Category Archives: Signs of the Times

"New Normal"?, 47, Accountability?, Arts: Blogging, Food, Libraries & Archives, Signs of the Times

Hegseth Headed For the Door?? I’ll Believe It When I See It

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Dow-down-900

Well, rest in peace, Pope F, but the crazy merry-go-round of news moves so fast you could have slipped away a month or two ago. But after all, you were 88.

For that matter, by mid-afternoon the stock market was down again — but only by another 900+ points; I, mean, Ho-hum, right? 401k panic is so last week.

The big late Monday news buzz was a growing swell of oddly-camouflaged, anonymously-sourced reports that the SuperLethal Crusader SecDef Pete Hegseth is on the way out.

The podcasts and news shows practically had him already being ushered out of the Pentagon by a team of Navy Seals. Was that a champagne cork I heard pop? Continue reading Hegseth Headed For the Door?? I’ll Believe It When I See It →

"New Normal"?, 47, Black & White & Other Colors, Books - by Chuck Fager, Books & Book Reviews, Censorship, DEI, Resistance, Sedition Watch, Selma & Civil Rights, Signs of the Times, writing & Such

The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth

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I hate to admit it, but my authorial ego was bruised by wading through the list of 381 books pulled from the Nimitz Library of the U. S. Naval Academy last week. It tallied the volumes  expelled by order of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for committing the grave sins of advocating and documenting aspects of work for racial and gender justice, particularly its recent incarnation in programs lumped together as DEI.

I was bummed out because, after all, I’ve published four books on racial justice. They got several decent reviews, sold some thousands of copies, and have turned up in footnotes and bibliographies of much better-known tomes. This is a sign that at least a few serious people had taken note of them.
My books were forged from direct experience and much research on a time of wide-ranging and often violent struggle for racial justice. They covered   Selma’s Bloody Sunday; the Poor Peoples Campaign; Black Power (“By any means necessary!”). Writing them, I considered each as documentation of radical challenges to an evil status quo.  Surely at least one of them should have caught the sharp eye of a diligent censor.

But no.

None made the cut for the Naval Academy’s dishonor roll.

Continue reading The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth →

"New Normal"?, 47, Civil War, Constitutional Crisis, Crusade, Democracy, Jail & Incarceration, Project 2025, Pushback, Sedition Watch, Signs of the Times, Supreme & Other Courts, Terror and Terrorism, The Law — Inside & Outside it, To Save Democracy

Dread: Confronting a key tool of Authoritarian Rule

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On the porch

It was just a suitcase. Well-used, medium size, dun-colored, nondescript. Sitting upright on the porch, not far from the low railing, out of sight of the sidewalk.

Why was it so unnerving? And what’s it got to do with America 2025?

We’ll get to 2025 presently. First, consider the location: 1315 Lapsley Street on the corner of Academy St., in Selma Alabama. A Black middle class enclave, single family houses. Respectable, not lavish, some tall trees. Mostly quiet, not much traffic.

Continue reading Dread: Confronting a key tool of Authoritarian Rule →

Books - by Chuck Fager, Hard-Core Quaker, Iraq, Islam & Muslims, Other War Notes, Palestine, Passing the Torch(es), Quakers, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Remarkable People, Remember . . ., Signs of the Times, War & Peace

Tom Fox – Quaker Peaceworker Murdered in Iraq March 10, 2006

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March 10: Remember Tom Fox

March 10 — how could I forget? How dare I fail to remember?

Nineteen years and four months ago, John Stephens and I began a blog site called freethecaptivesnow.org , as both a personal vigil and a community service, compiling and posting nightly updates of reports — or mostly the lack of reports — about the fate of four peaceworkers kidnapped in Iraq. They had been taken in Baghdad, and one of them, Tom Fox, was a Quaker and a friend of both John and me.

Continue reading Tom Fox – Quaker Peaceworker Murdered in Iraq March 10, 2006 →