Новости за 03.09.2018

In an era of congressional gridlock and political stands determined by opinion surveys, historians are re-evaluating our 28th President, Woodrow Wilson. Born in 1856 in Virginia to a minister, Wilson was pre-occupied with creating a high-minded vision for the United States, a nation he believed possessed a unique moral force in a corrupt world.

In your American history textbook and mine, no matter where or when you encountered it, Roger Williams and the story of Rhode Island came right after the story of William Bradford’s Plymouth colony and John Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay.  In the hurried trip through the mid-seventeenth century, Williams flees Massachusetts in 1636, founds Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, voices some important ideas about the need to separate church and state, and then pretty much disappears from the narrative. Читать дальше...

A unit of the Bulgarian International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, 1937

Historians know a great deal about CIA history. The US government has acknowledged some 50 Cold War covert actions, from fiddling with Italian elections in the late 1940s to undermining Marxist influence in Yemen in the 1980s. Spy chiefs, practitioners, journalists, and academics have written enough books on the CIA to fill several libraries. Although debate still rages about the good or ill of the CIA, we know the major contours of its history.

“There was not a manual, and there was not anything other than let’s try this, and with the overriding principle that these young people should not have to pay too big a price both in terms of their academic learning, in terms of their safety, by going through this process, because they didn’t volunteer for it either. And we’re all in it, in that sense. And that was the beauty of it, I mean, there were so many beautiful moments, but a lot of ugly stuff.”– Shelton Boyles, a former English teacher... Читать дальше...

When the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the nominees for the 70th edition of the Emmy Awards last month, it wandered, perhaps unwittingly, into the latest season of America’s history wars. 

At a time when the American population is radicalizing, when popular movements are coalescing around “radical” demands—Medicare for All, the abolition of ICE, tuition-free college, in general the demand to make society livable for everyone—it can be useful to draw collective inspiration from the past. Irruptions of the popular will have on innumerable occasions reshaped history, remade the terrain of class struggle such that the ruling class was, at least for a moment, thrown on the defensive and forced to retreat. Читать дальше...

1968: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet offensive and My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s abdication and Richard Nixon’s election, the Chicago Democratic convention. It’s not surprising in 2018 that we’ve been inundated with TV specials, films, and articles to commemorate episodes of the single most tumultuous year of the past century. 

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When Donald Trump was a presidential candidate, he promised to “drain the swamp.” Evidently, that promise has not been kept. Washington’s “swamp” appears to be overflowing, evidenced by a recent news report that Republican Congressman Chris Collins, the first member of the U.S. House to back Trump for President, has been indicted on charges of insider trading. Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi responded to the news by claiming there is a “culture of corruption” in Washington. Pelosi and... Читать дальше...

  There are few plays whose creation was an historical adventure and that is the tale of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, getting another revival at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey at Drew University, Madison, N.J. England’s Noel Coward wrote the play in 1941, at the start of World War II. He was forced to flee London, under heavy bombing by the Germans, when his office was destroyed in a nighttime raid. He went to Wales with a friend to write something about the war and wound up producing a comedy play. Читать дальше...

John Dean's Testimony Before the Watergate Committee (1973)

In a recent tweet, President Trump attacked John Dean, Nixon’s White House Counsel, as a “RAT.” He wrote: "The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel (sic) Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel (sic), he must be a John Dean type 'RAT.' But I allowed him and all others to testify. . . .” 

Rudy Giuliani (Courtesy of Gage Skidmore)

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky co-founded the Pro-Truth Pledge (at ProTruthPledge.org), a project joined by anyone who cares about creating a united constituency of all who care about truth and facts. He authored a number of a number of books, most notably the national 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. Читать дальше...