TV Weekend: The Bootleg Empire of Ken Burns’ Prohibition - Tuned In - TIME.com. There may be nothing more gratifying and unifying for people than coming together in disdain for a past idea, now universally agreed on to be stupid. One of the greatest of these in American history is alcohol prohibition, not merely the impetus for the criminal events of Boardwalk Empire, but the case study for the idea that the best way to encourage a personal vice is to forbid it. So for fans of Boardwalk (though its viewership was down from its season 1 premiere) or students of American history, Ken Burns’ Prohibition, airing three nights on PBS starting Sunday, provides a detailed, engaging postmortem of a very, very bad idea. One problem I’ve sometimes had with Burns’ documentaries in the past, as I’ve written before, is that they represent a kind of pledge-drive-safe advocacy: they make impassioned arguments for things the audience already believes. (Slavery was awful, war is hell, baseball represents America.)
Namely: America was drunk off its ass. FBI tracked King's every move. The other September 11: US backed coup in Chile, 1973. LPACTV: The True Story of The Bretton Woods. Civil rights movement struggling to keep up momentum. Resetting the American Narrative. Exclusive: The U.S. political climate might change if Americans understood how much the federal government did to create the infrastructure behind many business fortunes, including the Internet and computer technology.
That narrative would justify higher taxes on the rich to repay the nation and allow for future R&D, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry If the Republican presidential race has made one thing clear, it is that the GOP narrative for 2012 will be that the federal government is the “problem” – as Ronald Reagan once said – if not worse, an internal enemy that must be defeated.
So far, the Democrats lack a counter-narrative with similar appeal to a deeply alienated public. The Republican narrative holds that the route to freedom and prosperity lies in the twin principles of states’ rights and free markets. It also has become Republican dogma that the wealthy “job creators” must be freed up from taxes and regulations. Past Understanding Reaganomics The Return. History & Politics. How Republicans Stole '04 (part 1 of 2) Thom Hartmann is loved by many, especially at Fighting Bob Fest. Do Fox Pundits Even Know What Iran-Contra Was? In their frenzy to take down Attorney General Eric Holder, right wing media pundits have started comparing the brewing Fast and Furious scandal, in which a failed ATF operation allowed guns to "walk" to Mexico in order to track their delivery into the hands of drug cartels, to Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. Naturally, the conservatives making this comparison believe Fast and Furious is much worse than Reagan's scandal, in which the Republican hero trafficked arms into the hands of a tyrannical Iranian government, negotiated with Hezbollah terrorists and funneled money and military equipment into the hands of violent revolutionaries in America's own backyard.
Specifically, Fox News hosts are pushing the unlikely argument that Fast and Furious is worse than Iran-Contra because, as they put it, "nobody died" as a result of the latter scandal. CROWLEY: When we look at the annals of political scandals - Watergate, Iran-Contra - nobody died in those scandals. Isabel Schwab Reviews Hal Vaughan's "Sleeping With The Enemy" JOHN GALLIANO, the former head designer of Christian Dior, fell from grace this past February when a video surfaced of him making obscene anti-Semitic remarks in a Paris bar. He was immediately fired, shunned by even the most loyal Dior devotees, and whisked off to rehab. He is now supposedly “cured” of his drug addiction, which he blames for the outburst, and so there he is in the September issue of Vogue, posing at Kate Moss’s wedding. About some things fashion is so forgiving.
(This week, a French court found him guilty of making racially abusive statements). I thought about Galliano while reading Hal Vaughan’s book about Coco Chanel. According to Vaughan, one reason that Chanel has been able to escape censure is that she flat out lied about the full extent of her activities when she was arrested and questioned in court after the war. It thus works to the book’s advantage that Vaughan has little-to-no experience writing about fashion. The Red Scare: Mccarthyism. After World War 2, Americans began to be very afraid that hordes of communists were trying to take over the country. Communism was derided, and the American public called communists "˜reds'. Most people thought that communists were worse than murderers.
Just being suspected of communism meant that one was a traitor, and association with communists was nearly as bad as being one yourself. There were many reasons for this galloping paranoia. One reason was that news reports confirmed that some communist countries had spies in the U.S., and now had the recipe for atomic bombs. People were afraid of atomic bombs, and they feared that nuclear holocaust was just around the corner. News reports of atrocities committed by communist leaders served to fan the flames of America's fear.
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated communist organizations. In 1954, all of America watched avidly as the Senate held hearings for some of the people on the lists. Whatever Happened to the American Left? Reagan Insider: 'GOP Destroyed US Economy' Farrell writes: "In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: 'Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts - in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.'" By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch 10 August 10 This piece first ran on MarketWatch on Aug. 10, 2010. The 'insider' referred to in the title is the former economic wunderkind of Reaganomics - David Stockman. -- JPS/RSN How: Gold.
Ow my GOP destroyed the US economy. " Get it? Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But why focus on Stockman's message? We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Reagan Republican: The GOP Should File for Bankruptcy No more. Stage 1. Stage 2. OK, stop a minute. Stage 3. Stage 4. Get it? Democracy Now! Mobile. AMY GOODMAN: "Vivir en Paz," "Live in Peace," by Víctor Jara, the Chilean singer-songwriter tortured and executed during the Chilean coup of Salvador Allende, September 11th, 1973. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez. "That September 11, that lethal Tuesday morning, I awoke with dread to the sound of planes flying above my house. When, an hour later, I saw smoke billowing from the center of the city, I knew that life had changed for me, for my country, forever.
" Those are the words of the writer Ariel Dorfman, writing not about September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, 10 years ago, but another September 11th. JUAN GONZALEZ: On September 11th, 1973, a U.S. Click here to support this global independent news hour today. Ariel Dorfman served as a cultural adviser to Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973. Welcome to Democracy Now! ARIEL DORFMAN: It’s such a pleasure to be with you again, both of you.
No Deal. Does the New Deal provide a useful model for fixing our own troubled economy? In many respects, yes. The frenzy of activity and innovation that marked Franklin Roosevelt's initial months in office--a welcome contrast to the seeming paralysis of the discredited Hoover regime--helped first and foremost to lessen the panic that had gripped the nation. And, during the prewar years of his presidency, Roosevelt's actions produced an unprecedented array of tangible achievements as well. He moved quickly and effectively to address a wave of bank failures that threatened to shut down the financial system. He created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which helped make the beleaguered stock market more transparent and thus more trustworthy. He responded to out-of-control unemployment by launching the Civil Works Administration, the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which created jobs for millions of the unemployed.
By Alan Brinkley. Broadcast Yourself. The Beatles Refused to Play for Segregated Audiences, Contract Shows. A contract up for auction next week shows that The Beatles refused to play in front of segregated audiences. The contract for a 1965 concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California was signed by manager Brian Epstein and specifies that The Beatles “not be required to perform in front of a segregated audience.” It wasn’t the first time the band took a stand for civil rights in the U.S. In 1964, they refused to perform at a segregated concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida. After holding out for some time stadium official gave in and the band played an integrated concert. “We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now,” said John Lennon, according to the BBC.
Jimmy Carter Gives Logan Act a Boost. Wounds still linger for children of civil rights activists. Editor's Note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind events. John Blake, who helped write the CNN.com special report "Black in America," is author of the 2004 book "Children of the Movement," which profiles the children of the civil rights movement's leading figures and of segregationists. Martin Luther King III, second from left, says he yearned for his father's advice while he was growing up. (CNN) -- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights icon, but for one man, he's something else: the father he barely remembers. King's eldest son, Martin Luther King III, was 11 years old when his father was assassinated. His family broke the news to him by saying: "Daddy is going to go home to live with God. " King's memories of his father are now fragmentary: kissing him when he returned from his frequent travels, tossing a softball, riding a bicycle with him.
She had none to share, though. The Rev. The life of Charles Dickens: Beloved bully.
Does Germany Owe Greece $95 Billion from World War II? This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Die Welt. BERLIN — In the debate about the possible bankruptcy of the Greek state, one largely dormant argument has resurfaced with increasing frequency: the widespread damage inflicted by the Nazi regime during World War II means that Germany still owes Greece major wartime reparations. While the claims for payment of damages are based on very real facts, one could argue that over the course of 60 years or so, those claims have been satisfied under international law.
What is at stake? Without having been provoked, the Wehrmacht — the Third Reich's armed forces — took over both Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. In both countries, German soldiers set up a brutal occupation regime. This resulted in galloping inflation and a radically lower standard of living for Greeks. How to Compare the Salem Witch Trials to the Red Scare. The Magazine - Heart of <em>Dunkelheit</em> September/October 2011Heart of Dunkelheit Germany’s other genocide. By Paul Hockenos Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers by Jeremy Sarkin James Currey, 264 pp. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper W.
Erichsen Faber and Faber, 400 pp. By the time the German emperor Wilhelm II ascended the throne in the summer of 1888, it was clear that Germany had arrived late to the Great Game of European Imperialism. For this vision to succeed, vast tracts of free land were required to lure Germanic emigrants to the rough African countryside and the trials of pioneer life. Too little has been written about this period in German history; there is, however, a growing literature—in German and English—on Germany’s mass murder of the Herero and Nama peoples in southwestern Africa between 1904 and 1907.
Von Trotha didn’t mince words about his objectives.