National Miners Day Quotes

American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights. Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushed us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on Mother Earth. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It's nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it's called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals. I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We're not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary — and, yes, at times, extraordinary — human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren't stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren't sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you'd see a protest! With all else that's been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part. Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!

In April 1914, two National Guard companies were stationed in the hills overlooking the largest tent colony of strikers, the one at Ludlow, housing a thousand men, women, children. On the morning of April 20, a machine gun attack began on the tents. The miners fired back. Their leader, a Greek named Lou Tikas, was lured up into the hills to discuss a truce, then shot to death by a company of National Guardsmen. The women and children dug pits beneath the tents to escape the gunfire. At dusk, the Guard moved down from the hills with torches, set fire to the tents, and the families fled into the hills; thirteen people were killed by gunfire. The following day, a telephone linesman going through the ruins of the Ludlow tent colony lifted an iron cot covering a pit in one of the tents and found the charred, twisted bodies of eleven children and two women. This became known as the Ludlow Massacre.

And what’s the solution of preventing this debacle? Plenty of ‘em! The Communists have a patent Solution they know will work. So have the Fascists, and the rigid American Constitutionalists—who call themselves advocates of Democracy, without any notion what the word ought to mean; and the Monarchists—who are certain that if we could just resurrect the Kaiser and the Czar and King Alfonso, everybody would be loyal and happy again, and the banks would simply force credit on small business men at 2 per cent. And all the preachers—they tell you that they alone have the inspired Solution. “Well, gentlemen, I have listened to all your Solutions, and I now inform you that I, and I alone, except perhaps for Walt Trowbridge and the ghost of Pareto, have the perfect, the inevitable, the only Solution, and that is: There is no Solution! There will never be a state of society anything like perfect! “There never will be a time when there won’t be a large proportion of people who feel poor no matter how much they have, and envy their neighbors who know how to wear cheap clothes showily, and envy neighbors who can dance or make love or digest better.” Doremus suspected that, with the most scientific state, it would be impossible for iron deposits always to find themselves at exactly the rate decided upon two years before by the National Technocratic Minerals Commission, no matter how elevated and fraternal and Utopian the principles of the commissioners. His Solution, Doremus pointed out, was the only one that did not flee before the thought that a thousand years from now human beings would probably continue to die of cancer and earthquake and such clownish mishaps as slipping in bathtubs. It presumed that mankind would continue to be burdened with eyes that grow weak, feet that grow tired, noses that itch, intestines vulnerable to bacilli, and generative organs that are nervous until the age of virtue and senility. It seemed to him unidealistically probable, for all the “contemporary furniture” of the 1930’s, that most people would continue, at least for a few hundred years, to sit in chairs, eat from dishes upon tables, read books—no matter how many cunning phonographic substitutes might be invented, wear shoes or sandals, sleep in beds, write with some sort of pens, and in general spend twenty or twenty-two hours a day much as they had spent them in 1930, in 1630.

NEXT TIME LEW got up into the embattled altitudes of the San Juans, he noticed out on the trail that besides the usual strikebreaking vigilantes there were now cavalry units of the Colorado National Guard, in uniform, out ranging the slopes and creeksides. He had thought to obtain, through one of the least trustworthy of his contacts in the Mine Owners Association, a safe-passage document, which he kept in a leather billfold along with his detective licenses. More than once he ran into ragged groups of miners, some with deeply bruised or swelling faces, coatless, hatless, shoeless, being herded toward some borderline by mounted troopers. Or the Captain said some borderline. Lew wondered what he should be doing. This was wrong in so many ways, and bombings might help but would not begin to fix it. It wasn’t long before one day he found himself surrounded—one minute aspen-filtered shadows, the next a band of Ku Klux Klan night-riders, and here it was still daytime. Seeing these sheet-sporting vigilantes out in the sunlight, their attire displaying all sorts of laundering deficiencies, including cigar burns, food spills, piss blotches, and shit streaks, Lew found, you’d say, a certain de-emphasis of the sinister, pointy hoods or not. “Howdy, fellers!” he called out, friendly enough. “Don’t look like no nigger,” commented one. “Too tall for a miner,” said another. “Heeled, too. Think I saw him on a poster someplace.” “What do we do? Shoot him? Hang him?” “Nail his dick to a stump, and, and then, set him on fahr,” eagerly accompanied by a quantity of drool visibly soaking the speaker’s hood. “You all are doing a fine job of security here,” Lew beamed, riding through them easy as a herd of sheep, “and I’ll be sure to pass that along to Buck Wells when next I see him.” The name of the mine manager and cavalry commander at Telluride worked its magic. “Don’t forget my name!” hollered the drooler, “Clovis Yutts!” “Shh! Clovis, you hamhead, you ain’t supposed to tell em your name.” What in Creation could be going on up here, Lew couldn’t figure. He had a distinct, sleep-wrecking impression that he ought to just be getting his backside to the trackside, head on down to Denver, and not come up here again till it was all over. Whatever it was. It sure ‘s hell looked like war, and that must be what was keeping him here, he calculated, that possibility. Something like wanting to find out which side he was on without all these doubts. . . .

The history of the land is a history of blood. In this history, someone wins and someone loses. There are patriots and enemies. Folk heroes who save the day. Vanquished foes who had it coming. It’s all in the telling. The conquered have no voice. Ask the thirty-eight Santee Sioux singing the death song with the nooses around their necks, the treaty signed fair and square, then nullified with a snap of the rope. Ask the slave women forced to bear their masters’ children, to raise and love them and see them sold. Ask the miners slaughtered by the militia in Ludlow. Names are erased. The conqueror tells the story. The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness. Oh, but let’s not speak of such things! Look: Here is an eagle whipping above the vast grasslands where the buffalo once thundered bold as gods. (The buffalo are here among the dead. So many buffalo.) There is the Declaration in sepia. (Signed by slave owners. Shhh, hush up about that, now!) See how the sun shines down upon the homesteaders’ wagons racing toward a precious claim in the nation’s future, the pursuit of happiness pursued without rest, destiny made manifest? (Never mind about those same homesteaders eating the flesh of neighbors. Winters are harsh in this country. Pack a snack.) The history is a hungry history. Its mouth opens wide to consume. It must be fed. Bring me what you would forget, it cries, and I will swallow it whole and pull out the bones bleached of truth upon which you will hang the myths of yourselves. Feed me your pain and I will give you dreams and denial, a balm in Gilead. The land remembers everything, though. It knows the steps of this nation’s ballet of violence and forgetting. The land receives our dead, and the dead sing softly the song of us: blood. Blood on the plains. In the rivers. On the trees where the ropes swing. Blood on the leaves. Blood under the flowers of Gettysburg, of Antioch. Blood on the auction blocks. Blood of the Lenape, the Cherokee, the Cheyenne. Blood of the Alamo. Blood of the Chinese railroad workers. Blood of the midwives hung for witchcraft, for the crime of being women who bleed. Blood of the immigrants fleeing the hopeless, running toward the open arms of the nation’s seductive hope, its greatest export. Blood of the first removed to make way for the cities, the factories, the people and their unbridled dreams: The chugging of the railways. The tapping of the telegram. The humming of industry. Sound burbling along telephone wires. Printing presses whirring with the day’s news. And the next day’s. And the day after that’s. Endless cycles of information. Cities brimming with ambitions used and discarded. The dead hold what the people throw away. The stories sink the tendrils of their hope and sorrow down into the graves and coil around the dead buried there, deep in its womb. All passes away, the dead whisper. Except for us. We, the eternal. Always here. Always listening. Always seeing. One nation, under the earth. E Pluribus unum mortuis. Oh, how we wish we could reach you! You dreamers and schemers! Oh, you children of optimism! You pioneers! You stars and stripes, forever! Sometimes, the dreamers wake as if they have heard. They take to the streets. They pick up the plow, the pen, the banner, the promise. They reach out to neighbors. They reach out to strangers. Backs stooped from a hard day’s labor, two men, one black, one white, share water from a well. They are thirsty and, in this one moment, thirst and work make them brothers. They drink of shared trust, that all men are created equal. They wipe their brows and smile up at a faithful sun.

One day the “Good Morning Everyone” team announces that the government of the Dominican Republic has offered to bring all thirty-three miners and their families to a relaxing resort in that Caribbean island nation.

•from taking a course or reading a book on world religions, to developing a friendship with a Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist person, to moving to a city in North Africa or South Asia in hopes of being a witness for Christ there •from becoming an advocate for immigrant rights, to getting involved in the diplomatic corps, to becoming a lawyer at the United Nations dedicated to getting countries to abide by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights •from going on a short-term mission trip to reach children in a poor barrio, to supporting a child for forty dollars a month through World Vision or Compassion International, to becoming a social worker dedicated to serving children •from learning a language, to learning about people who don't have the Bible in their mother tongue, to becoming a linguist who translates the Bible •from dedicating thirty minutes per day to pray for the nations of the world, to building crosscultural friendships, to going to serve in a multicultural organization •from studying business at a university, to learning about microfinance, to engaging in business partnerships designed to create jobs for the poorer populations of the world •from taking a stand for an issue (advocating for free-trade coffee, opposing blood diamonds, opposing the manufacturing of "conflict minerals" for cell phones), to becoming an advocate for the people affected, to becoming an executive with a multinational corporation who brings the Christian value of dignity for the people affected by these issues You get the point. These are not issues that will be solved by a generous check. These are issues that can take our lifetimes.

Feeling the heat, Governor Hatfield released Mother Jones on May 7. The next day she appeared in the Senate gallery and applauded when Senator Kern’s call for an investigation passed by a voice vote. Acting largely on her own, one woman had done more than the nation’s top union leaders to alert reformers to the suppression of civil liberties in industrial America.

I frowned at Scott Morrison deliberately because, in my opinion, he has done and assisted in objectively terrible things. No matter what your politics are, the harm that was caused under his government was some of the worst in our nation's history, including but not limited to survivors of domestic and sexual violence. To have smiled at him, to have pretended that everything was all right, would have made me a fucking liar. That there was more outrage that day directed towards me over a momentary death stare that towards many of Scott's political acts, reflects how disturbingly skewed our national media's perspective and priorities have become. If people are more upset by the way you look than what you're exposing, it says more about them than it does about you. They're the emperors without any clothes on. (p.323-4)

Anybody who criticizes the corporate takeover of Adivasi land is called an antinational “sympathizer” of the banned Maoists. Sympathy is a crime, too. In television studios, guests who try to bring a semblance of intelligence into the debate are shouted down and compelled to demonstrate their loyalty to the nation. This is a war against people who have barely enough to eat one square meal a day. What particular brand of nationalism does this come under? What exactly are we supposed to be proud of? Our lumpen nationalists don’t seem to understand that the more they insist on this hollow sloganeering, the more they force people to say “Bharat Mata ki Jai!” and to declare that “Kashmir is an integral part of India,” the less sure of themselves they sound. The nationalism that is being rammed down our throats is more about hating another country—Pakistan—than loving our own. It’s more about securing territory than loving the land and its people. Paradoxically, those who are branded antinational are the ones who speak about the deaths of rivers and the desecration of forests. They are the ones who worry about the poisoning of the land and the falling of water tables. The “nationalists,” on the other hand, go about speaking of mining, damming, clear-felling, blasting, and selling. In their rule book, hawking minerals to multinational companies is patriotic activity. They have privatized the flag and wrested the microphone.

De Beers set up a purchasing office in Monrovia in 1954 where they bought diamonds, with the intent of keeping as much of the diamond trade under its control as possible. However by 1956, while I was still in Monrovia, there were approximately 75,000 illegal miners, who were smuggling these valuable stones on a vast scale. At that time I was offered the opportunity to get involved in this bonanza, which I fortunately did not do since some of my friends who did, went missing never to be seen again. At that time I was the Captain of a Farrell Line’s coastal ship and made additional pocket money running booze into the Liberian interior. In those days when someone disappeared or fell off of the grid, as we would say, the chance that they would be found again was exceedingly slim. In 1984 the De Beers Group (SLST) from South Africa, sold its remaining shares, under duress, to the Precious Metals Mining Company controlled by Lebanese National, Jamil Sahid Mohamed Khalil, was a questionable local businessman, as well as a diamonds and commodities trader. He became known throughout the world’s diamond industry as a wheeler-dealer and a politician, influential in Sierra Leone, where the majority of the blood diamonds came from. In 1999, when South African mercenaries invaded Sierra Leone’s capital city Freetown, Jamil attempted to flee from this West African country but was stopped prior to leaving his home. During this altercation, one of Jamil’s sons was shot to death right in front of him. The following year, Jamil died of a stroke after having successfully made his way to Lebanon.

February led to excited calls for war in the press, the monthly journal of the International Association of Machinists agreed it was a terrible disaster, but it noted that the deaths of workers in industrial accidents drew no such national clamor. It pointed to the Lattimer Massacre of September 10, 1897, during a coal strike in Pennsylvania. Miners marching on a highway to the Lattimer mine—Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, Germans—who had originally been imported as strikebreakers but then organized themselves, refused to disperse, whereupon the sheriff and his deputies opened fire, killing nineteen of them, most shot in the back, with no outcry in the press. The labor journal said that the . . . carnival of carnage that takes place every day, month and year in the realm of industry, the thousands of useful lives that are annually sacrificed to the Moloch of greed, the blood tribute paid by labor to capitalism, brings forth no shout for vengeance and reparation. . . . Death comes in thousands of instances in mill and mine, claims his victims, and no popular uproar is heard. The official organ of the Connecticut AFL, The Craftsman, also warned about the hysteria worked up by the sinking of the Maine: A gigantic . . . and cunningly-devised scheme is being worked ostensibly to place the United States in the front rank as a naval and military power. The real reason is that the capitalists will have the whole thing and, when any workingmen dare to ask for the living wage . . . they will be shot down like dogs in the streets.

Short story: The true and incredible tale of David Kirkpatrick, a Scottish ex-boy scout, and miner, serving in WW2 with 2nd Highland Light Infantry and the legendary elite corps 2nd SAS. A man who becomes a hero playing his bagpipe during a secret mission in Italy, March 1945, where he saved the lives of hundreds just playing during the attack. After he fought in North Africa, Greece, Albania, Sicily and being reported as an unruly soldier, (often drunk, insulting superiors and so on) in Tuscany, 23 march 1945 he joined as volunteer in the 2nd Special Air Service ( the British elite forces), for a secret mission behind enemy line in Italy. He parachuted in the Italian Apennines with his kilt on (so he becomes known as the 'mad piper' ) for a mission organized with British elite forces and an unruly group of Italian-Russian partisans (code name: 'Operation Tombola' organized from the British secret service SOE and 2nd SAS and the "Allied Battalion") against the Gothic Line german headquarter of the 51 German Mountains Corps in Albinea, Italy. The target of the anglo-partisan group's mission is to destroy the nazi HQ to prepare the big attack of the Allied Forces (US 5th Army, British 8th Army) to the German Gothic Line in North Italy at the beginning of April. It's the beginning of the liberation of Italy from the nazi fascist dictatorship. The Allied Battalion guided by major Roy Farran, captain Mike Lees Italian partisan Glauco Monducci, Gianni Ferrari, and the Russian Viktor Pirogov is an unruly brigade of great fighters of many nationalities. Among them also not just British, Italian, and Russian but also a dutch, a greek, one Austrian paratrooper who deserted the German Forces after has killed an SS, a german who deserted Hitler's Army being in love with an Italian taffeta's, two Jewish escaped from nazi reprisal and 3 Spanish anti-Franchise who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War and then joined first the French Foreign Legion and the British Elite Forces. The day before the attack, Kirkpatrick is secretly guested in a house of Italian farmers, and he donated his white silk parachute to a lady so she could create her wedding dress for the Wedding with his love: an Italian partisan. During the terrible attack in the night of 27th March 1945, the sound of his bagpipe marks the beginning of the fight and tricked the nazi, avoiding a terrible reprisal against the civilian population of the Italian village of Albinea, saving in this way the life of hundreds The German HQ based in two historical villa's is destroyed and in flames, several enemy soldiers are killed, during the attack, the bagpipe of David played for more than 30 minutes and let the german believe that the "British are here", not also Italian and Russian partisan (in war for Hitler' order: for partisans attack to german forces for every german killed nazi were executing 10 local civilians in terrible and barbarian reprisal). During the night the bagpipe of David is also hit after 30 minutes of the fight and, three British soldiers of 2nd SAS are killed in the action in one of the two Villa. The morning later when Germans bring their bodies to the Church of Albinea, don Alberto Ugolotti, the local priest notes in his diary: "Asked if they were organizing a reprisal against the civilian population, they answered that it was a "military attack" and there would.

By Anne Kihagi - For Wine Enthusiasts Looking for Off-Beaten Path Ideas- Consider the Town of MurphysSuggested by Anne Kihagi California is known for its numerous vineyards and wineries. Located in Calaveras County, the town of Murphys is situated between Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe. It is home to several dozen wineries that operate year-round. Some of the wineries in the town include Indian Rock Vineyards, Mineral Wines Tasting Room, Newsome Harlow, and Courtwood Wine Tasting Tours. The town also offers unique boutique shops, art galleries, and fine dining. You can find items that are new to you at Best Friends Consignment Shop, peruse baseball cards at KCK Collectibles, and sample olive oil at Marisolio Olive Oil Tasting Bar. Unwind after a long day of shopping and wine tasting with dinner at Gabby’s Mexican Cuisine or V Restaurant, Bar, and Bistro. If you have a sweet tooth, visit JoMa’s Artisan Ice Cream or Aria Bakery. A place of interest located near Murphys is Moaning Cavern in Calaveras Trees State Park. It is the largest cavern in the state. If you are a history buff, you will enjoy learning about the town’s origins during the Gold Rush Era. It was started in 1848 by brothers John and Daniel Murphy. Some of the town’s original buildings are still in operation, like the Murphys Historic Hotel and Lodge. It earned a registered historic landmark designation because of the significant figures who once visited it, including Mark Twain and General Ulysses S. Grant.

if one day states themselves begin to mine Bitcoin, the bitcoins and transaction fees that miners now collect on any exchanged bitcoin would be collected by the entire community. This global ‘Tobin e-tax’ would be the equivalent of a universal housing tax, serving to keep the national infrastructure in good condition. It would be an ideal candidate with which to finance an unconditional basic income, even if Marxists do not like the principle very much.4 This would be what activist Aaron Bastani calls ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’.

Kim Il-sung had promised North Koreans three bowls of rice every day. Rice, especially white rice, was a luxury in North Korea. It was a magnanimous promise that was impossible to fulfill for all but the elite. However, the public distribution system did supply the population with a mixture of grains in amounts that were carefully calibrated in accordance with rank and work. Coal miners doing hard labor were to get 900 grams of grain daily, while factory workers like Mrs. Song got 700 grams. The system also dispensed other staples in the Korean diet, such as soy sauce, cooking oil, and a thick red bean paste called gochujang. On national holidays, such as the Kim family birthdays, there might be pork or dried fish. The best part was the cabbage, distributed in the autumn for making kimchi. The spicy preserved cabbage is the Korean national dish, the only vegetable product in the traditional diet during the long winters and as integral to the culture as rice. The North Korean regime understood you couldn’t keep Koreans happy without kimchi. Each family got 70 kilograms (154 pounds) per adult and 50 kilos (110 pounds) per child,