Новости за 17.07.2018

It is Christmas Eve, 1956, and three fabled American songwriters, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen and Jimmy Van Heusen, meet in Berlin’s New York City apartment. It is snowing heavily outside as carolers roam from block to block. The three composers are angry because Elvis Presley and rock and roll music is pushing them off the music charts. “Is this the end?” one asks.

Rarely in history has a country so blindly, maliciously and relentlessly turned against the memory of one of its national leaders in blatant defiance of the historical facts, as French historians have against Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III. And they continue to do so to this day. The complete distortion and denial of Napoleon III’s true achievements began with his arch political opponent, Adolphe Thiers, in his undisguised strongly biased history of this period. Thiers reminds readers... Читать дальше...

Sunday morning, July 14th, 1918.

It’s Bastille Day—and, somewhere in France, a fledging, twenty-year old American aviator named Quentin Roosevelt is scampering into his single-seat French-made, wooden-and-canvas Nieuport-28 aeroplane for … nothing less than a rendezvous with death.

Quentin Roosevelt was, of course, Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest child. TR had argued mightily for American military preparedness in the lead-up to war in April 1917. Following our declaration of war, he... Читать дальше...

Hagia Sophia - By Arild Vågen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The sun was setting on the Roman Empire. After 2,000 years, the empire of Augustus, Constantine, and Justinian, whose annals were replete with conquests, wealth, and glory, was on its knees. John VI Kantakouzenos’ (r. 1347-1354) coronation in Constantinople in 1347 took place not in the grand Hagia Sophia, which lay in disrepair, but at the smaller Church of the Virgin at Blachernae. He was not crowned with the imperial jewels, which had been pawned off to Venice... Читать дальше...

Vel Phillips at March on Milwaukee - By Voces de la Frontera from Milwaukee, USA, 2007, CC BY 2.0

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, reacting to her victory

Recently, when 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an obscure, upfront democratic socialist from the Bronx, easily defeated one of the most powerful U.S. Congressmen in the Democratic primary, the story became an overnight sensation. How, the pundits wondered, could this upset have occurred?

Actually, it shouldn’t have been a total surprise for, in recent years, democratic socialism has been making a remarkable comeback in American life. Читать дальше...

According to a legion of biographers and social commentators, the Rules of Civility, which George Washington transcribed as a schoolboy, contain the essence of the Father of Our Country, the code of conduct that allowed him to scale the slippery pole of success to its peak and remain there for two centuries.

Most historians are familiar with a dilemma that journalists often complain of. Access versus reporting. You cozy up to the subject, try to get close, hope the contact yields some new insider information. If the journalist gets that far, stage 2 follows—do you use the information (which might compromise the source), and if so do you utilize the material in ways that protect the source. This has been a headache in press circles at least since I was in high school and assistant editor of my school newspaper. Читать дальше...

His target: People who complain that rich snooty guys in suits are to blame for the resurgence of populism.

“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”— Abraham Lincoln (December 1, 1862) 

According to Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions and Mitch McConnell, “We can’t have a nation with open borders!” This is quite ironic since the United States of America, more than any other nation, was created on the foundation stone of open borders. If Native Americans could have enforced closed borders in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, there would be no United States of America. No visa was required to enter the North American continent, and no restrictions were placed on immigration until Chinese were barred by the immigration act of 1882. Читать дальше...

With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, conservative pundits have begun to urge President Trump to nominate an originalist to the Supreme Court. Ben Shapiro, the editor in chief at the Daily Wire, has written that the president should only consider a constitutional originalist who will rid the country of such horrible judicial decisions as Roe V. Wade, and the Robert’s Court’s decisions on the affordable care act and same-sex marriage. “None of these decisions were remotely justifiable... Читать дальше...

This week Dwight and Steven Hammond, father-and-son Oregon ranchers sentenced to five years in federal prison for two counts of arson on federal land, join Joe Arpaio, Dinish D’Souza, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby as convicted citizens pardoned by President Trump. 

“Something wicked this way comes” is one of the many great lines that William Shakespeare wrote in his staggeringly bold play Macbeth, which just opened at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Massachusetts. It should be re-written as “something very confusing this way comes” because this new, pared down and twisted version directed by Melia Bensussen has audiences shaking their heads.

For the first twenty years after Roe, Senate confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominees were not polarizing conflicts over abortion rights, but now they are. How did this happen?

At the conclusion of Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1879 play A Doll’s House, heroine Nora Helmer turns her back on her husband and children and leaves home, penniless and jobless, slamming the door behind her.

It is early in the morning in a Florida retirement community and a naked Abigail, 58, is wrapped in a sheet, desperately looking for her clothes after spending the night with a man whom she met at his wife’s funeral. Ugh. Awful. Well, there are circumstances to the story. The late wife was cheating on the husband, Angus, and had been for quite a while. He wasn’t enamored by Abigail as much as he was angry at his wife and took out some revenge by sleeping with Abigail.

Exactly 50 years ago this spring, back when the Academy Awards mattered at least a little, five movies were in the running for the Oscar for Best Picture.  Several of them were obviously products of the late ‘60s zeitgeist, focused on race and violence.  The winner, “In the Heat of the Night” featured Rod Steiger as a racist Southern sheriff who grudgingly comes to some sort of enlightenment when his first suspect in a murder case, a visiting black Philadelphia detective played by Sidney Poitier, helps solves the crime with him. Читать дальше...

It was seventy years ago this summer when West Berlin faced starvation from a blockade by the Soviet Union. America's heroic response to that crisis gives us hope to feed the hungry in conflict zones across the globe today.Imagine if the roads, rails and waterways into your hometown were suddenly cut off by enemy troops. No supplies could move in under such a blockade. Soon there would be no food, gas, medicine, or anything else you need for daily life.  You would have an emergency within days. Читать дальше...

India is facing the worst water crisis it has ever encountered, as highlighted by a recent report by the Niti Aayog (a prominent Government of India policy think tank). A number of Indian cities likeSimla, Bangalore and Chennai are facing a future without assured water supply. Water shortages are not the only environmental challenge confronting Indian cities, affecting the daily lives of millions of people. Air pollution has reached stratospheric levels in many Indian cities. Data from the World... Читать дальше...

This year marks the centenary of one of the defining events of the early 20th century. In the early morning of July 17, 1918, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, their four daughters and son, along with their physician and three servants, were herded into the cellar of the merchant house in Yekaterinburg where they’d been held captive and executed. It was the final, fatal blow to three hundred years of Romanov rule. 

Caption: Woman looking at homeopathic medicine (Wikimedia Commons)

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky serves as the volunteer President of the nonprofit Intentional Insights and is a co-founder of the Pro-Truth Pledge. He authored a number of a number of books, most notably the #1 Amazon bestseller The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide, and is regularly featured in venues like CBS News, Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Newsweek, The Conversation, CNBC, and elsewhere.

At least... Читать дальше...

Recently, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen, a small farm to table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. After exiting quietly, Sanders unleashed a very uncivil right-wing outrage machine. She spread news of the incident via Twitter, leading Fox News and even the President to denounce the establishment. The restaurant had to shut down for more than a week in reaction to picketing and online harassment, ranging from death threats to hundreds of negative reviews on Yelp.