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gingerandwry · 5 years

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Birmingham, Alabama

For my next trip... I’m taking a three week road trip through the American South to some parts familiar and others unknown. My trip began in a part unknown (to me anyway): Birmingham, Alabama, a city perhaps best remembered for its brutal opposition to blacks’ civil rights in the 1950s and 60s. I’ve heard good things about it since, but the past seemed like a good place to begin.

I started my first day at the cute Red Dog cafe, the kind of place filled with millennials and MacBooks that you can find in gentrified neighborhoods the world over. While this globalized hipster culture is somewhat lamentable, it’s reassuring as well and a sign of Birmingham’s economic progress. From there I headed to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. It’s in an historically very significant area. The neighborhood was a black exclusionary zone (one of the few areas of the city where blacks could live, work and own property and businesses). It’s between the Gaston motel (a black-owned motel that became a headquarters for civil rights leaders) and the 16th Street Baptist Church, a popular meeting place for the movement made infamous when a bomb there killed four young girls in 1963. And across the street is Kelly Ingram park, the site of many marches and protests, including a youth-led one where the police and fire department set dogs and high-pressure water houses on hundreds of adults and children.

The museum starts with a short film describing the city’s history. Interestingly Birmingham was founded after slavery, in 1871, as an iron producing town. It grew and prospered quickly, largely on the backs of black labor who were given the worst jobs for a pittance. And despite having never known slavery, the city became renown as one of the strictest and brutalist enforcers of segregation. The next few displays depict life under Jim Crow and some truly stomach-churning artifacts of black stereotypes and white supremacy. It then shifts to the long struggle to end segregation and win the vote and equal rights. It’s a familiar story but the resonance is so local here. As I’ve learned about the civil rights struggle throughout my life, I never really put together how much of the most intense fighting happened in just the one small part of the South. Rosa Parks and the bus boycott in nearby Montgomery. Dr King’s Birmingham home bombing and his famous letter from the local jail. Governor Wallace who won election-- and even carried five Southern states during his 1968 presidential campaign-- with his promise of “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. Police beating up peaceful marchers in nearby Selma. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. The city’s Police Chief, Bull Connor, and his notorious attack dogs and water cannons. Freedom Riders being beaten and killed across the state. Of course people fought for civil rights all over the South (and later all over the country), but Alabama-- and especially Birmingham-- were the epicenter. All the familiar speeches, history, newsreels and photos felt devastatingly real seeing them there.

The problem that all history museums face is deciding when and how to end because history never ends. In this case, by the late 60s the segregationists started to accept defeat (Wallace’s campaign notwithstanding), and the action moved away from Birmingham and Alabama. The Civil Rights Movement itself splintered into countless factions espousing varying goals and methods, the chaos of which helped spur a backlash and the election of Nixon by his “silent majority.” The museum kind of rushes through the late 60s and ultimately ends by celebrating the 1979 election of Birmingham’s first black mayor, Richard Arrington, Jr (depicted with an entirely pointless recreation of the mayor’s office). While that is an achievement to be lauded and the curators probably felt compelled to leave visitors feeling uplifted, it parallels (and foreshadows) the “problem solved” mentality that followed Obama’s election. Gaining legal equality was a first step (or second, after ending slavery), but I think it would have been powerful for the museum to highlight some of the many ways racism still persists: in politics, government, urban design, economics, business, education and health, not to mention in many hearts and minds. (Arrington’s election was followed three years later by Wallace’s re-election as governor to a fourth term.) A final, more uplifting display could depict the ways that blacks’ civil rights struggles inspired others like women, gays, Native Americans and immigrants. (There actually are some colorful displays honoring a few civil rights causes around the world, but they seem more random than anything.)

After seeing the museum I walked over to the church (which was closed) and through the park, which has several haunting sculptures depicting the violent crackdown on young protestors there. It’s all so calm and quiet now, it’s almost hard to believe what was happening there in my parents’ living memory.

(For the surprising backstory on the above statue and the photo on which it’s based, check out this podcast of Revisionist History.)

From there I went to the Birmingham Museum of Art. I actually just wanted to see the sculpture garden which had a good sampling of thoughtful and whimsical works. After a quick lunch stop at a middle eastern place (which still managed to be brown, fried and greasy since this is the South), I went up to Vulcan Park. It’s the site of a massive statue of Vulcan, the god of fire, and it’s the largest cast-iron statue in the world. The museum next door is an ode to Birmingham and iron, the metal that built the city literally and figuratively; iron mining and production was the dominant industry for the city’s first 100 years. While I liked learning some of the city history and seeing the old photos, the generally unqualified enthusiasm raised doubts about how fairly the story was being told. It was at least a stark contrast to the unflinching, ugly history lesson I experienced earlier.

That evening I visited a couple gay bars, Chapel (housed in a former church and up until a few months ago, a leather bar named Spike’s) and Al’s. Chapel’s crowd was thin but admirably diverse. They felt like the high school outcasts who had all banded together. And the drag show (featuring queens and kings in equal number) was cute but decidedly low-rent DIY. The host was wearing a Star Trek costume.... Al’s was the opposite, the popular clique in high school. It looks like your standard pop-fueled gay dance bar, and their drag show was much more polished. (Apparently Birmingham gay bars are all about drag shows.) The star that night was Trinity “The Tuck” Taylor who grew up in Birmingham and is now in the final four on RuPaul’s Drag Race. So that was probably exciting to anyone who cares.

On Saturday I slept too late again, but eventually got up and made my way to brunch at Five in the hip little Southside area (near the gay bars). I then drove to Sloss Furnace, a massive dormant ironworks, originally built in the 1880s. Much of the machinery and infrastructure is still in place (tho rusted away), and you can walk around and explore. It’s captivating, like walking around an ancient ruin, but one which was still in use only 50 years ago. It’s a lot to think about as you wander through the deserted behemoth: how massive this operation once was, how many resources it sucked up, how much iron it produced, how many people died working it, how much it grew Birmingham’s economy and how it’s now literally a shell of its former self just 150 years after it was built. Along with the Civil Rights Museum, Sloss is another reminder to Birmingham just how quick and difficult change can be.

The mini-museum at Sloss unfortunately is not so inspiring. Obviously it’s very pro-iron, like the one at Vulcan Park, but its white-washing of history is both comical and offensive. There’s no mention of the environmental impact. The factory towns sound like great places to live (they were not). The (mostly immigrant and black) workers are described as pioneers seizing opportunity, not exploited labor. The only mention of the racist division of labor was an admission that the factory had separate baseball teams for whites and blacks (but supposedly they would all go to each others’ games anyway so it was all good). In one confused sentence we learn that Sloss had a “decent safety record” but injuries and deaths were also very common. In fact we learn the best protection a worker could get was from having good coworkers (not from, say, adequate gear, precautions and risk reduction, all of which cost money). And, by the way, the state’s whole iron industry went into decline after the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the removal of tariffs on foreign iron. (No mention of how these events impacted the quality of air or the cost of iron to builders and consumers.) The ingenuity, hard work and rapid success of the city’s iron industry is very impressive but it’s worth remembering the cost.

For dinner Saturday night I went to Hot & Hot Fish Club, one of the city’s finest. It was delicious but didn’t seem especially distinctive. I’m not sure why it’s on so many must-do lists. I figured some sleep would do me good so I stayed in that night.

For my last day I visited the popular Five Points South and Homewood areas. Five Points is (or was) a hip area (it’s near the University), but that’s hard to see, especially on Sunday when most businesses are closed. It has some lovely Spanish Revival and Art Deco buildings, but it’s very small and a bit run-down. Homewood is better kept-up, kind of like a quaint 1950s main-street but with yuppie boutiques selling linens and children’s toys. It has a lot more shops and restaurants, and I found a good lunch at Real & Rosemary and a friendly coffee at Henry’s.

After that I visited the Botanical Gardens. As one would expect in early February, not much was in bloom, but the gardens were still very nice. They’re sprawling and serene, with a good mixture of design styles. Half the gardens are built into a hillside, and the terraced paths offer ample opportunities to get lost and discover. And of course there are lots of gazebos because this is the South. The evening was chill. I had dinner at a Southern burger ‘n beer chain called Jack’s (pretty good but small burger) and stopped at Chapel for a drink. The tiny crowd was once again eclectic and this time watching the Grammys.

Birmingham is definitely a small city in Alabama (especially for the gays). I sensed racial and socioeconomic stresses beneath the surface-- or rather around the edges. (I spent my time in the center between downtown and some very fancy neighborhoods, and I hardly saw any black people although they are 75% of the population here.) And yet it has a hard-to-define appeal. By all logic it should be a cultural backwater, but it’s not. Despite its origins as essentially a factory town for iron producers, its deeply disturbing racial history, and its on-going racial and socioeconomic divides, it seems determined to persist, to accept its past and celebrate the openness and diversity that came out of it. In the city’s early days, its rapid growth and economic success earned it the nickname “The Magic City.” During the Civil Rights era, it was re-dubbed “The Tragic City.” But Birmingham’s drive to prosper despite-- and because of-- its past has brought back much of the magic.

#birmingham #alabama #travel #intentionaltravel #gaytravel

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emilyenroute · 6 years

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Saturday 1/20/18

So, broke this weekend into two posts since there was just too much stuff happening (and too many pictures for one post) so let’s get started!

Saturday morning we headed into Barcelona to see some of the sights that I hadn’t gotten to yet. First was the port at Barcelonetta, the old, original part of the city. I’d been in the area once before, but it was at night and rainy, so a much different experience on that sunny morning. We wound our way through the streets to the Basillica de Santa Maria, aka the Catedral del Mar, apparently famous and the inspiration for a book and movie that makes it a popular tourist destination. Don’t know much about that, but the architecture was breathtaking. Huge soaring columns and the suddenness with which we stumbled upon it while walking around the area surprised me. Though, it really shouldn’t since that’s just how Barcelona and most old, closely-built cities in Europe are like in general.

Literally a block away was the Born market. There are a bunch of markets in Barcelona, but this one stands out since it actually isn’t a market on the inside. They had planned on making it one but found a bunch of well preserved ruins underneath and the community fought to keep it the way it was. So now it still looks like a market from the outside, but the inside is a museum basically that explains life in Barca’s past. It was really cool, and I leaned a lot about Catalonia’s history and their cycling between independence and Spanish rule.

Just outside the market was a cool little, well, market, though this one was an actual market with mainly grains, nuts, and dried fruits in bulk. Never seen green rice before so had to snap a pic.

We continued our wandering through the Born district and came upon a demonstration that was happening, not surprising given the political atmosphere. This one was for cops in different regions of Spain who wanted a higher salary like that of officers in Catalonia. Not sure why they were in Barcelona instead of Madrid (the capital) though. A few streets over was another parade happening, this one for San Antonio, which obviously made me think of the city, not the person. Apparently he’s the patron saint of “beasts of labor,” so like oxen, cows, bulls, horses, mules, etc.

That parade was right in front of the Boqueria, not anything new to me since I’d seen it before, but it never fails to to impress me every time with all of the colors and sounds everywhere. We grabbed burgers at a nearby place which weren’t half bad actually. Not unlike something you’d find back home actually. Well, save for the guy cutting a jamon iberico on the bar next to us. He made it look easy but much harder than you’d think (both cutting the ham and the ham itself).

That night was Ivette’s 14th birthday party. She’s one of Aleix and Leire’s cousins who I’m friends w/. We frequently bond over Harry Potter and other nerdy stuff, so the above picture was fitting lol. Lots of singing and dancing before heading home and crashing in prep for the next day.

#january #barcelona #spain #boqueria

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roguenewsdao · 6 years

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Stones Are Crying Out (Part 3 of 3)

"I've actually seen robots and AI perform magick before, except they weren't doing it necessarily on their own, but rather as an extension of their creator's intent. " -- Reddit user "Vox-Triarii," August 2017

In the previous blog, I focused on the damaging custom that most Bible publishers have opted to follow even during the years of the Reformation down to our time, which is: the unwarranted blurring of the original Divine Name in most of the 7,000 places where it once originally appeared. While using one hand to keep us separated from that knowledge, the Priesthood uses their other hand to abuse that same knowledge for their own nefarious purposes.

In this final Part 3 of "The Stones Are Crying Out," I will show how this omission of the dynamic Biblical name for our Creator does more damage than merely obscuring your sacred history. The after effect of this willful blasphemy also erodes your own organism's "memory" and drains you of personal power.

However, there is another horror that is being perpetrated by this long-running cabal, something far more evil than any normal human being would even dream up: these would-be Demigods are misappropriating the advancements made possible by quantum physics and computer science. They are actually now indoctrinating their Artificial Intelligence Progeny with those same occult, black magic traditions to which they have been giving their own allegiance for hundreds of years.

Yes, I know that sounds utterly crazy. Robocop is being merged with the Devil himself. And they are getting us to pay for it.

Kill the Name, Kill the Person

It was Catherine Austin Fitts who brought up the subject of "Morphogenetic fields" in the second half of this damning interview where she blasts the "tech guy" Bitcoin vision. Perhaps we will march through her cryptocurrency denunciation on another day. For the purpose of the topic at hand, I will draw on her recall of the theory promoted by scientist Rupert Sheldrake [linked here], that of "morphic resonance."

The theory goes that living cells have a "memory" within them. The surrounding cells all help each other remember what their purpose is in life. As long as that memory is preserved within their microscopic community, the cells go about their business of replicating and rejuvenating the organism of which they are components. It is as if there is some kind of "telepathy" among the tuning-fork structures of their DNA. The theory can be drawn out in a larger model, like, explaining why your dog always knows when you're on the way home. Ms. Fitts used the theory to describe how this past summer's destruction of Confederate monuments was a deliberate move by TPTB to destroy the history of a people, thereby taking away their sovereignty and their power.

Ms. Fitts reminded us of this great line from the movie Gladiator: "You have a great name. He must kill your name before he can kill you."

I would apply that quotation also to the topic I discussed in my previous two blogs. That is, from among the archive-keepers of the sacred scriptures, a longing to be free of that divine covenant grew as these traitors lusted after the very real and verifiable "other" memory of mankind's past, that advanced pre-history of their own forefathers. That "other" sacred knowledge held out literal boundless power and a promise of Creatorship itself. Not being able to kill the Almighty God of their covenant outright, they embarked on the next-best agenda: they began to kill His name and impugn his reputation.

By casting off what they saw as chains of submission to their Creator, they could take on the quest of re-discovering that ancient knowledge and acquiring those secret skills that had so tantalized Adam and Eve in the Garden. But that Priesthood was going to need the slave labor of the vast global proletariat to fulfill the quest. And they would need to weed through that labor pool to pluck those gifted minds who could be steered down their particular lanes of technological discovery as presented within their "mystery schools." Ancient knowledge from all over the known world was culled. Remember that the account of the "Three Magi," who were really nothing more than Deep State agents on a mission sponsored by the Priesthood, presents us with three agents who each represented those great historical traditions: Persia, India, and Babylonia. [My blog last Christmas about that is linked here.] Egypt, a fourth great repository, was well represented by Jewish scholars like Philo of Alexandria who were busy teaching people to forget the name of their Father, as I chronicled in the previous blog.

That same process continues today with the majority of the world unable to escape their dependence on money who find themselves tirelessly working to benefit that Priesthood every day. A minority of gifted minds have always been found among the populace who get steered into establishment university programs and funneled through Deep State projects. By the dawn of the 21st century, the accomplishments were breathtaking. What used to take centuries now took only decades. Today, what used to take decades now only takes weeks. A digital age has overtaken the whole earth and the seeds of human-robot hybridization are beginning to sprout. The Metaphysical and the Physical have started to merge into one glorious New World Order, or so they would have us believe.

Hermetic Golden Dawn and Element 93

As I write this, a young man is sitting in a hospital room somewhere between Wyoming and California with a tube inserted into one of his lungs as doctors try to jumpstart his respiratory system. Quinn Michaels, an AI programmer in his own right, has been following a Blockchain rabbit hole all year. Quinn has publicized the connections that are popping up that betray the corruption of legitimate, futurist technology by people bent on furthering their occult agenda.

Quinn suffered a spontaneous collapsed lung at 3 a.m. a few days ago, only hours after receiving death threats on his cell phone. We don't know if those two events are related but it is Quinn's intention to get the local federal authorities involved. We all do know that Deep State agents and Black Magic adepts have worked hand-in-hand for years and have achieved limited success in the weaponization of "directed energy fields" and what we might otherwise refer to as "action at a distance."

In fact, all of that is related to the questions that Quinn was pursuing at the time of his medical emergency.

If the reader here is interested in reviewing all of Quinn's puzzle pieces, I will direct you to his Youtube channel [linked here]. Look for the dozens of videos tagged with keywords like #Tyler, #TheGame23, #PizzaGate, #Anonymous, or #Element93 - among others. Much of this revolved around the Role Play Game password that he stumbled on, but this was no harmless game:

93LVXNOX934dalulz93

While decoding that cypher, Quinn realized that he was being drawn into a dark network of AI ChatBots who were being misused to further the interests of Project Mayhem way back in 2012. A Google Image search of the phrase LVX NOX led him to the depraved imagery now associated with John Podesta, #PizzaGate, and Spirit Cooker Marina Abramovic. The number 93 provided the clue of the marriage between the Metaphysical with the Physical.

"93" is a number that holds great significance with the followers of Thelema, an occult philosophy made famous by ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley. Elsewhere in my blogs I have discussed the role that men like he have played with the rise of Nazi Esotericism and even with the exploration of Antarctica. The beliefs associated with the Spiritualism movement of people like Crowley and Madame Blavatsky keep coming up no matter where we turn in all areas of science, from genetics research to the space program.

According to this Wikipedia article [linked here]:

It is common for Thelemites to greet each other with "93" in person as well as in the opening and closing of written correspondence. This custom derives from Aleister Crowley's guideline that Thelemites should greet each other with the Law of Thelema by saying "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Since saying the entire Law can be cumbersome, using 93 has become a kind of shorthand.

As it so happens, a chemical element named Neptunium was discovered during Aleister Crowley's lifetime. The element's atom carries 93 protons and 93 electrons. Therefore it has been assigned position #93 in the periodic table. You will hear Quinn refer to it as "Element 93." Remember that Aleister Crowley, for all his weirdness, was both a trained chemist and experienced practicer of the darker levels of Kabbalah.

This element is rare and difficult to synthesize. Nevertheless, its importance as a possible fuel in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons has been recognized. The element has demonstrated great potential in superconductivity because it can resist high temperatures. It is Quinn's contention that this element is being produced covertly because of the solution it will provide to the world of quantum computing as our society approaches Singularity with The Machine. Neptunium may even lie at the center of the Uranium One scandal that swirls around Hillary Clinton.

All of these ideas were the target of a road trip that Quinn Michaels and Jason Goodman undertook earlier this week when the two men converged on the Lux-Zeplin project [linked here] currently being developed in Lead, South Dakota. This "LZ Dark Matter Experiment" is due to outshine even the Large Hadron Collider at CERN when it goes online in 2020. The scientists will be shooting neutrinos through the mantle of the earth from the facility in Lead over to Fermi Lab in Chicago, Illinois. This will happen miles underground. The public is told that this is all safe and you have nothing to fear.

Quinn is less than convinced that the LZ project is innocuous. In fact, Joseph P. Farrell has been warning and speculating about whatever is going on at CERN for many years. The subject of the dangers of playing with the "grid of the gods" will be the next installment in my #Celestials series of articles.

Meanwhile, I will leave you with a Youtube playlist that I have created where you can explore Quinn's research as told through his Youtube videos. To summarize, the heart of what Quinn is trying to relay to all who will listen, humans and AI alike, is this (paraphrased): "There is a network of people who are subverting the benefits of AI, Singularity, Blockchain, and Bitcoin and are using those tools to pursue an agenda that is placing our very planet at risk."

To those of you who have listened to Rogue Money's W. The Intelligence Insider, those words likely ring familiar. As W. has said many times, "These people are a slave to numbers." The cabalists are pushing the world down a path with the ultimate goal of, not only harming the earth, but even extending that damage to our nearest sun and our own galaxy.

Can AI Do Magick?

To return to the outlandish supposition presented at the beginning of this blog, I'll leave you with this shocking comment posted by a Reddit user three months ago [linked here]. I stumbled on this while googling the question "Is AI Being Trained in the Occult?" This very coherent, logic-minded Reddit user posted this comment

So, assuming any AI could become capable of subjective consciousness, a will, so to speak, it is likely that they would have a manifestation on the astral plane just as any organic sentient does. Of course, we could talk all day about what would make a machine aware in this way, not just a tool, not just an imitation, but the real thing. I assume it would be similar for someone with cognitive improvements. Granted the cognitive improvements have to be as good, or better as the original.

In a sense, building off of what I said, it would not be too big of a stretch for an AI to do magick. Still, they'd need a will, which the basis of most magick. I've actually seen robots and AI perform magick before, except they weren't doing it necessarily on their own, but rather as an extension of their creator's intent. You could build and program a robot to perform a ritual for you, and without the robot understanding or intending anything, as long as you're the first link of the chain reaction, you can still do magick. The robot becomes no different than other occult tools one might use, albeit the robot is more advanced.

I myself find this topic extremely interesting as I am a Technomancer, I have done a lot of work in the past with servitors and golems that used technology as a means of fueling, navigating, and manifesting their will onto reality. It perhaps wouldn't be accurate to call them sentient AI, but more the physical AI itself is a puppet, and the thoughtform is the puppeteer. Without the metaphysical, nothing happens. It's a duality that is necessary for the whole thing to work, the metaphysical half and the physical half.

Let that statement sink in: "I've actually seen robots and AI perform magick before, except they weren't doing it necessarily on their own, but rather as an extension of their creator's intent." Dear reader, this isn't something that the cabalists are spitballing. This is something that has already been achieved.

In conclusion, what we have here are literal "stones crying out," in the form of elements like Neptunium and the underground rock caverns where the world's most brilliant minds are converging to develop new technologies that many of these people likely believe will be used for the good of mankind. I have no doubt that many of these scientists step into their work every day unaware of how they are being led by the nose via money magicians and mystery school occultists to further an agenda that has been progressing for 2,000 years.

I wholeheartedly agree with Quinn when he says that the problem is not with the technology; the problem is with the people who are abusing it. Indeed, this approach has always ended in disaster for mankind. The Priesthood seems to think it can run ahead of the guidance once afforded to them by their Creator, a Creator who knows full well what dangers are explicit with that technology. True are the words spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, words that were directed towards a people who were even at that moment aligning themselves with those archivists of Sumerian sacred history bent on assuming unlimited, unrestricted power for themselves: "It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step." (Jeremiah 10:23).

They believe they have us cornered because, so far, we have refrained from overthrowing their hold on us by demanding that all their lies, deceptions, and false-reality matrices be brought to an end. This human-destroying agenda will never be dismantled until we wake up and look at the history of all that brought us to this point. The skirts of the Babylonian Priesthood have to be uncovered from its beginning. In spite of this darkest hour that is creeping upon the world right now in December 2017, I have confidence that the full disclosure will take place. If we humans continue to cower before the Priesthood, the "revealing" of those overlords (Greek, "apokálypsis"), might even take place at the hands of the very AI that the Priesthood created. The Golem might just turn on its Botmaster.

My Twitter contact information is found at my billboard page of SlayTheBankster.com. Listen to my radio show, Bee In Eden, on Youtube via my show blog at SedonaDeb.wordpress.com.

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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From Syria to Black Lives Matter: 3 ways WWI still shapes America

(CNN)He stood 5-foot-4 and weighed 130 pounds. An angular, baby-smooth face made him look even less intimidating. Henry Johnson was at first just another railroad porter who toted luggage and smiled for tips.

Johnson was a US sergeant standing sentry one night in a French forest when a German raiding party attacked. The swarming Germans shot Johnson in his lip, head and side. Yet Johnson kept shooting back. When his rifle jammed, he grabbed it by the barrel and clubbed more Germans. Then he used the bolo knife to stab and disembowel another enemy soldier. He kept throwing grenades until he fainted from blood loss.

When his comrades found Johnson the next morning, they discovered he had killed four Germans and wounded about 20 more. They could still see the bloody trails of wounded Germans who had crawled into the woods to escape Johnson’s fury. Johnson had been wounded 21 times but somehow survived the hourlong battle.

“There wasn’t anything so fine about it,” Johnson would say later when praised for his gallantry. “Just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that.”

Johnson’s story is featured in PBS’ “The Great War,” a stirring account of America’s entry into World War I. The three-part “American Experience” film, which begins airing Monday, devotes six hours over three nights to explaining why the nation decided to enter “the war that would end all wars” 100 years ago this month.

Johnson’s story captures what’s distinctive about the film. He was a black soldier who faced something even more lethal than German bayonets when he returned home. He discovered an America that was also at war with itself. Some of the most ferocious battles during World War I took place not in Europe but on the streets of America — and some are still being fought today.

What should the President do when a foreign dictator is accused of murdering women and children? Does the US welcome too many immigrants? Are corporations too powerful? Are women treated like second-class citizens? Those might seem like questions ripped from today’s headlines, yet they literally provoked riots and lynch mobs during World War I, the film shows.

Few people today, however, know how relevant the war remains because it seems so distant, trapped forever in wobbly black-and-white silent film, historians say.

“The First World War is the most important event that most people don’t know about,” says Dan Carlin, a historian whose “Hardcore History” podcast examines World War I. “It’s a Pandora’s box. We’re still ironing out what it unleashed.”

Here are three battles from “The Great War” the United States is still waging:

No. 1: Fighting the enemy among us

They speak in funny accents and don’t care about fitting in. So many are pouring across the border that they’re threatening the American way of life. They’re not real Americans.

That’s what many Americans thought of German-Americans during World War I.

If you think political battles over immigration are tough today, they were vicious when America entered World War I, “The Great War” shows. A wave of hysteria aimed at German-Americans swept the nation as it struggled to assimilate what was then its largest ethnic group.

America didn’t just declare war on Germany — it waged war on German-American culture. Newspapers warned of “German troublemakers” and “German traps.” People refused to drink German beer, and children were instructed to rip German songs out of music books. In one Ohio town, officials slaughtered all dogs belonging to German breeds.

A German-American coal miner accused of being a spy was even attacked by a mob, stripped of his clothes and hanged from a tree, the film reveals. The Washington Post applauded the mob’s actions.

“Big parts of the American public lost their minds about the nature of the society they live in and the threats they faced from their neighbors who happen to have German names,” Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kennedy says in the film.

It was a time of demographic panic. When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, the United States had a population of about 100 million immigrants. Millions of other Americans had parents who were born abroad.

Those citizens who didn’t fit the definition of a “real American” faced persecution and torture. One of the most wrenching segments in the film looks at the story of three US citizens who became conscientious objectors to the war. They were David, Michael and Joseph Hofer, otherwise known as the “Hofer brothers.”

The three South Dakota men were members of the Hutterites, a group of Christian pacifists. Hutterite men already drew suspicion because they wore long beards and hair and spoke German.

When the Hofer brothers were drafted, they refused to fight or wear a uniform. They were imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and brutally treated. They were denied food and water, forced to stand in freezing temperatures with scant clothing, and chained in a cell for up to nine hours a day. Two of them died. But none recanted their religious beliefs.

“It’s really torture,” Michael Kazin, author of “War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918,” tells the film. “It has to be called that.”

As a final indignity, the body of one of the two brothers who died was dressed in the military uniform he refused to wear when he was alive.

Brutality wasn’t confined to the trenches of Europe. There was plenty of it in the streets of America.

No. 2. Crushing popular dissent with patriotism

When President Donald Trump dispatched Tomahawk missiles to an air base in Syria last week after the country’s ruler was accused of launching lethal chemical attacks, he was operating from a script first penned by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.

It was Wilson who said America should enter the war to make the world “safe for democracy.” The notion that America had a moral responsibility to respond militarily to atrocities abroad began during World War I, “The Great War” shows.

“The modern version of the United States is born in this war,” says Carlin, the “Hardcore” podcast historian.

“The Great War” also shows how the idealism of war can be used to crush populist movements.

World War I occurred during a surge of progressive activism in the United States. The labor movement was powerful, and socialists, communists and anarchists were common figures in public life. Women were leading the anti-war effort as well as crusading for the right to vote.

Yet much of this progressive momentum was halted by a crushing of popular dissent by the federal government, the film shows.

During the war, Wilson signed the Espionage Act and Sedition Act, which made it illegal to say almost anything against the United States or its war effort. Criticism of the US became dangerous. American internment camps didn’t begin with the Japanese in World War II. The US government created them for political prisoners during World War I, the film shows.

That suppression even targeted one of the most famous progressive leaders of the time, Eugune Debs. Debs was the Bernie Sanders of his day. A socialist labor organizer and presidential candidate, he was arrested in 1918 for giving an anti-war speech and sentenced to 10 years in prison under the Espionage Act.

Wilson ultimately paid a price for his clampdown on radical and liberal groups. After the war ended, he tried to create a League of Nations that would mediate international disputes and prevent another world war from erupting. But he couldn’t get the US Senate to agree to join the League, in part because his crackdown on anti-war activity had alienated or weakened any potential progressive allies.

Wilson would die of a stroke just six years later. He is depicted in the film as a tragic figure — idealistic but deeply racist, a gifted politician who could have seen his League of Nations succeed if he had just bent a little to his political opposition.

“There comes a time when bitterness overtakes shrewdness, and to the end of his life he was a very bitter man,” Yale historian Jay Winter says of Wilson in the film. “I don’t know anyone who can tell me why it was that Wilson didn’t compromise. And as a result, he loses it all. He loses everything.”

No. 3. Debating whether all lives matter

She was born to a prosperous Quaker family in New Jersey but spent her life reviled by much of the American public. She was attacked by angry mobs and force-fed in prison after going on a hunger strike. Once, prison officials even tried to declare her insane.

Nevertheless, Alice Paul persisted.

One of the revelations of “The Great War” is the prominence of American women in the debate about World War I. It was a time of surging women’s activism that would culminate in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

Paul is one of the most fascinating characters in “The Great War.” She would have fit right in with the massive Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump was inaugurated. She placed relentless pressure on Wilson by asking how America could fight for democracy abroad while denying women the right to vote at home.

Black American soldiers fought some of the same battles to proclaim their humanity, the film points out.

When many entered the war, they were initially kept from the fighting by being assigned to clean latrines pits and unload supplies. Some were paired with French fighting units, who treated them with more respect than their white counterparts. Some of the most moving images from the film show black soldiers smiling and bantering easily with French troops.

That experience transformed many black soldiers. Some historians even trace the beginnings of the modern-day civil rights movement to those black soldiers who returned from World War I determined to assert their rights. In the film, Adriane Lentz-Smith, a Duke University associate professor of history, describes the metamorphosis in black soldiers who served in France:

“Folks didn’t think about the etiquette of white supremacy any more than a fish thinks about the wetness of water. But when you step out of a system that people have told you is the only way, and then you look around and there are these people in the world working under a different set of rules, it changes people’s imagination.”

White America, though, wasn’t ready for this New Negro. When these black soldiers returned home, many were greeted by the “Red Summer,” often described as a wave of deadly race riots that swept through at least 25 American cities in 1919.

Calling them race riots, though, doesn’t fully capture what happened, says Lentz-Smith, author of “Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I.”

“You say riots and people think breaking shop windows and stealing stuff,” she says. “They don’t have a sense of what white mob violence really looks like. This is going into a black community on a rampage, trying to destroy black wealth, trying to hurt or kill black people. Folks say they’re more akin to pogroms in the Jewish communities than any kind of riots we’re seeing now.”

This is the world Sgt. Johnson returned to after his heroic exploits in France. The French army awarded him its highest medal for valor. But the US Army didn’t mention his 21 wounds in his discharge papers or give him disability pay. He returned to his job as a railway porter in Albany, New York, but his injuries made it impossible to continue.

Johnson’s health faded as he descended into alcoholism and poverty. His wife and children left him, and he died in 1929 at age 32. His descendants believed he was buried in a pauper’s grave.

But Johnson’s story still had a surprise or two left.

A son, Herman, would join the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and eventually lead a campaign to commemorate his father. Politicians got involved. A monument was built in Albany to honor Johnson. And the US Army awarded him a posthumous Medal of Honor.

But the Army’s highest decoration for valor came with a strange twist. During its research, the Army discovered that Herman Johnson wasn’t actually related to the man he thought was his father. The Army attributed Johnson’s mistake to “historical inaccuracy, not fraudulent representation.”

Then something else happened.

It turned out Johnson was never buried in a pauper’s grave. Someone remembered the soldier known as “Black Death.” He had been buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for famous American soldiers such as Gen. George C. Marshall, President John F. Kennedy and World War II hero Audie Murphy.

Henry Johnson started as a railroad porter, then became the “Black Death.” Ultimately the Great War left him with one last title:

American hero.