Francis 🇾🇪 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @francis@greenplenty.social

On June 21, 1877, the authorities hanged ten Irish miners in a single day in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Known as Black Thursday, or Day of the Rope, it was the second largest mass execution in U.S. history. (The largest was in 1862, when the U.S. government executed 38 Dakota warriors). They convicted the Irishmen of murder, and accused them of being terrorists from a secret organization called the Molly Maguires. They executed ten more over the next two years, and imprisoned another twenty suspected Molly Maguires. Most of the convicted men were union activists. Some even held public office, as sheriffs and school board members.

However, there is no evidence that an organization called the Molly Maguires ever existed in the U.S. The only serious evidence against the men was presented by a spy, James McParland, working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who provided the plans and weapons the men purportedly used in their crimes. The entire legal process was a travesty: a private corporation (the Reading Railroad) set up the investigation through a private police force (the Pinkerton Detective Agency) and prosecuted them with their own company attorneys. No jurors were Irish, though several were recent German immigrants who had trouble understanding the proceedings.

Nearly everything people “know” today about the Molly Maguires comes from Allan Pinkerton’s own work of fiction, The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (1877), which he marketed as nonfiction. His heavily biased book was the primary source for dozens of academic works, and for several pieces of fiction, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s final Sherlock Holmes novel, Valley of Fear (1915), and the 1970 Sean Connery film, Molly Maguires.

My novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, tells a truer story of these union miners and their persecution by the Pinkertons.

You can read my complete article on the Molly Maguires here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/13/the-myth-of-the-molly-maguires/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #MollyMaguires #union #Pinkertons #coal #mining #police #racism

The AI bubble crash will be very, very bad
https://mastodon.cloud/@jasongorman/112267939807351935

Normal Island News

Iran plotting unprovoked attack on country that bombed its embassy
This would be a huge act of aggression

There is outrage in the west that Iran might be planning an unprovoked attack against Israel after the IDF bombed its consulate building in Damascus on April 1, killing two generals and five soldiers. Tensions have been high since Iran refused to apologise for overreacting to Israel’s April Fools' prank.

https://open.substack.com/pub/normalislandnews/p/iran-plotting-unprovoked-attack-on?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#NormalIslandNews #IranIsrael

i see nothing has changed in the past 20 years:

2004: windows pcs are plagued with random unwanted popups
2024: windows pcs are plagued with random unwanted popups

actually there is one difference difference, in 2004 it was considered malware, and in 2024 it's just how windows works

@SeanJones

My first question to those who cheer such stupidity:

Which rights and freedoms would you like to be unprotected?

My second question:

Are you content with the UK having the same status in respect of human rights under international law as Belarus and Russia?

People cheering the Govt’s talk about leaving the ECHR is like little pigs demanding the wolf legislate for dwellings to be made exclusively of straw.

When a business or executive is described as laser-focused, your visual model should be that of a cat chasing the meaningless dot of a laser pointer until exhausted.

Wankpanzer ❤️​

Me: Explains cancer treatment using #science

Patient (male): <looks at me in shock> “And you know all this?”

Me: “Sir, I have to know all of this; that’s how I became a board-certified medical oncologist”

Patient: <still clearly in shock>

(I think this is a culmination of the ease of internet “research,” where many truly cannot fathom the depths of learning over decades it takes to become an expert (compared to 5 min googling); anti-science; & worsening #misogyny everywhere)

#MedMastodon

"Spotify’s CEO is now a billionaire but it takes artists 334 streams to make $1. The company just enacted a plan to completely demonetize smaller artists. Under the new policy, tracks that get under a certain threshold of annual streams will receive no money from the company. Groups like United Musicians and Allied Workers (ig: weareumaw) are fighting to save their industry."

#Union #capitalism

Dear UK residents. I’m sorry to be tedious, but I’m going to do the trans Cassandra thing again.

The government is now moving towards regarding trans people as effective children until the age of 25.

This will be established as precedent and then used to screw over any and all young adults who can’t escape from abusive parents, especially young women.

If you want to do anything about this, you need to fight for trans people. Yes, you. Now.

We all know that isn’t going to happen to any significant extent though.

As you were.