The Guardian’s subtitle captures the whole story: T-shirt by film-maker Roger Young polarises online commenters, with some praising gesture and others defending colonialism. [guard]
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All the unbuffered error messages
The Guardian’s subtitle captures the whole story: T-shirt by film-maker Roger Young polarises online commenters, with some praising gesture and others defending colonialism. [guard]
Whenever we read an account of the beginning of WWI it’s necessary for the historian to first lay out the landscape of interlocking defense treaties that turned Europe into a sort of Venn diagram of fantasy militarism. To me, it’s a reminder of the great Avalon Hill game Diplomacy which we played in my high school Military History Club (AKA: D&D club) – everyone secretly negotiating with everyone else against everyone else. For Europe, the results were grim, and I needn’t go into them.
When I started to realize I’d been fed a diet of lies, I began trying to pick things apart and re-assess most of what I had ingested. Howard Zinn was a huge help, for me, not because I think he’s right about everything, but because he offers a different perspective on established history. We’re left to our own devices with so much, otherwise – the “is this racist?” or “is this offensive?” conversation – it has to happen as an inevitable consequence of re-assessing the constructed history of a time. I’ve had discussions about this in some strange places, about some strange times; probably my favorite was “why isn’t there a lot of Vietnam War reenactment?” (My answer to that: “because bombers are too expensive to reenact.”)
Here’s more stuff from my closet.
It seems like everyone’s got a solution for North Korea. Naturally, I like my own the best: diplomacy. But that doesn’t work for authoritarians.
The CIA regularly deals with nasty people. Probably, it’s got something to do with the fact that they are nasty people, too.
The other day I posted a photo I found when looking for images about the many bombings that took place in the US in 1968.
Did you know it’s “Constitution Day”? I didn’t.
There’s been a great deal of conversation about de-platforming and the free speech of some proto-fascists, or homophobes, or white supremacists.
… and thought, “that can’t be right.” Then, as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he’d think “good,” and pick the next of his neatly-folded uniform jackets off the stack, struggle into it, then turn off the light and leave.