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Believe it or not 1968 was worse

2018-06-19T13:04:36Z

MagdalenaMarquar:

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 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 [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] 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 [http://Www.Groundreport.com/?s=self-aware 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 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 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 [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] Isserman) Advertisement

G7 agrees measures to respond to hostile Russian activity despite...

2018-06-19T00:23:49Z

MagdalenaMarquar:

Divisions over how to deal with Russia have been revealed as the G7 agreed a robust set of measures to counter hostile activity directed by Moscow. Theresa May�s tough line on Russia has been undermined by US President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte who have suggested that Vladimir Putin should be readmitted to the group of world leaders. The Prime Minister insisted that Russia needs to �change its approach� before any consideration of whether it should resume its place in the group of leading industrialised nations after being thrown out in 2014. Theresa May (Steve Parsons/PA) Shortly before [http://Www.Fin24.com/Search/News?queryString=arriving arriving] at the summit in Canada Mr Trump said: �Russia should be in the meeting, should be a part of it.� But Mrs May told the BBC: �We should remind ourselves why the G8 became the G7, it was because Russia illegally annexed Crimea. �We have seen malign activity from Russia in a whole variety of ways, of course including on the streets of Salisbury in the UK. �So we need to say, I think, before any such conversations can take place Russia needs to change its approach.� The Prime Minister has been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to build an alliance against Russia after the Salisbury nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Despite Mr Trump�s comments, the US had signed up to a G7 initiative to establish a new mechanism to respond to hostile activities directed by states such as Russia. Under the plans agreed by the UK, US, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan at the summit in Quebec, there will be greater co-ordination to identify and respond to threats including cyber attacks and other breaches of international rules. Mrs May also pushed for action to tackle Russian �dirty money� and work to curtail the movement of Moscow�s spies. And the Prime Minister urged other countries to back giving the chemical weapons watchdog the power to identify states responsible for attacks such as the nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury. At the summit in La Malbaie, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, the G7 leaders formally agreed to set up a new rapid response mechanism. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had already preempted the announcement of the measure [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] in a leaked recording of him telling a private dinner that Mrs May would use the summit to set up the rapid response unit to �identify Russian malfeasance � whether it�s cyber warfare, assassinations, calling it out and identifying it�. At the summit the Prime Minister emphasised that recent events, including the reckless use of NotPetya ransomware and the attempted murder of the Skripals, demonstrated the importance of a unified international response. The new mechanism involves the sharing of threat intelligence and measures to protect physical and digital infrastructure from attack. It also calls for co-ordinated attribution of hostile activity so more countries name and shame perpetrators of cyber attacks and other abuses. In an effort to counter propaganda, the G7 leaders agreed to work together to assert [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] a �common narrative and response� to incidents. At the summit on Friday, Mrs May said: �There is no doubt that foreign interference in our democratic institutions and processes, and other forms of hostile activity, pose a strategic threat to our shared values and interests. �So I welcome today�s agreement that the G7 will exchange information, co-ordinate action, and develop strategies to reinforce our democracies, strengthen our societies� resilience and uphold freedom of expression and a free and independent media in the face of this growing threat. �Today�s announcement shows that the G7 will not tolerate foreign interference in any one of our democracies, that we are getting organised, and that we will take coordinated action against those who seek to violate the rules-based international system. �Calling out malicious activity helps to end hostile states� false sense of impunity, demonstrates our awareness of their activity, and underlines our unwavering willingness to defend ourselves.� A senior UK Government source said despite Mr Trump�s comments �the Americans have been very clear in negotiating they are signed up to the rapid response mechanism�. Mrs May was also pushing the leaders to do more together as the G7 to better understand illicit money flows and then agree concrete actions to stop dirty cash being used to undermine democracy. The Prime Minister also called for G7 countries to share information so that Russians expelled from one state do not simply redeploy to another. Ahead of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) special conference of states parties, expected to take place later this month, Mrs May urged her counterparts to back calls to allow the watchdog to point the finger at states behind chemical weapons attacks rather than simply confirming an incident has taken place and identifying the substance. The UK has called for a special Conference of the State Parties to the OPCW. We call on all states to use this opportunity to defend and strengthen the global ban on chemical weapons. #NoImpunity pic.twitter.com/xHh9Oe07oT - Foreign Office 🇬🇧 (@foreignoffice) May 30, 2018 Mrs May�s attempts to strengthen the international response against Russia comes ahead of a meeting with Italy�s new prime minister Mr Conte who has called for sanctions against Moscow to be eased. The Prime Minister told reporters accompanying her to the summit: �I�ve had a telephone conversation with the new Italian PM and I�ll be having further discussions with him here at the G7. �I will continue to make the case as I have done within the European Council of the importance of those sanctions against Russia. �They were of course part of the response that the EU gave in relation to Russian activity in Crimea, the importance that we get the full implementation of the Minsk agreement. � Advertisement

User:MagdalenaMarquar

2018-06-19T00:23:32Z

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