FlaglerLive

The American South – and the nation more broadly – continues to wrestle with how to remember its most painful chapters. Tourism is one of the arenas where that struggle is most visible. the impulse to monetize history isn’t new. More than 300 plantation sites across the country generate billions of dollars in revenue each year. This type of tourism forces communities and visitors alike to ask a difficult question: What parts of the past do Americans preserve, and for whom?

Specialists have estimated that the Eiffel Tower actually grows between 12 and 15 centimetres when comparing its size on cold winter days with the hottest days of summer. This means that, in addition to being a landmark, a communications tower and a symbol of Paris itself, the Eiffel Tower is also, in effect, a giant thermometer.

Beach vacations only became popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries as part of the lifestyle of the wealthy in Western countries. Early Europeans, and especially the ancient Greeks, thought the beach was a place of hardship and death. As a seafaring people, they mostly lived on the coastline, yet they feared the sea and thought that an agricultural lifestyle was safer and more respectable.

While it’s still too early to fully assess the long-term impact of the United States’ political shift when it comes to global cooperation on climate change, there are signs that a new set of leaders is rising to the occasion. China and the European Union issued a joint statement vowing to strengthen their climate targets and meet them. They alluded to the U.S., referring to “the fluid and turbulent international situation today” in saying that “the major economies … must step up efforts to address climate change.”

Despite promises of moderation and inclusion, four years later, the Taliban has established a repressive, exclusionary regime – one that has dismantled institutions of law, justice and civil rights with ruthless efficiency. As the Taliban regime has tightened its grip, international attention has waned. Crises elsewhere dominate the global agenda, pushing Afghanistan out of the spotlight. With the Taliban seeking to end its isolation and gain legitimacy, can the international community find the will now to exert real pressure?

Amin was the creator of a myth that was both manifestly untrue and extraordinarily compelling: that his violent, dysfunctional regime was actually engaged in freeing people from foreign oppressors. Even his cruelest policies were framed as if they were liberatory. In August 1972, Amin announced the summary expulsion of Uganda’s Asian community. Some 50,000 people, many of whom had lived in Uganda for generations, were given a bare three months to tie up their affairs and leave the country. Amin named this the “Economic War.”