Men who are governed by reason desire for themselves nothing which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and, consequently, are just, faithful, and honorable in their conduct.
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| — | Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (via philosophybits) |
three separate off duty commercial aviators photographed cumulonimbus clouds illuminated by flashes of lightning from their planes.
otherwise known as thunderclouds, cumulonimbus are the only cloud type that can produce hail, thunder and lighting. the base of the cloud is often flat with a very dark wall like feature hanging underneath, and may only lie a few hundred feet above the earth’s surface.
cumulonimbus clouds are created through convection, often growing from small cumulus clouds over a hot surface.they get increasingly big until they represent huge powerhouses, storing the same amount of energy as ten hiroshima sized atom bombs.
although the storm looks formidable, today’s airliners have advanced equipment to circle around storms this big without entering any dangerous zones.
On this day, 4 April 1968, civil rights activist, socialist and advocate of nonviolence Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated while in Memphis supporting a strike of African-American sanitation workers.
His ideas had become increasing radical in recent years, and in addition to opposing racism had begun opposing US imperialism in Vietnam and elsewhere, and capitalism itself. And he had begun organising a Poor People’s Campaign, to unite working class and poor people, Black and white.
Though he is widely lauded by establishment figures now, at the time he was hated by the rich and powerful as well as most white Americans. Fuelled by negative media coverage, only 22% of Americans approved of “Freedom Rides” for the desegregation of public transport, and 63% disapproved of King.
The FBI’s domestic intelligence chief called him “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security”, and later sent King an anonymous letter attempting to blackmail him into suicide.
His murder by a white supremacist left many disillusioned with pacifism, and riots broke out across the US in the biggest explosion of social unrest since the civil war. The Memphis sanitation strike was part of a wave of stoppages across the US during the Vietnam war.
We have made available in our online store this book by the King family’s lawyer, who won their civil case which implicated US security services in his murder: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/an-act-of-state-the-execution-of-martin-luther-king-william-f-pepper
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