Category Archives: Freedom

Jailed journalists around the globe. How can it be?

First Amendment aggressions in the United States. How can it be?

Devious despots misusing power and preying upon humanitywithholding information because knowledge is power. Silencing the other side of the story. Fear of losing control feeds their depravity. Dictators hiding behind castle walls and armies of destruction for those who dare criticize.

Freedom of the press is held hostage as journalists observe through prison bars. The courageous story-tellers that sacrifice personal safety for the human rights of others. But their lips will not be nailed shut like a wooden coffin. Truth finds a way to seep out of the cracks and crannies of the grave.

Duvar English, an independent newspaper in Turkey, revealed the following facts in a 2019 article. There are 250 imprisoned journalists in the world, nearly 50 of whom are in Turkey, according to a report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Turkey follows China with the second largest number of journalists jailed with 47, marking a decrease from 68 last yearPenned by CPJ editor Elana Beiser, the report noted that over 100 news organizations have been closed under the current Turkish government and that many working journalists are being accused of terrorism and are in legal battlesSaudi Arabia and Egypt tied for third place with 26 journalists incarcerated. http://www.duvarenglish.com.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) lends bulletproof vests and helmets at no cost to journalists travelling to dangerous areas.

Freedom of Press in USA

Before the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain, the British government attempted to censor the American media by prohibiting newspapers from publishing unfavorable information and opinions. http://www.history.com.

The First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press, was adopted on December 15, 1791, as part of the Bill of Rights.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which documents First Amendment aggressions in the United States, has collected student journalism-based incidents at both the university and high school levels. Since its launch in 2017, the Tracker has documented five cases of high school newspapers being censored or placed under prior review for their coverage of controversial topics. At the university level, it has collected two arrests, two physical attacks and three border stop involving student journalists, as well as three cases of subpoenas or legal orders. http://www.freedom.press.

What Can Citizens in the US Do?

Support your local newspaper and pay for the news you consume. Read local, state, and national newspapers and write Letters to the Editors about free press issues.

Join or donate to Reporters Without Borders at http://www.rsf.org. Reporters Without Borders USA (RSF USA) is the US office of the global organization. Read about the 100 Information Heroes from countries abroad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. CPJ is made up of about 40 experts around the world, with headquarters in New York City. When press freedom violations occur, CPJ mobilizes a network of correspondents who report and take action on behalf of those targeted. http://www.cpj.org.

Be aware of fake news outlets and fake news on social media. PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others at http://www.politifact.com. And Snopes.com is an independent publication fact-checking site online. Fact-checking and accountability journalism from AP journalists around the globe at FactCheck@ap.org.

Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose. George Orwell.

Melissa Martin, Ph.D., is an author, columnist,

educator and therapist. She lives in Ohio. Contact her at melissamcolumnist@gmail.com.

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Melissa Martin: What happens when freedom of the press is silenced? - Cleburne Times-Review

It's hard to quantify the fight for life, liberty and freedom with cold, hard figures.

But in a year where anti-government protests in Hong Kong have dominated headlines, bringing into focus an area of the world with a somewhat spotty record on human and economic rights, one exchange-traded fund has come to the fore that tries to do just that.

Enter the Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF (FRDM). The fund, launched in May 2019, uses data from the Fraser Institute, the Cato Institute and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom to determine how 26 emerging market countries are weighed in the ETF. It essentially takes civil, political and economic freedoms into account and assigns a bigger weighting to "freer" countries based on the criteria.

So far, Taiwan holds the biggest geographic weighting in FRDM, followed by South Korea and Poland. Chile and South Africa round out the top five countries represented in the ETF.

One of the most noteworthy results of the ETF's weighting system is that China, Russia and Saudi Arabia aren't included, particularly as a result of their reported human rights violations. This is despite Chinese markets being up 12% year to date and indexer MSCI increasing its China weighting twice this year.

FRDM founder Perth Tolle says that's the exact problem her ETF is trying to address.

"The problem is with the way that we weigh countries," she said on CNBC's "ETF Edge" earlier this month. "In emerging markets, market capitalization weighting just naturally ends up with a lot of weighting in China and some of these other less-free countries."

Plus, said Tolle, "freer" markets tend to outperform in the long run.

"We do expect that freer markets do perform more sustainably, they recover faster from drawdowns and they use their human or economic capital, or capital labor more efficiently," she said. "So we do expect outperformance in the long run, but that cannot be measured in days, it has to be measured in decades."

But while some countries meet some of the criteria laid out by FRDM, investors may balk at missing out on other profit-generating regions. Tolle raised Saudi Arabia as an example while the kingdom's oil-heavy investments may garner huge payouts, its few breakthroughs in the area of women's rights and overall record in "human freedoms" has kept it out of the ETF.

Tolle also stressed that the ETF looks at every country's laws and practices individually, rather than penalizing them for trade and business relations they may have with less-free countries.

"We are highly invested in Taiwan, South Korea, and Chile. Those are all huge traders with China, and they all have investments or factories that function there," she said. "So we don't penalize them for that. They ultimately answer to [their own rules and laws]."

Since FRDM was launched in May, the ETF has rallied 11%.

Disclaimer

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'Freedom ETF' looks to introduce investing in human rights and liberties to traders - CNBC

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan Every Sunday night for the past two years, Jawid Kaderi has organized Afghan music nights in a recreation center on this expansive base to showcase an essential aspect of Afghan life that had been suppressed before the U.S.-led invasion 18 years ago.

American troops often dub the deafening roar of fighter jets taking off from the nearby flight line the sound of freedom, but in the small auditorium off the bases Disney Drive where Kaderi and a rotating cast of three to four contract interpreters gather each week, the strains of the stringed rabab and the rhythmic beat of the tabla drums make for a humbler celebration of the concept.

Though sparsely attended, the events are open to American troops and others who Kaderi hopes will come to learn about his countrys traditions.

The nightlong jam sessions are also helping to rebuild a musical culture that was nearly completely destroyed under the Taliban, and which faces continuing challenges even now, said Capt. Philip D. Tappan, associate bandmaster of the United States Army Band.

The revival of musical traditions here is also something of a rebuke of the radicalism that has mired Afghanistan in decades of war, said Tappan, who studied Afghan culture before deploying to the country several years ago with the 1st Cavalry Division band and played alongside Afghan musicians at Bagram and in Kabul in 2017.

If the work we did together provided any legitimacy to their programs and the musical arts in Afghanistan, then we have directly combated the extremism that has terrorized this country and the world at large, he said.

The Taliban had denounced singing and dancing as a moral perversion. When they emerged as victors in the countrys fractious civil war in the 1990s, they burned instruments and ripped apart cassette tapes, outlawing music and other forms of pop culture under their hardline interpretation of Islamic law.

But just a few decades before the country was plunged into 40 years of war, including street battles that ravaged Kabuls musicians quarter, artists like Ahmad Zahir the Afghan Elvis had flourished amid a golden age of music in the 1960s and 1970s, Kaderi said.

And after the militant regime fell in late 2001, it wasnt long before song returned to the countrys capital, Kaderi said.

Right after the Taliban were ousted by U.S. forces, the first thing that we saw on the streets of Kabul was the free people playing music, singing and dancing, he said.

The U.S. and NATO have funded music programs in the years since, but just as efforts to establish lasting peace, security and prosperity here still face numerous challenges, so too does any musical renaissance. In rural areas still under Taliban influence, the militant group continues to bar it, locals have said, and musicians elsewhere in the country still face strong family pressure and even threats from violent extremists.

In 2014, for example, a suicide bomb attack targeted Ahmad Naser Sarmast, founder and musical director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. The Taliban claimed the attack, which took place at a high school, and said Sarmast was corrupting Afghanistans youth.

Samast lost his hearing in both ears, and for three or four months afterward it felt like there was a full symphony orchestra in my head, playing out of tune, he said recently.

Now Sarmast is slowly regaining his hearing and continues teaching young people. However, an entire generation of other would-be teachers or mentors was silenced by death, oppression or exile, said Kabul University music professor Mohsen Saify, and Afghan women are still often discouraged from even studying music by family members who hold that its immoral.

At Bagram, however, Kaderi believes that sharing a love of music is a deep part of the countrys culture and a reason to continue to celebrate the Talibans ouster.

You cannot take away music from Afghan people, he said. Even during their fighting with their enemies, they sing and dance.

Capt. Eveleen Soroko has attended some of the music nights and said that even though she didnt understand all of the words, she enjoyed the musics poetry.

I can feel in the music that the culture is alive, and that the history has a beautiful depth to offer, she said.

The Bagram events are also a way for fellow musicians like Kaderi and Tappan to build camaraderie.

I have not forgotten about Afghan music, the experiences Ive had with Afghan musicians or the study of Afghan music, Tappan said. It will continually color my life.

lawrence.jp@stripes.comTwitter: @jplawrence3

Afghan and American musicians assemble on Oct. 23, 2016, at Bagram Airfield. The two groups of musicians closed the show in a joint performance of two traditional Dari folk songs.COURTESY OF CAPT. PHILIP D. TAPPAN

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Bagram's Afghan music night is the American base's other 'sound of freedom' - Stars and Stripes

For all its difficulties and outright calamities, the year 2019 gave the workers and oppressed of the world a lot to celebrate. Mainly, international revolt on a scale unprecedented in recent history!

For every exploitative, inhumane or downright barbaric action by the powers-that-be, there was a resounding reaction by working-class and young people, often with women on the front lines. Around the world, from Chile to Lebanon, people rose up against corruption, the bitter fruits of neoliberalism, ethnic cleansing, destabilizing of the climate, and the arrogance and repression of authoritarian leaders.

Strikes in the United States and across the globe got real. Symbolic one-day walkouts were often replaced by bold, serious struggles, sometimes lasting for weeks or months. Internationally, one of the most compelling battles raged in France, where public employees were still out as the year ended. Strikers in the U.S. included 49,000 auto workers at General Motors, nurses in Ohio, copper miners in Arizona, and teachers in Los Angeles, Chicago, and across the country. In one week in October, over 85,000 workers were out.

Workers stepped up not only over bread and butter issues, but over issues of justice, equality, and planetary survival as well. Employees at Google, Microsoft, Palantir, Amazon, Tableau, Whole Foods, and Wayfair protested their companies dealings with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sometimes by striking. Thousands of big-tech workers organized an environmental walkout the week before the United Nations climate summit in September. And Microsoft employees petitioned the corporation to cancel a $479 million military contract and to end development of weapons technology. Issues of gender, race, sexuality, and the rights of indigenous people, immigrants, and refugees galvanized action in every hemisphere.

Nonetheless, wars continued to proliferate, seas continued to rise, and the far right continued to grow. The opponents of all of these scourges had plenty of courage and commitment. But too often one overthrown dictator was merely replaced with another; a valiant strike won only modest gains or went down to defeat; or a climate mobilization of hundreds of thousands failed to push the politicians to stand up to the fossil fuel profiteers. What was lacking? Revolutionary organizations prepared to lead a fight for revolutionary solutions.

The Freedom Socialist Party aims to be part of meeting this need. To this end, FSP belongs to the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR), which is an expanding effort to bring socialists together internationally to collaborate on the major problems facing the worlds people.

Along with taking part in a productive, forward-looking meeting of CRIR in Mexico City in December 2019, FSP held its own rousing socialist feminist convention in the Seattle area in October. The overwhelming spirit of members was one of revolutionary optimism, based on the Marxist understanding that nothing is greater than the power of the working class once fully unleashed.

In the U.S., 2020 brings the quadrennial showdown between the Democrats and Republicans over who will take charge of stealing from workers and the poor to give to the rich with the added complication of Donald Trumps impeachment. But these exercises in capitalist democracy have very little to do with real democracy of, by and for the working-class majority. And that is the goal worth aiming for.

The best tribute we can pay to the brave insurgents and labor militants of 2019 is to continue their work and deepen it to usher in a new year and a new decade dedicated to achieving the international socialism that people and the planet so urgently need.

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Freedom Socialist Party New Year's Greetings for 2020: In anticipation of another year of global resistance - Freedom Socialist Party

This time, with freedom! Sisters Mary Karen and Mary Gabriel implored. It was a rare day for Sisters of Life from different convents to get to be together at the religious orders motherhouse in the suburbs of New York. There, they gathered around an outdoor Nativity scene with fire for warmth and sang carols and other devotional songs.

The funny part of the freedom remark is that these women are freer than just about anyone I have ever met.

In one description of the founding of the Sisters of Life, Mother Agnes Mary Donovan said about its founder, Cardinal John OConnor: He was very frank. He often said he was doing what he believed the Holy Spirit had asked him, and if it was of the Holy Spirit, then it would turn out all right.

I thought of that story as Sister Mary Gabriel gazed on the flames of the fire and talked about the Holy Spirit burning in each Christian. When you acknowledge that reality within, great things can happen. Goodness and joy can become contagious. Hope can be seen, and love can be plausible.

The Sisters of Life help women in need women who may not want their children but dont want to choose abortion; women who need help with parenting; women who need help, period. It is an international movement, with Sisters hailing from all corners of the globe. (The Sisters currently have convents in New York, Denver, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Toronto.)

Its safe to say the Holy Spirit wanted the Sisters of Life, because it is looking more than all right. They are women dedicated to God and His people, with a special commitment to innocent human life. The Sisters of Life were born of an inspiration Cardinal OConnor had at Dachau. He asked himself: How could human beings do this to other human beings?

Speaking of freedom, I realize I still cant get over an event at the Freedom Tower the structure built on the site of the World Trade Center in January, when the governor or New York decided to expand abortion in a state already known as the abortion capital of the country. To celebrate such a blow to life at a site at which so much life was taken should be beyond the pale.

But life continues, and God provides people who see clearly and will pour themselves out in service for others. Ours doesnt have to be a culture of cynicism and despair. The Sisters not only show us something greater, something wonderful, something more real than so much that we allow ourselves to become enslaved to; they draw us into it, as well.

The Sisters will tell you: We believe every person is valuable and sacred. We believe that every person is good, loved, unique and unrepeatable. We believe that every persons life has deep meaning, purpose and worth. In fact, we give our lives for that truth.

And that seems to me a good prompt for a resolution for the new year, for the rest of our lives. What more can we do to help people see that they are good, loved, unique and unrepeatable? People dont feel good, loved, unique and unrepeatable. What can each one of us do about that? Thats not simply a question for women who take particular vows with the Sisters of Life. Its fuel for the revolution our lives and world need. This is using freedom well. And it only comes from knowing it about yourself at which point it becomes harder not to want the same for others.

So, as the Sisters said: This time, with freedom! How about that as a mantra for 2020?

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review magazine. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.

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KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: 'This time, with freedom!' | Opinion - The Albany Herald

During my two-and-a-half decades as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, I had the privilege of getting to know political dissidents around the world. They were the most courageous people Ive known. They fight for the freedoms we take for granted. Some sacrificed their lives.

Occasionally, in my last diplomatic posting, I used to meet the Vietnamese political dissident Dng Thu Hng in Hanoi. As a young woman during the Vietnam War, Dng served as a volunteer in a youth auxiliarynoncombatants who provided support services for the troops. She was one of only three in her 40-woman unit who survived the war. She also became a member of the Communist Party. After the country was unified in 1975, she turned to writing. Her novels became bestsellers in her country and later abroad.

Nevertheless, she became disillusioned with Vietnams repressive one-party regime and expressed her discontent in her stories. Her government responded by banning her books (which were then circulated underground samizdat-style, and smuggled out of the country); expelling her from the Party; imprisoning her and after her release, barring her from foreign travel. Her circle of friends, afraid to be seen with her, dwindled and the secret police constantly harassed her.

Her novel, Paradise of the Blind, banned in Vietnam, became an award-winning bestseller abroad. In it, she took on Vietnams political leaders boast that they had created a workers and peasants paradise. On the contrary, she countered, there was no paradiseonly blind men promoting a faux paradise based on a flawed ideology that could never succeed. Only the first lie really costs us; after that, everything flows from the same wellspring, she wrote.

Over lunch one day, I asked her how she put up with it allthe harassment, the marginalization, the censorship. Plus, didnt she worry about meeting openly with an American diplomat? She stiffened in her chair, chin up, and responded resolutely, I spit in their face.

The Vietnamese government, having their fill of the feisty Madame Dng, finally allowed her to leave the country. Today, she resides in France, busily writing away into her 70s.

When I worked on Afghanistan at the State Department, I occasionally met the young Russian muckraking journalist Artyom Borovik. The son of a Novosti journalist assigned to New York, Borovik spoke nearly perfect American English (and excellent Spanish). He was urbane, highly educated and multilingual. At the same time, he was as comfortable in an Afghan tea house as he was at a Manhattan Starbucks. Borovik was a pioneer of investigative journalism during glasnost and was fearless in his criticism of the corrupt, oligarchic system that was supplanting the old communist regime.

True to form, he had been digging dirt on Vladimir Putin in advance of the 2000 presidential elections. In a scathing article, he quoted Putin as saying, There are three ways to influence people: blackmail, vodka, and the threat to kill. Days later, Borovik, only 39, was killed in a still-unsolved Moscow plane accident, an early journalistic fatality as Putin was consolidating power.

I also got to know many Cuban dissidents before Fidel Castros death, when my diplomatic duties included traveling throughout the island to monitor the human rights conditions of people we had repatriated, in accordance with a bilateral agreement, after they had unsuccessfully attempted to flee to the United States. Yet we took it a step further and resettled genuine political dissidents to the U.S. In Cuba, I was constantly surveilled and harassed. At one point, the secret police slashed my tires.

Later, during the 2003 crackdown known as the Black Spring, the Cuban government imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists. Several years later, two of them, Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Wilmar Villar Mendoza, died from hunger strikes.

Around this time, the dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez summed up the dissidents sentiments: Freedom is fundamentally the possibility of standing on a street corner and shouting There is no freedom here! That reminded me of one of the earliest American political dissidents, Thomas Paine, who proclaimed, Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Indeed, we face the same challenge now, in Trumps America. Journalists are not enemies of the people; all voters need unhindered access to the polls; dark money needs to be taken out of politics; and whistleblowers are essential to democracy. Thats why we need to fight back. Because, as Paine made clear, and as the dissidents I knew exemplified, the most patriotic thing one can do is dissent. It means you love your country enough to sacrifice your own comfort for the sake of its improvement.

One way you can invest in our freedomand protect our democracywhile our rights as Americans are under assault, is to support Washington Monthly.

As our editors state on our website, Were an independent voice, listened to by insiders and willing to take on sacred cowsliberal and conservative. And, as a non-profit, the Monthlyis beholden to no vested interests. Were committed to putting pressure on power, telling the truth no matter the costs, treating journalism as a public service, and coming up with bold ideas that can improve the country.

But we cant do it all on our own. If you appreciate our work, please consider helping us by making adonationduring this months fundraising drive. Give whatever you can$10, $20, $100, $1,000and for a limited time only your contribution will be matched, dollar for dollar, thanks to a generous challenge grant from NewsMatch. If you give $50 or more, youll receive a complimentary one-year subscription to the print edition of theWashington Monthly.

Your contributions to theWashington Monthlyare vital, tax-deductible, and much appreciated. And rememberits an investment in freedom.

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Invest in Freedom: Support the Washington Monthly - Washington Monthly

AP

It was called the "Tuskegee Experiment."

Amid the unease of possibly being drawn into wars in Europe and Asia, the United States in the 1930s explored the idea of allowing African-Americans to serve as military pilots and looked to deeply segregated Alabama to get that idea off the ground.

"Potential candidates had to be college graduates and were expected to be officers in the Army Air Forces, usually second lieutenants, as they completed their advanced training," according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

More than 900 black pilots trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama during the war, men from all over the country who fought racism and oppression at home and enemy pilots and antiaircraft gunners overseas.

More than 400 served in combat.

The Tuskegee Airmen lost 27 ships and would complete 1,578 total combat missions for the Fifteenth and Twelve Air Forces, destroying 150 enemy aircraft on the ground and 112 in air-to-air combat.

It was that record which inspired Harry Truman to eliminate racial divides in the military services.

These airmen shown listening to an instructor are among first class of African American pilots in history of the United States to get their wings at the advanced fly school on March 7, 1942 at Tuskegee, Alabama. Left to right: R.M. Long, G.S. Roberts, London, W. VA.; Capt. B. Washington; C.H. Debow, Indianapolis; Mac Ross, L.R. Curtis, New Rochelle, N.Y. (AP Photo)

B. I. Sanders

The Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941 attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the nation was thrust into World War II. Approximately 300,000 uniformed men and women from Alabama served in the military branches during the war. More than 6,000 lost their lives, including those who served at Pearl Harbor, Normandy and Iwo Jima.

New or expanded military bases brought thousands of service members and civilians to Montgomery, Mobile, Selma, Ozark, Gadsden, Anniston and elsewhere, while munitions and supply plants roared day and night across the state.

In honor of Alabamas bicentennial, here is the third in a series of four pieces compiling more than 200 images capturing the states 200 years of history good, bad and ugly.

Part I: Creek War, Civil War, and the KKK

Part II: Promise, progress, Depression and death

Second Lieut. Russell Drinnan, an instructor in a Ranger division training at Camp Rucker, Ala., demonstrates how easy it is to clear bayonets, March 5, 1943. (AP Photo/B. I. Sanders)

Woman painting at Goodyear rubber plant in Gadsden, sometime between 1941-1945. Alabama Department of Archives and History.

AP

James Estes of Marion, Alabama stands guard beneath the stars and stripes on board a destroyer at the U.S. Naval operational base at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, July 12, 1942. (AP Photo)

A large electric phosphate smelting furnace used to make elemental phosphorus in a TVA chemical plant in the vicinity of Muscle Shoals in 1942. (Library of Congress)

Carl Thusgaard

Mess Sergeant, S/Sgt. Milton Henney (right, foreground) of Opelousas, La., tastes the chow in the field kitchen in New Guinea on June 23, 1943. At left is Sgt. Henry Hall of Leeds, Alabama. (AP Photo/Pool/Carl Thusgaard)

AP

Sergeant Joe Louis, top, world heavyweight boxing champion, stretched out for a rest in a water-filled trench in Alabama on March 11, 1944, where he is temporarily stationed, after crawling under live machine gun fire and through mud and barbed wire. He and his two companions were training on the battle conditioning course of the chemical warfare training centre at Alabama. (AP Photo)

Alabama also became home to 24 POW camps holding 16,000 German prisoners. Camp Aliceville in Pickens County is the largest, with a capacity for 6,000. German POWs housed in barracks in Aliceville. (Alabama Department of Archives and History.)

Robert Adams

The war at home

When the war and the victory celebrations ended, Alabama still faced the deep racial divides that haunted us since before we joined the United States 125 years earlier.

In the years after World War II, Birmingham's African-American families began crossing the invisible line formed by decades old city ordinances that kept blacks out of the city's 'white neighborhoods.'

Barriers that kept black children in inferior schools and black women at the back of city buses were challenged in court and with acts of peaceful, civil disobedience.

Each hard fought victory was met with violence from spiteful racists.

Impromptu celebrations erupted in the streets of Birmingham as news of the surrender of Japan in August 1945, ending World War II, swept across Birmingham. (Robert Adams/The Birmingham News)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jimmy Harris, right, 19, is questioned by Warden Tennyson Dennis, left, at the state prison in Montgomery, Ala., June 10, 1947, after Harris was rescued from a mob at Hurtsboro, Ala., which had a rope around his neck and was threatening to lynch him. Sheriff Ralph Matthews says Harris is held on an attempted rape charge. After his rescue from the mob, Harris was rushed to the jail at Phenix City and then to the state prison for his "protection." (AP Photo)

In the 20 years after WWII, bomb blasts turned Birmingham's Smithfield neighborhood into 'Dynamite Hill' and the Magic City into 'Bombingham.'

As civil rights activists made progress step by grueling step, their victories from the 1940s through the 1960s were punctuated with the sounds of bombs exploding.

After the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth fought to desegregate buses in 1956, his home was blown up on Christmas night.

When a truce was declared to end weeks of nationally televised protests in May 1963, bombs exploded at the Gaston Motel and the home of A.D. King, brother of MLK.

Days after city schools integrated in September 1963, four Sunday School students were killed in the deadliest, most tragic of the years-long series of bombings.

Original News caption: "Home Blasted: The four-bedroom home of a Negro woman who had challenged the city of Birmingham's zoning laws was blasted in 1950. This picture shows the over-all damage to the residence of Monroe and Mary Means Monk, 950 North Center Street. In the foreground is the wrecked porch, on which the bomb is believed to have exploded. Just back of the porch is the Monk's bedroom in which the owner of the house had retired before the explosion."

From a 2006 News article: "When Claretta Monk heard the blast four nights before Christmas 1950, she knew exactly what the target was: the home of her father and stepmother, Monroe and Mary Means Monk.

With a friend in tow, she hurried on foot from her residence in Enon Ridge to her parents' new home on the traditionally white west side of Center Street North.

''They stayed in it one night, and it was gone,'' said Monk."

.....The Monks were targets because they challenged (segregation) laws. The first black to do so was Sam Matthews. On Aug. 18, 1947, his home at 120 11th Court North was bombed.

Disgusted with the national Democratic Party for embracing aplatform to eliminate the poll tax and pass fair labor practices and anti-lynching laws, Southern state delegates walked out of the party's convention in Philadelphia into the rain on July 17, 1948and caught the Silver Comet train to Birmingham.

Bull Connor led the 6,000 people gathered under the ceiling fans there at Birmingham's Municipal Auditorium -- today called Boutwell Auditorium.

South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond, who had a relatively moderate record on race, accepted the presidential nomination to the newly formed Dixiecrat Party.

"There's not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit Negroes into our homes, our theaters and our swimming pools," Thurmond said in his acceptance speech.

July 17, 1948: The Dixiecrat Convention assembles in Birmingham, selecting Strom Thurmond as presidential nominee for the States Rights Democratic Party. In the 1948 election, the Dixiecrats carry Alabama and three other Southern states.'Truman Killed By Civil Rights' reads the sign on this effigy of President Truman handing from the marquee of the Tutwiler Hotel tonight after a states rights meeting was held here.

Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery on Dec. 1, 1955. Her action ignited the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott and helped usher in the civil rights movement.

"While thousands of other Negroes boycotted Montgomery city lines in protest, Mrs. Rosa Parks was fined $14 in Police Court today for having disregarded last Thursday a driver's order to move to the rear of a bus," The Associated Press reported in December 1955.

"An emotional crowd of Negroes, estimated by the police at 5,000, roared approval tonight at a meeting to continue the boycott.

"Spokesmen said the boycott would continue until people who rode buses were no longer "intimidated, embarrassed and coerced." They said a "delegation of citizens" was ready to help city and bus line officials develop a program that would be "satisfactory and equitable."

"Mrs. Parks appealed her fine and was released under $100 bond signed by an attorney, Fred Gray, and a former state president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, E.D. Nixon."

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., Feb. 22, 1956, two months after refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955. She was arrested with several others who violated segregation laws. Parks' refusal to give up her seat led to a boycott of buses by blacks in Dec. 1955, a tactic organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which ended after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed that all segregation was unlawful,Dec. 20, 1956. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

Gene Herrick

In early 1956, the homes of (Martin Luther) King and E. D. Nixon were bombed," according to Stanford University.

"King was able to calm the crowd that gathered at his home by declaring: Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place."

"City officials obtained injunctions against the boycott in February 1956, and indicted over 80 boycott leaders under a 1921 law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business. King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case. Despite this resistance, the boycott continued."

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court and the boycott ended 0n Dec. 20, 1956.

"The next morning, (King) boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife Coretta after leaving court in Montgomery, Ala., March 22, 1956. King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott city buses in a campaign to desegregate the bus system, but a judge suspended his $500 fine pending appeal. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

HARDIN

Meanwhile, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was the driving force behind the Birmingham integration efforts in the 1950s and early 1960s that energized the national civil rights movement.

He was brutally beaten by a mob, sprayed with city fire hoses, arrested by police 35 times and also blown out of his bed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb during his struggle against segregation in Birmingham and said he never feared death.

"I tried to get killed in Birmingham and go home to God because I knew it would be better for you in Birmingham," he once told an audience of students.

June 5, 1956: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth on the night he founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights at Sardis Baptist Church. The meeting came one week after Alabama Attorney General John Patterson outlawed the NAACP. Said Shuttlesworth of the meeting: It was packed. People were downstairs and outside too. It was an enthusiastic meeting. The thing you have to remember is that I was challenging the whole segregation law. I was saying what I wanted to say and I was screaming against segregation. I was getting the crowd whipped up. After the NAACP was outlawed by Alabama Attorney General John Patterson. A response was organized as the ACMHR one week later. The ACMHR was the organization most often associated with Birmingham civil rights actions for the next 10 years, with Shuttlesworth's fiery oratorical style at the helm. (Tom Hardin photo)

Jay Reeves The Associated Pres

For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in Tuskegee withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward.

Workers initially recruited 600 black men into a health program with the promise of free medical checks, free food, free transportation and burial insurance in a county where many blacks had never even seen a doctor. The men were tested and sorted into groups -- 399 with syphilis and another 201 who were not infected.

The disease-free men were used as a control group. Health workers told syphilitic fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers and uncles only that they had "bad blood."

None of the men were asked to consent to take part in a medical study. They also weren't told that "bad blood" actually was a euphemism for syphilis. Instead, doctors purposely hid the study's purpose from the men, subjecting them during the study's early months to painful spinal taps and blood tests.

And doctors never provided them with penicillin after it became the standard treatment for syphilis in the mid-1940s.

The government published occasional reports on the study, including findings which showed the men with syphilis were dying at a faster rate than the uninfected. But it's doubtful any of the men -- or their wives, girlfriends or other sexual partners -- had any idea what had happened until an Associated Press story was published nationwide on July 26, 1972.

Finally exposed, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement.

In this 1950's photo released by the National Archives, a black man included in a syphilis study has blood drawn by a doctor in Tuskegee, Ala. For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward. Finally exposed in 1972, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement. (National Archives via AP)

The Freedom Rides, a protest to show how Supreme Court decisions integrating public transportation were not being enforced in the segregationist South, left Washington in May 1961 headed to New Orleans. The buses were filled with blacks and whites, riding side by side.

Waiting for them were klansman in Alabama, determined the trip, and the Civil Rights Movement, would not proceed.

A Freedom Rider bus went up in flames in May 1961 when a fire bomb was tossed through a window near Anniston, Ala. The bus, which was testing bus station segregation in the south, had stopped because of a flat tire. Passengers escaped without serious injury. (AP Photo)

TOMMY LANGSTON

Klansmen attack a Freedom Rider at the Trailways Bus Station in Birmingham, Ala., May 14, 1961. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Tommy Langston, File)

Nashville Tennessean

May 20, 1961: Freedom Riders arrive at the Greyhound bus terminal in Montgomery where a mob attacks them. Anniston and Birmingham are scenes of similar mob mayhem. The Freedom Rides through the Deep South are challenging racial segregation on public transit.Freedom Riders John Lewis and Jim Zwerg after being beaten by a mob in Montgomery Alabama as they took part in the 1961 Freedom Rides that ultimately brought integration of interstate transportation to the South.

AP

A workman removes a restroom sign at Montgomery Municipal Airport, Jan. 5, 1962, in compliance with a federal court order banning segregation. However, city officials delayed plans to remove waiting room furniture and close toilets and water fountains. But they said these and the airport restaurant will be closed if there is a concerted integration attempt. (AP Photo)

AP

In the mayoral election of 1963, former Alabama Lt. Gov. Albert Boutwell received 39 percent of the vote and Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor received 31 percent, setting up an April 2 runoff.

Civil rights activists saw the discord in the municipal goverment of one of America's most violently segregated cities as a chance to finally kill Jim Crow.

Boutwell decisively defeated Connor and the next day, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) led sit-in demonstrations at downtown Birmingham lunch counters; 20 participants were arrested at Britt's lunch counters, while Kress, Loveman's, Pizitz, and Woolworth's closed their counters.

For the next five weeks, marchers, many of them children, took to the streets of Birmingham and were assailed by police dogs and fire hoses while the world watched on television.

(AP Photo/stf)

With an estimated 40 percent of the student body at the all-black Parker High School skipping class to protest and the Birmingham City Jail filled beyond capacity, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered the use of fire hoses and police dogs on the protestors in May of 1963.

CALVIN HANNAH

June 11, 1963, has been remembered most often as the day Gp. George Wallace fulfilled a campaign promise made more than a year earlier as he kicked off his run for governor, Charles Dean wrote.

"I shall refuse to abide by any such illegal federal court order even to the point of standing in the schoolhouse door, if necessary."

But Wallace's stand in front of Foster Auditorium was not how Vivian Malone, later to become Vivian Malone Jones, wanted history to remember those events. Jones, who died in 2005, said on the 40th anniversary of her and James Hood's successful enrollment, that she hoped people would remember doors opened, not blocked.

"For so long, it's gone down in a negative way, it's gone down in the way we portray that event as a 'stand in the schoolhouse door.' The press picked it up that way, which to me was a negative," said Jones. "What I was hoping and hoping will happen .... is that we celebrate the opening of the door, not the stand, not the attempt to close the door."

Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace is shown in this June 1963 photo, when he vowed 'segregation forever' and stood in an Alabama school house door to keep blacks from enrolling at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Tuscaloosa News, Calvin Hannah)

Jones, Ed

Although only the state flag typically flew over Alabama's capitol, the Confederate flag was raised as U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy visited the state to meet with Gov. George Wallace in 1963. The two spoke for nearly an hour and a half.

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Alabama's 200 years in 200 images: Freedom fighting from Iwo Jima to Selma - AL.com

OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Dsir welcomes the release of Ukrainian journalists Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk from militant captivity in occupied Donetsk.

I welcome and am relieved that Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk, both contributors to Radio Liberty in Ukraine, were released today from long illegal custody in Donetsk as a result of todays exchange of prisoners, Dsir posted on Twitter on December 29.

Earlier, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media repeatedly called for the release of Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk illegally detained by Russian occupation troops in Donetsk.

As reported, on December 29, the detainee exchange between Ukraine and the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic took place at the Mayorske entry-exit checkpoint in Donetsk region.

Seventy-six people returned to Ukraine. Ukraine transferred 127 detainees, being ready to transfer 141 people, but 14 of them refused to return to the militant-controlled territory.

Stanislav Aseev is Ukrainian writer, journalist and blogger, member of PEN Ukraine. He was captured between May 10 and June 2, 2017 by militants and charged with espionage. There was almost no connection with him. Aseev was held in former museum Isolation, turned into a prison, and was later transferred to another prison. According to the released Ukrainian who was in captivity together with Aseev, the latter admitted that he had been tortured. On October 22, Russian-backed militants of the Donetsk Peoples Republic formation reported in their media that Aseev had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Blogger Oleh Halaziuk was held captive also. He lived in the occupied city of Torez, Donetsk region, and was a professor at the local faculty of the Kharkiv Institute of Economics of Market Relations and Management. In June 2014, his brother, Vitaliy, reported to the Torez police department about disappearance of Oleh.

Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk were also columnists of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and told about life under occupation.

ol

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OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media welcomes release of Aseev and Halaziuk - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

To the Editor:

Overall, PBS News Hour and Politico, in particular the outstanding Judy Woodruff, moderated a substantive and productive debate among Democratic presidential candidates Dec. 19.

The candidates performed well, and competing world visions were laid out for the American voters.

Ironically, the most poignant moment, on foreign policy matters, came from South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He said that the Peoples Republic of China is on a mission to use technology for the perfection of dictatorship.

I believe his articulation of this fact is critical if we are to understand the future. The U.S. must respond aggressively to the Chinese communists efforts to subvert democracy, censor inherent freedoms, violently oppress individual rights and kill everyone who stands in their way.

The next president of the United States, and our entire nation, must stand boldly for our democratic republic. Even during this joyful time of year, we must recognize that our enemies will not compromise, relent or grant us mercy in their quest to implement an autocratic and evil world empire.

This is truly a binary choice for our planet. Freedom versus slavery. Life versus death. We must fight to ensure that freedom, and life itself, prevails.

Henry J.H. Wilson

Barrington

Read this article:

Letter: Choice is simple freedom or slavery? - Northwest Herald

Cruise day is here and we are getting onboard Freedom of the Seas!

We flew down to San Juan on two nights before and enjoyed a relaxing start to our vacation. Prior to the cruise, there was a lot of conjecture about what time boarding would begin, but I decided around 10:30am to roll the dice and head to the port. We found no traffic or wait at all to check-in at the terminal.

We boarded the ship at 11am and it felt great to be back onboard one of my favorite ships in the fleet.

Getting onboard the ship, we walked around the ship a bit to see things. There were still Christmas and Hannukah decorations up on the ship, and I understand they will stay up through this sailing.

At 1:30pm, our rooms were ready and we are staying in a two bedroom grand suite on the aft of deck 8.

The room is very spacious, and more than enough room for the kids and us. It features two full bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a very spacious balcony.

After getting in the room, I took the kids up to the pool to enjoy the now-classic H2O Zone. This, like so many other areas of the ship, will be upgraded/replaced in the forthcoming Amplification.

In the afternoon, we held our first event of the RoyalCaribbeanBlog.com group cruise, which was a welcome aboard event in the Viking Crown Lounge. We rented out the entire Olive or Twist bar and got our first official opportunity to meet everyone and put faces to online names.

Muster drill was at 5:15pm, and was luckily not too warm outside for the duration of the event.

Unfortunately Adventure Ocean did not open until 8:30pm, so we decided to skip dinner in a restaurant and eat with our kids in the Windjammer.

The Windjammer had a phenomenal gingerbread house at the entrance.

After dinner, we headed down to the Royal Promenade for some live music in the pub.

There was a Christmas tree lighting held as well on this sailing.

Tomorrow, we will be in St. Maarten.

I loved this creative fruit and cookie delivery to the room.

Here is the New Years Eve champagne options to pre-order.

The upper decks are closed due to winds this evening.

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Freedom of the Seas Live Blog - Day 1 - Embarkation - Royal Caribbean Blog