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Believe it or not 1968 was worse

2018-07-03T22:32:30Z

KiraKrouse70:

By Maurice Isserman July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving. This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete. Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission. I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.") "Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years." I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged. Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'" Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America? And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible. If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again? Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable. In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age. Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today. Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades. It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes. Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as [http://www.google.de/search?q=president president] in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run. His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation. History was not on a loop in the 1860s. Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life. "I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience. Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman) Advertisement

French Foreign Legion soldiers were the toughest in the world

2018-06-29T18:53:13Z

KiraKrouse70:

BOOK OF THE WEEK AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Jean-Vincent Blanchard (Bloomsbury �20) As a boy, I�d always more than half-wondered if the French Foreign Legion was an invention of Hollywood. Cary Grant and Gary Cooper capered about in the desert wearing those distinctive hats with the white hankies dangling down the backs of their necks. Laurel and Hardy ran away to join the Foreign Legion, as did Jim Dale in Carry On . . . Follow That Camel, which was filmed in exotic Camber Sands. Marty Feldman directed, co-wrote and starred in The Last Remake Of Beau Geste, with Peter Ustinov as the sadistic sergeant. A new book by Jean-Vincent Blanchard examines the legendary, vicious (and racist) French Foreign Legion, whose soldiers marched in 50C heat till their boots filled with blood Edith Piaf had a famous song about a night of hectic passion with a tattooed recruit, which she compared to (and I translate) �a thunderstorm through the sky�. And it is her image of the moody and uncompromising Legionnaire, attracted by the promise of �blood, bullets, bayonets and women in an Arab land�, that gets closest to the historical and psychological truth, as laid before us in this gripping, disturbing and controversial account of the Legion�s first century. For the all-volunteer corps of the French Army, founded in 1831, was neither comical, nor an excuse for high-spirited larks. It was brutal and often monstrous. Created to participate in France�s colonial expansion to Algeria, Morocco, Madagascar, Indochina and Mexico, �we scare people, we inspire fear and perhaps admiration, which is a little too thin a reward sometimes; but love, never�. RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next Sex, soldiers and a very special relationship: Pals were... He was a doctor to royalty and collector supreme who created... Share this article Share Even the unique right to hire men regardless of their nationality was a cynical move. Since Napoleon and his casualties were still a living memory, the French government wanted an army �that could face danger and human losses without drawing the political backlash that French-born victims would elicit�. Out of this came the Legion�s legendary appeal to ne�er-do-wells, broken-hearted lovers, criminals, political refugees and �scions of aristocratic families leaving behind gambling debts�. Anyone physically fit was accepted, especially if they had teeth strong enough to bite the biscuit rations. No questions were asked at the headquarters in Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria. The band of outcasts were fearless and had 'no families, no ideals' and 'no loves� �You can choose a new name if you like,� recruits were told. �We don�t ask for documents.� As mercenaries, the men fought for the Legion itself, united against everyone else. �Legio Patria Nostra,� ran the motto - the Legion is our country. �We don�t give a damn what we fight for. It�s our job. We�ve nothing else in life. No families, no ideals, no loves.� By 1900, there were 11,500 men in this band of scary outcasts. Blanchard calculates that between 1831 and 1962, when Algeria was grudgingly granted independence and the French left North Africa, approximately 600,000 people had joined up. It is chilling to discover that Jean-Marie Le Pen spent a formative three years in the Legion, and that recently a retired commander was arrested for making anti-Islam protests at Calais �The substantial majority of them were Germans or Northern Europeans,� we are informed. The rest were Belgians, Spaniards and Britons. There was one Turk, one New Zealander and lots of Americans during the Great Depression of the Thirties. Exhausting route-marches in Saharan temperatures of 50c with heavy backpacks, where �acid sweat burned your skin� and �you march with your shoes full of blood�, would not be my cup of tea. But, according to Blanchard, the typical Legionnaire was a man who found �redemption and an existential purpose through camaraderie and abnegation�. �Excessive revelry� was condoned by the generals, who believed �one did not build empires with virgins� A Legionnaire who was shot in the stomach and lying on the ground with his intestines escaping was heard to murmur to his captain: �Are you happy with me?� This is the kind of stoicism that was expected. �Excessive revelry� was condoned by the generals, who believed �one did not build empires with virgins�. Sex with prostitutes was encouraged, despite the risk of venereal disease, as were heavy drinking and brawling. How hilarious it must have been to terrorise the [http://data.gov.uk/data/search?q=natives%20- natives -] the Legionnaires �can hardly keep beating, so hard they laugh�, ran a report. The French government maintained that this imperial experiment was to bring �reason, progress, science, culture and freedom� to backward jungle regions and wildernesses' The French government maintained that this imperial experiment was to bring �reason, progress, science, culture and freedom� to backward jungle regions and wildernesses. The Legionnaires were expected to fight �in the professed name of civilisation and� - here comes the catch - �in the name of racial superiority�. While we can applaud their achievements as engineers - digging and building roads, constructing forts and laying telephone lines - the fact remains that, for these mercenaries, �the gift of French civilisation� in practice meant the opportunity for the savage conquest of African tribes and, in Indochina, the Vietnamese patriotic resistance. Legionnaires went about �civilising the barbarians of this world with cannonballs�. Villages were pillaged and burned, the women raped, the men decapitated. �We were [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] allowed to kill and plunder everything,� recalled a soldier. �We went to the villages and surprised the people in bed.� One Legionnaire received no censure when he made a tobacco pouch from cured human skin. Nevertheless, killing civilians must have taken its toll - indeed, Legionnaires were among the most screwed-up soldiers in history. In a group of 350 men, 11 deaths were put down to suicide, but there may have been many more, disguised in the record as death from disease. The belief was: �It is better to be dead than go through hell.� The Legionnaires were expected to fight �in the professed name of civilisation and� - here comes the catch - �in the name of racial superiority� There was alcoholism and much illness - typhoid, tropical fever, dysentery, malaria. In Legionnaires� hospitals, a coffin, slathered with quicklime, was placed in readiness under a patient�s bed. It was said of a soldier about to die that he was off to �eat bananas by the roots� - i.e. be buried in soft soil. The deliberate hardship was not unlike that of a religious order, with its renunciation of worldly comforts - though entertainment involved lots of drag shows. Legionnaires made �splendid female impersonators�. Homosexual activity was commonplace, as you�d expect with �[http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội],000 young solid males, boiling with vigour and vitality� at a loose end in the fort. When Kaiser Wilhelm tried to discourage Germans from joining up by publishing articles warning against sexual abuse in the desert, men with Heidelberg duelling scars raced to enlist. As 43 per cent of the corps was German, perhaps it is no surprise the Foreign Legion didn�t rescue France when the country was occupied by Nazis during World War II. The French government maintained that this imperial experiment was to bring �reason, progress, science, culture and freedom� to backward jungle regions and wildernesses Blanchard�s story concludes with the centenary of the corps in 1931, the [http://Www.reddit.com/r/howto/search?q=parades parades] and so forth. I am keen to read a further volume about post-colonial activities, particularly because, since 1962 when Sidi Bel Abbes was abandoned for a new HQ in Marseille, 50,000 men have felt the need to run away and join the Legion. It is chilling to discover that Jean-Marie Le Pen spent a formative three years in the Legion, and that recently a retired commander was arrested for making anti-Islam protests at Calais. Advertisement

User:KiraKrouse70

2018-06-29T18:53:09Z

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I am Kira from Rzeszow. I am learning to play the Cello. Other hobbies are Airsoft. Review my web site; [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội]