified. There are people out to kill them. Yeah, absolutely. It is a stark reminder of the realities of what they're doing. ♪ Worsley: The violent death of Margaret Clitherow must have had a seismic effect on the community here in York, where Guy Fawkes and some of the other future plotters were teenagers. This was an impressionable age for them, and I can imagine that if you were recently converted to Catholicism or thinking about becoming a Catholic, then this must have had a real impact. I'm not saying that watching somebody being killed for their religion justifies the killing of other people. Absolutely not, but I think I can begin to glimpse the sort of effect it might have had on Guy Fawkes. To him, religion must have started to feel like it was a matter of life and death. [Bells tolling] We can never know exactly what the young Guy Fawkes thought about his home country and the ruling regime at this time... [Water sloshing] but we do know he decided to leave. In his early 20s, Guy went to Europe to fight for Catholic Spain in its wars against the Protestant Dutch... ♪ but he was becoming a soldier. He's not an extremist yet... ♪ and although Guy has today become the face of the Gunpowder Plot, it wasn't his idea. To understand what drove this plan for radical violence, I'm going to have to follow a different line of inquiry to look at the man credited with coming up with the plot, the ringleader Robert Catesby. ♪ I've come to Ashby Manor in Northamptonshire, which belonged to the Catesby family. Ashby is mentioned in letters between the conspirators as a base where they could meet, and hidden away here is the perfect room. This is the gatehouse. It's supposed to be a good place for plotting because it's at a distance from the main house over there. That's so Robert Catesby's mum didn't need to know what was going on, and it's here they had some of the meetings to plan the gunpowder attack on Westminster. ♪ [Hushed] It happened here. ♪ The other conspirators later talked about Catesby as a charismatic man who drew them into the Gunpowder Plot... but this wasn't the first uprising Robert Catesby had been involved with. [Priest speaking Latin] 4 years earlier in 1601, Catesby had joined an attempted coup known as the Essex Rebellion. This wasn't a Catholic plot, but a power grab within the court of Elizabeth I, which attracted a range of disaffected groups. ♪ To try to understand Catesby's motivations, I'm meeting a historian who studied the evidence for his life. We're sat here in one of the Catesby family's homes. Can you tell me a bit about Robert's background? Well, he's from a prominent gentry family, who are descended from one of the cronies of Richard III, but by the 1580s, Catesby's father is known as one of the kind of leading Catholic gentlemen in the area. He is somebody who we call a recusant, who pays fines for not attending the Church of England services, and he's seen as potentially troublesome to the regime. So like father, like son, there's a history of being a Catholic agitator. Yeah. Catesby's father William Catesby, as far as we know, did not get involved in any schemes that involved violent action, and he declared that he was a loyal subject of the Crown, just not of the church. [Indistinct voices] So in that sense, Robert Catesby is of a generation that has decided that violent action is now necessary because they can't see that their situation and the situation of those who are suffering for their religion is going to become any better. [Indistinct voices] For Catesby, the outlawing of his religion meant you're not really-- you can't participate in the state. You're not anything we'd call a citizen, and for a member of the gentry, that means really, you can't live the kind of life to which you are born properly. He seems to have been extremely ambitious but also possessed of this kind of desire for action. We have records of him in conversation with Catholic priests saying, "I cannot wait. "I cannot wait for Catholicism "to be restored by Providence. I have to act now." -He's an action man. -He's an action man. Alexandra, what happens to the people who were involved in the Earl of Essex's rebellion? Well, Essex himself, with a handful of his really close conspirators are executed. They're beheaded, but a much larger number of them are imprisoned and fined quite significantly. This document says, "The names of those that are fined and reserved to Her Majesty's use," and here we see the name of Robert Catesby. 4,000 marks. That's a pretty big fine. It's difficult to make these kinds of calculations, but we think that's, at a very low estimate, at least £4 million today. Gosh. And what does it mean to be reserved to Her Majesty like that? That means, theoretically, to be imprisoned or to be placed under some kind of close confinement -such as house arrest? -Gosh. He's certainly, from this point, on the radar of the Privy Council and the Crown as somebody who might be a potential threat. Just before Elizabeth's death, he's one of a number of Catholic gentlemen who are placed under some kind of confinement and watch. They're described as hunger starved for innovation. That means that they're seen as seditious. They want some kind of change, and he's seen as a kind of turbulent spirit, who might be dangerous. ♪ Worsley: It seems to me that Robert Catesby was a desperate man... so keen for change that it was already landing him in trouble. Elizabethan rule had been hard on these Catholic families. There was a mood of anger... ♪ but I want to examine why that anger then grew into extremism under a different monarch... ♪ because the Gunpowder Plot took place two years after the death of Elizabeth. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. ♪ Catholics like Robert Catesby could find reasons to be optimistic. ♪ King James was Protestant, but his mother had been the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, and James' own wife had converted to Catholicism, suggesting his children could be brought up in the faith. ♪ James was the leader many Catholics had hoped for. In fact, one of the plotters-- Thomas Percy was his name-- had even met up with James before he'd taken the English throne in order to discuss toleration for Catholics. ♪ So why would the plotters turn from being hopeful about the new king to wanting to kill him? James' biographer believes that a book written by the king himself reveals a reason why the plotters might have felt betrayed. So this is James' "Basilikon Doron," or "The Kingly Gift," and it's a sort of how to be a king that James had written to his son Prince Henry, and it was first written in 1599 when he was King of Scotland but then became a mammoth bestseller in England upon his accession to the English throne in 1603. What kind of insights do we get from the book then? We get some quite surprising insights into how James might have operated. One of those is the idea of being economical with the truth. Is that OK? Well, for James it is at times. So in this passage in the 1603 edition, he says that "it may be thought a point "of imbecility of spirit in a king to speak obscurely, much more untruly." So that means you've got to be a straight talker -to be a good king. -That's exactly right. In the 1603 edition. In the earliest forms of the text, however, in 1599, it's a little bit different. No way. What does he say? So I've got here the older Scottish version from 1599. "The king must not speak obscurely, "much more untruly, except some unhappy mutiny "or sudden rebellion were blazed up. "Then indeed it is a lawful policy to bear "with that present fiery confusion by fair general speeches." What a dirty devil! So he's saying, if there's a crisis going on, it's OK not to tell the truth. -Absolutely. -To say things that are kind of meaningless just to-- just to smooth things over. Yes. That's right, and indeed, he goes on to say, "keeping you as far as you can from direct promises." So give them the brush off. So if that's his true thought-- and I can imagine him coming to England and saying all of these kind things about the Catholics-- -Mm. -is that how they got the idea that he was going to tolerate them. Uh, yes, on one level, I think that is true. Before he is safely ensconced on the English throne, he is trying to appeal to different audiences who might be useful to him in bringing about a smooth course to succeed to Elizabeth's throne, almost like a politician seeking election, and when James came south in the spring of 1603, things did get lighter for Catholics. Fines on Catholics for nonattendance at church were greatly alleviated, so James gives off these signals. He's able to leave people thinking that they have been listened to. In that sense, he's a slippery character at times, but that does then pose some problems because the hopes that they had in him turn out not to be quite what they had thought. ♪ Worsley: The king's attitude towards Catholics soon hardened. In March 1604, James made a proclamation to Parliament, making it clear he was never going to tolerate Catholicism. He ordered the deportation of Jesuit priests, accusing them of being a malevolent foreign influence. The fines Queen Elizabeth had established for not going to church were soon reintroduced and backdated. There was a sense of doors closing. The options for toleration were shutting down. ♪ For an already frustrated man like Robert Catesby, all this must have felt like a real blow, perhaps even a provocation... ♪ but while these events were unfolding in England, Guy Fawkes was hundreds of miles away. ♪ So how far down the road to extremism was he? ♪ When King James came to the throne, Guy Fawkes had been in Europe for about a decade, fighting for Catholic Spain. ♪ His name appears on lists of soldiers, but there's very little detail... ♪ but to get a sense of how Guy was feeling about events in England... ♪ I tracked down some evidence in a Spanish historical archive in Simancas. This is a document that's supposed to be written rather excitingly by Fawkes himself. Now it's in Spanish--ahh! And I can see what he's done. He's changed his name to the more Spanish-sounding Guido. He's become Guido Fawkes here. It's from 1603, and Guido Fawkes is reporting news to the royal court in Spain. ♪ The subject is the new King James, and this English translation exposes the true nature of Guy's position. It says here that James is a heretic and that he's determined to "tyrannize" the English Catholics. That's a strong word. Guy goes on to claim there's infighting in James' court. It appears he's deliberately undermining the new king. He's telling the Spanish that England is not a happy place, especially for Catholics. ♪ It's likely that by spreading these stories Guy was hoping Spain would step in and help. ♪ Spain had been at war with England since the mid 1580s. [Men shouting] [Explosions] In 1588, the fleet of the Spanish Armada had attempted to invade England. Ever since, English Catholics had lobbied Spain to try again or at least support a rebellion. ♪ And there's another document here that I think suggests just how desperate for change Guy was. Hmm. This is--this is amazing. This is Guy imagining the future. He's drafted a proclamation that's to be handed out to English people after an imaginary future foreign invasion, so he's literally making plans for there to be a new regime in England, and hidden inside what he's written is this fascinating point. He says that God is going to be OK if you use violence, provided you've been oppressed and when no other remedy is offered. So what he's saying is that when there's no other option, violence is justified in the eyes of God. Guy's ready to fight back. ♪ Guy wasn't the only person hoping Spain would help the English Catholics. Catesby and other plotters, too, appealed to the Spanish for aid. It was their last big hope, but Spain was short of cash. War was expensive, So in 1604, Spain and England signed a peace treaty. This must have left the English Catholics feeling alone. The cavalry were not coming, and perhaps this was the final twist in the screw that made Catesby and the other conspirators feel that it was down to them. Nobody was going to help them. They must take drastic action. ♪ Within a year of James' coronation, Catesby had begun to gather a small group of men to plot a major uprising. John Wright had grown up in York and, like Catesby, had been part of the Essex Rebellion. Thomas Wintour was Robert Catesby's cousin and a relative of one of the priests hidden by Margaret Clitherow. ♪ To get inside the heads of these plotters as they made their early plans, I've come to Hatfield House, built by Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State, who oversaw the Gunpowder Plot investigations. ♪ Among Cecil's papers here are the confessions of core conspirator Thomas Wintour. These are key, key sources for what happened in the Gunpowder Plot. A lot of the detail comes out here about what was happening in the room when the conspirators were actually having these dangerous conversations. It's like being a fly on the wall. Wintour talks here about the first time Robert Catesby told him he'd thought of a way to bring back the Catholic religion to England. "In a word," Catesby says, "it was to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder." There it is. "In that place have they... done...us all the mischief." So he means "in that place, the Parliament, they have done the bad things to us Catholics," and--oh--this is-- it turns very dark here, And he says, "Perchance God "has designed that place for their punishment. "For what they've done "to the members of the Catholic faith, these people in the Parliament have to die." ♪ In a single blast, they would take out the entire structure of power. Targeting the opening day of Parliament meant the king and most of his family would be at Westminster. So would members of the House of Lords and MPs, who all had a say in making the law, but there has to be more to the plot than this. The explosion was supposed to cause huge confusion in London, and the plotters were going to go galloping up to the Midlands to rouse their supporters for a rebellion. They were also going to kidnap the king's daughter, his little girl, and set her up as a Catholic puppet queen. So this was supposed to be regime change, new monarch, new government. Catesby was building his team and knew exactly who he needed. Down here, we get for the first time the mention of a very significant name in connection with the plot. Catesby tells Wintour to go abroad, to go to the Spanish Netherlands, and to bring back with him "some confident gentleman." That means a gentleman he can trust, "such as you shall understand best able for this business and named unto me Mr. Fawkes." ♪ So why was this Guy Fawkes the best man for the job? ♪ By the time Wintour went to recruit Guy Fawkes, Guy had been a soldier fighting in a holy war for most of his adult life. ♪ That must have given him a key practical skill. ♪ He was likely to have worked with gunpowder. This wasn't a suicide mission. The plan was to light the fuse and escape. Guy Fawkes should have had the know-how to do just that... ♪ but I'm interested in how else Guy's experience abroad might have influenced him. Now, even though there's a great mass of 17th century documentation about the Gunpowder Plot, it's still quite hard for me to grasp what pushed Guy over the edge, what turned him from being a rebel who wanted change into an absolute radical willing to kill? ♪ I'm intrigued. if modern knowledge of extremism can help me understand the lengths to which Guy was willing to go, so I've enlisted the help of a journalist and author who's written extensively on terror, and particularly al Qaeda. Jason, why do you think the plotters go abroad to recruit Guy Fawkes? Because it's abroad that they'll find exactly the person they need. The one thing that's really clear about more recent plots, those in the last few decades, is that spending time overseas and then coming back is absolutely crucial. If they're overseas or, in fact, if they're just a long way from home, they can be kept in an environment where the radicalization process is really very intense. There are no other influences getting in. It's just the group, the ideology, the other people in that group. Someone who's involved in terrorist training said to me once that the only way that he could take a teenager and turn them into the kind of extremist actor that he wanted was by taking them away from their home, and you put them in a kind of camp somewhere in a particular environment where you're surrounded by people who are committed to the same cause. That will work. I mean, he said to me, "If they go back to their mum every night, forget it. That's not gonna happen." If a if they're in an environment that's outside their own kind of domestic environment, then you can really see that the radicalization processes will happen quite fast. Do you think it's significant that Guy Fawkes himself had been working as a soldier? Oh, yeah, very much so. In that real kind of hothouse environment, his commitment and his tolerance for violence, also, will be reinforced, get higher and higher and higher, so I think it's really important that he was what we would now call a foreign fighter. He got skills, got psychologically hardened there, was exposed to some probably quite traumatic experiences, and then came back and is absolutely perfect to fit into this plot that is preexisting. Jason, do you have any insight into what makes a person willing to go all the way and kill loads of people? The whole thing about terrorism is it's not a science. What you can say is that whoever does it... needs to believe that it is the only thing they can do in those circumstances. They're very often seeing their community or the people they identify with as under threat. Now, that might be wrong. Often is, but that's what they see, and then that then justifies what they think they have to do. -No alternative. -There's no alternative. It is now, it is urgent, and they have to be the ones who will do it. ♪ Worsley: In May 1604, the core plotters came together to take an oath of secrecy and make plans. ♪ While Catesby was known to the authorities, Guy Fawkes wasn't. He was able to move around without suspicion. ♪ Thomas Percy also now joined. He was the brother-in-law of John and Christopher Wright, but crucially, he was also a member of the King's Bodyguard. With easy access to Westminster, he rented the cellar beneath the parliamentary complex, where the gunpowder would be hidden. Preparations would take more than a year. Meetings of Parliament were postponed, so the date slipped. Plans were carefully made for the Midlands part of the rebellion. Funds had to be raised. ♪ That meant the network of conspirators grew. These were cousins, brothers, friends. It was a cell of mostly wealthy men hoping for more power under a regime change. On the 4th of November, 1605, the stage was finally set for attack. [Bell tolls] The following day, the king was due to open parliament, but underneath the parliament-- in the old building, not this one-- Guy Fawkes was waiting with his 36 barrels of gunpowder... ♪ but now the plotters' network had widened, there was a leak. An anonymous letter had been sent to a Catholic peer, warning him not to go to the opening of Parliament. That letter was passed on to the authorities. [Wind blowing] On the night of November the 4th, with conspirators poised for rebellion around London and in the Midlands, Guy Fawkes waited for his big moment, but the king had ordered two searches of the cellars beneath Parliament, and in the early hours of the fifth... [Strike, fuse sparking] [Cawing] Guy was discovered. ♪ The most radical part of their plot had collapsed, but some in the group believed the rest of the uprising might still succeed. ♪ Guy was brought to the Tower of London to be interrogated. This was now a race against time. On the one hand, the authorities wanted to know who is this man, who else might be involved, what else might be planned? On the other hand, Guy Fawkes wanted to stall for as long as possible. If this rebellion was going to succeed, then Catesby and the rest of them needed time to rouse up their supporters. ♪ Catesby had built a cell of men willing to go to extremes. ♪ He must have felt like their future now hinged on Guy's interrogation. ♪ I want to know exactly how committed Guy was to this plot. Records from the time tell us what was said in the interrogation, but a modern perspective might help me delve into Guy's state of mind under pressure... ♪ so I'm meeting a psychologist who works as a registered intermediary in police interviews and has designed an app to evaluate interview technique. ♪ Laura, this is the actual room where Guy Fawkes was questioned. You spend a lot of your time in investigative interview situations, don't you? -Yes, I do. -Bit different to this. Very different. This is a very grand room. I guess the idea was these are really grand surroundings. This represents the majesty of the king, and you're just a little worm. Yeah, definitely. You're meant to feel intimidated when you walk into an interrogation room. And how does Guy Fawkes stand up to the questioning? Yeah. So what the app allows us to do is see when there are significant turning points in an interview or an interrogation, so this here maps out the interrogation on the second day with Guy Fawkes. In the early stages, he's very happy to answer questions about facts that are probably known. For example, "Whether did you convey yet in barrels or otherwise?" How he carried the gunpowder, and then he says in barrels, so he's answering those questions. He's given them that information, but it's clear to everybody it was in barrels because he was caught there. He's merely confirming the details -that are already known... -Yeah. but we do see a switch as the interrogation goes on. What this app allows us to see is that he then closes down. His responses drop down to the red. So the first one is when they start demanding where he was in the nights leading up to the actual plot. And they don't know that information. And they don't know that information. And what does he say? He says he has forgotten. He's forgotten?! And you can see it all the way through the interrogation. When they are asking him questions about facts they do not know, such as his location or the other conspirators, he does not give them any information. So as the questions get more important, as it were, he's basically saying, "Up yours. I'm not telling you anything." Absolutely, and he seems-- when you read through this interrogation, he seems very much in control. He's obviously an extremist, and there are two main schools of thought around why they engage with that type of behavior. The first one is that there are mental health problems, they are delusional, and they are going through with these acts in a chaotic state of mind. I don't necessarily see that in the interrogations with Guy Fawkes. He actually appears to be quite the opposite, which leads us nicely on to the second school of thought that actually it's because they are very controlled. They have this duty, and they won't stop at anything to do it. and when Guy Fawkes is caught red-handed, when he's interrogated, you can see that he remains that composed state. He's not given erratic information. He's actually been very controlled and very careful with what he is providing to the interrogators. I think he gives us a clue here into his source of strength because he says to the questioners, "You would have me betray my friends." -Hmm. -"My friends." He's got friends. He's part of something social. He sees himself as part of a social group. In his head, you know, he knows that he's been caught, but he's very much hoping that the plot will still go ahead, and so he's not giving away any information that will jeopardize that. ♪ Worsley: It seems to me that Guy's belief in the plot was extremely deep... ♪ but I've come to the National Archives to examine the evidence for what it might have taken to make him crack. ♪ Now, this completely astonishing document is in the king's own handwriting, so it's a little window into his mind, and it explains how the king wants the interrogation done. He says, "If Guy Fawkes won't confess, then the gentler tortures"-- tortures-- "are to be first used unto him." And then after that, the king actually goes into Latin because what he's saying is so dark and serious. He says, "et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur." That means the tortures are to be increased little by little until you get to the very worst. ♪ Torture was technically illegal, but the king would sanction it to bring down the plotters. This document is a record of what Guy Fawkes said in his interrogation. This is the 7th of November, and at the end of the session, they got him to sign his name, supposedly to show that it was an accurate reflection of his words, but when we fast forward two days, you can see he's finally cracked because at the end of this session where they've asked him to sign his name, he can hardly write, which suggests--and this is really brutally awful-- that during those two days he's been tortured so badly, whether using the thumbscrews or the rack or whatever, that he's lost the use of his hands. ♪ Despite all of his confidence and his ability to withstand interrogation that he showed earlier on, he's finally broken. But the irony is Guy's naming of his accomplices was irrelevant. [Groaning] ♪ While Guy was being questioned in the tower, the authorities were already hunting for known Catholics who had left London suddenly. ♪ On the 5th of November, hearing Guy Fawkes had been caught, Catesby sped here to the Midlands, still determined he could start a rebellion... ♪ but in reality, support was dwindling. ♪ Within days, the authorities had the plotters surrounded in a Catholic safe house in Staffordshire. I've got an account here by Thomas Wintour, who was holed up in the house with them, and it's brilliant because he takes us right into the drama of the situation. It says here that Wintour asked them, the others, "what they resolved to do," and they answered, "'We mean here to die.'" Wintour's confession gives us the detail of Catesby's last minutes. He says he and Catesby were standing "before the door they were to enter." That's the authorities. They're just about to burst in, and Catesby said, "'Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together.'" ♪ Catesby, Thomas Percy, and the two Wright brothers were shot and killed on the 8th of November. It's hard not to feel emotional at the thought of these loyal friends dying together. Catesby was willing to take a bullet, a lethal bullet, for his beliefs, but don't forget, he was very willing to kill other people for his beliefs, as well. He was willing to take the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. ♪ 4 men were dead, but the surviving plotters would face the consequences of their actions. ♪ The trial of Guy Fawkes and the other remaining conspirators was held here in Westminster Hall on January the 27th, 1606. This is one of the few parliamentary buildings that remain from the time. This whole vast hall was full of a crowd, who'd paid to get in. There was a real squeeze on space. Some members of Parliament complained that they hadn't been able to get decent seats. Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were up on a little platform, and there was even a rumor that the king himself was present, hidden away, secretly listening in. ♪ This was a show trial lasting just one day. It was used to target the conspirators' priests, suggesting they'd encouraged the plot. ♪ Just a few days later, Guy Fawkes and some of the other plotters were taken to the yard outside the Palace of Westminster, and they were brutally executed. ♪ In 1605, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were united by a very specific desire for change... ♪ but now Guy's face has been transformed into a broader symbol of protest and rebellion with little connection to the original deadly plan. ♪ The radical violence at the heart of the plot seems forgotten, yet I think it's the journey to extremism that's worth remembering. The Gunpowder Plot happened at a time of deep divisions and high stakes. People had strong beliefs that sometimes led to extreme actions. Time gives us perspective and the space to start to understand the motivations of both sides, but perhaps we should be mindful about what and who we choose to celebrate. ♪

Book Review by Richard Murray for Freedom at Dawn: Robert Smalls’s Voyage Out of Slavery by Leah Schanke, SPHR Illustrated by Oboh Moses https://aalbc.com/book_review/9780807524282 on AALBC.com IN AMENDMENT https://www.tumblr.com/everythingfox/688794883560013824/catching-some-rays-via