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Black Kos Friday "We Need No Approval For Joy" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-20
Voices & Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Editor
Since I was a child, I have been both enamored and appalled at the increasing militancy of our nation. We glory the Soldier as a Hero, one whose pedestal is not to be sullied. Songs are sung and films are broadcast about yellow ribbons and Gold Stars, about red sky at morning and Johnny come marching home, tears are shed at Arlington on Memorial and Veteran's Day with 20 gun salutes and full metal jackets shredding jungles and deserts, seas and air, and the intersection of Liberty Avenue at Main Street.
Everywhere I look, supplicants genuflect and tithe at the Altar of the Military. Politicians and preachers sky pilot high school football homecoming prom dances, while daddy works in a coal mine going down down down burning fossil microbes to steam a turbine, while economies and marriages suffer from codified martial strategies of weapons procurement and international arms sales.
Barney Fife seems to have fragged the Mayberry Sheriff and outfitted the newly deputized insurrectionists with the best paramilitary gear the School of the Americas could buy for neo Nazi dictatorships, here and abroad.
There is a reason the few anti slave founders of this nation argued against a standing army. We see in real time the exact unconstitutional lawlessness they warned against. We have valorized the protectors of Democracy, and rightfully so, but five-time draft dodgers now demand military parades in their honor, and they order troops to disappear people in an ethnic purge, all while stealing valor and holding it as a commodity, handing it off to the highest paying tech CEO’s and knighting them as lieutenants of the realm. The Mobster King thinks he can Sharpie the most American of holidays into a memory hole of his own imagination. A holiday that revels in Freedom and Humanity and helping your neighbor navigate self-governance. He thinks he can, and he will claim he has. But no one needs approval from a Mad King Boer-ing his way through life and declaring himself God on Earth, in the Land of the Free.
No one needs approval to honor those who sacrificed so much and had so much taken, those who worked long and hard to secure their Freedom, no one needs approval from bigots and goosesteppers to honor those whose struggle is a struggle to this very day.
We need no approval for joy and community. And it’s deplorable of people who think they can demand it.
The only antidote I may have to Trump’s election is in a small ferry to Robben Island one that shuttles you to the former prison where those who fought against apartheid were held The only answers may be in one wool blanket a basin toilet cell and the tiny windows of Robben Island in the discarded artillery the rock and the limestone yard where many were blinded driven mad Now the survivors former prisoners give tours their faces carved like tree roots exposed The only answers may be in the surrounding peaks of Table Mountain its Twelve Apostles all now standing as testament to what through years of struggles can be defeated overcome - Pamela Sneed
"Robben Island"
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A white, Christian, MAGA went to war in Minnesota, and the press is calling it "politically motivated shootings" instead of what it is --- terrorism. News One: The Media’s Favorite Terrorists Are Always White Men
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A white, Christian, fascist MAGA plotted a day of bloodshed and later texted his family, “Dad went to war last night.”
That chilling text message to his wife and kids was a blood-soaked benediction and a declaration of allegiance to his politics, to whiteness, to God.
He dressed up like a cop. Slipped on a creepy silicone mask to hide his face and climbed into a fake police car full of high-powered weapons. He had a notebook filled with a hit list that included the names of 45 elected officials. Everything was meticulously mapped out, annotated, and studied. He surveilled their homes. Tracked their routines and knew details about their spouses and children.
And then he stalked his targets and opened fire, murdering a Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband, and wounding another Democratic official and his wife. The killings triggered a massive, two-day manhunt involving 20 SWAT teams, helicopters, and drones. Vance Boelter was taken into custody alive and quietly folded into the system that always seems to exercise restraint with men who look like him.
And despite all these chilling details, the news headlines have been sterile.
“Politically motivated shootings.”
“Assassination suspect.”
“Suspect in Minnesota shootings captured.”
Nowhere in the initial stories was there even a whisper of the word that should’ve screamed from every page: TERRORIST. Because that’s what he is. But the media refuses to call him that. Because when a white Christian man enacts political violence, the media suddenly becomes shy. The language softens. The tone shifts to neutral.
Had he been Muslim, this would have dominated news cycles as some kind of jihad. Had he been Black, his body might still be cooling on the sidewalk, and his name would be trending as a hashtag. Had he been undocumented, Republicans would be staging press conferences in body armor, and Fox News would have declared a national emergency.
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The flag’s designer shares the story and inspiration for his design. Vox: The Juneteenth flag, explained
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Haith, a community organizer and activist known better as “Boston Ben,” created the flag in 1997. In an interview with Capital B Atlanta, Haith said once he learned about Juenteenth, he felt passionately that it needed representation.
“I was just doing what God told me,” Haith said. “I have somewhat of a marketing background, and I thought Juneteenth, what it represented, needed to have a symbol.”
Haith wasn’t impressed by his initial version — a “rough draft” — but every Juneteenth holiday he would raise the flag near his son’s middle school in Roxbury, a majority Black community in Boston.
After getting some inspiration, he knew which colors and symbols he wanted in the flag, he just needed to finalize it. That’s when he met illustrator Lisa Jeanne-Graf, who responded to an ad in a local newspaper and finalized the flag in 2000. Juneteenth is often associated with red, green, and black: the colors of the Pan-African flag. However, those aren’t the colors of the Juneteenth flag. The banner shares the colors of the American flag: red, white, and blue. In the past, Haith has said it was a purposeful choice — a reminder that Black Americans descended from enslaved people are exactly that: American. “For so long, our ancestors weren’t considered citizens of this country,” Haith said. “But realistically, and technically, they were citizens. They just were deprived of being recognized as citizens. So I thought it was important that the colors portray red, white and blue which we see in the American flag.”
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Pirates of the Caribbean is a $4.5bn swashbuckling film franchise and Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham are among marauding buccaneers who have captured imaginations over the centuries.
But almost nothing is known about the life and times of actual pirates.
Now a leading British marine archaeologist is co-directing an expedition that has been allowed for the first time to search for pirate ships off Nassau on the island of New Providence, a notorious pirate hideout 300 years ago.
No one had until now explored the seabed for their ships and treasure, let alone everyday belongings that could be as valuable to historical research as a stash of emeralds, Dr Sean Kingsley said.
“The potential is enormous,” he added. “We are expecting to find some really cool stuff because this is the real home of the pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates didn’t keep journals listing their lawlessness. What happened in Nassau stayed in Nassau. If we want to discover the truth, we’re going to have to dive for it.”
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