I remember reading about Agent Orange in accounts of Vietnam. Zyklon B appeared in reports on Nazi Germany’s concentation camps, and Scud missiles dominated Cold War headlines. When I later studied the lead-up to the 2002 invasion of Iraq, it was WMDs all day: biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons governed by treaties, held illicitly, and responsible […]
“The first rewrite of the draft of history”
Tom Toles has drawn editorial cartoons for the Washington Post since 2002. The Post published “The first rewrite of the draft of history” in 2005 after British papers broke news about “highly sensitive” meetings of British intelligence officers, Cabinet members, political strategists, and communications specialists, and representatives of the United States. At these meetings, later minuted in […]
More on the Japanese internment
This week, George Takei shared more about his experience with socially marginalized people and marginalizing social laws. I referred to his 2014 TED talk in last night’s post; this morning, he published a new reflection on his life in a United States internment camp. The United States apologized for locking up Japanese Americans. Have we […]
Reflections on the US-Japanese Internment
Lately I’ve been honoring the Santayana quotation about being doomed to repetition by referring my readers to history: Habit and memory are a sort of heredity within the individual… Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible […]
A Writing November
I’ve decided to participate in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo 2013), and will be using the 50,000 word-challenge to reboot my research on the British executive branch’s structure, values, personnel, and communications during the 18 months before the UK- and US invaded Iraq.* This year marked the 10th anniversary of the March 2003 […]