The word “Auschwitz” has become a metonym for the Holocaust as a whole. Yet the vast majority of Jews had already been murdered, further east, by the time that Auschwitz became a major killing facility. Yet while Auschwitz has been remembered, most of the Holocaust has been largely forgotten.
Month: November 2015
Nuremberg Trial Bore Witness to the Nazis’ Worst Crimes
Rebecca West, the acclaimed British writer, covered Nuremberg for the New Yorker. In August 1946, as the case entered its 10th month, she wrote, “[T]he courtroom is a citadel of boredom. Every person attending it is in the grip of extreme tedium.” How could a trial for some of the most ghastly and massive crimes ever committed—crimes that continue to horrify and fascinate us—be dull? The answer lies in a most deliberate prosecutorial strategy, one to which we all owe a debt of gratitude today.
18 Rules Of Behavior For Young Ladies In 1831
“Rules of behavior for Young Ladies, partly extracted from this work and the most celebrated books on Ladies education.”
- Avoid every thing masculine.
- Be not too often seen in public.
- Consult only your own relations.
- Don’t even hear a double entendre.
- Endeavor to write and speak grammatically.
- Fondness for finery shows as bad a taste, as neatness and simplicity imply a good one.
- Form no friendship with men.
- Give your hand, when necessary, modestly.
- If you talk in society, talk only about those things which you understand.
- Know that a man of good sense will never marry but the pious, industrious and frugal.
- Let not love begin on your part.
- Make no great intimacies with any body.
- Never be afraid of blushing.
- Pride yourself in modesty.
- Read no novels, but let your study be History, Geography, Biography and other instructive books.
- Sympathise with the unfortunate
- Trust no female acquaintance, i.e. make no confidant of any one.
Boko Haram Ranked Ahead of ISIS for Deadliest Terror Group
Boko Haram, the militant group that has tortured Nigeria and its neighbors for years, was responsible for 6,664 deaths last year, more than any other terrorist group in the world, including the Islamic State, which killed 6,073 people in 2014, according to a report released Wednesday tracking terrorist attacks globally.
….Mr. Buhari, who took office in May, ran on a platform of eliminating Boko Haram, which he has pledged to do by the end of December, as well as cutting back on corruption that has dogged the nation.
This week, Mr. Buhari accused the previous administration’s national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, of pocketing more than $2 billion that had been allocated for warplanes, helicopters and other military gear to fight Boko Haram. Mr. Dasuki has denied the allegations.
Source: New York Times
Lecture – The “One China” Myth: Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong
This lecture explores how China has long struggled for internal sovereignty, but as the world cautiously watches the rise of China, the CCP faces its complexities and contradictions on the global stage. Often oblivious and usually insensitive to the hopes and needs of ethnic minorities, the PRC claims they are zhong guo ren, Chinese People with Universal Values. What casual observers perceive to be “One China” is indeed a fragmented society bound by the crushing chains of the CCP.
This lecture is also available on my AP GoGoPo podcast.
Iranians Reclaim Public Spaces and Liberties
“Few would say it out loud, but we had almost become a police state,” Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, a sociologist at Tehran University, said about the years after 2009, when the morality police were a fixture in every main square, hauling those deemed to be “badly veiled” off in vans. For many, the atmosphere became so suffocating that they started leaving for other countries.
Mr. Jalaeipour said small changes began after Mr. Rouhani unseated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2013, promising a nuclear agreement and an expansion of personal freedoms, but have increased noticeably of late. “Especially after the elections and now the nuclear deal,” he said, “the self-confidence of ordinary people is increasing and that can be seen everywhere.”
Lecture: The Enlightenment: Constructing a New Paradigm of Man and Society
My lecture outline:
- Operational Definition
- The Road to Enlightenment
- The State of Nature
- Enlightened Governance
- Enlightened Economics
- Enlightened Education
- Enlightenment vs. Religion
- Challenges to Enlightenment
Here is the Power Point
Election 2015 – Why The Conservatives Won
“Death to America,” Explained (by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei)
In an explanation unlikely to assuage the concerns of many Americans, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei clarified the meaning of the popular slogan “death to America” on Tuesday. “The aim of the slogan means death to U.S. policies and arrogance,” the supreme leader told a group of students of the phrase, widely chanted at rallies and at mosques after Friday prayers.
Some Iranian moderates have argued in the past that the slogan, which dates back to the revolution of 1979, is no longer useful, and most official documents translate the phrase, mar bar Amrika, as the somewhat more polite “down with America.”
Economist Says Polyamory Can Solve China’s Gender Imbalance. Chinese Internet Explodes
Could polyamory be the solution to China’s gender imbalance? The New York Times’s Sinosphere blog reports that one economist’s proposal to that effect has become a viral sensation on the Chinese internet.
24 things that Jeremy Corbyn believes
Jeremy Corbyn is the new leader of the Labour party. What are his beliefs?
1. The deficit should be tackled – but not through spending cuts and not to an “arbitrary” deadline. Instead Corbyn would fund its reduction via higher taxes for the rich and a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion while tackling “corporate welfare” and tax breaks for companies.
2. Britain’s railways should be renationalised. He is also opposed to the HS2 rail scheme, saying it would turn northern cities into “dormitories for London businesses”
Prohibition? The Economic Argument
Excessive drinking doesn’t just result in a high bar tab, it also lowers productivity and costs the country billions….
They found that the most significant cost was the lost productivity of hungover workers who either showed up for work barely able to function, or who were unable to show up at all, which cost nearly $90 billion. In total, all forms of lost productivity accounted for about $179 billion of alcohol-related costs. The researchers estimate that the government, and thus taxpayers, cover about 40 percent of the total $250-billion bill.
Labour promises to renationalise English railways
The Labour conference has formally committed itself to the renationalisation of the English rail network as it pledged to oppose another round of “unneeded, unwanted and ill-thought-through privatisation”.
In a significant boost for the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has suffered a series of setbacks over the EU and Trident, Labour’s national executive committee agreed a statement that paves the way for the rolling renationalisation of the rail network.
A Scientific Analysis of Civil War Beards
How Civil War commanders wore their facial hair, in one chart:
More than 90 percent of commanders studied had some kind of facial hair, most sporting either the long beard or the short beard. Very few went with muttonchops or a goatee. However, there were some significant differences between North and South here.
Government may privatise Channel 4
The government has inadvertently provided further evidence that it is looking at privatising Channel 4, after an official was photographed entering Downing Street with a document setting out options for a sell-off.
After months of ministerial obfuscation on whether the sale of the state-owned, commercially funded broadcaster was being considered, the document reveals that proposals have already been drawn up in a bid to raise an estimated £1bn for Treasury coffers.
NPR Fresh Air – America's Forgotten History Of Mexican-American 'Repatriation'
With a scarcity of jobs during the Depression, more than a million people of Mexican descent were sent to Mexico. Author Francisco Balderrama estimates that 60 percent were American citizens.
NPR Fresh Air Interview – 'Policing The Police': How The Black Panthers Got Their Start
Nearly 50 years ago, in 1966, a group of six black men in Oakland, Calif., came together in an effort to curb police brutality against African-Americans in the city. Because of a quirk in California law, the men were able to carry loaded weapons openly. The Black Panthers, as they became known, would follow the police around, jumping out of their cars with guns drawn if the police made a stop.
“They would observe the police and make sure that no brutality occurred,” filmmaker Stanley Nelson tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “What they were really doing was policing the police.”
Nelson, who chronicles the Panther movement in his new documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, says the group was a response to what some saw as the limitations of the nonviolent civil rights movement.
160 years of US immigration trends, mapped
US immigration trends shifted dramatically between 1850 and 2013 —including changes in the dominant countries of origin for each state and decade, and the total size of foreign-born population — according to a new series of historical maps from the Pew Research Center.
German Nationalism Lecture Notes
My Lecture Outline
- Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire: “300 Germanies”
- Impact of the Congress of Vienna on Germany and Prussia
- “Siamese Twins”: Zollverien and Railroads
- Struggles for Nationalism, Liberalism and Democracy in Vormaerz:
- Wartburg Festival (1817)
- Carlsbad Decrees (1819)
- Hambach Festival (1832)
- Gottingen Seven (1837)
- The Spirit of ‘48
- Frankfurt Parliament
- Constitution of St. Paul’s Church
- Erfurt Union & Punctuation/Humiliation of Olmutz
- Germany: Born of War?
- Von Roon, von Moltke, and the Prussian military machine
- Schleswig-Holstein Wars (1848-52, 1864)
- Austro-Prussian War (1866)
- Franco-Prussian War (1870-71)
- Proclamation of German Empire (18 January 1871)
- More Than Iron & Blood: Karl Baedeker, Brothers Grimm, von Fallersleben, and von Humboldt