Saturday, March 15, 2014

Today -100: March 15, 1914: Mrs. Pankhurst is persecuting the Government without mercy


The NYT calls for a new trial for Leo Frank. It doesn’t mention, no one ever mentions, that one of the reasons why he was railroaded and why there was such an outcry against him was that he is Jewish. Evidently in Atlanta they hated Jews more than they hated black men who killed 14-year-old girls.

A day after the Daily Mail crows that the militant suffragette movement in Britain is dying out, suffragettes break the windows of Home Secretary Reginald McKenna’s home. All cabinet ministers’ houses have police protection these days, so they’re all arrested. One tells the court: “It is a lucky thing for you we do not shoot.”

Emmeline Pankhurst is released from prison into a nursing home, after a hunger and thirst strike. She was not forcibly fed. Sylvia Pankhurst, also hunger-striking, gets out of prison the same day.

The NYT says “All the suffragists condemn the Government in heated terms. Mrs. Pankhurst is released because she threatens to starve herself to death, and the harridans insist that the Government is persecuting Mrs. Pankhurst. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Pankhurst is persecuting the Government without mercy.”

Kaiser Wilhelm orders all military officers to prevent their wives riding horses except side saddle.

Austria-Hungary, worried about the strength of its military, bans the emigration of men aged 17 to 36.

Theodore Roosevelt sends a dispatch from his Amazonian adventures.

Predictable Headline of the Day -100: “Ulster, Immovable, Demands Even More.” Ulster Unionists won’t accept an exclusion from Home Rule that is less than permanent, and want the entire province excluded, including the counties in which Protestants are in the minority (5 of the 9 counties of Northern Ireland). Arms smuggling and drilling continue apace, as is the custom.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill gives a speech about Northern Ireland in Bradford, and the NYT leaves out the important bits, the bits that Ulsterites took as a declaration of war:
If Ulstermen extend the hand of friendship, it will be clasped by Liberals and by their Nationalist countrymen in all good faith and in all good will; but if there is no wish for peace; if every concession that is made is spurned and exploited; if every effort to meet their views is only to be used as a means of breaking down Home Rule and of barring the way to the rest of Ireland; if the Government and Parliament of this great country and greater Empire are to be exposed to menace and brutality; if all the loose, wanton, and reckless chatter we have been forced to listen to these many months is in the end to disclose a sinister and revolutionary purpose; then I can only say to you, Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof.


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2 comments:

  1. "As a matter of fact, Mrs. Pankhurst is persecuting the Government without mercy.”

    This reminded me of something...

    In the meantime, Col Bogden says he will continue following his orders. I ask if he considers whether this hunger strike is part of what has been described as an "asymmetric war".

    "I think that's probably an accurate description of what they do. I mean, there are plenty of detainees who are still in the fight, they are looking [for] any means to resist to, to assault or to harm a guard, anything that keeps them in the fight for their cause."

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  2. It's been described that way by previous Guantanamo officials, this isn't just the reporter putting words in his mouth. There was also the guy who said the Guantamo hunger strikes were “consistent with al-Qaeda training.”

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