Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “American Civil War”
Power Shift: The Radicalized Right and the Battle of ‘American Values’
Leid Stories discusses the rise of the radicalized right in America and the seismic shifts it has caused, and continues to cause, in our notions about governance, national identity, democracy, and even self.
When black progressives today think about the Civil War, they are often more struck by what didn’t happen than what did. Michelle Alexander’s much-lauded The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a case in point. Citing W. E. B. Du Bois’s lament that “former slaves had ‘a brief moment in the sun’ before they were returned to …
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech was titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one year before his April, 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis. In the speech, King declared, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” The people …
America is entering into a most dangerous time in its history as this society and its people react to and try to cope with the specter of fear that is rapidly spreading across this nation. For many years, Americans have listened to the incessant beat of the drums of war. Now we hear the drums of fear sounding across this …
2015 has become a year of living dangerously. Wars are spreading across the globe. Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity. Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent elections, are now on the verge of civil wars. These are wars without victors, but plenty of losers; wars …
“The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.” — Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on Meet the Press, August 2011 In a post on “Sovereign Man” dated August 14th, Simon Black argued that Donald Trump may be the right man for the presidency: …
Past Is Present: 50 Years After the Watts Rebellion, Ferguson’s Crisis Confirms Delusions of ‘Progress’ and ‘Change’
Fifty years ago today, the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, a tinderbox smoldering for decades under the yoke of poverty, disfranchisement, governmental indifference, and militarized police oppression, exploded in a cathartic rage. The heavy-handed arrest of a black motorist by white cops for drunk driving was the spark that set Watts aflame for six days and transformed it into a war zone—claiming 34 lives; causing more than $40 million in property damage; adding 4,000 National Guards, 934 city cops and 71 sheriffs to the city’s police force; causing about 3,500 arrests.
Half a century later, Ferguson, Missouri, is under its second state of emergency as the mostly black town of 21,000 observes the anniversary of the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by former police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9 last year.
Mainstream media, until yesterday, were touting headlines and news stories about “change.” But our guest, Dr. Gerald Horne, a diplomatic scholar, historian, attorney and prolific author, draws stark parallels between Watts and Ferguson.
Horne is the John J. and Rebecca Moores chair of history and African American studies at the University of Houston. He has written more than 30 books, and more than 100 scholarly papers and reviews, on struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism. Pertinent to our discussion today is his authoritative account and analysis of the Watts Rebellion, Fire This Time, The Watts Uprising and the 1960s.
Santayana had it wrong: Even if we remember the past, we may be condemned to repeat it. Indeed, the more we learn about the conflict between the North and South that led to the Civil War, the more it becomes apparent that we are reliving that conflict today. The South’s current drive to impose on the rest of the nation …
In a forthcoming interview with Al Jazeera English set to air on July 31st, a former United States general—who helped craft some of the most controversial tactics in America’s foreign wars—warned that drone strikes create terrorists. Retired Army General Mike Flynn also criticized American torture tactics and condemned the United States for the integral role its foreign policy has played in spurring the …
U.S. military officials have now stated that journalists will not be allowed to embed with the military for the upcoming Jade Helm 15 exercise. One week before the controversial Jade Helm 15 military exercise is scheduled to begin, U.S. military officials announced that journalists will not be allowed to embed with the military. Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, a spokesman for Army …
