Can confirm. I lived in C. Springs in 98-99, and sporadically for years after that, when fate brought me through.

Focus on the Family had its claws DEEP in that town, at every level, and especially in the military families stationed there.

Today is the 130th anniversary of the #WoundedKneeMassacre. On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry surrounded a peaceful encampment of Lakota with Hotchkiss guns and slaughtered ~300. They were mostly women and children.

Those killed at Wounded Knee were led by Mniconjou Chief Spotted Elk, who was ill. Many were followers of Hunkpapa Chief Sitting Bull who was assassinated 14 days prior. They were invited to seek refuge with Oglala Chief Red Cloud at Pine Ridge. They were hungry, tired & cold.

The soldiers weren’t satisfied with gunning down the encampment. They chased down those who escaped, including little children & their grandmothers, for miles. Some ran all the way back to the Cheyenne River Reservation, through the night in the freezing cold, with bullet wounds.

Charles Eastman, the 1st western educated Oceti Sakowin (Dakota Sioux) physician, was at Pine Ridge during the #WoundedKneeMassacre. It was right after Christmas. A banner hanging over the wounded said, ‘Peace on Earth.’ The horrors Dr. Eastman saw that day changed him forever.

Those massacred at Wounded Knee were callously thrown into a mass grave. Soldiers proudly posed for photos with their corpses. They were awarded Medals of Honor for their part in the slaughter. Those Medals have never been rescinded, despite public outcry.

A Thanksgiving story to warm your pluralistic hearts:

It was the early 1990s, the days before Washington DC had meters in taxis. A famine was raging in Somalia. And I was working in my first job out of college: a brief stint working for an organization that focused on the Middle East peace process.

I was heading to my parents’ house. I was standing in front of a mailbox near my office. I was holding a stack of papers with Hebrew writing on them. I hailed a cab.

I was aware that on the mailbox behind me was a large sign from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals with an image of a turkey and the words: “Thanksgiving is Murder on Turkeys.”

It was the period right around Thanksgiving.

A cab pulled up, and I got in the front seat—because in the days before metered cabs in DC, drivers were allowed to pick up more than one fare, and someone else was already occupying the back seat.

A thread on Wallelign Mekonnen’s 1969 essay “On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia” - which catalyzed the student movement that overthrew Ethiopia’s Solomonic dynasty in 1974 (Wallelign was killed in 1972 while hijacking an Ethiopian airlines plane) https://t.co/Ol0ElagLJq

Wallelign wrote that, while some call the question of nationalities "tribalism" - it is in fact "nationalism." Ethiopia is not one nation, he wrote, “it is made up of a dozen nationalities with their own languages, ways of dressing, social organization and territorial entity.”

Culture is nothing more than the superstructure of an economic basis that presupposes subjugation of the peasantry and proletariat. To be a “genuine Ethiopian” one has to speak Amharic and adhere to their culture. One must “wear an Amhara mask”- to use Frantz Fanon's terminology.

A common refute to the Neftegna system, whereby Abyssinian elites took lands from southern peoples, was that there are Amhara and Tigray masses in poverty. Another centred on representational politics. In reality, the feudal system oppressed all, but some groups more than others.

While Abyssinians are not dominant because of inherent imperialist tendencies, this is no excuse to perpetuate this situation. The only way forward is a state where every nationality is given equal opportunity to preserve and develop its language, culture and self-administration.

This is the story of an ordinary seaside town and the global powers that tried to hide it from the world.

In 1983 a little-known filmmaker made a television documentary about an obscure working-class town in the English county of Essex. That filmmaker’s name was Adam Curtis.

He aimed to show that ordinary people could find fulfilment away from the ever-growing influence of global capitalism.

His film was broadcast by the BBC on Tuesday 19th April 1983, only one day after 33 people were killed when terrorists bombed the US Embassy in Beirut.

This documentary was “Just Another Day: The Seaside” and it depicted the small coastal town of Walton-on-the-Naze, where innocent holiday-makers found pleasure in a technology-free utopia.

The same day this film was shown, Polish author Jerzy Andrzejewski, whose books explored topics such as betrayal and the final days of World War II, died in Warsaw of a heart attack.

Curtis was convinced that if the ancient pastimes of these Essex pleasure seekers – such as Punch and Judy shows, and Wild West re-enactments – were captured on film then people around the world might realise something.

But this was a fantasy.