1968: The Year That Shaped a Generation

Thanks to Charles Burris’ “1968–The Year That Shaped a Generation (Outstanding Documentary Illustrating Many Turbulent Parallels to Today),” May 1, 2023

1968, end of March. February 12-April 16.  Memphis, Tennessee Garbage Workers’ Strike.

1968, Kerner Commission Report released.

1968, April 4, Martin Luther King Assassination.

1968, April 6, Chicago Riots.  Mayor Daly sent in the National Guard to restore order.

1968, June 5/6, RFK’s Assassination.  Kennedy said he’d read and was influenced by Albert Camus’ 1951 book, The Rebel.

1968, August 5-8, Republican National Convention, Miami, Florida.

1968, August 20-21, Warsaw Pact Invasion of Prague, Czechoslovakia.

1968, August 23-28, Democratic National Convention Protests in Chicago.  Chicago Seven refers to the group of activists who organized the Protest.

1968, October 2.  Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City., called The Night of Sorrow, was the worst single disaster of 1968.  Fuentes says the number murdered was over 500. The CIA’s Wikipedia lowers that figure to “350-400.”  The segment on the Mexico city massacre takes place toward the end at 45:35.

1968, Olympics., October 12-27.  Tommy Smith and Juan Carlos didn’t raise fists in protest against the United States, though that is how it was sold in the American press, but to declare the strength and defiance of free men over authoritarian governments in the aftermath of the October 2 slaughter in Mexico City.

George Wallace campaigned for president in 1968, but his memorable date with an assassin’s [Arthur Bremer’s] bullet didn’t occur ’til May 15,1972.

Carlos Fuentes, 1928-2012.

Pat Buchanan.  Buchanan’s books.

 

“In order to solve a problem that did not exist, the Kennedy Administration created a problem that could not be solved.”

This is a must-listen interview by Tom Woods of Geoffrey Shaw, author of The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam.  Shaw will definitely present you with a picture of Vietnam you’ve never heard before.  And he does an excellent job of portraying a very decent, very talented Vietnamese president who was betrayed and assassinated by forces within the U.S. government.  It sounds like it was Averell Harriman and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.  Tom Woods explains

The standard narrative runs like this: Ngo Dinh Diem was the corrupt and oppressive president of South Vietnam whose removal (which wound up taking the form of assassination) the Kennedy Administration had no choice but to endorse. On top of everything else, Diem’s administration was dominated by Roman Catholics in a predominantly Buddhist country, and his outrageous oppression of Buddhists was still another reason he had to go.

Diem was a great leader and didn’t need to be murdered or removed.