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manhefnawi

Compassionate Kings and Rebellious Princes | History Today - 0 views

  • History may not repeat itself, but there is no gainsaying its fondness for close affinities
  • When in 1807 Ferdinand, heir to the throne, stood accused by his father, Charles IV of Spain, of sedition and seeking to usurp the royal title, the young prince fearfully recalled the analogous events two hundred and forty years previously
  • In 1568 Philip II had similarly confronted his recalcitrant son Carlos, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment and mysterious death seven months later
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  • while casting aspersions on his uncle’s illegitimate birth, often to his face, Carlos must at times have envied Don Juan’s bastard lineage and sound health
  • Don Juan of Austria
  • Another promising candidate was the widowed Mary Stuart, who escaped only to marry the despicable Darnley
  • Due to the possibility of armed insurrection in the north, Philip decided to visit his rebellious provinces in person
  • He now became openly vindictive, unstable and sullen, given to insults and unprovoked attacks on imaginary enemies
  • The threat of a divided royal house, with a maleficent Carlos rallying rebel support to his cause, was totally unacceptable to Philip
  • his father obviously had every intention of supplanting his rancorous heir-apparent should God give him another son
  • he intended to leave for Germany and the Netherlands, with or without his father’s permission
  • he stumbled down a decrepit flight of stairs in the dark, fracturing his skull
  • The strained relationship between Philip and his only son continued to deteriorate, but despite disturbing signs of the young man’s mental instability, the King remained phlegmatic
  • The King’s extended absences gave Carlos considerable latitude to prepare his escape
  • His inability to hold his tongue proved to be Philip’s salvation though at dreadful cost
  • Carlos rashly confided to Don Juan of Austria that he intended to leave Spain within the next few days. After some initial hesitation, Don Juan rode out to the Escorial on Christmas Day and informed Philip of the Prince’s decision
  • Meanwhile, Philip had returned to Madrid and was kept fully informed of his son’s designs; incredibly, he still hesitated to act
  • King Philip and five members of the Council of State made their way to the Prince’s bedchamber. The ingenious system of bolts and locks, which could be operated from his bed, had secretly been dismantled; and the startled Carlos was quickly disarmed. He guiltily assumed they had come to assassinate him, especially when his father seized a document listing the Prince’s enemies, with the King’s name at the head
  • The King was soon inured to suffering and private tragedies, and came to regard the unfounded attacks of his enemies as part of the burden he had been called upon to bear
  • Carlos’ mental equilibrium had always been precarious; and now he began to experience hallucinations. No visitors were allowed, and the Prince was kept under close surveillance, though the conditions of his detention were not too onerous
  • His fragile health was unable to withstand such sustained abuse, and an early death soon became inevitable. Philip resigned himself to his loss, and found spiritual comfort in blessing his dying
  • The death of the successor to the throne under such mysterious circumstances naturally gave rise to the wildest conjecture
  • Reasons of state were hinted at, which were assumed to involve a far-flung conspiracy of the son against his obdurate father
  • Ferdinand’s upbringing was similar to that of the ill-fated Carlos. Born on October 14th, 1784 at the Escorial, the young prince received scant affection from his parents, Charles IV and Maria Luisa, who finally ascended the throne in 1788 after a frustrating wait of twenty-three years
  • his suspicious nature and resentment towards his parents being evident from an early age
  • did not deter the calculating priest from further poisoning his charge’s distrustful mind. Ferdinand’s hatred was especially directed against his mother, Queen Maria Luisa
  • Ferdinand’s fears were not imaginary. In 1795, at the conclusion of an unsuccessful war against revolutionary France, Godoy - the monarchs’ ‘querido Manuel’ - had incredibly been granted the vainglorious title of ‘Prince of the Peace’
  • Ferdinand justifiably suspected that some machination on the part of his mother and Godoy might prevent his succession to the throne. By late 1807 his situation had become desperate
  • If the men who surround (Charles IV) here would let him know the character of Your Majesty as I know it, with what desire would not my father seek to tighten the bonds which should unite our two nations
  • Having already removed Charles’ brother from the throne of Naples, the French Emperor watched the unseemly squabbling among the Spanish Bourbons with a calculating eye to the future
  • unilateral commitment to refuse to marry ‘whoever she may be, without the consent of Your Majesty from whom alone I await the selection of my bride
  • Ferdinand’s enthusiasm at being related to the French Emperor was such that Beauharnais suggested that the Prince approach Napoleon directly in writing. Not only is it incredible that the heir-apparent would dare to discuss marriage plans with a foreign head of state; but equally so is the abject tone of the letter
  • The state in which I have found myself for some time, and which could not be hidden from the great penetration of Your Majesty
  • But full of hope in finding in Your Majesty’s magnanimity the most powerful protection
  • persistent rumours that he might appoint himself Regent on the King’s death, spurred the Prince of Asturias to frantic measures
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  • The subsequent crisis, though outwardly similar to the events of 1568, was wider in scope and more tragic in its consequences. King Philip, criticized by many for his dispassionate attitude, never forfeited the esteem or the sympathy of the nation. In 1807 the position was the exact reverse; Charles IV at best was pitied as a dupe, while Maria Luisa and her paramour were held responsible for reducing Spain to the role of Napoleon’s subservient ally
  • Did Napoleon instigate the scheme to sow further dissension within the Spanish royal family, or did Beauharnais initiate it on his own account
  • Napoleon was delighted to receive Ferdinand’s letter and immediately grasped its mischief-making potential
  • Charles IV discovered his son’s treasonous correspondence
  • Godoy whose spies were everywhere
  • The ensuing scenes are reminiscent of those of 1568. The King angrily entered his son’s room, and was soon in possession not only of the damaging correspondence - apparently the Prince’s terrified gaze betrayed its hiding place - but also of the cipher needed to transcribe the coded letters
  • The Queen was distraught that Godoy was ill with a fever in Madrid at such a critical moment
  • The following day Ferdinand was formally placed under arrest with a guard of twenty-four elite soldiers
  • warning him of Godoy’s boundless ambitions and greed, enumerating his supposed crimes, his abuse of power and the royal confidence, his corruption and immorality
  • The most damning assertion was that Godoy had besmirched the King’s name and delivered Spain to her enemies
  • patriots anxious to ensure the orderly succession to the throne in the event of the King’s death
  • who imagined they had come to deliver their beloved prince from the pernicious influence of the royal favourite
  • Godoy pointed out to the King that a family reconciliation was imperative to prevent Napoleon from dividing the Spanish royal family. The King stubbornly refused to pardon his son, but finally agreed to let Godoy act as intermediary
  • Godoy saw his opportunity, and easily prevailed upon the terrified Prince to pen contrite letters to his parents, fully admitting his guilt
  • The King, moved by paternal compassion, granted his son a royal pardon, but insisted nevertheless that the other ‘conspirators’ be brought to trial and a full enquiry be convened
  • As Godoy had foreseen, Ferdinand’s immense popularity throughout the nation and the patriotic motives of the accused could only work to the detriment of the Santa Trinidad, as the reigning monarchs and the favourite were caustically referred to by the common people
  • On January 25th, 1808, to the acclaim of the public and the barely contained fury of the royal couple, the defendants were declared innocent
  • From the outset Godoy had been opposed to the trial; but this was one of the rare occasions on which both monarchs disregarded his counsel. To compound the initial error
  • Ferdinand’s defence, based on his right of legitimate succession to the throne, is persuasive as offered by Escoiquiz and the others at their trial. But whatever the provocation and dangers -real or imagined-one cannot forgive Ferdinand’s clandestine appeal to the French Emperor at such a critical moment, when Spain was threatened from outside
  • Being a King, you know how sacred are the rights of the throne; any approach of an heir apparent to a foreign sovereign is criminal
  • Napoleon assumed that the conduct and moral fibre of the Spanish royal family was representative of the entire nation
manhefnawi

The Art of Kingship: Louis XIV, A Reconsideration | History Today - 0 views

  • On June 7th, 1654, Louis XIV was crowned in the traditional manner at the cathedral of Reims
  • It was indeed one of the least significant events in the whole reign of Loins XIV
  • The minority had ended at rather an early age, but kings of France were not as ordinary men, in that, among other things, they had the capacity of coming of age prematurely
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  • For ten years after he had come of age Louis XIV left the government in the hands of Mazarin, apparently willingly
  • Louis XIV would as soon have neglected his Council as his grand couvert, when he dined in public
  • Louis never forgot the flight from Paris or the humiliations inflicted on his childhood by the Fronde. Saint-Simon said that he often spoke of those times with bitterness, even telling how he was so neglected that one evening he had been pulled dripping out of the fountain in the Palais Royal, where he had fallen and been left to lie. The lesson he drew from the Fronde was that the king must be absolute
  • The same standards were demanded from those who surrounded the King
  • A population of some twenty millions, when England or Spain had under five and the largest German states barely one or two millions, was, given able generals and domestic unity, a guarantee of military success. But such a cautious monarch as Louis did not fling himself into a course of foreign conquest without preparation
  • Given this, and a King like Louis XIV to play the central role, it became the scene of something like a perpetual ballet performed before an audience of twenty millions
  • An Italian visitor compared Louis XIV leaving his chateau, surrounded by body-guards, carriages, horses, courtiers, valets, to the Queen bee when she takes flight into the fields with her swarm
  • The Queen died about this time; and Louis, who by now was wanting to settle down, married Mme Scarron secretly
  • Versailles, court, etiquette, mistresses, were all part of the ornamental framework of monarchy, but Louis XIV was no mere playboy king. His pride was in his mastery of what he called the metier de roi, and it is important to note what this meant, because it has sometimes been given too extensive an interpretation
  • It was natural that Louis XIV should devote his attention above all to foreign affairs, but it was with his characteristic moderation and sense of the possible that he began his career of conquest
  • A king was in those days still primarily a great landowner and his first aim was to add to the extent of the lands possessed by his dynasty. In this sense the state was identified with the monarch and this was the meaning of I’Etat e’est moi. Louis XIV put the position quite clearly himself: “In working for the state, the monarch is working for himself; the good of the one is the glory of the other; when the former is happy, noble and powerful, he who has brought this about is glorious.
  • The devastating invasion of a German state was calculated to do so, and in this sense it succeeded, but only at a price
  • Under Louis XIV the higher nobility were domesticated at Court and ceased to be even a nuisance. Robbed of their leadership, the lesser nobles and gentry—of course they did not come to Versailles, as is sometimes implied, there would not have been standing room if they had—could safely be left to rot in idleness in their chateaux and manor-houses. With one exception Louis had no minister of noble birth throughout his reign
  • Under Louis XIV the royal bureaucracy, which had been so many centuries in the growing, reached its apogee
  • The government of France was now a complete bureaucracy and Louis XIV the grand bureaucrat.
  • If the Catholics were loyal, the Huguenots were not less so. It almost seemed as if there were a competition which religion could elevate the King on a higher altar
  • Louis XIV did not have to initiate the persecution of the Huguenots
  • In the cause of religion Louis XIV had lost, as Sorel put it, more than he could have gained by the most victorious war or than could have been demanded by his enemies as the price of the most disastrous peace
  • He had seen a whole generation of his subjects pass away. Within a few months, in 1711, his son, his grandson and his elder great-grandson all died, leaving only a weak baby to carry on the Bourbon dynasty
  • The last of the agreements was signed in November 1715, but the King of France had died at Versailles on September 1st, at the age of seventy-seven and in the fifty-sixth year of his personal rule
  • The sun king had gone down not in splendour but amid clouds of foreign defeat and domestic distress, to be succeeded, against his will and testament, not by his bastard Maine, whom he loved, but by Philip of Orleans, whom he hated. The Regent was to try to put the clock back, to undo the work of the great monarch in every field. In foreign policy, religion, government, finance, the Regency was an attempt at revolution from above
  • Three-quarters of a century after Louis XIV had died the monarchy which had reached its height, and been given its final majestic proportions under him, came crashing down in ruins; and in this case it is just to tax the architect with ill-matched aims
  • Every time the King creates an office, it was said, God creates a fool to buy it. In fact, the purchasers were not quite so foolish as the saying suggests
  • Finally, it must be said that Louis XIV had not even successfully completed his especial task of securing the emancipation of the monarchy from the danger of a future Fronde. He had bound the noblesse to the Crown, but he had equally bound the Crown to the privileged orders. If Louis XIV was the master of his Court, his successors were to be the dependants of their own courtiers. Parlements, provincial estates still remained; and, powerless under a strong king, they were to be a menace under weak ones. The wheel came full circle in 1787 with the révolte nobiliaire, when the last Fronde began the revolution against Louis XVI, and the privileged orders destroyed the absolute monarchy, though in doing so they also destroyed themselves
krystalxu

British Culture: Facts & Customs | Study.com - 0 views

  • The most culturally recognized aspect of British tradition is their monarchy. When people say 'The Queen,' it's a pretty safe bet that they're referring to the Queen of England. Royalty is a significant part of British culture and the many ceremonies surrounding royalty has been a celebrated custom for over 1000 years.
manhefnawi

Louis XVIII | king of France | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Louis was the fourth son of the dauphin Louis, the son of Louis XV, and received the title comte de Provence; after the death of his two elder brothers and the accession of his remaining elder brother as Louis XVI in 1774, he became heir presumptive
  • With little concern for the safety of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, who were held captive in Paris, the Comte de Provence issued uncompromising counterrevolutionary manifestos, organized émigré associations, and sought the support of other monarchs in the fight against the Revolution. When the King and Queen were executed in 1793, he declared himself regent for his nephew, the dauphin Louis XVII, at whose death, in June 1795, he proclaimed himself Louis XVIII.
  • promoting the royalist cause, however hopeless it seemed after Napoleon’s proclamation as emperor in 1804
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  • After Napoleon’s defeats in 1813, Louis issued a manifesto in which he promised to recognize some of the results of the Revolution in a restored Bourbon regime. When the Allied armies entered Paris in March 1814, the brilliant diplomatist Talleyrand was able to negotiate the restoration, and on May 3, 1814, Louis was received with jubilation by the war-weary Parisians.
  • On May 2, Louis XVIII officially promised a constitutional monarchy, with a bicameral parliament, religious toleration, and constitutional rights for all citizens.
  • Louis XVIII’s reign saw France’s first experiment in parliamentary government since the Revolution. The King was invested with executive powers and had “legislative initiative,”
  • After 1820, however, the ultras exercised increasing control and thwarted most of Louis’s attempts to heal the wounds of the Revolution. At his death he was succeeded by his brother, the comte d’Artois, as Charles X.
manhefnawi

Spain - Spain under the Habsburgs | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Ferdinand died on January 23, 1516, and the crowns of the Spanish kingdoms devolved to his grandson, Charles I (1516–56), the ruler of the Netherlands and heir to the Habsburg dominions in Austria and southern Germany. This new union had not been planned in Spain, and at first it was deeply resented.
  • The old hostilities between the different Spanish kingdoms were as bitter as ever, with the men of Navarre, for instance, claiming that they would rather accept a Turk than an Aragonese as governor of the fortress of Pamplona.
  • When Charles finally arrived in Spain in September 1517, his supporters were already disillusioned, and the country was apprehensive of the rule of a foreigner.
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  • but the queen, whether out of madness or calculation of the interests of the monarchy, would not commit herself to Padilla’s proposals
  • There was talk of dethroning Charles in favour of his mother, Joan the Mad.
  • The different Cortes of Castile, Aragon, and Catalonia granted his financial demands but attached to them much pointed advice and criticism.
  • The power of monarchy was thus restored in Castile, never to be seriously shaken again under the Habsburg kings. But in practice it was far from absolute.
  • Because of Charles’s role as Holy Roman emperor, Spain became involved in interminable wars. The necessity of defending southern Italy against the Turks brought Charles’s empire into collision with the Ottoman Empire, with the central Mediterranean as the chief battleground. Ferdinand’s failure to complete the conquest of North Africa now brought a bitter revenge.
  • In 1535 Charles captured Tunis. In perhaps his most satisfying triumph, Charles appeared in his chosen role of, as he said himself, “God’s standard-bearer.”
  • It is therefore not surprising that the empire in Europe with Charles V as head became gradually transformed into a Spanish—or, rather, Castilian—empire of Charles I
manhefnawi

Alfonso XII | king of Spain | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • The eldest surviving son of Queen Isabella II and, presumably, her consort, the duque de Cádiz, Alfonso accompanied his mother into exile following her deposition by the revolution of September 1868.
  • Isabella abdicated her rights in his favour in June 1870, but it was not until four years later (December 29, 1874) that Alfonso was proclaimed king of Spain. He returned to his country early in January of the following year.
  • Attempts on the king’s life (October 1878 and December 1879) and a military pronunciamiento against the regime (1883) were not indicative of any general discontent with the restored monarchy; on the contrary, Alfonso enjoyed considerable popularity, and his early death from tuberculosis was a great disappointment to those who looked forward to a constitutional monarchy in Spain.
manhefnawi

Francis II | king of France | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • The eldest son of Henry II and Catherine de Médicis, Francis was married in April 1558 to Mary Stuart, queen of Scots and niece of François, duc de Guise, and of Charles, cardinal of Lorraine.
  • To defeat the Guises, Louis de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Huguenot leader, planned the conspiracy of Amboise (March 1560), an abortive coup d’etat in which some Huguenots surrounded the Château of Amboise and tried to seize the King.
brookegoodman

Kaiser Wilhelm II - WWI, Abdication & Death - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Kaiser Wilhelm II was born in Potsdam, Germany, on January 27, 1859, the son of Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia (1831-88) and Princess Victoria (1840-1901), the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria of England (1819-1901).
  • The political event that shaped Wilhelm was the formation of the German Empire under the leadership of Prussia in 1871.
  • Wilhelm II (1859-1941), the German kaiser (emperor) and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, was one of the most recognizable public figures of World War I (1914-18).
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  • He spent the rest of his life in exile in the Netherlands, where he died at age 82.
  • Wilhelm’s childhood was shaped by two events, one medical and one political. His birth had been traumatic; in the course of a complicated delivery, the doctor permanently damaged Wilhelm’s left arm. In addition to its smaller size, the arm was useless for such ordinary tasks as cutting certain foods with a knife at mealtime.
  • In 1881, Wilhelm married Princess Augusta Victoria (1858-1921) of Schleswig-Holstein. The couple would go on to have seven children
  • Wilhelm damaged his political position in a number of ways. He meddled in German foreign policy on the basis of his emotions, resulting in incoherence and inconsistency in German relations with other nations. He also made a number of public blunders, the worst of which was The Daily Telegraph affair of 1908. Wilhelm gave an interview to the London-based newspaper in which he offended the British by saying such things as: “You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares.”
  • The kaiser supported the plans of Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930), his chief admiral, who maintained that Germany could gain diplomatic power over Britain by stationing a fleet of warships in the North Sea. By 1914, however, the naval buildup had caused severe financial problems for Wilhelm’s government.
  • Wilhelm’s behavior during the crisis that led to war in August 1914 is still controversial. There is little doubt that he had been broken psychologically by the criticism that followed the Eulenburg-Harden and Daily Telegraph scandals; he suffered an episode of depression in 1908. In addition, the kaiser was out of touch with the realities of international politics in 1914; he thought that his blood relationships to other European monarchs were sufficient to manage the crisis that followed the June 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Although Wilhelm signed the order for German mobilization following pressure from his generals–Germany declared war against Russia and France during the first week of August 1914– he is reported to have said, “You will regret this, gentlemen.”
  • In late 1918, popular unrest in Germany (which had suffered greatly during the war) combined with a naval mutiny convinced civilian political leaders that the kaiser had to abdicate to preserve order. In fact, Wilhelm’s abdication was announced on November 9, 1918, before he had actually consented to it. He agreed to leave when the leaders of the army told him he had lost their support as well. On November 10, the former emperor took a train across the border into the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war. He eventually bought a manor house in the town of Doorn, and remained there for the remainder of his life.
  • After two decades in exile, he died in the Netherlands on June 4, 1941, at the age of 82.
nrashkind

What it's like for health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic -... - 0 views

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Across the country, health care professionals have mobilized to treat patients suffering from the novel coronavirus, and many are doing so without adequate supplies and equipment
  • Here's what they have to say.
  • A registered ICU nurse with University of Chicago Medicine told CNN she's scared about what the ICU could look like in another week, as the US Surgeon General said Chicago was one of several emerging coronavirus hot spots in the United States.
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  • Patients were streaming in nonstop, she said, coughing and sweating, with fevers and "fear in their eyes." The nurse wrote that she cried in the bathroom during her break, peeling off the PPE that left indentations in her face.
  • The nurse, who said she works in a Covid-19 triage area, said the previous night was "so far the worst I have seen."
  • 'I cried the entire ride home'
  • Dr. Cory Deburghgraeve, an anesthesiologist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said he's working 94 hours this week. He's the designated "airway anesthesiologist" giving coronavirus patients breathing tubes in a procedure called intubation.
  • Deburghgraeve shared a video with CNN of him donning his PPE, putting on gloves, a protective gown, a face mask and then another mask that looks like a space helmet.
  • "What's very devastating for me is some people we know will not survive," he said, "and since they're not allowed to have visitors, I may be the last face they see and voice they hear ever as I put them to sleep (general anesthesia) prior to being on a ventilator.
  • A physician assistant working in an emergency room in Queens, New York, told CNN there was an "every man for themselves" mentality when it came to the PPE at the hospital.
  • "You have people out on the streets that have masks and meanwhile the hospitals are all running out of masks," said the physician assistant, who CNN is not naming because they feared repercussions for speaking to the media.
  • The physician assistant said they were told they would have to make their N95 mask last for five days. The PPE is being prioritized, the physician assistant said, for staff working with intubated patients, who are most at risk of infection.
  • "There's patients everywhere," the physician assistant said
  • An emergency room physician at a hospital in the New York borough of Queens said doctors and nurses must deal with cramped spaces.
  • "Stretchers are packed in metal-to-metal, stacked three deep head to toe, with no space ... to walk to patients," the physician said. "When patients deteriorate, you hope you see them from across the room and hope you can move enough stretchers out of the way to get that person to a critical care area."
  • "I don't have the support that I need, and even just the materials that I need physically to take care of my patients," Smith said. "And it's America and we're supposed to be a first-world country."
Javier E

Why Democrats Are Still Not the Party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The 116th Congress also demonstrated that political influence outside of Washington does not always translate into legislative victories, as progressives are promising.
  • Without question Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s influence on the Democratic Party also is striking in modern politics for a freshman House member.
  • In her first few months in office she got normally skittish Democrats and some early presidential candidates to sign on to her Green New Deal (introduced with Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts), forced a national conversation about marginal tax rates and Medicare for All, helped tank a plan for Amazon to move to Queens, and catalyzed a vast rejection of corporate PAC mone
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  • But here was the reality for progressives: Medicare for All got little more than a hearing or two, while the House passed bill after bill pressing more incremental health care changes (but none of which the Republican-controlled Senate would even entertain).
  • The Green New Deal had a messy if high-profile roll out, then fizzled.
  • Ms. Ocasio-Cortez did not have even the modest legislative victories enjoyed by other freshman Democrats
  • What is more, many Democrats began to fret early on that the far left was going to do to them what the Tea Party had done to Republicans a few years back: Run them out of town, one primary at a time.
  • “There are some people who one don’t really seem to understand the math of the majority making,”
  • “There’s some people that just think that we’re out of touch and that if we just worked hard, more Democrats would come out of the woodwork, and so we should just try to say to all the things that excite all the Democrats. You can say that until you’re blue in the face, but there are just not that many Democrats in my district.”
  • While the narrative of her victory portrayed younger, nonwhite and working-class voters as her secret base, in reality Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had soundly beaten the incumbent in the areas of the district that were by and large more wealthy and educated, in particular parts of Queens filled with white residents fleeing overpriced Manhattan.
  • “Ocasio-Cortez, the young Latina who proudly identifies as a democratic socialist, hadn’t been all but vaulted into Congress by the party’s diversity, or a blue-collar base looking to even the playing field. She won because she had galvanized the college-educated gentrifiers who are displacing those people.”
  • In short, deeply blue areas, especially with young and affluent voters, may be seeking political representation far to the left of the Democrats who were once easily re-elected.
  • much of the rest of the country’s Democrats, especially older African-American voters who are a major component of the base, prefer more centrist candidates.
  • This is the dichotomy that hangs over the party today.
Javier E

Britain Just Got Pulled Back From the Edge - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Starmer’s elevation is of deep importance on a number of levels. First, after years of appalling ineptitude and moral vacuity under Corbyn’s catastrophic leadership, Britain’s opposition will be led by a credible alternative prime minister whose competence, professionalism, and patriotism are unquestioned. The government can now be held to account.
  • Starmer, appearing on the BBC’s flagship political program, The Andrew Marr Show, broke with the Corbynite position, offering “constructive engagement” with the government. “We’ve all got a duty here to save lives and protect our country,” he said. A boring statement, but almost revolutionary after the Corbyn years.
  • The Queen is the only public figure able to personally link the current fight against the pandemic to the Second World War, the prior struggle that still defines the country, at least in its own perception. The message was well pitched, nodding to the young and old, frontline and staying-at-home. It cast her as a spiritual leader, more than merely figurative.
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  • The National Health Service appears to be rising to the task, the military has been deployed, the BBC has found its voice after years of unease, and the political institutions—torn apart by the financial crash, Brexit, and Corbynism—have refound something of a common set of rules and purpose.
  • The establishment is back. And British politics has some measure of its old self back. Both will be needed again soon, for once this immediate medical crisis is over, an economic one will emerge. Real change may soon follow.
ethanshilling

What the 'Invisible' People Cleaning the Subway Want Riders to Know - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Yaneth Ochoa, a Colombian woman who lives in Queens, was glad to find a job cleaning the subway last summer, as demolition jobs had dried up during the pandemic.
  • But as trains rolled into the Jamaica-179 Street Station in Queens, she learned she would not just be wiping down cars to remove traces of the coronavirus.
  • Like workers at end-of-line stations all over New York City, Ms. Ochoa, 30, was expected to scrub away grime, sputum and even human excrement, she said, without adequate training or special equipment.
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  • Cleaning the New York City subway has always been a dirty job. But when the pandemic hit last spring, it became even more challenging.
  • The thousands of workers the contractors hired — largely low-income immigrants from Latin America — were envisioned as a stopgap measure, as M.T.A. workers were falling ill and dying of the virus.
  • Now, as the M.T.A. prepares to welcome more riders, the workers are pushing back, raising concerns about their safety, salaries and working conditions that they say feel like exploitation.
  • The New York Times interviewed a dozen contract cleaners, including three who in late February had met with Patrick J. Foye, the chairman and chief executive of the M.T.A. to describe their job and share a list of “needs” with transit agency leadership.
  • “It’s so scary to be left without work right now that you’ll accept almost anything,” she said.
  • A spokeswoman for the M.T.A., Abbey Collins, said the agency was disinfecting the subway with the help of “licensed and reputable outside companies whose performance is monitored regularly.”
  • Ms. Ochoa, who earned around $15 per hour, New York State’s minimum wage, finally quit after refusing to clean a train smeared with excrement with just a few rags, she said.
  • “If you’ve got workers on the property for a year, it’s a matter of basic equality,” said Zachary Arcidiacono, the chair of the Train Operators Division for the union.
  • The cleaning program, which the M.T.A. plans to continue indefinitely, will cost about $300 million this year.
  • Their accounts paint a picture of dismal working conditions, and highlight their unequal treatment compared with transit cleaners, who are paid up to $30 an hour and enjoy health insurance and other benefits, uniforms and MetroCards to swipe themselves into the system.
  • Transit officials said they had called on City Hall to send more police officers and mental health workers into the subway to ensure that all workers and passengers were safe.
  • “Many people were getting paid minimum wage or just a dollar or two more,” Mr. Tecaxco said. “The conditions were terrible.”
  • Ms. Muñoz, who cleaned the offices of an architecture firm before the pandemic, said the work was taxing and the rules were strict. Workers were let go for arriving minutes late, or for calling in sick, including from Covid-19, she said.
  • Ms. Muñoz said she was fired in November without explanation. As the sole provider for her four children and parents in Puebla, Mexico, she pleaded to keep her job.
  • Since then, she has not found steady work; she cleans someone’s home every two weeks. As for her former co-workers at the end of the Q line, “My compañeros are still there,” Ms. Muñoz said. “Nothing has changed.”
ethanshilling

See a Map of Vaccination Rates for New York City - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Just over a hundred days into New York City’s vaccination campaign, 30 percent of adults and half of those 65 and older have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
  • White and Asian New Yorkers have been vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino residents, who have been more likely to die from or be hospitalized with Covid-19 both in New York City and nationwide.
  • Some of the highest vaccination rates are in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods — places where residents were most likely to leave the city at the start of the pandemic.
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  • Twenty percent of Manhattan adults have been fully vaccinated, compared with 12 percent of Brooklyn adults. One of the clearest demographic trends in who is getting vaccinated is age.
  • There are more than 1.2 million New Yorkers age 65 and older, rivaling the entire population of Dallas. Older adults were among the first in line for the vaccine, and in general, areas of the city with more older residents have a higher percentage of vaccinations than others.
  • While about half of all of these New Yorkers have had at least one dose, about 70 percent of those over 65 are not yet fully vaccinated, suggesting the city still has a ways to go even as eligibility expands to younger groups.
  • Neighborhoods with mostly white residents, like the Upper East and Upper West Side, Riverdale in the Bronx, Breezy Point in Queens, mid-island and the south shore of Staten Island, are outpacing city averages.
  • The majority Black and Latino neighborhoods in large swaths of Queens, Brooklyn, upper Manhattan and the southern Bronx are in some cases 20 to 30 percentage points behind neighborhoods at the top of the list
  • Reasons for the disparities vary, and they will not all be clear from simply looking at a map. Many seniors are homebound or have had trouble navigating complex and confusing websites to sign up for the vaccine (obstacles not just for seniors, really).
  • For non-English speakers, language barriers can create fear and confusion. For poorer residents, it’s simply more difficult (and more expensive) to take a few hours or a day or two off work to get a shot.
  • The city is averaging 60,000 to 70,000 shots per day. At that rate, it will take months to reach the remaining seven million New Yorkers, including children, who are not yet eligible for any vaccine.
Javier E

A QAnon 'Digital Soldier' Marches On, Undeterred by Theory's Unraveling - The New York ... - 0 views

  • Over a series of conversations, I learned that she had a longstanding suspicion of elites dating back to her Harvard days, when she felt out of place among people she considered snobby rich kids. As an adult, she joined the anti-establishment left, advocating animal rights and supporting the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests. She admired the hacktivist group Anonymous, and looked up to whistle-blowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. She was a registered Democrat for most of her life, but she voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in the 2016 presidential election after deciding that both major parties were corrupt.
  • Ms. Gilbert used to get push notifications on her phone every time Q posted a new message. But Q, who once sent dozens of updates a day, has essentially vanished from the internet in recent weeks, posting only four times since the November election. The sudden disappearance has caused some believers to start asking questions. Chat rooms and Twitter threads have filled with impatient followers wondering when the mass arrests will begin, and if Q’s mantra — “trust the plan” — is just a stalling tactic.
  • Ms. Gilbert isn’t worried. For her, QAnon was always less about Q and more about the crowdsourced search for truth. She loves assembling her own reality in real time, patching together shards of information and connecting them to the core narrative.
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  • (She once spent several minutes explaining how a domino-shaped ornament on the White House Christmas tree proved that Mr. Trump was sending coded messages about QAnon, because the domino had 17 dots, and Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet.)
  • When she solves a new piece of the puzzle, she posts it to Facebook, where her QAnon friends post heart emojis and congratulate her.
  • This collaborative element, which some have likened to a massively multiplayer online video game, is a big part of what drew Ms. Gilbert to QAnon and keeps her there now.
  • Believing in QAnon tends to clear one’s social calendar, and Ms. Gilbert is no exception. She cut ties with her closest friends years ago, after arguing with them about Pizzagate. She is estranged from her sister, who tried and failed to stage an intervention over her Facebook posts.
  • Ms. Gilbert insists that she’s a lone wolf by choice, but becoming a pariah has clearly taken a toll. She compares Manhattan to Nazi Germany, and speaks bitterly about the friends she has lost. (I talked to several of those former friends. They miss her, but can’t imagine reconciling with her in her current state.)
  • This week, when Mr. Biden becomes president and Mr. Trump leaves the White House, it will be a huge blow to QAnon’s core mythology, and it may force some believers to acknowledge that they’ve been lied to. Many will cope by spinning the development as a win, or saying it proves that Mr. Trump is playing the long game. Others will quietly ditch Q and transfer their enthusiasm to a new conspiracy theory. A few might be jolted back to reality.
  • But the meme queen is undeterred. She trusts Q’s plan, at least for a little while longer, and she wants them to trust it, too.“Be prepared, and stay cool,” Ms. Gilbert wrote to her Facebook friends recently. “Slow and steady wins the race. We’re in the home stretch now.”
anonymous

Thailand royal consort: How did Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi fall from grace? - BBC News - 0 views

  • Sineenat, 34, was the first royal consort in Thailand for almost a century. When she was given the title in July, it made her an official companion - but not a queen - of the king shortly after he married his fourth wife, Queen Suthida.
  • Historically, polygamy and the taking of royal consorts was used by Thailand's royals to assure the allegiance of powerful families across the provinces of the large kingdom.
  • Thai kings throughout the centuries took multiple wives - or consorts. The last time a Thai king took an official consort was in the 1920s and the title has not been used since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
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  • "In any situation like that you find a system of patronage behind the scenes. Sineenat might have been part of that system of patronage and she might have played it in a way that didn't work well for her," she says, hinting at possible factionalism in the court.
  • Earlier this year, the two most important army units in the capital Bangkok were placed directly under his command, showing a concentration of military power in royal hands unprecedented in modern Thailand.
  • Under the country's lese-majeste law, the controversial demotion cannot be discussed publicly in the country - but observers believe this dramatic fall from grace will be uppermost in many people's minds.
brookegoodman

Tulsi Gabbard, running for president, won't seek re-election to Congress - 0 views

  • Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday that she will not run for re-election for her U.S. representative seat, saying she wants to focus on trying to secure her party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump.
  • "I believe that I can best serve the people of Hawaii and our country as your president and commander-in-chief,"
  • An Iowa Democratic caucus poll out this week put Gabbard at 3 percent, with former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the top three spots.
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  • Clinton did not mention Gabbard by name but said she believes one candidate is "the favorite of the Russians."
  • Clinton was referring to the GOP grooming Gabbard, not Russians.
  • Gabbard reacted by tweeting that Clinton is “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that sickened the Democratic Party for so long."
  • Trump attacked Clinton for the suggestion earlier this week, and said Clinton and other Democrats claim everyone opposed to them is a Russian agent.
  • ratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday that she will not run for re-election for her U.S. representative seat, saying she wants to focus on trying to secure her party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump.Gabbard, who represents Hawaii, made the announcement in a video and email to supporters."I believe that I can best serve the people of Hawaii and our country as your president and commander-in-chief," Gabbard said in the video.Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.Sign UpThis site is protected by recaptcha Privacy Policy | Terms of Service She also expressed gratitude to the people of Hawaii for her nearly seven years in Congress.In January, Hawaii state Sen. Kai Kahele, a Democrat, said he would run for Gabbard's seat, NBC affiliate KHNL of Honolulu reported.An Iowa Democratic caucus poll out this week put Gabbard at 3 percent, with former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the top three spots.She is in a crowded field of Democrats seeking the nomination to run for president. Another candidate, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, ended his long-shot presidential campaign Thursday.RecommendedvideovideoMcConnell: If the House impeaches Trump, Senate will hold trial 'until we finish'2020 Election2020 ElectionTim Ryan drops out of presidential raceHillary Clinton recently suggested that she believed Republicans were grooming one of the Democrats for a third-party candidacy. Clinton did not mention Gabbard by name but said she believes one candidate is "the favorite of the Russians."
brookegoodman

Marie-Antoinette - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755, Marie Antoinette married the future French king Louis XVI when she was just 15 years old.
  • Marie Antoinette herself became the target of a great deal of vicious gossip
  • Marie Antoinette was arrested and tried for trumped-up crimes against the French republic. She was convicted and sent to the guillotine on October 16, 1793.
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  • Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and the powerful Habsburg empress Maria Theresa
  • More than 5,000 guests watched as the two teenagers were married. It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.
  • Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly the American Revolution, in which the French had intervened on behalf of the colonists–had created a tremendous debt for the French state
  • Life as a public figure was not easy for Marie Antoinette.
  • she spent most of her time socializing and indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had a model farm built on the palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could dress in elaborate costumes and pretend to be milkmaids and shepherdesses.
  • Before long, it had become fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems.
  • There is no evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said that starving peasants should “eat cake” if they had no bread. In fact, the story of a fatuous noblewoman who said “Let them eat cake!” appears in the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, which was written around 1766 (when Marie Antoinette was just 11 years old).
  • ordinary people, on the other hand, felt squeezed by high taxes and resentful of the royal family’s conspicuous spending.
  • Louis XVI and his advisers tried to impose a more representative system of taxation, but the nobility resisted.
  • Marie Antoinette continued to be a convenient target for their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers depicted her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could to undermine the French nation.
  • One of Marie Antoinette’s best friends, the Princesse de Lamballe, was dismembered in the street, and revolutionaries paraded her head and body parts through Paris.
  • In July 1793, she lost custody of her young son, who was forced to accuse her of sexual abuse and incest before a Revolutionary tribunal. In October, she was convicted of treason and sent to the guillotine. She was 37 years old.
  • She and the people around her seemed to represent everything that was wrong with the monarchy and the Second Estate: They appeared to be tone-deaf, out of touch, disloyal (along with her allegedly treasonous behavior, writers and pamphleteers frequently accused the queen of adultery) and self-interested. What Marie Antoinette was actually like was beside the point; the image of the queen was far more influential than the woman herself.
anonymous

Queen Elizabeth II recalls WWII evacuations during coronavirus speech - The Washington ... - 0 views

  • She also harked back to her first speech to the public ever, when she was only 14 and still a princess.“It reminds me of the very first broadcast I made, in 1940, helped by my sister,” she said, as an archive photo of the girls appeared on-screen. “We as children spoke from here at Windsor [Castle] to children who had been evacuated from their homes and sent away for their own safety.”
  • The wave of child evacuations had begun the year before, on Sept. 1, 1939 — the same day Nazi Germany invaded Poland and only two days before Britain’s prime minister declared war. Fearing civilian casualties if British cities were bombed, officials urged parents to send their children to the countryside to live with strangers who volunteered to provide space for them.
  • Evacuation of children was voluntary, according to the Imperial War Museum, but since urban schools had been shut down, the decision was made easier.
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  • In the first wave, nearly 1 million children, hundreds of thousands of teachers and half-a-million mothers with babies were evacuated. The teachers were assigned groups of kids to find spaces for when their trains arrived in smaller towns and villages.
  • In September 1940, the predicted Nazi bombing campaign known as “the Blitz” began, and the last wave of child evacuations took place. Many well-to-do families also arranged for their children to be sent overseas to countries such as Canada, Australia and the United States.
  • Accommodations varied wildly. Some children were virtually adopted by host families and given love and good care. Some lived in large manors housing dozens of children and run by teachers. Many of the urban children were seeing the countryside, agriculture and farm animals for the first time, finding it both inspiring and boring.
  • by January 1940, nearly half of parents had brought their children home, the museum said. The health ministry put up threatening posters to discourage this. One poster depicts a mother visiting her children in the country with a ghostly Adolf Hitler over her shoulder, tempting her like Satan to “Take them back! Take them back!”
  • For others, the evacuation was a nightmare. Their food rations from the government were confiscated by the families they ended up with; they were put to work in fields; many were physically and sexually abused. John Abbott told the BBC he was whipped by his host family whenever he spoke and was eventually rescued by local police, bruised and bleeding.
  • It was after this last wave, in October 1940, that Princess Elizabeth addressed the children of Britain.
  • When Elizabeth turned 18 in early 1945, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she trained as a truck mechanic and driver. To this day, she is the only female member of the royal family to have served in the military.
  • In 1940, she told the children — her contemporaries — “When peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.”Now 93, she said Sunday: “I hope, in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.”“Today, once again, many will feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones,” she closed. “But now, as then, we know deep down that it is the right thing to do.”
Javier E

A Racist Attack on Children Was Taped in 1975. We Found Them. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Rosedale of the 1970s was a predominantly white working-class neighborhood of about 25,000, home to civil service workers, police officers and firefighters of mainly Italian, Irish and Jewish descent. But like much of New York City at that time, demographics were shifting as black and immigrant families moved in and, in response, some white families headed out.
  • Mr. Moyers, who served as press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson, said he was drawn to Rosedale as a journalist because he was interested in the societal ramifications of the Johnson administration’s efforts to put an end to segregation. Mr. Moyers and his camera crew set out to understand its impact and stumbled upon its real-world consequence on a street corner: the attack on their peers by children steeped in hate.
  • What he discovered in Queens, he said, was racism enmeshed with economic anxiety — a belief that the newcomers would bring waves of crime and slash property values. Plus, there was a toxic fear held by white residents of losing their dominance, he said, something he sees echoed in the politics of today.
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  • “We are in the last battle of white supremacy at the moment, and that was incipient in what was happening in Rosedale in the early 1970s,” Mr. Moyers said. “The past is very much alive today. Rosedale is being played out in a hundred different ways.”
  • The incident still fills Ms. Lipscomb-McDonald with rage, both for the little girl she was, and in light of this era’s similar struggles, how intractable racism seems. In recent days, she said, she has marched in Black Lives Matter protests near her home in Bel Air, Md., with her children. “Which is beautiful,” she said, “and very sad that another generation has to take up the cause.”
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