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UN outlaws praising Nazis (Baltic states disagree)

The United Nations General Assembly has passed a Russia-sponsored draft resolution against the glorification of Nazism and attempts to rewrite WWII history.The document states that any attempts to revise the history for war, the Nuremberg decisions and to whitewash former Nazis must be considered as violations of the UN Charter and the principles on which it was established, reports Itar-Tass.The resolution on "Inadmissibility of certain practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" was supported by 120 states in the Third Committee of the UN GA. Twenty-two countries – including the Baltic states – said “no” to the document, while 31 UN members abstained....

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Week of November 7, 2011

Next WeekJFK: The Lost Bullet National Geographic Channel, 9:00 pm EST/PST Sunday, November 20

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Victimized by Folklore art

Linn Duchaill: Ireland's unlikely Viking capital

A windswept barley field just south of Dundalk seems an unlikely spot for Ireland's capital.But if things had been different, Annagassan near Castlebellingham might have been the principal city on the island of Ireland.Twelve hundred years ago it was the site of Linn Duchaill, one of the first Viking settlements, which rivalled Dublin in size and importance.Folklore said it was there, but all traces of it had disappeared, until a group of archaeologists and local historians set out to prove its existence.Extensive field research and test digs have now done that....

Papers From Iraqi Archive Reveal Conspiratorial Mind-Set of Hussein

 WASHINGTON — On Nov. 15, 1986, Saddam Hussein gathered his most senior aides for an important strategy session. Two days earlier, President Ronald Reagan had acknowledged in a televised address that his administration had sent weapons and spare parts to Iran.“It can only be a conspiracy against Iraq,” said Mr. Hussein, who inferred darkly that the United States was trying to prolong the Iran-Iraq war, already in its sixth year, and increase Iraq’s enormous casualties.In truth, the Reagan administration had arranged the arms shipment for a variety of reasons that had little to do with Iraq: to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon, to open a private channel to the new leadership in Tehran and to generate secret profits that could be sent to Nicaraguan rebels.

The who's who of Victorian England pasted on to a 7ft divider by Charles Dickens to educate an actor friend's children

The discovery of a room-dividing screen decorated by Charles Dickens with 800 images of the great and the good of the day has stunned historians.It is believed to have been created in 1850 by Victorian novelist Dickens and his actor friend William Macready to educate the thespian's children and is a Who's Who of famous people from the 19th century.It includes images of the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, Isaac Newton, Admiral Nelson, William Blake, Mozart, George III, Byron, John Swift, Samuel Butler, William Hogarth and George Washington.Scenes from Shakespeare plays like Henry VIII were also stuck onto the screen by the two friends who spent hours gluing etchings and prints to the 7ft tall divider at the actor's homeA burn hole caused by a candle shows how someone in the past had been closely looking at it during the night....

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Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar: OWS Can't All Be Anger

Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, a professor of history and the associate dean for the humanities at the University of Connecticut, is the author of "Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap."The Occupy Wall Street movement, with its cross-section of activists (including "1 percenters" like Russell Simmons), reflects an impulse of empathy for everyday people who are hurting under a system that has increasingly awarded more to those with the most, while the poor are forced to do less with less. Many of the Occupy activists have expressed great anger at the increasing bifurcation of wealth in the United States. But whether this movement, or any, is more durable when it develops out of a visceral anger is hard to tell.

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Sean Wilentz: Bill Clinton’ Promise: The Reinvention of American Liberalism

Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University and the author of numerous books, including The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.Since the end of World War II, every Democrat who has sought the presidency has attempted to update the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. In announcing his candidacy 20 years ago, Bill Clinton called his reformed liberalism “a new covenant.” By this he meant a revitalized connection between government and the citizenry that rejected the Reagan Republican idea of right-wing, laissez-faire economics, but that also re-emphasized what Clinton called “the solid, middle-class virtues of hard work, individual responsibility, family, community, and faith.” The phrase “new covenant” did not stick, but the idea behind it remained the guiding light of the Clinton Administration for the ensuing eight years. During that time, it offered Democrats and the nation a reopened path to the future that had been blocked since the distempers of the late 1960s and in particular since the tragedies of 1968.