Новости за 16.09.2018

After Al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, there were many, many questions. Sen. John McCain was among the few in Congress who quickly took the lead in finding the answers.

Two years into the presidency of Donald Trump, many of us are still scratching our heads. How did such a corrupt, narcissistic, TV celebrity win a national election? We saw the “Blue Wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin turn red in November 2016, but why?

Murray Polner, formerly HNN's senior book review editor, blogs at There's No There There. He is the author of No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran, Branch Rickey: A Biography, and co-editor of We Who Dared Say No To War.

Senate Reception Room

In 1957, a committee was formed in the US Senate to honor great Senators in the history of that body. Democrat John F. Kennedy (Massachusetts) was named the head of the committee; the other members included Democrats Richard Russell (Georgia) and Mike Mansfield (Montana), and Republicans Styles Bridges (New Hampshire) and John Bricker (Ohio). The majority of the committee were conservatives, and that affected their choices.

An advisory committee of 160 scholars was asked to contribute suggestions... Читать дальше...

On August 9, 2018 California’s big three burns – Ferguson, Carr, and Mendocino – reached 539,000 acres, and counting, and commanded national attention. They had human causes, two unknown in particulars, one from a faulty car. The Ferguson had forced Yosemite National Park to close its west entry and Yosemite Valley. The Carr fire had burned into suburbs of Redding. The Mendocino fires were two, nearly adjacent, treated as a single megacomplex. None were contained; fire officials stated the Mendocino... Читать дальше...

Huey Long: Share the Wealth

President Trump continues to attack news media critical of his policies as "enemies of the people" who perpetuate "fake news." In mid-August of this year, 300 of the nation's newspapers published editorials decrying his continuing attacks on first amendment rights. "Journalists are not the enemy," said a Boston Globe editorial. "This reckless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences."

A few previous presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln... Читать дальше...

Andrew Gillum’s recent win in the Florida Democratic primary for governor provoked a quick backlash by his Republican opponent Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump. The morning after the primary results, DeSantis warned Floridians, “the last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.” Trump tweeted that Gillum is “a failed Socialist Mayor… who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his... Читать дальше...

Henry Kissinger spoke at Senator John McCain’s funeral. He said that McCain was one of those rare public servants who understood duty and honor. He believed that McCain embraced America’s power and its ideals, holding each dearly to his chest. This, for Kissinger, is the mark of a true leader. Of course, Kissinger was really talking about himself. The 95-year-old Kissinger, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, also recalled that he had... Читать дальше...

A Russian vaccine disinformation campaign targeting the United States and Western Europe described in a recent study is part of a chain of Russian and Soviet medical disinformation campaigns that stretches back for decades. During the Cold war the KGB fanned the flames of conspiracy theories in stories planted in obscure foreign newspapers and disseminated on shortwave radio broadcasts. Russian intelligence has updated its playbook to incorporate Twitter bots and trolls, but the motives and effects haven’t changed. Читать дальше...

If you did not know where it was, you would stroll right past the ruins of the Roman Theater in Cartagena, Spain, one of the largest and best-preserved amphitheaters of the Roman Empire, a theatrical and historical wonder.

It whitewashes FDR's response to the Holocaust.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has just published a 2019 calendar that focuses on the museum’s new exhibit about Americans’ responses to the Holocaust. Remarkably, two-thirds of the calendar has nothing do with Americans’ responses to the Holocaust. This stark discrepancy is a small but striking illustration of a disturbing bias that has crept into some of the museum’s work in recent years.

Several of the months in the calendar... Читать дальше...

Recently Jeffrey Skilling, the former CEO the infamous Texas energy company Enron, was quietly released from prison and placed into a halfway house. To some, the news might offer a satisfying conclusion to the Enron story. The details of the company’s 2001 collapse, involving a massive accounting fraud, were so outlandish that Skilling’s prison term seemed as if justice had been served. After all, many Enron employees lost their retirements when the company went under. The problems with Enron... Читать дальше...

In the run-up to World War II, Latin America was up for grabs and countries that would become the Axis held the upper hand. Latin skies were ruled by airlines owned by German immigrants, some still loyal to the fatherland. Or by Italians, who flew a route that transported spies back and forth and delivered contraband vital to the war effort, like industrial diamonds and platinum, to the heart of the Reich. Mexico sent oil to Hitler and Mussolini, Germany and Japan bought up Brazilian rubber. 

As the nation commemorates and honors Senator John McCain after his passing on August 25, 2018, giving him the kind of attention and reverence often only given to former Presidents of the United States, this is a good time to reflect on the Republican Party and the US Senate since 1950.

“Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders at the top of the hill which they captured, Battle of San Juan”

“A horse leach, a ferret, a pole-cat, a weasel.” This was how editor William Cobbett painted American humanitarian Dr. Benjamin Rush in a 1793 newspaper editorial in Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital. 

Perhaps not unlike other prominent politicians of his time, Thomas Jefferson had an ambivalent relationship with the press. That ambivalence expressed itself in an unflagging theoretical commitment to free presses with growing practical recognition as he advanced in years that free presses seldom concerned themselves with truth. Thus, while he recognized that public papers were often put to use for political posture, in spite of the strictures of the First Amendment, he also recognized that a... Читать дальше...

Inauguration ceremony for Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933

“A steadily degenerating confidence in the future which had reached the height of general alarm. . . . We are in a pitiful position.” The American Dream “appears to lie shattered.” Words from the present Trumpian times when political rancor and divisiveness are rampant and our president continues to attack his predecessor’s legacy and despoil our environment? Nope. The quotes are from Herbert Hoover and a popular historian... 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. . . .” 

A detail of the 13th-century Fontana Maggiore in Perugia with the fables of The Wolf and the Crane and The Wolf and the Lamb - By G.dallorto - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5

Despite the soaring costs of attending American colleges and universities, their students are receiving an education that falls far short of the one experienced by earlier generations.