The topsy-turvy nature of the Trumpian version of the American century is something this country — and certainly the Biden administration — still hasn’t fully come to grips with.
The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, [into Afghanistan] I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski
The German media, always happy about another juicy anniversary, has for days been marking the date, sixty years ago, when the “Berlin Wall” was constructed - August 13 1961 – proof that the ”real-socialist” system in East Germany was a failure.
New biography of Mildred Harnack, born in Milwaukee. She was a central part of the anti-Nazi resistance movement inside Nazi Germany, until her capture in 1942. Sentenced to hard labor, she was re-tried under Hitler's order, and executed.
The Soviet experience of Nazi invasion inspired many powerful works of cinema. Soviet filmmakers avoided triumphalist images of warfare, depicting the conflict as a brutal necessity that should never be repeated.
With Victory Day here again, World War II historical revisionism kicks back into gear. The reason this is becoming such a hot issue once again is that the debate over the past has serious implications for today’s geopolitics.
Reader Comments: Palestine, U.S. Must Pursue Peace; Creation of Israel, Soviet Union and U.S. Communists; Police Unions; Financial Transactions Taxes; Puerto Ricans in NYC; DC Labor Film Festival; Art of Ralph Fasanella; more....
John le Carré died Saturday at eighty-nine. His novels rejected the glamor and ritz of Cold War–era spy fiction. Instead, he portrayed espionage as a dreary, disturbing machine that ground up innocents for a goal that didn’t justify the human cost.
The use of the atomic weapon must be seen as a continuation and a start: the nuclear continuation of the conventional terror bombing of Japanese civilians, and the start of a new “cold war.”
Vietnam is building on the internationalist traditions of Ho Chi Minh. True patriotism, is quite different from narrow, selfish nationalism - it should always respect the rights and interests of other nations without harming common interests...
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