finally, C-SPAN anniversary.
Optimist. Link here. The Dali Lama on breaking the cycle of hatred.
Notable US dates:
13 March 1954: Though the long-term consequences were not clear at the time, battle of Dien Bien Phu began, pitting the Vietnamese against their colonial masters, the French. In response to the French loss, Vietnam was divided (North and South) and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy furthered President Truman's initial military involvement in south east Asia. The rest is history.
14 March 1964: A jury in Dallas, TX, found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald. The verdict and death sentence were later overturned, but Ruby died before he could be retried.
16 March 1968: The infamous My Lai massacre by American forces took place in South Vietnam. The story was first reported by Seymour Hersch in the New Yorker article in January 1972.
17 March 1776: The British evacuated Boston. 1804: Jim Bridger, later renowned western explorer and mountain man, was born in Richmond, VA.
18 March 1776: Parliament passed the notorious Stamp Act, setting in motion the US War of Independence. 1852: Wells Fargo was formed in NYC. 1925: Some 695 people died when the US's worst tornado storm erupted in eastern MO, southern IL and southern IN. 1937: Nearly 300 students died in New London, TX, in a natural gas explosion.
19 March 1931. Gambling became legal in NV. 2003: President George W. Bush ordered the start of the Iraq war.
New Zealand. Yet another nation/city is in the news for the wrong reasons. The seemingly now eternal question arises: How to inform without playing to a mass shooter's desire for notoriety? How to lessen/dissuade the possible copycats?
Ever since 1999 and the Columbine high school shooting in suburban Denver, Coni Sanders has pondered that question. (Coni's father Dave, a teacher, died saving countless Columbine students.) His role quickly disappeared from the news from all but the local news, while the two student-killers became well known and were much studied. There are no good answers/hard-and-fast rules.
Students on climate change. Some in the next generation are concerned and student walkout were held around the world calling for action while there is still time. They question if "[a]t the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy."
Luisa Beck from Berlin on the young people who are protesting to save their futures. "They’ve gathered to show the grown-ups that they will no longer play by their rules, and to demand that adults protect their future from climate-change disasters."
Two mantras much noted on students' signs/placards: "There is no Planet B" and "Make Our Planet Great Again."
Deadly streets. Sobering statistics from The Guardian article. Even after strenuous efforts at improvements and a declining overall death rate, why do so many pedestrians (and cyclists) die on our city streets? It is a problem in Denver and across the nation. Some jurisdictions, including CO, are increasing the penalties for vehicular homicide.
New Orleans, Airbnb. A cautionary tale of how this new short term housing resource is changing entire neighborhoods/cities. New Orleans now boasts 6,500+ short term rental units and entire neighborhoods are now owned by investors, many non-residents. Neighborhoods are virtually empty except for 3-4 day weekend party-goers.
Fox News, too close for comfort? As the Chinese and North Koreans might say, Fox is a close to the White House "as lips and teeth." So why is a news channel that is pulling in $1.5B/quarter in trouble? Primarily, it appears, because many advertisers have pulled their ads from several of Fox's most prominent opinion shows, Hannity and Tucker Carlson. Surveys show that an increasing number of viewers now turn to Fox only for its straight news programming, not its commentary, resulting in lost advertising dollars.
Military spending. Not all that long ago, US representatives and senators of either party would move heaven and hell go get military contracts/projects into their districts/states. Now, however, "[t]hey would sooner take away money already promised to military families and constituents than anger Trump." Here in CO, "Sen.
Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) will decide whether to put on the chopping block
six projects at Buckley and Schriever Air Force bases and at Fort
Carson worth more than $100 million." Senator Gardner has received White House assurances that no 2019 funds destined for CO would be impacted.
For better or worse, it looks more and more as if America's two-party system is (alpha order) not Democrat and Republican, but Democrat and Trump. If you are a Republican, crossing swords with the President will guarantee you a primary challenge by an even more hard line, right wing challenger.
One can only imagine how much President Trump would love to have similar ability to deal with "fake" news -- i.e. whatever he does not like. One can only hope Congress would never pass such a bill. Though.......Russia’s parliament passed bills that would impose fines on those who insult state officials, the flag and the constitution, or spread fake news online. Repeat offenders could be jailed. The bills need President Vladimir Putin’s signature to become law. Human-rights groups say that the vaguely worded laws open the door to direct censorship.
US censorship. US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the US will not issue visas to employees of the International Criminal Court who are investigating charges of war crimes by US service personnel -- nor those of any our valued allies (e.g. Israel).
Russian land-grab. This Foreign Policy article examines President Putin's slow, persistent moves in Europe to acquire territory/control access to areas in Europe.
MRGA, Make Russia Great Again. President Trump may well want to take a page from President Putin's playbook. Vladimir is using an expanding infrastructure building program to MRGA.
Nuclear weapons. This article from the CSM discusses the current situation. It is not all that rosy now, even though the Cold Was is supposedly over. The charts present a sobering picture. The article from Foreign Policy notes that the Pentagon has begun working on heretofore banned missile systems.
Nuclear power safety. Wondering about the safety of your nearby nuclear plant? In keeping with the administration's desires to cut back on regulations and oversight, the nuclear power industry is pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to cut back on inspections AND throttle back what it tells the public about plant problems. Which is worse: a badly performing plant or a badly performing plant you do not know about?
White nationalism. As American as apple pie? This Atlantic article by Adam Serwer really does bear reading. "The president’s rhetoric about “shithole countries” invites dismissal as crude talk, but behind it lie ideas whose power should not be underestimated." Witness Robert Powers' recent pogrom at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
“Massive demographic changes,” Laura Ingraham has proclaimed, mean that “the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” in much of the country: Surely this kind of rhetoric reflects mere ignorance. Or it’s just a symptom of partisan anxiety about what those changes may portend for Republicans’ electoral prospects. As for the views and utterances of someone like Congressman Steve King (“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies”), such sentiments are treated as outlandish extremism, best ignored as much as possible....What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful cadre of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of “race suicide” during the immigration scare of the early 20th century.Sewer's review makes clear that racism was endemic nationwide, as well as up and down the economic spectrum.
This Atlantic article draws comparisons between White-Supremacist violence and other forms of terrorism.
C-SPAN. It debuted to mixed reviews. Old timers in the US House predicted chaos, mayhem, even worse: letting the public see what went on behind largely closed doors. Those in the Visitors' Gallery rarely stayed long. Columnist Karen Tumulty looks back at the history (sometimes hilarious, some not) of C-SPAN (House) and C-SPAN2 (Senate). The article's subtitle: "We need you more than ever."
Thank you for reading. "The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things well." Hugh Walpole (British novelist, 1886-1941)
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