John Mack

Mohawk Skywalkers: The History Stephen Miller Whitewashed The Kanien'kéhá:ka Haudenosaunee ironworkers were vital to building Miller's favorite monuments to modern America

Stephen Miller tried to claim only real "Americans" built the Empire State Building, but he left out the true stories of the Indigenous ironworkers who actually did. The Mohawk Skywalkers helped shape America's skylines—and shatter the lie behind Miller’s whitewashed nostalgia.

His Former Company Got Caught Employing Undocumented Workers. Now He’s Profiting Off an Immigrant Detention Camp. Disaster Management Group is one contractor behind the nation’s largest detention camp, to be built at Fort Bliss. It’s run by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty to a...

www.propublica.org/article/nath...

George Orwell Explains in a Revealing 1944 Letter Why He’d Write 1984 Image via Wikimedia Commons Most of the twentieth century's notable men of letters — i.e., writers of books, of essays, of reportage — seem also to have, literally, written a great deal of letters.

George Orwell Explains in a Revealing 1944 Letter Why He’d Write 1984 www.openculture.com/2014/01/geor...

Council of Nicaea anniversary is call to Christian unity, speakers say url:https://www.usccb.org/news/2025/council-nicaea-anniversary-call-christian-unity-speakers-say

Aerial photo of the Dachau concentration camp

Crowds of prisoners of Dachau standing in front of the line of barracks. The fence of the camp is visible on the left.

29 April 1945 | The US Army soldiers liberated #Dachau - the first concentration camp created in Nazi Germany which became a model camp for the entire SS concentration camps system. Over 205,000 people were imprisoned there between 1933-1945. Some 41,500 were murdered there.

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration (Gift Article) Federal agencies have issued guidance to employees on hundreds of terms to limit or avoid using. An analysis of government websites shows many of the same words being removed.

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious (Gift Article) President Trump, in an early February call, challenged the border treaty between the two countries and told Justin Trudeau he didn’t like their shared water agreements.

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/w...

F.D.A. Cancels Meeting of Vaccine Experts Scheduled to Advise on Flu Shots The cancellation plays into fears among scientists who worry that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will use his position as health secretary to sow doubts about vaccines.

As someone who is immune suppressed from a transplant, this is frightening. A dangerous roll of the dice for next year’s flu season. 86 children and 19,000 adults have died from flu this season. About 430,000 people were hospitalized.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/18940...

Calling Bullshit Pushing back on performative power

“Every bully hopes you’ll think it’s all-encompassing, absolute and undeniable. Every bully is wrong.”

Yes. All the time. Unexamined. Denied. Often dwelling in our fears and expressed in hatred.

The root that tears apart your foundation begins as a seed of distrust, hate, and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe didn’t arrive overnight.

It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

Time spent loving is never wasted | The Catholic Weekly Anything good, including knowledge, can be distorted and used to harm, but that doesn't mean it's not worth preserving, or time wasted writes Simcha Fisher.

From @simchafisher.bsky.social

The Final Despotism When Technology Rewrites Human Freedom

Powerful read

02-14-25 - Pastoral Letter from Bishop Mark Brennan | Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston Immigrants: Our Neighbors, Friends and Fellow Believers When I was a boy, we children sometimes asked one another: “What are you?” It wasn’t a question about our sex or what position we played in base...

On immigration and ministry to migrants. Charity and clarity. “Where are you from?”

@parkermolloy.com has an ongoing thread of J6 thugs rearrests

One by one. Justice served.

A follow up: Cardinal Dolan addressed the issue Tuesday on his weekly talk show. However, he then said, “[From] a guy who has struck me as a gentleman and a thoughtful man, and from whom I’m still expecting great things — I hope it was an uncharacteristic moment.” Hmmm…

Missed it. His original statement went viral. Hard to believe that my whole theology world on FB never mentioned the response. I guess they missed it, too.

An Office of Public Affairs statement? A paragraph. Yes, 3 days ago, unnoticed. Perhaps if the President of the USCCB, who is usually unafraid of the spotlight, had said something. Perhaps they have already been silenced out of fear of pushback. USCCB is always disappointing but never surprising. 😪

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H. L. Mencken, who died on January 29, 1956

Finally. From the USCCB as a whole. Where is the leadership? Their silence is deafening and telling.

“This power structure, which has become institutionalized, has put people with no empathy, no risk assessment and extremely poor understanding of the world in charge of our governance and our knowledge with predictably disastrous results.” - Heather Marsh, The Creation of Me, Them, and Us

“This power structure, which has become institutionalized, has put people with no empathy, no risk assessment and extremely poor understanding of the world in charge of our governance and our knowledge with predictably disastrous results.”

- Heather Marsh, The Creation of Me, Them and Us

#booksky

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.

"Sins against charity are sins and therefore immoral no less than are sins against justice. Christian morality does not recommend that we not offend against charity. It obliges us under pain of sin not to offend against charity."

— George Dunne, SJ, 1945
www.commonwealmagazine.org/sin-of-segre...