Transcribing the Past

 I debated whether to include this transcript here, I consider this blog an archive for work related loosely to working class history and this doesn't quite fit under that umbrella. Still, I think it deserves to be preserved.  Content Warning Discussion of physical and sexual abuse of children, including graphic details. I'm including a tran s cript of segment from the RTE program Questions and Answers (similar in format to the UK's Question Time) from May 2009. The transcript concerns the response from audience member Michael O'Brien to the panel concerning their response or lack of response to the systematic abuse of vulnerable Irish women and children by the Catholic Church. This has been an open wound in Ireland for some time, and I'm sorry to say that it reached and affected members of my family. Even now there are ad campaigns encouraging victims to come forward, the scale of the abuse and the cover-ups are hard to imagine.    I came across O'Brien's a...

 July 3, 1945 A PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future. The liberation of atomic power which has been achieved places atomic bombs in the hands of the Army. It places in your hands, as Commander-in-Chief, the fateful decision whether or not to sanction the use of such bombs in the present phase of the war against Japan. We, the undersigned scientists, have been working in the field of atomic power for a number of years. Until recently we have had to reckon with the possibility that the United States might be attacked by atomic bombs during this war and that her only defense might lie in a counterattack by the same means. Today with this danger averted we feel impelled to say what follows The war has to be brought speedily to a successful conclusion and the destruction of Japanese cities by means of atomic bombs may very well be an effective method of w...

  9th July, 1917, NYC Gentlemen of the Jury: As in the case of my co-defendant, Alexander Berkman, this is also the first time in my life I have ever addressed a jury. I once had occasion to speak to three judges. On the day after our arrest it was given out by the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney’s office that the “big fish” of the No?Conscription activities had been caught, and that there would be no more trouble-makers and disturbers to interfere with the highly democratic effort of the Government to conscript its young manhood for the European slaughter. What a pity that the faithful servants of the Government, personified in the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney, should have used such a weak and flimsy net for their big catch. The moment the anglers pulled their heavily laden net ashore, it broke, and all the labor was so much wasted energy. The methods employed by Marshal McCarthy and his hosts of heroic warriors were sensational enough to satisfy the famous c...

     The sixth issue of the Al Amal newsletter is now live, you can download the PDF here.  The war in Sudan has now entered its third year … The war in Sudan has now entered its third year, with no end in sight. This war was planned as early as 2019, as the generals of blood themselves admitted, stating that its timing had been set back then, but was delayed due to incomplete preparations. What a horrifying reality. This state has always been one that plans and orchestrates internal wars, suppresses freedoms by every possible means, and perpetuates continuous brutal violence. This regime, which carries out systematic arrests, organized torture in so- called “ghost houses,” and extrajudicial killings, now stands fully exposed before the revolutionary masses. The Rapid Support Forces are not separate from this regime; they are its product—an extension of its brutality and savagery. All the crimes committed, including ethnic cleansing and genocide, are a direct result...

  Note translated by Reddit user neopoznanoye_telo Text reads  [Banner]  "In the struggle you will gain your right!"   Long live the revolutionary people! What will we produce during the constituent assembly?     A speedy and lasting peace.     All power to the people.     All land without redemption - to the working people - Land only to those who work on it. No purchase or sale of land.     Shifting taxes from the poor to the rich.     The destruction of the standing army and its replacement by the people's militia.     The struggle for socialism, i.e., the transfer of factories into the hands of the working people    Peasants and workers - who were nothing - will become everything! Comments;  I'm assuming this was produced in 1917 between the February and October revolutions since it opposes the ongoing participation in the First World War and calls for extending the socialist policies dema...

  It was a weird and bizarre scene. Typical of the men who lived in these great woods, where the sound of giant timbers crashing to the ground never seemed to cease. It caught hold of Bob Dennis's throat and seemed likely to strangle him.   Lurching and pushing each other aside, the big-framed lumberjacks among whom his lot, at least for a time, was cast, came into the smoke-dried, sweltering bunkhouse, the atmosphere of which had a choking, steaming tang, eager for their evening meal. Like ravenous animals they fell over each other in their anxiety to seize the steaming dishes of fried pork, beans, and hot bread straight from the cook's oven. the cook, poor wretch, who appeared to have all the earmarks of the unfortunate afflicted with weak lungs was at his wits' end to cope even unsuccessfully with the frenzied demands upon his service. Lumberman was stamped upon each face. Here, in a land where Nature shows herself in her most relentless mood, men were apt to become at...