[extropy-chat] Gen X amnesia

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:49 AM 11/5/2005 -0800, spike wrote:

>scerir:
>
> > in California (remember Marcuse? and Angela Davis?), etc.
>
>Well, actually no, but I am not the most historically
>savvy guy you ever met.

This is awfully depressing, because without (actual or book-acquired) 
memory of the moderately recent past, there's no way one can sensibly 
attempt to estimate likely consequences of actions and strategies in the 
present and future.

Spike, do you know that Greece, the "birthplace of democracy", was under 
fascist military rule when you were a child in the '60s and early '70s? 
Googling almost at random, see e.g.:

============


Woodhouse, C.M. The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels. New York: Franklin 
Watts, 1985. 192 pages.

C.M. Woodhouse, a former British diplomat, Conservative MP, and Oxford 
fellow, has written several books on modern Greek history. In April 1967, a 
group of colonels seized power and held on to it until 1974. The Greek 
junta was known around the world for its suspension of civil liberties, 
torture of political prisoners, and brutal repression of a student revolt 
in November 1973. The regime was brought down primarily because the various 
branches of the military could only manage to conspire against each other 
when it came time to defend their position in Cyprus against Turkish forces.

Many people believe that the level of CIA intrigue behind the junta was an 
important factor. This is true with Oriana Fallaci in "A Man" (1980), an 
overwhelmingly-dramatic biography of junta prisoner Alexander Panagoulis. 
Woodhouse concedes that the CIA probably had advance knowledge of the coup, 
but feels that popular opinion in Greece is also trying to scapegoat the 
CIA for a situation of their own making. With his Establishment 
credentials, Woodhouse cannot be expected to pursue the question. 
Regardless of what forces led to the coup, vice-president Spiro Agnew was 
openly pro-junta during his term, and Nixon, Kissinger, and Dean Rusk 
weren't much better. The junta, after all, was open to U.S. corporations, 
Greece was a NATO ally in a strategic region, and the Navy needed to 
homeport the Sixth Fleet there.
ISBN 0-531-09798-6

==============

Not to know about Angela Davis, BTW, seems to me as strange as not knowing 
about Martin Luther King, whatever one thinks of her politics.

Damien Broderick