Past & Present

The CIA has produced the documents that detail their spying activities against domestic enemies, more often referred to as hippies

I happened to mention this piece of work Ilich Ramirez Sanchez during class this week, while talking about the rise of al Qaeda. I was talking about how Sudan provided a haven for Osama bin Laden during the 1980s. Jackal also lived there until Sudan decided it needed to redeem itself in the eyes of the international community.

It will be interesting to contrast this visitwith her previous one in the 1950s when Virginia was fighting to maintain Jim Crow segregation. It’s neat to think about the streams of more recent civil rights history flowing past this now embalmed site of a colonial event 400 years gone.

I have not been to Jamestown. But I did take advantage during a vacation in the Outer Banks to visit the lost colony of Sir Walter Raleigh, sanctioned by England’s first Queen Elizabeth. Not much there to see today, so you have to, like me, get a kick out of merely standing in the site of events you have read about.

That’s how The Guardian newspaper aptly describes the Russian ex-president Boris Yeltsin who died today. He was 76, which is a surprisingly old age for a man notorious for drinking hard.

The proposal that the European Union develop a continent-wide history text makes me think of Benedict Anderson. The idea of a nation is essentially that, a social construction, which relies upon ritual, symbol, and a version of history. I am not saying there is anything sinister about this move. It is a mental part of the integration of Europe that has already begun as a legal and political process. This process runs parallel with a weakening of Europe’s nation-states.

In my history classes, while discussing the idea of “globalization” in the latter 20th Century, we look at baseball.

Here is a link, thanks to Mike, that provides an interactive graphic showing the Far East Asia presence in Major League Baseball today.

At the risk of having my high-profile career Dixie-Chicked, I am going to admit that I did not support the whole “islamic fascist” label that the White House promoted.

To equate radical Islamists such as Al Qaeda militants with European fascists of the 1920s and 1930s ignored too many differences. Plus, it just promotes this intellectual sloth that is the habit of looking to the World War II era, and nothing but the World War II era, for any and all historical insight into our present day.

Now comes President Bush today, on the occasion of George Washington’s birthday, also linking the U.S. War for Independence with the Global War on Terror.

I guess I should be grateful that we are branching out beyond the 20th Century for analogies. But, instead, I’m just tired.

The Washington Post has a story looking at the legacy of the civil war in El Salvador as we approach 15 years since the peace agreements. Thanks to Patrick for pointing this out.

Through NPR’s site I found this comparison of the old British-occupied Iraq with the situation today. http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2004/may/beemanMay04.asp

A U.S. court has ruled that punishment is owed to a former official in the El Salvador government. The court said that during the dirty war against the FMLN insurgency of the late 1970s and 1980s, the ex-deputy defense minister Nicolas Carranza directed acts of torture against suspects. We’ll see where it goes on the inevitable appeals. I wonder what stand the U.S. government is or will take on this case.

http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4451966.stm