Group items tagged

Fifty years ago this month, France erupted. Students lobbed cobblestones at riot police in Paris’s Latin Quarter. Millions of union workers went on strike. The government of President Charles de Gaulle tottered. Today, the events of May 1968 are generally regarded as more of a cultural milestone than a political one, a time when the ideals of a rising generation collided with the mores of an older, more powerful establishment. Fifty years later, the legacy of those historic weeks remains a subject of debate between the country’s conservative and progressive factions. It is, as the philosopher André Glucksmann described it in 2008, “a monument, either sublime or detested, that we want to commemorate or bury.”

Mr. Caron’s photographs of joyful, radiant students capture what made the unrest seem to some “a huge collective fiesta,” as the journalist Marc Kravetz once described it. But in his photographs of the turmoil in the Latin Quarter — armed riot police racing through the streets, students hurling projectiles through the air — Mr. Caron appears to be documenting nothing less than urban guerrilla warfare (much like this week’s May Day riots). In these photos, Mr. Caron’s experience as a combat photographer helped give his photos a cinematic immediacy and power that quickly made them among the most widely circulated at the time. The protests fizzled in June, President de Gaulle remained in power, and Mr. Caron moved on to other conflicts. In 1969, he photographed the troubles in Northern Ireland and the anniversary of the Prague spring in Czechoslovakia. In 1970, he was taken hostage for a month while covering the civil war in Chad with a group including Mr. Pledge. Just a few months after their release, Mr. Caron traveled to Cambodia, where, one day, he disappeared in Khmer Rouge-controlled territory, never to be seen again. He was 30.

In November of 1947, Albert Einstein offered the United States and the international community advice on how to coexist under the looming threat of nuclear war. An excerpt from his article in The Atlantic, “Atomic War or Peace,” has been animated in the video above.

Today, as the Trump administration appears to be considering nuclear war with North Korea, Einstein’s words resonate once again. In his article, the German-born Nobel Prize-winner cautioned against fear-mongering, which he believed only increases international antagonism. Einstein did condone nuclear programs, but only as a necessary evil for deterrence; he believed the atomic bomb should never again be deployed.

“I am not saying that the United States should not manufacture and stockpile the bomb, for I believe that it must do so; it must be able to deter another nation from making an atomic attack when it also has the bomb,” Einstein said. “To keep a stockpile of atomic bombs without promising not to initiate its use is exploiting the possession of bombs for political ends….Unless there is a determination not to use [atomic bombs] that is stronger than can be noted today among American political and military leaders, and on the part of the public itself, atomic warfare will be hard to avoid.”

Social media has empowered isis recruiting, helping the group draw at least 30,000 foreign fighters, from some 100 countries, to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. It has aided the seeding of new franchises in places ranging from Libya and Afghanistan to Nigeria and Bangladesh. It was the vehicle isis used to declare war on the United States: The execution of the American journalist James Foley was deliberately choreographed for viral distribution. And it is how the group has inspired acts of terror on five continents.

While the Islamic State has shown savvy in its use of social media, it is the technology itself—not any unique genius on the part of the jihadists—that lies at the heart of the group’s disruptive power and outsize success. Other groups will follow.

And not just terrorist groups. This is only the beginning of a larger revolution, one that is already starting to reshape the operations of small-time gangs on one end of the spectrum, and the political and military strategies of heavily armed superpowers on the other.

political magazines, of any persuasion, can be at their worst when ideological team spirit is strongest.

For conservative magazines, the years after Sept. 11, 2001, when patriotism seemed to demand loyalty to the White House, were such a time. “We did allow ourselves to become house organs for the Republican Party and the conservative movement,” says American Conservative blogger Rod Dreher, who worked at National Review from 2002 to 2003. “I would have denied it at the time, but that really happened.”

This also made many conservatives reluctant to confront the flaws of George W. Bush, even years after his presidency. “What did we think about compassionate conservatism? About No Child Left Behind? About the Iraq War? The truth is a lot of conservatives thought they were basically a mistake and badly considered,”

French Revolution

After the French Revolution transformed France and threatened the old order of Europe, France fought a series of wars against the monarchies of Europe to first protect and spread the revolution, and then to conquer territory. The later years were dominated by Napoleon and France’s enemy was seven coalitions of European states.

Austria and Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz - which asked Europe to act to restore the French monarchy – they actually worded the document to prevent war. However, France misinterpreted and decided to launch a defensive and pre-emptive war, declaring one in April 1792.

When Donald Trump’s press secretary was recently asked to comment on a rogues’ gallery of foreign leaders embracing her boss’s catchphrase of “fake news,” she essentially made the Las Vegas argument: What happens in the United States stays in the United States. “I’m not going to speak to specifics of another country when I don’t know the details,” said Sarah Sanders. “The White House is concerned about false and inaccurate information being pushed out ... to mislead the American people.”

Like many successful branding campaigns, Trump’s is grounded in some truth: The term “fake news” emerged, in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as a reference to the deliberately false stories that Russian government propagandists and assorted troublemakers around the world were spreading on Facebook and other social-media platforms to help or harm a particular candidate, sow chaos, or simply make a quick buck. The weaponization of information and large-scale manufacture of disinformation have become fixtures of contemporary politics.

But in specifically repurposing the term “fake news,” and conflating unfavorable journalism with disinformation, Trump is arguing that journalists maliciously fabricate the sources and substance of their reporting—at least when what they report doesn’t reflect well on him.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russian hackers attacked the U.S. on two fronts: the psychological and the technical. Hackers used classic propaganda techniques to influence American voters, bought thousands of social media ads to propagate fake news, and broke into Democratic party email servers to steal information. And it won't be the last time. Russian-backed psychological cyber warfare will only get better, and its methods more sophisticated.

the West Virginia GOP primary confirms that this sort of vulgar demagoguery is becoming routine. Trump’s election was no aberration. Rather, he exploited deep problems in American politics that had been building for years — and others, following his example, will exploit those same problems after he’s gone.

Before Trump, there was Sarah Palin, the tea party movement, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), the Republican Study Committee, the Freedom Caucus. The Republican Party tried to harness the rage of the nativist right but ultimately couldn’t contain it.

Now we have Blankenship, Roy Moore, Joe Arpaio and a proliferation of name-calling misfits and even felons on Republican ballots. They are monsters created by the GOP, or rather the power vacuum the GOP has become.

a vigorous suppressor of Protestants within his kingdom

Henry was sent with his brother Francis, the dauphin, as a hostage to Spain in 1526

The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was to be cemented by the marriages of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth and his sister Margaret to Philip II of Spain and to Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, respectively

Louis XII became king of France by accident. Or, more precisely, because of an accident. On April 7th 1498, his cousin, the reigning monarch Charles VIII, stumbled and hit his head on the lintel of a doorway through which he was passing on his way to watch a tennis match in the royal chateau at Amboise. The king had recently been ill. He seemed to be recovering but this final blow in a life full of hard knocks finished him off. Having no surviving male heir, the crown passed to his nearest male relative, Louis duke of Orleans, who was crowned king in Rheims cathedral on 27 May 1498

Louis ended his reign having reformed the French legal system, reduced taxes, having enjoyed some military success in Italy and bearing the loving accolade, 'Father of the People'. In many respects he stands comparison with his contemporary, Henry VII of England

Louis was born in 1462 during the reign of his second cousin Louis XI. His father was Charles duke of Orleans, a celebrated poet and the head of a cadet branch of the royal house of Valois. Louis XI was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII, in 1483

The conflict between the Habsburg Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) and the Valois King of France Francis I (1494-1547) commenced in 1521 and came to an end in 1559 in the reigns of their successors, Philip II and Henry II

to Christendom as a whole

One explanation for the protracted nature of the Habsburg-Valois wars is that the character of warfare was changing

in our current culture, it’s precisely the elites who seem to be driving tribal identity and thought, and doubling down on ideological and affectional polarization

“The more highly educated also tend to be more strongly identified along political lines.” He quoted from her book: Political knowledge tends to increase the effects of identity as more knowledgeable people have more informational ammunition to counter argue any stories they don’t like

Much of the growth in ideological consistency has come among better educated adults — including a striking rise in the share who have across-the-board liberal views, which is consistent with the growing share of postgraduates who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.”

Firstly, that Henry VIII failed to achieve his primary goal, which was to recover the French empire which had been conquered by Henry V

his foreign policy was often incoherent, thus allowing more wily operators, such as King Ferdinand of Aragon and the Emperor Maximilian, to manipulate him

He only succeeded in capturing the towns of Therouanne and Tournai in northern France in 1513, and these were soft targets

In June 1488, just three years after Henry VII’s unlikely victory in the English Midlands, James IV became king on the battlefield of Sauchieburn south of Stirling, close to the spot where Robert Bruce had won his great victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

James IV was brought up at Stirling Castle by his mother, Margaret of Denmark, alongside his two younger brothers. The queen had produced three healthy sons but she and James III led separate lives after an earlier rebellion in 1482. The king, who had managed to alienate all of his siblings, believed that his wife had sided with his brother, the Duke of Albany, when the duke returned from exile in France and invaded Scotland with the future Richard III of England. James III seems also to have felt that his eldest son was tainted by contact with Albany and perhaps considered barring the boy from the succession

James IV was ruler of a land famously described in a letter written by its own nobility in 1320 to Pope John XXII as ‘the tiny country of Scotia lying on the very edge of the inhabited world’. Scotland was poor, cold and wet. Edinburgh, its capital, held only 12,000 citizens, in contrast to London’s 50,000. Yet, like its new monarch, the country was not inward-looking.  Difficulty of travel by road over rugged terrain meant that it had long relied on sea routes for transport and communication with the wider world. The kings of Scotland were determined not to be overlooked in Europe. They forged trade and political alliances with Scandinavia and were long-standing allies of the French, who viewed Scotland as a brake on the ambitions of England. The two countries that occupied the island of Britain were natural enemies, nowhere more so than in the Borders, where centuries-old feuds and the violence that fuelled them were adjudicated by special courts composed of English and Scots. But James III had attempted a policy of conciliation with England that was unpopular with his aristocracy and Henry VII, a cautious man, did not relish constant war with his northern neighbour. It remained to be seen how James IV would approach Anglo-Scottish relations and how he would develop his ambition to make Scotland a European power.

The occasion of his liberty was the joyous passage through Meung of the new King, Louis XI, whose reign was to change the France in which Villon had pursued his rogue’s career out of all recognition

Of all the princes that I ever had the honour to know”, wrote Commines, “the wisest and most dexterous to extricate himself out of any danger or difficulty in time of adversity was our master King Louis XI.”

Louis was born in 1423, the year after the Dauphin, his father, had claimed his inheritance at the deaths of Henry V of England and Charles VI

Charles I, who was elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519 upon the death of his paternal grandfather, Maximilian, aspired to universal monarchy over the far-flung territories he had inherited, from Germany, the Low Countries, Italy, and Spain to the New World.

The revolt of the comuneros (1520–21), an uprising of a group of Spanish cities, was successfully quelled, securing Castile as the bedrock of his empire, but the opposition of Francis I of France, of Süleyman I (the Magnificent; ruled 1520–66) of the Ottoman Empire, and of the Lutheran princes in Germany proved more intractable.

When a refitted French army of 30,000 men retook Milan in 1524, the new Medici pope, Clement VII (reigned 1523–34), changed sides to become a French ally. But, at the most important battle of the Italian wars, fought at Pavia on Feb. 24, 1525, the French were defeated and Francis I was captured.

McGovern was on to something that is still misunderstood today: Republicans had capitalized upon a strong advantage with anti-feminist white women, most notably in the South. The GOP had wooed these women by dropping its previous support for the Equal Rights Amendment and offering up a new dog-whistle tactic: preaching the politics of “family values.”

In 1976, 64 percent of Southern white women supported the ERA, while 16 percent were opposed. By 1980, however, support had dropped to 42 percent, while opposition swelled to 44 percent — a much more drastic shift than in other regions of the country.

In fall 1971 and spring 1972, the ERA sailed through the House of Representatives and the Senate by votes of 354 to 24 and 84 to 8. It received such broad bipartisan support because legislators understood that the amendment would create equal opportunities for women should they choose to pursue them.

Speaking in South Korea earlier Wednesday, Mr. Trump made an impassioned call for China and other countries to pull together to confront the North, which he described as a sinister regime that starved and terrorized its people — a tragic failed experiment in the “laboratory of history.”

Since Mr. Trump first played host to Mr. Xi at his Florida estate last April, he has said he is counting on Mr. Xi to do the right thing with North Korea, alternately praising and prodding the Chinese leader about enforcing tougher United Nations sanctions.

To his frustration, however, Mr. Xi has stopped short of targeting Mr. Kim with unilateral sanctions that would threaten his regime, send refugees into China and raise the possibility of a Korean Peninsula under control of the South, a close American ally.

“Mexico was second-deadliest country in 2016″ and “Mexico Now World’s Deadliest Conflict Zone After Syria: Survey,”

The reports say that Syria had about 50,000 conflict deaths last year and that Mexico came in second with 23,000, followed by Afghanistan with 17,000.

Many homicides have nothing to do with organized crime. For example, men kill their intimate partners terrifyingly often. Yet these family violence deaths — and many others — are included in IISS’s figure of 23,000 conflict deaths for Mexico.

The Republican Party has long preyed on the shame of dispossessed white voters. But that shame — over “being viewed as second-class citizens,” Mr. Kennedy said — has converted into a defiance that the party doesn’t yet seem to grasp.

“Populism” has become a convenient shorthand for the nihilistic backlash, and the term has come to invoke a collection of largely irrational cultural tropes. But this doesn’t do justice to the critique of capitalism at the heart of the insurgency.

Original, post-Reconstruction populism was the crucible in which the elite deformed the have-nots’ economic urgency into racial anxiety. Alabama yeomen had returned from the Civil War to face a sea change in agriculture, with those formerly independent farmers joining former slaves in peonage to the large landholders.