Monthly Archives: December 2019

History, Security

Stanford = Genocide

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A search on the Internet for “Stanford genocide” brings up a long list of references. Some initial hits are these, all very promising:

However, as you scroll down the list, perhaps the most interesting hit of all is this one warning that Stanford should be known as a “primary architect of annihilation”:

“Naming America’s Own Genocide”

“Genocide” is a powerful word, but one whose impact has been diminished through overuse. Madley doesn’t use the word carelessly, even though he’s writing about US policy toward American Indians, a subject that often leads people to toss the term around quite loosely. His book does not contend, as more polemical works do, that all Indian policy was genocidal. He concentrates instead on a particular place and time: California from 1846 to 1873. […] Madley argues—and this is the core of his book—that California’s elected officials were in fact “the primary architects of annihilation,” and that they were funded and enabled by the federal government. Together, state and federal officials created what Madley describes as a “killing machine” composed of US soldiers, California militia and volunteers, and slavers and mercenaries (so-called “Indian hunters”) in it for the money.

Overall, it is clear that Stanford’s success was built on a system that was often exploitative and unjust, which benefited from extreme violence, repression, and genocide.

Stanford served in California state legislature as a Senator in the 1850s and oversaw Native American policy as a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs. That foreshadowed his governorship actions in 1862 to 1863, when he signed into law appropriations bills specifically meant to fund a “killing machine” that would wipe out Native American tribes in the state, a policy of forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands.

Keep in mind at the point Stanford “oversaw” the fate of Native Americans, their population of approximately 310,000 just had been reduced to about 150,000 in the prior 77 years. Stanford’s push for a “killing machine” then totally decimated surviving populations, reducing them to just 12,000 people.

Stanford not only was head of government he was involved in business ventures that benefited from the displacement and exploitation of Native American communities, including the acquisition of land that had been taken from those communities through violent means.

Stanford University sits on ancestral land stolen from the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

Genocide.

The San Francisco Chronicle calls this “The moral case for renaming Hastings [and Stanford]“.

Leland Stanford solicited volunteers for his Civil War-era army campaigns against California Indians and, as governor, signed into law appropriations bills to fund those killing expeditions. He later founded Stanford University in the name of his son, Leland Stanford Jr. Both Hastings and Stanford had made fortunes in real estate. Their ability to acquire land titles was facilitated by the massacre of the rightful claimants, a near-extinction they promoted and funded. As UCLA professor Benjamin Madley wrote in his sobering “An American Genocide,” published in 2016 by none other than Yale University Press, both Stanford and Hastings had “helped to facilitate genocide.”

The California State Library puts it plainly:

California is birthed in genocide. […] As governor of California from 1861 ­to 1863, [Stanford] signs into law appropriation bills to finance those killing expeditions. Stanford’s favorite Indian killer is Major James D. Savage, leader of a militia called the “Mariposa Battalion.” Facilitated by the successes of extermination, both Hastings and Stanford acquire vast tracts of land and make fortunes in real estate. Their ability to acquire land titles is facilitated by their massacre of the rightful claimants.

Stanford wealth and assets came from massacres.

While all these references may seem to be ancient history, don’t forget Stanford recently hired Facebook’s disgraced head of security after he allegedly helped to facilitate genocide.

Change seems necessary and long overdue.

Is renaming from Stanford possible?

It appears to me this University moving to a better name is not out of the question.

We already know Stanford agreed to remove cartoonish and degrading “Indian” imagery as its mascot. If you read the fine print on the following example it says offensive memorabilia was declared eliminated by making it secret, meaning easily available from the bookstore on request.

Source: The Stanford Daily Archives

In other words Stanford moves quickly when it wants to and uses creative solutions to deal with those uncomfortable with change/progress. The school offers an official timeline explaining how in just two years time they switched to being the Cardinals in 1972.

On November 22, 1970, Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO) members petition for removal of Stanford’s Indian mascot—both the logo (as a “false image of the American Indian”) and the man, Timm Williams (whose live performances at sporting events were a “mockery of Indian religious practices.”) Native American students position themselves outside the Stanford Stadium at the Big Game against the University of California with banners saying “Indians are people, not mascots.”

SAIO members retell the story a little more broadly. They point out Governor Ronald Reagan’s “Indian staff person” is who voluntarily dressed and danced as a human mascot, and was breaking a promise he made to cease derogatory and demeaning acts:

The big issue with Timm Williams was his mockery of Indian religions. He would dance around in a faux Indian dance at the games. Even though he was a Yurok Indian, he wore the recognizable Plains Indian headdress and clothes to every game. He would make the “woo woo” sound with his hand slapping his mouth. We met with him a month after we got there, and he promised not to do it anymore. Shortly afterward he became the Indian staff person to Gov. Ronald Reagan, who infamously did nothing to understand Indians, most of whom had lost their Indian status when their treaties were terminated in the 1950s. But Timm did it again the next week. That was it for us. The Indian symbol, the caricatured Indians with the big noses, the religious denigration—all of it had to go. It took two years, but we finally got it done.

Governor Reagan fired Williams just months after Stanford changed its mascot.

Outside pressure clearly has worked on Stanford. Also, inside pressure has shown to be effective, as explained by members of the Stanford marching band who transformed it into a protest against a history of exterminating native cultures.

Part of assimilating Indigenous children in boarding schools into American society was handing them European music instruments to play European music. The government thought it would assist with wiping away their traditional musical practices. Marching bands came into play. […] “When it comes to discipline, the Stanford band is zero discipline,” said the Miwok citizen with a laugh and an emphasis on zero. The university’s marching band is “pretty nontraditional. Technically, we’re a scatter band,” Brown said. So they don’t actually march. They run from one formation to the other. What else makes the band nontraditional? No experience is required. It’s zero commitment meaning they welcome beginners to advanced musicians. This can also be current students, alumni or community members. Members hardly wear bucket hats and military-style uniforms. If they do, they can customize it with buttons and pins. Other university bands, like the University of Southern California, hate them. People yell at them and get upset because they’re not traditional.

I write this all in response to those who have asked me what to do after they read history of America and its episodes of genocide, a history that quite frankly historians tend to point out Nazi Germany studied for inspiration.

Let me put it this way. If Germans asked what to do about a university named for someone who committed genocide, what would any American probably tell them to do? Renaming should be an obvious answer here, though Americans seem not to welcome the very step that they enforced on Germany during occupation.

Binding Up the Wounds: An American Soldier in Occupied Germany, 1945-1946, by Leon C. Standifer, p 131

Other states already have figured out how to turn the corner. Take for example Minnesota’s Governor who very clearly came forward and condemned a past Minnesota Governor known for saying the U.S. should exterminate Native Americans.

“I am appalled by Governor Ramsey’s words and by his encouragement of vigilante violence against innocent people; and I repudiate them,” Gov. Mark Dayton said in a statement released Thursday. “The viciousness and violence, which were commonplace 150 years ago in Minnesota, are not accepted or allowed now.” Dayton called for flags to fly at half-staff from sunrise to sunset Friday, declaring it a day of remembrance and reconciliation on the 150th anniversary of the start of the six-week U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. He asked Minnesotans “to remember that dark past; to recognize its continuing harm in the present; and to resolve that we will not let it poison the future.”

We have yet to see California leaders take even basic steps to call out Governor Stanford for who he was and what the Stanford name means to this day — resolve to stop letting it poison the future by demanding change in the present.

In case that reference to Stanford isn’t clear, his gubernatorial candidate acceptance speech of 1859 allegedly was “I prefer free white citizens to any other race”. Then, after becoming Governor of California, in his first speech he wrote clearly white supremacist life goals straight into the official record books:

There can be no doubt but that the presence of numbers among us of a degraded and distinct people must exercise a deleterious influence upon the superior race, and, to a certain extent, repel desirable immigration.

Racial purity? As Stanford’s basis for genocide and internment camps?

Go ahead and tell me how this is any different from someone following Hitler’s orders.

Stanford is an important domino towards addressing wider American systemic racism.

Of course some warn it won’t be easy erasing this genocidal xenophobic white supremacist’s name, while they also ironically point out how Stanford already has been renaming things (again thanks to outside pressures).

California has a racist past. But removing monuments sparks debate about how to reflect an ugly history…Stanford University last month decided to rename three campus references to Father Junipero Serra, who founded the California mission system in the 1700s and whose legacy came under fire for the missions’ treatment of Native Americans.

I’m not saying by any means that Stanford was the only bad guy to focus on, and thus also agree with removing Serra (Stanford has very shamelessly replaced Serra with… Stanford).

What I’m saying is that even Stanford admits there is an important point to renaming anything that reflects “ugly” treatment of Native Americans.

Stafford Poole, the renowned historian on colonial Latin America, explains at a macro level how Stanford really was a powerful cog in a wider context of U.S. creating California to exterminate Native Americans.

The true villain is James K. Polk, the [1845 to 1849] president who maneuvered the country into an immoral war for which he was opposed by a congressman named Abraham Lincoln.

For those unfamiliar with the Bay Area, Polk tends to be a popular and significant street name.

Poole is of course not only right, his point should be taken to mean the U.S. President Polk who in 1846 invaded Mexi-Cali to eradicate people living there and replace with white settlers…also probably shouldn’t have his name on anything today.

Source: Professor Grace Chee, Los Angeles Community Colleges

Note that quote from Grant, a true American hero in every sense. If you want to celebrate someone in American history, he’s the real deal.

Stanford stands out as the most significant target for renaming due to the heavy and widespread use as an honorific badge among scholars — influence is an understatement — not to mention the University obviously has aspirations to prevent further genocide (see initial links at the top of this blog).

When Stanford finally renames it likely will have influence on others to follow.

After Stanford in 1972 dropped their “Indian” mascot Dartmouth did the same.

I imagine after Stanford gets a better name someone will petition for places like San Francisco’s rather obscure yet busy Polk Street to be renamed (take note how “Polk Gulch” bloggers chastise other place names while apparently ignoring their own name).

The SAIO proved to the world in 1970 that Stanford University is capable of change, even rapidly evolving away from its ugly past.

We’re long past time to course correct the shameful “Stanford asshole” trend. Renaming Stanford to something not so “ugly” would be more than a symbolic way to help.

I propose Ohlone be consulted for the new name. Let them decide what the their land should be called.

And in the meantime go ask anyone brandishing the genocidal Stanford name to explain why they promote his crimes against humanity.

Oh, and also perhaps also ask why Mrs. Stanford was murdered with poison yet school officials refused to admit the facts, instead trying to claim she died from having too nice a lunch.

Security

Lessons From a New Norm of Internet Shutdowns

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Nearly 60K people in London lost Internet access when their Virgin fiber was ripped out by a crew that didn’t check for authorization before drilling
Compare and contrast:

First: “I asked my students to turn in their cell phones and write about living without them”

The usual industry and education narrative about cell phones, social media, and digital technology generally is that they build community, foster communication, and increase efficiency, thus improving our lives. Mark Zuckerberg’s recent reformulation of Facebook’s mission statement is typical: the company aims to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Without their phones, most of my students initially felt lost, disoriented, frustrated, and even frightened. That seemed to support the industry narrative: look how disconnected and lonely you’ll be without our technology. But after just two weeks, the majority began to think that their cell phones were in fact limiting their relationships with other people, compromising their own lives, and somehow cutting them off from the “real” world.

Second: “Internet shutdowns used to be rare. They’re increasingly becoming the norm in much of the world”

David Kaye, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, has described the ongoing shutdown as a “communications siege” and “collective punishment without even the allegation of an underlying offense.”

Within security theory we would see this as an authorization dilemma.

In the first story the teacher clearly is an authority over students, although she does admit to asking for their permission before taking away their Internet.

In the second story the government clearly also is an authority over citizens, however that permission step becomes the rub. What if the citizens object to their government?

In either case, it’s interesting to see how the teacher builds a case that Internet removal generates a lot of fear and anxiety at first, before shifting to a realization it may be even more harmful to have it restored.

Self-determination is one issue, obviously needing to be kept in the debate, yet the other much more interesting situation here is that shutdowns could have a positive effect (e.g. especially if Facebook is being used by anyone, as it tends to be the tool of dictatorship, mass atrocities and destruction of self-determination).

Third:

The FBI says fiber cables in Fremont, Berkeley and San Jose have been intentionally severed in 11 instances since July 2014. Federal officials say there is no evidence that the San Francisco Bay Area acts are linked with the sabotage of a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. substation in April 2013. The nighttime attack knocked out phone and emergency 911 service in Silicon Valley.

Not to mention the odd coincidence that Bay Area fiber cables were cut 04/2013 at 0100 and 04/2009 at 0100.

Most of the 10 severed fiber-optic cables were in San Jose, where the first four were cut shortly before 1:30 a.m. Thursday in an underground vault along Monterey Highway north of Blossom Hill Road. Those belong to AT&T. Four more underground cables, at least two of which belong to AT&T, were cut about two hours later at two locations near each other along Old County Road near Bing Street in San Carlos, authorities said. Two others were cut in south San Jose. Each time, the vandals had to pry up manhole covers, climb down into vaults and chop through the thick cables.

Someone has been working hard for over a decade on multiple levels to destroy critical infrastructure. I also remember an even bigger event around 2002 that disconnected much of San Jose but there seems to be no reports anymore on the web.

Update 2020: “Sonic investigates internet disruption that cut off customers throughout Northern California”

Food, History, Poetry, Security

This Day in History: 1862 Largest Mass Execution in American History

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Minnesota’s concentration camp of 1862 was setup to abuse and kill the Native American elderly, women and children. Source: Minnesota Historical Society
For some in America the “Holiday” weeks of December are an extremely painful time of American history.

The state of Minnesota, for example, was founded on deception and violence to steal land from Native Americans and culminated this month in 1862.

The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) explains how the encroaching U.S. sparked an intense war with Native Americans that ended in an unfair trial with a very large number of unjust executions:

The trials of the Dakota were conducted unfairly in a variety of ways. The evidence was sparse, the tribunal was biased, the defendants were unrepresented in unfamiliar proceedings conducted in a foreign language, and authority for convening the tribunal was lacking. More fundamentally, neither the Military Commission nor the reviewing authorities recognized that they were dealing with the aftermath of a war fought with a sovereign nation and that the men who surrendered were entitled to treatment in accordance with that status.

MNHS also relates how Dakota leaders have been recorded as clearly humane and civilized in their rationalizations of self-defense, yet received barbaric treatment by the white nationalist militants they fought against:

You have deceived me. You told me that if we followed the advice of General Sibley, and gave ourselves up to the whites, all would be well; no innocent man would be injured. I have not killed, wounded or injured a white man, or any white persons. I have not participated in the plunder of their property; and yet to-day I am set apart for execution, and must die in a few days, while men who are guilty will remain in prison. My wife is your daughter, my children are your grandchildren. I leave them all in your care and under your protection. Do not let them suffer; and when my children are grown up, let them know that their father died because he followed the advice of his chief, and without having the blood of a white man to answer for to the Great Spirit.

Those of the Dakota men who had fought in the war already had retreated for winter, or had been killed and very few captured. The U.S. military decided it wasn’t staffed to pursue the warriors.

In other words the only Dakota people brought into custody by the U.S. military were elderly, women, and children; nearly 2,000 people who had nothing to do with the war were seduced with a promise of care and then death-marched for days into a concentration camp to be abused and die.

They lost everything. They lost their lands. They lost all their annuities that were owed them from the treaties. These are people who were guilty of nothing.

Just as many of the Dakota were very obviously peaceful and kind people at the time, some whites did try to take the opposite and moral stand, to account for white settler crimes against humanity:

Henry Whipple, traveled to Washington to meet with Lincoln; he explained to the president that Dakota grievances stemmed in large part from the greed, corruption, and deceit of government agents, traders, and other whites. Lincoln took what he called “the rascality of this Indian business” into consideration and granted clemency to most of those sentenced to die.

This appeal for sanity was far from being sufficient to curtail what the Minnesota Governor proclaimed in his public platform of genocide: “The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated…“.

Minnesota History Magazine further relates that a prominent leader of the Dakota people a year later was murdered by white settlers who simply noticed him eating wild raspberries and decided on that basis alone to illegally hunt, kill, decapitate and scalp a human:

Even if a state of war had existed in 1863, the Lamsons’ action could not be defended as legal. They were mere civilians, who under international law have no right to take up arms against the enemy and who will be
hanged summarily if they do. The ordinary law of murder would apply to them. […] If killing in reliance upon the adjutant general’s orders would be murder under the law in force in 1863, obviously killing before any orders were issued would be an even stronger case of murder. Thus Little Crow was tendered a posthumous apology. One must reach the conclusion that in strict law the Lamsons were provocateurs and murderers.

Shot on sight without any questions. Think about that. Little Crow was a man nationally recognized and celebrated, a hero of America who had negotiated the Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851.

Yet he was illegally shot dead on sight without question because… he was not white.

Back to the start of this blog it also was Little Crow who had negotiated a band of Dakota from their massive 25 million acre territory into a tiny (20 mile by 70 mile) reservation.

There were many tens of thousands of Native Americans said to be in the region at the time, although soon they were vastly outnumbered and under constant threat.

In 1850, the white population of what would soon be the state of Minnesota stood at about 6,000 people. The Indian population was eight times that, with nearly 50,000 Dakota, Ojibwe, Winnebago and Menominee living in the territory. But within two decades, as immigrant settlers poured in, the white population would mushroom to more than 450,000.

In other words, by the war of 1862 (and after he was coerced into an even worse treaty in 1858), Little Crow was known as the Dakota leader who had taken a principled and fair stand to protect his followers against his former trading partner U.S. General Sibley.

The U.S. government allegedly had offered the Dakota only a few cents per acre for their entire ceded territory space in treaties, and gave promises of annuity payments and food supplies.

Yet while the Dakota land was taken away, those agreed upon payments and food never arrived.

It was this context behind the fact that white settlers flooded the area historically inhabited by Dakota, backing the Dakota into a corner and literally starving them out.

Congress passes the Homestead Act, a law signed by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, offering millions of acres of free land to settlers who stay on the land for five years. The act brings 75,000 people to Minnesota over three years. To qualify for 160 free acres, settlers have to live on it for five years, farm and build a permanent dwelling. Those able to spend the money can buy the 160 acres at $1.25 an acre after living on it for six months.

The federal government was effectively buying land for cheap and then selling 160 acre parcels of it at either $200 (20X the cost) or for five years of farming and construction.

Since the tiny allocated reservation space for the Dakota wasn’t producing any food, and the U.S. government was intentionally withholding payments and supplies to survive on, huge numbers of Dakota faced a starvation-level situation. No wonder they demanded quick restitution.

On top of that white settlers illegally had been violating the agreement by encroaching into even the tiny Dakota reservation area.

The Dakota faced no choice but to reassert rights to their money, food and land that they already had negotiated.

Tension grew from the U.S. refusing to help, withholding food and money from the now trapped Dakota population in an attempt to “force conformance to white ideals” of a “Christian” lifestyle.

While Dakota parents watched their children starve to death, pork and grain filled the Lower Sioux Agency’s new stone warehouse, a large square building of flat, irregularly shaped stones harvested from the river bottoms. […] “So far as I’m concerned, if they are hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung,” [warehouse owner] Myrick said.

The U.S. strategically reneged on agreements and intentionally starved Dakota populations into desperation, before ultimately using attempts at self-defense as justification for mass unjust executions and murder. This was followed by Minnesota settlers banishing the native population entirely from their own historic territory under penalty of death into concentration camps, offering rewards to anyone who could trap and kill the Native Americans (Minnesota’s government offered a reward up to $200 — roughly $4000 in 2019 terms — for non-white human scalps).

At a higher level the race in 1862 to settle territory inhabited and owned by Native Americans had been complicated the year before by militant southern states starting a Civil War to violently force expansion of slavery into any new states. Thus, just as John Brown’s attempt to incite abolition got him executed in 1859 as a “traitor” to America, the Dakota people fighting for freedom from tyranny three years after in 1862 were unjustly tried by Minnesota settlers and executed on December 26. 

Old John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on.

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;
Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,
His soul is marching on.

He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on.
John Brown witnessed far too many Americans being murdered under the tyranny of expansionist slavery when he said there was no choice but fighting back, calling for wider armed defense and predicting war. Curry’s impressive mural called “Tragic Prelude” that depicts Brown’s conviction against tyranny can be seen in the Kansas State Capitol.

Just a month later, 500 Native Americans were massacred in Bear River, Idaho.