Word: vietnam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...private screening of a documentary about McCain produced for the A&E network series Biography. McCain is one of those baroque pearls of American politics, lustrous but irregular, so nobody was surprised that the film made the most of his days as a Navy flyer and a Vietnam-war POW or that it played up his bumpy Senate fights against Big Tobacco and for campaign-finance reform. But it also went long and deep into how he piled up demerits at the U.S. Naval Academy and lost several planes on training runs. It raked over his hard-partying past...
...comic momentum. It is an example of a movie that boasts fantastic scenes but which on the whole is not the most polished or cohesive product. The scene in which Max puts on his play--an adaptation of the gritty Al Pacino cop drama Serpico and a hard-boiled Vietnam epic--are comically brilliant, as is the montage that reveals all of Max's activities and the clever sequence in which Max and Blume play tricks on one another. But there is too much down time between these bits of inspired comedy, and the story suffers from its overall lack...
...students discovered how powerfully symbolic seizing the heart of a university could be. Harvard has its own famous example; the University Hall takeover by members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in spring 1969, the first and most violent of the building seizures on campus during the Vietnam era. Other takeovers followed, including a weeklong occupation of Mass. Hall in April 1972 by students protesting the University's investments in Angola...
...goal in this situation--to alleviate poor working conditions for sweatshop laborers--is an admirable one, just as ending the University's involvement with Vietnam was in 1969. And it's all too tempting to argue that the plight of oppressed workers in the Third World justifies whatever means it takes to end Harvard insignia apparel makers' use of sweatshop labor...
Public disclosure becomes even more crucial if Harvard decides to hire a private accounting firm to do the monitoring, instead of a non-profit organization such as Amnesty International. Recently, an independent study found that the accounting firm Ernst & Young's audit of a Nike factory in Vietnam was riddled with errors and oversights. Accounting firms are less likely to be familiar with local conditions and to earn the trust of workers than nonprofits, who typically consult with local community organizations. Furthermore, most such firms are or have been under contract to garment companies--an unacceptable conflict of interest...