#2010 and a bomb on a railway line

[majorhortonisonleaveinlondon]

An updated (April 3, 2024 7:48am pst) list of WW2 movies and TV shows in chronological order

thought out WW2 -(Imitation Game 2014) -(The Book Thief 2013) -(The Zookeeper’s Wife 2017) -(The Pianist 2002)

1937

October 26, 1937 Defence of Sihang Warehouse (The Eight Hundred 2020)

December 13, 1937 Nanjing Massacre - (John Rabe 2009) - (The Flowers of War 2011)

1938

Fall of 1938 (Munich – The Edge of War 2022)

1939

Summer 1939 (Six Minutes to Midnight 2020)

September 3, 1939 King George VI first wartime speech (King’s Speech 2010)

September 17, 1939, Soviet Union Invitation of Poland (The Way Back 2010)

November 30, 1939 Soviet Union invades Finland (The Winter War 1989)

1940

April 9, 1940 Operation Weserübung -(April 9th [movie] 2015) -(King’s Choice 2016) -(Narvik 2022) -(War Sailors 2023)

April 27, 1940 (Into the White 2011)

June 4, 1940 -Churchill gives “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech (Darkest Hour 2017) -Dunkirk Evaluation (Dunkirk 2017)

July 10-October 31, 1940 Battle of Britain (Battle of Britain 1969)

1941

May 1941 (Call to Spy 2019)

June 22, 1941 Operation Barbarossa -(Fortress of War [The Brest Fortres 2010) -(Defiance 2008)

September 8, 1941, Siege of Leningrad begins. -(Battle of Leningrad [Saving Leningrad] 2019) -(Leningrad 2009)

October 1941 Battle of Moscow (The Last Frontier [The Final Stand] 2020)

October 1941 Battle of Sevastopol (Battle for Sevastopol 2015)

December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan attacks Pearl Harbor (Tora! Tora! Tora! 1970)

December 8, 1941 Japan invades Shanghai International Settlement (Empire of the Sun 1987)

1942

January 20, 1942, Wannsee Conference (Conspiracy 2001)

February 1942 Battle of the Atlantic (Greyhound 2020)

February 1942 (The Railway Man 2013)

February 19, 1942, Bombing of Darwin (Australia 2008)

Spring 1942 (U-571 2000)

April 18, 1942 The Doolittle Raid (In Harm’s Way 2018)

June 4, 1942 Battle of Midway (Midway 2019)

1942 Summer Occupation of Jersey Island (Another Mother’s Son 2017 Prime)

July, 10 1942 Easy Company Trains in Camp Tocca (Band of Brothers 01x10 Currahee 2001)

July 21, 1942, Kokoda Track Campaign (Kokoda: 39th Battalion 2006)

August 7, 1942, 1st Marine Division land on Guadalcanal (The Pacific Ep. 1 Guadalcanal/Leckie 2010)

August 19, 1942, Dieppe Raid (Dieppe 1993)

August 23, 1942 Battle of Stalingrad begins (Stalingrad 1993)

September 1942 Formation of Troop 30 (Age of Heroes 2011)

September 18, 1942, 7th Marines Land on Guadalcanal (The Pacific Ep. 2 Basilone 2010)

Autumn of 1942 Battle of the Atlantic (Das Boot 1981)

October 18, 1942, Operation Grouse (Heavy Water War Ep. 2 2015)

November 8, 1942, Operation Torch (The Big Red One 1980)

November 10-17 1942 Vasily Zaytsev kills 225 German Soldiers during the Battle of Stalingrad (Enemy at the Gates 2001)

December 1942 The 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal is relieved (The Pacific Ep. 3 Melbourne 2010)

December 15, 1942, Battle of Mount Austen (Thin Red Line 1998)

1943

March 13-14 1943, liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto -(Schindler’s List 1993)

April 17, 1943 Operation Mincemeat (Operation Mincemeat 2021)

April 19, 1943, beginning of the Warsaw Uprising (Uprising 2001)

May 4, 1943, Final Mission of The Memphis Bell (Memphis Bell 1990)

May 15, 1943, Salamo Arouch and his family arrive in Auschwitz Concentration Camp (Triumph of the Spirit 1989)

May 27, 1943 Louis Zamperini plane crashes on a search and rescue mission (Unbroken 2014)

May 30, 1943 first All-American Girls Professional Baseball League game played (A League of Their Own 1992)

June 25, 1943, 100th Bomb Group flew its first 8th Air Force combat mission (Master of the Air: Part One 2024)

July 1943 -(The Tuskegee Airmen 1995) -(The Liberator Ep. 1 2020) -(Heavy Water War Ep. 5 2015)

July 16, 1943, The 100th Bomb Group bombed U-Boats in Tronbhdim (Masters of the Air: Part Two 2024)

August 17, 1943 the 4th Bomb Wing of the 100th Bomb Group bombed Regenberg (Masters of the Air: Part Three 2024)

September 16, 1943, William Quinn and Charles Bailey leave Belgium (Masters of the Air: Part Four 2024)

September 18, 1943 John ‘Bucky’ Egan returns from leave to join the mission to bomb Munster (Master of the Air: Part Five 2024

October 14, 1943, John ‘Bucky’ Egan interrogated at Dulag Lut, Frankfurt Germany (Masters of the Air: Part Six 2024)

December 26, 1943, 1st Marine Division lands on Cape Gloucester (The Pacific Ep. 4 Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika 2010)

1944

January 22, 1944, Battle of Anzio -(The Liberator Ep. 2 2020) -(Red Tails 2012) -(Anzio 1968)

February 20, 1944, Hydro Ferry bombing (Heavy Water War Ep. 6 2015)

March 7, 1944, Stalag Luft III Sagan, Germany, Germans find the concealed radio Bucky was using to learn news of the War (Master of the Air: Part Seven 2024)

March 24/25, 1944 Allied Mass Escape of Stalag Luft III (The Great Escape 1963)

June 1944 (Cross of Iron 1977)

June 6, 1944, 00:48 & 01:40 First airborne troops begin to land on Normandy (Band of Brothers 02x10 Day of Days 2001)

June 6, 1944, 06:30 D-Day landings -(Storming Juno 2010)

-(Saving Private Ryan 1998)

June 10, 1944, Easy Company Takes Carentan (Band of Brothers 03x10 Carentan 2001)

June 15-July 9, 1944 Battle of Saipan

-(Windtalkers 2002)

-(Oba: The Last Samurai 2011)

July, 1944 The Monuments Men land in Normandy (The Monuments Men 2014)

July 20, 1944 Operation Valkyrie (Valkyrie 2008)

August 12, 1944, The 332nd Fighter Group attack Radar stations in Southern France (Masters of the Air: Part Eight 2024)

September 15, 1944, U.S. Marines landed on Peleliu at 08:32 (the Pacific Ep. 5 2010)

September 16, 1944, U.S Marines take Peleliu Airfield (the Pacific Ep. 5 2010)

September 17, 1944, Operation Market Garden

-(Band of Brothers 04x10 Replacements 2001)

-(A Bridge Too Far 1977)

October 2, 1944 Battle of Scheldt (Forgotten Battle 2021)

October 12, 1944, Battle of Peleliu, Assault on Bloody Nose Ridge (the Pacific Ep. 7 Peleliu Hills 2010)

October 13, 1944, Rovaniemi public buildings were destroyed (Sisu 2022)

October 14, 1944, Erwin Rommel is arrested (Rommel 2012 Prime)

October 22/23, 1944, 2100 – 0200 Operation Pegasus (Band of Brothers 05x10 Crossroads 2001)

November 1944 middle of the Battle of Hürtgen Forest (When Trumpets Fade 1998)

December 16, 1944, Battle of the Bulge (Band of Brothers 06x10 Bastogne 2001)

December 1944 (Hart’s War 2002)

1945

January 2, 1945 (The Liberator Ep 3 2020)

January 10, 1945 (Attack Force Z)

January 13, 1945, Battle of Foy (Band of Brothers 07x10 The Breaking Point 2001)

January 30, 1945 The Raid at Cabanatuan (The Great Raid 2002)

February 14, 1945, David Webb rejoins the 506th in Haguenau (Band of Brothers 08x10 The Last Patrol 2001)

February 19, 1945, Battle of Iwo Jima starts. - (Letters from Iwo Jima 2006) - (The Pacific Ep. 8 Iwo Jima 2010) - (Flags of our Fathers 2006)

March 21, 1945, Operation Carthage (The Bombardment 2021)

April, 1945 (Fury 2014)

April 5, 1945, 506th Finds abandoned Concentration Camp (Band of Brothers 09x10 Why We Fight 2001)

April 26, 1945, near the end of the war in Europe (A Woman in Berlin 2008)

April 29, 1945, 45th Infantry Division liberated Dachau Concentration camp (The Liberator Ep. 4 2020)

May 2, 1945, Fall of Berlin -(Downfall 2004) -(Jojo Rabbit 2019)

May 1945 Battle of Okinawa -(Hacksaw Ridge 2016) -(The Pacific Ep. 9 Okinawa 2010)

May 7, 1945, Germany Surrenders V-E Day - (Master of the Air: Part Nine 2024) - (Band of Brothers 10x10 Points 2001)

July 30, 1945, USS Indianapolis sank. (USS Indianapolis 2016)

August 15, 1945, The Empire of Japan surrenders end of the War. -(Oppenheimer 2023) -(The Pacific Part Ten: Home 2010)

September 11, 1945 US Military search and Arrest Japanese Leaders for war crimes (Emperor 2012)

1946 April 29, 1946 Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (Tokyo Trial 2016)

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.19 (after 1930)

1933 – Finnish cavalry general C. G. E. Mannerheim is appointed the field marshal. 1934 – Zveno and the Bulgarian Army engineer a coup d'état and install Kimon Georgiev as the new Prime Minister of Bulgaria. 1942 – World War II: In the aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Task Force 16 heads to Pearl Harbor for repairs. 1943 – Winston Churchill's second wartime address to the U.S. Congress. 1945 – Syrian demonstrators in Damascus are fired upon by French troops injuring twelve, leading to the Levant Crisis. 1950 – A barge containing munitions destined for Pakistan explodes in the harbor at South Amboy, New Jersey, devastating the city. 1950 – Egypt announces that the Suez Canal is closed to Israeli ships and commerce. 1959 – The North Vietnamese Army establishes Group 559, whose responsibility is to determine how to maintain supply lines to South Vietnam; the resulting route is the Ho Chi Minh trail. 1961 – Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data). 1961 – At Silchar Railway Station, Assam, 11 Bengalis die when police open fire on protesters demanding state recognition of Bengali language in the Bengali Language Movement. 1962 – A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday". 1963 – The New York Post Sunday Magazine publishes Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. 1971 – Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union. 1986 – The Firearm Owners Protection Act is signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. 1991 – Croatians vote for independence in a referendum. 1993 – SAM Colombia Flight 501 crashes on approach to José María Córdova International Airport in Medellín, Colombia, killing 132. 1996 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on mission STS-77. 1997 – The Sierra Gorda biosphere, the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, is established as a result of grassroots efforts. 2000 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-101 to resupply the International Space Station. 2007 – President of Romania Traian Băsescu survives an impeachment referendum and returns to office from suspension. 2010 – The Royal Thai Armed Forces concludes its crackdown on protests by forcing the surrender of United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship leaders. 2012 – Three gas cylinder bombs explode in front of a vocational school in the Italian city of Brindisi, killing one person and injuring five others. 2012 – A car bomb explodes near a military complex in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, killing nine people. 2015 – The Refugio oil spill deposited 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto an area in California considered one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the west coast. 2016 – EgyptAir Flight 804 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea while traveling from Paris to Cairo, killing all on board. 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is held at St George's Chapel, Windsor, with an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion.

[stahl-tier]

(not really a) callout post

since yesterday I’ve been curious about what the dynamics here in Austria even are between our established national state railways (the ÖBB) and its sole tiny “competitor” company, the privately owned WESTbahn.

at first it was honestly funny to learn about how the WESTbahn essentially seems to exist only because the European Union eventually noticed that the ÖBB pretty much has a monopoly going on in terms of all rail services in this country, and that is Not Allowed. however essentially the ÖBB continues to at least act like it’s the only rail company here while also having a weird apparent obsession with incessantly bullying the WESTbahn at the same time.

lots of findings and rambling under the cut:

in no word is the WESTbahn mentioned or acknowledged anywhere where the ÖBB has a say. so while the ÖBB is still feverishly tooting its own horn about how they’re the greatest and best railway service in the whole country (even if until about 2008 there literally was no others and now there’s.... one)....

a little comparison to help you imagine just how one-sided this “rivalry” is: ÖBB has 42000+ employees, owns more than 1000 engines, all sorts of other rail vehicles, and the entire rail network. WESTbahn has around 200 employees (no I didn’t forget any zeroes there), owns 15 trains that drive back and forth on one stretch of track.

there’s.... a lot going on between these two. I’ve been piecing together information from various webpages and whatever newspaper articles that are accessible and I had to fill in a lot of gaps with speculation and interpretation but. it’s like someone in charge at ÖBB, upon being informed that they would now be required to share the railroad space with someone else, ordered a scorched earth doctrine.....

some examples of this theory:

the Westbahnhof (West Station in Vienna, one of the city’s main stations) has existed since the times when he had emperors around here. after being bombed to pieces in WW2 it was rebuilt and people were fond of it. around ca. 2010 the ÖBB tore it down again and rebuilt it while surrounding it with what was generally regarded as ugly and overbearing modern facilities like hotels, shops, and god knows what. they seemed to make a point of emphasizing in strangely sardonic tones that this was the first time “private funds” were used to finance a public train station project. that was coincidentally around the time where they essentially handed over the entire station to the WESTbahn.

on the WESTbahn’s website you can, strangely, find the TOS about and information how to book their trainwash machine. to my understanding, this oversized open-air carwash was left behind at the West Station by the ÖBB. the WESTbahn, in this TOS document, points out with as much bitterness as plain text can convey, that the wash machine is ancient equipment that is most likely going to malfunction and they’re not responsible for any damage it causes to your trains. the roof wash brush is specifically stated to be out of service, too, but it has been since at least 2016 and they seem to have no intentions of fixing it. rain or wind or cold will prevent operation of the machine because it is after all, open-air. the entire offer is pretty weird considering that it’s worded as if anyone but the WESTbahn themselves would use this.

the ÖBB, by the way, is renting out the one (1) stretch of track the WESTbahn has been allowed to use for their trains. the WESTbahn has to pay 3€ per train per kilometer to the ÖBB sub-company “Infra” when using this track. since the ÖBB sub-company ÖBB “Personenverkehr” has to do the same though (paying their sister-company rent), they claim this is fair and just.

as the ÖBB announced at the end of 2010 that they would abandon their Linz-Graz line, the WESTbahn released a tentative statement in early 2011 that they would like to fill that niche... but the ÖBB suddenly changed their mind after this, stated that they’d keep the line, and the WESTbahn said “OK NEVERMIND!” and dropped the idea.

perhaps in a few years, all the road signs pointing to train stations and featuring the ÖBB’s logo will be replaced with a more neutral sign. until then, I suppose the local authorities will be asked to keep putting stickers on the signs to cover up the logo.

small acts of resistance: the WESTbahn strikes back and offers cheaper tickets to holders of the ÖBB bonus card. the WESTbahn are also offering a 10,000€ reward to any certified train driver they hire - considering that they’re not allowed (or can’t afford?) training their own drivers, the only way to become a certified train driver currently seems to be getting hired by the ÖBB and using their education offer. I guess that means that the only way for the WESTbahn to acquire train drivers really is to entice them away like this.

well now that you have heard about all of these microaggressions, I’d like to add for those unaware that the WESTbahn has been making it their “thing” that they are friendly and accommodating and I feel like the design of their trains reflects this:

round. bright. inoffensive. friend-shaped. the train model’s name is literally KISS.

but this is the part where I just started to feel really sorry for this company that really gives the impression that ITSELF doesn’t really want to exist, either.

their Wikipedia article and some news reports mention that in the first two (?) years of their operation, they had at least two incidences where doors became loose on their trains during drives. that’s obviously not good. but do you know what caused these incidents BOTH times?

you probably guessed it, but let me tell you it’s... oh boy. at around the same time that the WESTbahn started operating, the ÖBB came up with a new train model they wanted to introduce. they called it Railjet and you can’t tell me you can gaze upon this thing and act like it wasn’t designed specifically to cull any KISS it comes across:

and boy, it sure fulfilled that directive.

as it is, the ÖBB probably wanted to prove that they still have the biggest ........(redacted)....... so these absolute units go 230 kph (about 143 mph). and on those two occasions where the WESTbahn’s trains had door “malfunctions”, it was literally caused by the blast wave of a Railjet passing them at full speed. it was reported that the KISS’s doors were straight up ripped out of their hinges. (the Railjet driver, signalling as he departs, probably: “this was your final warning. lmao bye nerd”)

the WESTbahn’s management for some reason didn’t mention the incidents to the ministry of transportation (I mean, it is pretty embarassing and I wouldn’t want to make it a big deal either if I was a struggling newly founded company trying to establish itself), but they found out about it anyway. and to avoid these happening in the future, the ÖBB had to promise that their trains would go a little slower on that particular track in the future.

and that’s it for this already entirely too long post I guess.

disclaimer: the ÖBB is totally rad we all love you but please chill............. also don’t take anything in this post at face value. all of this info was very poorly researched while I was trying to fall asleep. poor translation of german sources, poor memory of facts, comedic exaggeration of facts, etc. you know the drill.

but before I go, some bonus trivia: have you ever wondered what train drivers do when they need to pee? there’s no toilets inside those engines and they are often on the rail for hours without a break. our esteemed german colleagues at the union that represents the train drivers of the Deutsche Bahn (DB) have the answer: you open the door on the side and piss out of it, hopefully not falling out and dying. and hopefully you have streamlined your technique because you have about 30 seconds before the SiFA system notices you didn’t press the button, declares you dead, and forcefully initiates an emergency braking maneuver. and seeing as that could cause a delay, you’re gonna wish you were lying next to the rails about a kilometer away if this happens. (but we were reassured that the passengers won’t have to worry about keeping the windows shut since train drivers would never piss out while the train is going at full speed, only when it slows down at harsh bends or construction sites.)

[i-want-it-all-or-nothing-at-all]

The geo-political struggle and arms race with the communist world known as the Cold War lasted so long (1945–1991), and was so fraught with existential danger to human civilization, that it is often forgotten that the United States and Soviet Union had been allies against Nazi Germany. Strategic as it was, this alliance came down to a marriage of expediency and no sooner had the dust of war settled than the erstwhile confederates confronted each other over the spoils of victory. At war’s end the United States’ continental territory was untouched and it was by far the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. The Soviet Union, where most of the European fighting had been waged, lay in ashes with 30 million dead. With their common enemies prostrate the two allies briefly had a positive opportunity for a workable compromise over military and economic issues, and thus for a more peaceful future. But peace was not on the horizon.

After World War II anti-communism became the watchword of the day and the Soviets were demonized as entirely responsible for the state of tension that unfolded dangerously and rapidly. Neither side was blameless but the record clearly shows more effort at conciliation by Moscow than by Washington. Unwilling to acknowledge that the USSR had vital national security issues far more pressing than their own, advocates of a permanent military establishment and Open Door to the markets of Eastern Europe and East Asia claimed that the Soviets and Chinese communists had replaced the Nazis and imperial Japan as the threats to the ‘American way of life’. On the basis of this claim they militarized American society as never before.

Atwood, P. L. (2010). War and Empire: The American Way of Life. Chapter 9: Cold War: The Clash of Ideology or of Empires? Pluto Press. [bold and italisized emphasis added by me] Rest of the chapter below the break.

SOVIETS INDISPENSABLE TO DEFEAT OF HITLER

In American popular culture World War II is seen as the victory of democracy over German and Japanese dictatorship, with the United States playing the major role. There is no denying that US military fi repower defeated Japan. Indeed, American war planners never doubted victory. Americans have been loath, however, to accept less than full credit for triumph over Nazi Germany. Certainly the American Lend-Lease program provided Britain and the Soviet Union with essential resources, including arms, and the massive American and British aerial bombardment of German factories and cities contributed to Hitler’s downfall. But in terms of ground combat and the defeat of millions of Nazi soldiers, the Soviet Red Army was indisputably central. The war on Europe’s eastern front was far more destructive and savage than in the west and millions of soldiers and civilians on both sides perished. More than two-thirds of Hitler’s legions were concentrated against the Soviets, where they fought a desperate and losing effort to keep the Red Army at bay. When German forces entered the Soviet Union in 1941 they committed atrocities on a colossal scale, including the roundup and systematic extermination of Jews, and the slaughter of many other civilians. By late 1942 the Red Army had reversed Germany’s fortunes and in 1945 broke through into Germany itself and began to exact an equally atrocious retribution.

It is often forgotten too, deliberately omitted, that when the Nazis conquered states in Eastern Europe they subordinated their governments and forged military alliances with these puppet regimes. The result was that Hungarian, Ukrainian, Romanian and other pro-Nazi troops invaded Soviet Russia alongside the Germans as partners. Thus, it was on the basis that these regimes had waged war against the USSR that the Red Army occupied these nations after driving the Nazis back, eventually to total defeat. In the popular view of the Cold War the Reds had occupied innocent nations illegitimately. But this was false. The Soviets planted themselves in Eastern Europe for much the same reasons that the US occupied western Germany and Japan. It is true that the smaller nations of Eastern Europe were pawns but they were bargaining chips to each side. Both the US and USSR wished Europe to be reconstructed along lines benefi cial to their specifi c economic and security interests. In terms of physical security there was no doubt as to which nation had the greater claim.

The overwhelming majority of Hitler’s best troops had been locked in mortal struggle in the east. Thus, when the US fi nally, in the last year of war, was able to employ its vast wealth of resources to mount the largest seaborne invasion force in history on the north coast of France, the effort succeeded only because the least combat experienced, and fewest, Nazi troops were there as defenders. Had the bulk of Nazi forces not been bogged down in the east they would have been on the beaches of France and therefore no such invasion would have been possible or even considered. Hitler could not have been defeated without the Soviet Union. Had he confi ned his effort to conquering western Europe, and not attacked Russia, Europe’s recent history would be very different.

But Hitler had made it supremely clear in his book Mein Kampf that he intended to extend German living space (lebensraum) to the Slavic east and to defeat communism once and for all. The Soviet system had only recently been stabilized after years of civil war and internal communist party purges. Stalin feared that the western European powers might align with Germany against him. Since he desired no such war he allied with Hitler in 1939. This certainly disappointed the British and US bitterly. But then in the late summer of 1941 Hitler reneged on his pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR. By this time the US was in an undeclared but de facto naval war with Germany. Once full-scale declared war broke out both Britain and the United States understood that Germany could only be defeated with the aid of the Soviets. This posed a very difficult problem for American goals. If US foreign policy was predicated upon keeping an Open Door for American business enterprise to the resources, markets and labor power of Europe as a whole, and the Nazis had to be prevented from shutting that portal, this goal could only be achieved with the indispensable assistance of a regime that had been equally hostile to the Open Door. At best only half the loaf of American war aims could be attained. Instead of Nazi autarky throughout Eastern Europe, Soviet communism would prevail, and whatever access American corporations might have to trade with this bloc it would not be on American terms. The cold hard fact was that at war’s end the Russians occupied the same territory in Europe’s east as had the Nazis.

Some historians argue that if Roosevelt had been younger, healthier and able to continue he might have arranged a favorable agreement with Stalin that may have benefited both nations. FDR would have faced the same bitter opposition his successor faced domestically, but he was far more sophisticated a politician and more of a realist. The Soviets had been portrayed in heroic terms by the US press and Hollywood while the war was still ongoing, but rightists and anti-communists in the US were already in 1945 accusing Roosevelt of having lost Eastern Europe to the hated Reds, though the region was hardly America’s to lose. In any case Roosevelt died just as the war was ending and his place was taken by an inexperienced and easily manipulated, at least initially, Harry S. Truman, who was himself reflexively anti-communist and who almost immediately went on the political and ideological offensive against yesterday’s ally.

YESTERDAY’S ESSENTIAL ALLY BECOMES THE NEW THREAT

In short order the Truman Administration claimed that the Soviets had now replaced the Nazis as the principal threat to global order and American national security. Less than three months after Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945 the enormously influential Life magazine startled readers with graphic depictions of a Soviet atomic missile attack on US cities, though pointedly the Soviets did not possess an atomic bomb, and intercontinental missiles did not exist and would not until 1957. Most mainstream publications followed suit with lurid depictions of what the USSR could do to the US despite its obvious weakness. In 1946 Admiral Chester Nimitz, hero of the Pacific War, declared, with no evidence whatever, that the Soviets were preparing to bomb England and launch submarine attacks against American coastal cities. Presidential adviser Clark Clifford claimed that the communist threat was so dire ‘the United States must be prepared to wage atomic and biological warfare’. Only five months after Germany surrendered, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a report calling for the atomic bombing of 20 cities in the USSR if that country ‘developed either a means of defense against our attack or the capacity for an eventual attack on the United States’ (author’s emphasis). 

All this despite the fact that the USSR had suffered the greatest devastation to its national territory of any belligerent, worse even than atomically desolated Japan, and had not the remotest possibility of attacking the United States. Nor did it have such an intention.All of European Russia’s major cities and towns, estimated at 70,000, were destroyed, its roads, and railways in ruins, its crops and livestock dead or stolen, and at least 30 million of its soldiers and civilians dead. Though the Red Army was immense, and its soldiers extremely combat-hardened, it showed no signs of moving beyond the territories it had wrested from the Nazis with so much blood. Nor did it seek territorial gains in Western Europe or the Middle East. Yet, the American public was indoctrinated to believe that Soviet-led communism was on the march with the goal of ‘world conquest’. This was exactly the propaganda employed about the Nazis and Japanese. The permanent enemy required for a permanent war economy had miraculously materialized.

This is not to say that Soviet communism lived up to its promises, or functioned as a benevolent regime. Far from it. Russia was behaving as Russia had always behaved, and still does. The Soviet victory enabled Stalin to re-extend control over some of what had been lost to Russia’s empire during World War I and what he deemed Tsarist Russia’s natural sphere. After two devastating invasions in a quarter century the Soviet general staff obsessed over territorial security. The Yalta Accords of 1945 reflected the realities of war. The Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe as a result of its overwhelming victory over the Nazis. This enormous contribution to Nazi defeat had to be acknowledged. Yalta also accorded the Soviets territories in East Asia, some of which had been forcibly taken from Russia in its war against Japan from 1904 to 1905. At the time the accords were signed then Secretary of War Henry Stimson acknowledged they recognized the USSR’s vital concerns for future security. The same Joint Chiefs who planned a sneak attack on Russia out of fear of its military power also said in another position paper that the USSR’s policy was defensive in nature and aimed merely ‘to establish a Soviet Monroe Doctrine for the area under her shadow, primarily and urgently for security’.

Harry S. Truman’s ascension to the presidency on the sudden death of FDR in April 1945 brought about a sea change in the US’s relationship with the USSR. Demonizing the Soviets quickly became the major component in the campaign to assert the newfound power in Washington’s hand to reconstruct and stabilize the global capitalist economy. Therefore, in order to gain the American people’s support for the remilitarization and increased tax burden that would be required to confront this new enemy, the highly positive image of the Soviets, that portrayed Stalin and the Red Army as noble allies in the war against Nazism induced by American propaganda, had to be reversed.

A hopeful moment thus became a tragic one, yet entirely in keeping with the historical thrust of American development and foreign policy. Though the seeds of both world wars were planted in Europe, the United States entered each war knowing that European empires and Japan would be sapped, if not finished. By 1940 a golden opening had arisen for Washington to intervene at the right moment, replace many of its rivals at the pinnacle of global power and reconfi gure global order. Already, the phrase ‘American century’ had entered the public vocabulary.

The major problem for American post-war plans was that though the war had been a pyrrhic victory for Russia it still remained a great power, and it straddled much of Europe. Despite no navy to speak of and no airforce capable of crossing oceans, the USSR had the largest, most-bloodied, most combat experienced army on earth. Even so, though it occupied much of the very region the US had wanted freed from German rule and opened to American enterprise, it was not capable, nor did it desire, to occupy Western Europe.

Uppermost on Stalin’s agenda was rebuilding an utterly devastated nation and ensuring that invasion by a foreign enemy could never take place again. For Soviet foreign policy maintaining control of Eastern Europe as a bulwark, a cordon sanitaire, was indispensable against any possibility of incursion from the west. To safeguard their country and their rule the Soviets were more than willing to modify the doctrines of communism and world revolution. Had the Truman Administration been willing to acknowledge this profound need on the part of the Soviets, and to work with them to guarantee their security, the possibilities for subsequent cooperation might have proved invaluable to both nations. Genuinely frightened by American actions in the early Cold War, the Russians were goaded to intensify their own acquisition of atomic weapons, thereby ensuring that Soviet nuclear capabilities would become the very threat, and the only such threat, to American national security that propaganda had claimed but which had been utterly false (author’s emphasis).

THE ATOMIC ARMS RACE BEGINS

As American officials intended, the atomic bombings of Japan had badly unnerved the Soviets. Not only were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a warning that such destruction of entire cities and ruthlessness against helpless civilians could be visited elsewhere, they also ended the war abruptly on American terms, forestalling the USSR’s occupation of Japan, to prevent any repeat of the problems inherent in the division of Germany.

The future of atomic weapons thus lay at the center of both nations’ critical concerns. Many Americans, including leading atomic scientists who developed the bomb, had worried that nuclear weapons in the hands of one nation would induce a terrifying arms race that portended the annihilation of human civilization. The Soviets demanded the destruction of all existing atomic weapons, though no American offi cial believed they would stop their own program. To mollify domestic critics the Truman Administration created a special committee headed by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson to advance policies for the control of such armaments and atomic energy in general. When this committee’s proposals were deemed too soft, its recommendations were replaced by those of Wall Street baron, Barnard Baruch. The Baruch Plan demanded that the Soviets submit to international inspections and end their A-bomb project, then in its early stage, while the US would retain its atomic monopoly until satisfi ed no Soviet bomb would or could be created. Then, and only then, would the US reconsider whether or not to destroy its own bomb making capacity. It was, as a Baruch staff member conceded, ‘obviously unacceptable to the Soviets with the full realization that they would reject it’. Acheson himself said that the Baruch Plan would guarantee the failure of international control of atomic weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted only one dimension of control. ‘The bomb should continue to be at the heart of America’s arsenal, and a system of controls should be established that would prevent the Russians from developing the weapon.’ The nuclear arms race, that on more than one occasion would bring the world to the brink of Armageddon, was on.

SOVIETS WITHDRAW VOLUNTARILY FROM CONQUERED AREAS

In early 1946 Winston Churchill made his famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in the US in which he described what he termed the barbaric and illegitimate domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviets. Yet, as prime minister of Britain, and Stalin’s ally, he had cut a bargain with the Soviet dictator himself by which Britain would recognize Soviet mastery throughout the east in return for Stalin’s acknowl-edgement of Britain’s continued sphere in Greece, a bargain Stalin kept. The real record of Soviet actions in the immediate post-war period demonstrated a genuine willingness to cooperate with the US and its allies. Austria had been annexed by Germany in 1938 and so had also participated in the invasion of Russia. At war’s end the Red Army occupied about half of Austria, but it withdrew voluntarily.

Similarly, the Soviets also withdrew from Chinese territory occupied when the Red Army declared war on Japan in 1945. In 1947 Truman issued his famous doctrine in which he accused the Soviets of intervening in Greece’s civil war waged between native Greek communists and right-wing forces that had collaborated with the Nazis, and who were then also supported by Britain. But Stalin kept his word with Churchill and gave no aid to the Greek communists. That is precisely why the Greek communists were defeated.

In yet another case both Russia and Britain had occupied Iran and Azerbaijan in order to keep immense reserves of oil from Nazi control. FDR had assured Stalin that Russia could obtain Iranian oil for necessary reconstruction after the war. The Soviets agreed to withdraw from this area by March 1946, yet when the time came they balked; not because they wished to annex the region but to ensure that Iran would provide the USSR with oil. Initially the Truman Administration urged the Iranians to broker such an oil deal. At this early stage of American power Washington was already maneuvering to create a buffer between the USSR and Middle East oil, and saw Iran as pivotal. So, after the Soviets did withdraw Washington then told Iran to renege.

In every one of these cases there was nothing the US could have done had Russia actually behaved in the manner that American propaganda falsely claimed, that is, with military force. In the case of Iran even the A-bomb was useless since that would have irradiated and poisoned (or utterly destroyed) the oil wells. In fact, Russian actions belied the claim that they were relentlessly pursuing new conquests. No evidence existed of any Soviet desire to move militarily beyond the areas occupied during the rout of Nazi Germany. By contrast Britain still had its imperial armies all over the globe, as did the US. None of this meant that Stalin did not remain a despot; it meant that the Soviet leadership was committed to traditional Russian concerns of security and dominance within its perceived sphere. To ensure their security the Soviets were willing to meet the US approximately half way. George F. Kennan of the State Department, the very architect of early American Cold War policy of containing the Soviet Union, nevertheless continued to insist that ‘Our first aim with respect to Russia in time of peace, is to encourage and promote by means short of war the retraction of undue Russian power and influence from the present satellite area.’

Ever the pragmatist and realist FDR recognized that the Red Army occupied Eastern Europe and could not be removed, as did Churchill despite his later hypocrisy. The Yalta Accords, agreed in April 1945 between the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union, not only reflected the real balance of power at that moment but affi rmed the division of Europe with the possibility for future mutual cooperation. Months later the balance of power would be altered exponentially by the American atomic bomb.

It is true that communist parties in western Europe, especially in France and Italy, were very strong and posed an electoral threat to the American reconstruction agenda in that region. Communists could rise to power there democratically and showed every sign of doing so, owing to widespread dissatisfaction with the regimes that had brought on war and ruin. Certainly the Soviets aided such political movements where they could, but given the Soviets’ own domestic problems such assistance was minimal. The American response was to deploy the newly established Central Intelligence Agency to areas where electoral communist success was possible, there to employ every dirty trick available, including bribery, vote fraud and even assassination to prevent communist electoral success. In both France and Italy the CIA worked openly with organized crime to intimidate organized labor. Ironically the US accused the Soviets of thuggery. If democracy was to result in communist gains then democracy had to be jettisoned.

CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM VIE FOR THE LOYALTIES OF THE DEFEATED EMPIRES’ COLONIES

Americans are educated to take capitalism for granted as the only rational system of social and economic organization. The brutal and unjust history of capitalist evolution is all but censored. Indeed, while communist nations were usually derided as slave states, the fact that slavery and mass slaughter were indispensable ingredients of western capitalism’s rise is not open for discussion, at least in mainstream forums. When communist ideas began to percolate into  society they were both an intellectual and grass roots response to the very real depredations of capitalism. Clearly communist revolutions did not succeed in creating better societies for their peoples, as capitalist societies claim they do for their own. Soviet rule over its satellites was brutal. But if the capitalist west prospers greatly today it does so directly as an historical legacy of the early western conquest of much of the planet, a system erected as a result of genocide and slavery at its dawn and maintained by exploitation and war to this day. The west can and does vilify communist crimes. But there is nothing in the communist record not matched by capitalist societies in terms of crimes against humanity. The record of capitalist larceny is why so many colonized peoples struggling for independence from western rule turned toward communist and socialist ideas in the aftermath of World War II; that, and their recognition that the European empires, and Japan, were finished. As victims they had first hand knowledge of the west’s hypocrisy and its claims to bring the benefits of civilization to the benighted denizens of what was condescendingly termed the ‘Third World’. They knew that western nations prospered at their expense. Nationalists like Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh had seen first hand the beneficence of French capitalism and rejected it utterly. European colonizers employed noble rhetoric and platitudes but the realities involved plantations and mines that paid slave wages, a system backed by prisons and executions. The widely held notion that the US opposed communism on moral grounds is flatly contradicted by the fact that throughout the Cold War Washington overthrew numerous democracies because they pursued policies in opposition to US intentions. In many cases the US filled these power vacuums with bloody dictatorships every bit as brutish and criminal as anything to be found in the communist world.

American policy-makers understood that World War II’s costs in lives and treasure would all but bankrupt western Europe’s empires, and Japan’s, presenting the long anticipated opening to replace them, if not in exactly the same way. So the stage was set for a titanic struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for the loyalties of the former colonial subjects. This contest was one of the cardinal issues at the heart of American opposition to the communist world. Throughout the post-war era, until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, both sides would square off and on too many occasions would stand at the brink of nuclear war. At other times the two opponents would arm proxies such as Koreans, Vietnamese, Cubans, Angolans, Ethiopians and many others, and foster wars all over the planet such that by the end of the twentieth century almost as many people would die of these so-called ‘savage wars of peace’ as had been killed in World War II.

The Great Depression in the US had been caused by speculation in stock markets, overproduction, restriction of credit, collapsed purchasing power and the closure of overseas markets by countries reverting to economic nationalism, or autarky, especially Britain, Germany and Japan. The USSR already impeded capitalist penetration on American terms. In the decade before the war most foreign markets were off limits to American goods and services. Then the war itself shattered the global capitalist system. This was the deepest crisis facing American political, social and economic stability at home immediately in the post-war years. There was absolutely no military threat from any corner of the globe. American analysts reasoned that the only way to avert a return to stagnation was through the economic and financial reconstruction of the global order on American terms.

THE THREAT OF A CLOSED WORLD REMAINS: GERMANY BECOMES A NEW AXIS

American policy faced a four-pronged threat: the ruined nations of Europe and Asia – both friends and former foes – might revert to the economic nationalism and closure of markets that had characterized the pre-war years. Post-war impoverishment in these regions might lead populations toward communism and socialism. Ruined nations could not buy American goods owing to their lack of dollars. Finally, the colonies were in revolt, threatening to align themselves with Moscow, or in nationalist directions otherwise independent of US desires.

So the key to post-war American strategy focused fundamentally on economic security, not the claimed military threat from communism. The ‘closed world’ that had preceded the war, with restrictions on market access and discriminatory trade practices such as tariffs, was a major factor in the depth of the Great Depression. In order ‘to maintain a world economic order based on free trade and currency convertibility’ the US hosted the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 at which the American dollar was pegged as the standard, backed by the world’s greatest gold reserves, against which all other currencies would exchange. This gave the US economy preponderant leverage over the evolution of the new global system.

Germany was the key to reconstruction strategy as the new ‘axis’ of an integrated European market. At the end of the war Germany had been co-occupied by the US, Britain and the USSR. The issue of the shape of Germany’s reunification had been left open by the big three powers. Russia occupied about one-third of the nation, the largely agricultural eastern sector, while the US and Britain ruled the industrial west. This posed an immediate problem for US–Soviet cooperation since Russia wanted to carry off Germany’s remaining industrial plants as part of the exacting indemnity it desired and as a measure to cripple any future re-industrialization that could lead to Germany’s remilitarization. This came directly into conflict with American goals. As Stalin saw matters, the issue revolved around Russian need for security versus American desire for gain. The question of Germany’s future would ultimately be the root of Washington’s decision to militarize the Cold War.

US ambassador to the newly created United Nations, John Foster Dulles, said ‘a healthy Europe’ could not be ‘divided into small compartments’. It had to be organized into ‘an integrated market big enough to justify modern methods of mass production for mass consumption’. An early draft of the Truman Doctrine had declared that:

Two great wars and an intervening world depression have weakened the system almost everywhere except in the United States...if, by default, we permit free enterprise to disappear in other countries of the world, the very existence of our democracy will be gravely threatened.

Envisioning a global ‘America, Inc.’ Washington policy-makers would anoint defeated Germany and Japan as junior partners with management rights over many of the areas formerly comprising the very empires they had sought to rule. In order to renew capitalist prosperity the US would ally with its former enemies to thwart the opposition of both communists and any economic nationalists (any who put their national economic interests before American corporate interests) on the scene. What Truman, a Democrat, and Dulles, a Republican, feared above all was any return to self-contained economic blocs that would freeze American enterprise out. Whether this took the form of Stalinism, Chinese communism, state socialism or Arab nationalism, any type of economic autarky anywhere was unacceptable to official Washington. In 1904 Teddy Roosevelt had extended the Monroe Doctrine and American dominance throughout the western hemisphere; now Truman, in his famous doctrine of 1947, would extend it to the planet.

CONTROL OF OIL BECOMES THE LINCHPIN OF AMERICAN POLICY

Fundamental to American management of capitalist economies, and the military power to back it up, was control of the resource necessary to fuel the system. In the words of the US State Department oil had become ‘a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history’. James Forrestal, who had directed the Navy Department during the war and would soon become the nation’s first Secretary of Defense, put matters quite baldly. ‘Whoever sits on the valve of Middle East oil may control the destiny of Europe.’ George Kennan, architect of early anti-communist policy, wrote that ‘US control over Japanese oil imports would help provide “veto power” over Japan’s military and industrial policies.’ In another position paper the State Department declared:

Our petroleum policy is predicated on a mutual recognition of a very extensive joint interest and upon control...of the great bulk of the petroleum resources of the world...US–UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern of the development and utilization of petroleum resources under the control of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial importance. [author’s emphasis]

The inclusion of the British government in this proposed condominium was quite disingenuous, since American policy all along had been to displace Britain at the top of the system, to remake it on American terms: to play Rome to Britain’s Athens.

As we have seen, the Middle East had been cynically carved up and occupied by Britain and France after World War I. Owing to the shock and cost of World War II both nations were losing their empires. Having ascended to the pinnacle of the system that had evolved by conquest, the US would shortly, in the name of countering communists but really in order to maintain its new position, be forced to intervene in the Middle East for strategic reasons and to ensure its access to and control over the disposition of vital oil. Solving these problems would require outlays of US tax revenues that would dwarf the costs incurred by the war itself, and if not managed tightly could lead back to depression.

The Truman Doctrine of 1947 committed the US to provide assistance to any nation at risk from communist movements or insurgencies, but it was also a major response to the economic uncertainties facing reconstruction of the global system. The capitalist British Empire had been the greatest impediment to American hegemony in the pre-war system. In another of history’s ironies Prime Minister Churchill had allied with the US in order to save his nation’s empire, only to see it bankrupted by victory. Britain had succumbed to classic ‘imperial overstretch’, and the main beneficiary of this precipitous decline was its ally and rival. In desperate need of loans from the only nation with funds, London agreed to convert its currency, the pound sterling, to dollars, thereby transferring economic management at home and economic control of its dominions to the US. The imperial roles had been reversed, a goal sought by Washington and Wall Street for half a century. But the US had also now adopted Britain’s role as enforcer in the empire she was losing. The first stop was Greece, formerly London’s satellite, now in danger of succumbing to home-grown communists.

The anti-communist propaganda of the Truman Doctrine also prepared the American public and Congress for even greater outlays of American dollars. Truman’s message emphasized the communist threat to Greece, Turkey and the oil of the Middle East, but this was not entirely honest. Its deeper goal was to overcome political reluctance to extend massive loans for European recovery. As noted, Stalin was not interfering in the Greek civil war between communists and rightists. The aid thus extended by Truman defeated the Greek communists and lined the US up with a reactionary and dictatorial regime. There was no evidence that the Soviets were interfering in Turkey and that Muslim nations’ communists were a weak minority in any case. As Chairman Arthur Vandenburg of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Truman, if he wanted Congress to put up the money he would have ‘to scare hell out of the American people’. Thus an equally massive distortion and deception campaign about Russia’s proclaimed threat was set in motion to match the enormous outlays of funds that would be necessary to rebuild Europe’s shattered economies to suit the American agenda of a world open to American corporate penetration. Communism was on the march the public was told; only the United States stood in its path.

THE ‘MARTIAL PLAN’

Named after Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the European Recovery Program is often presented as an impeccable example of American generosity towards war-ruined nations, including former enemies. But the plan was crafted primarily as a measure to resolve the ‘dollar gap’ crisis and restore the US economy and international trade. Prior to the depression and war, Europe and Japan had exported their products to the US and been paid in dollars, which these nations then used to import American products. In the post-war period European currencies and the Japanese yen were essentially worthless. In the absence of dollars to buy American goods, global trade could not be re-established and the US was in danger of falling back into depression, mass unemployment and social instability. The plan envisioned ultimately an integrated European Common Market, with a re-industrialized Germany at its core and a common currency easily converted into dollars. Billions of tax dollars would be pumped into ruined Europe (with a similar plan for Japan) and then be re-circulated back into the US to purchase reconstruction services and materials from American companies. The war-devastated nations would be rebuilt and American prosperity would return.

The key to European recovery, said American analysts, was Germany. Secretary Marshall declared that ‘the restoration of Europe required the restoration of Germany. Without a revival of Germany’s production there can be no revival of Europe’s economy.’ The chairman of General Motors, then the largest corporation in the world, said that without German integration into a common European market ‘there is nothing that could convince us in General Motors that it was either sound or desirable or worthwhile to undertake an operation of any consequence in a country like France’.

France itself was adamantly opposed to re-industrializing the neighbor that had invaded it twice that century but was induced to accept the plan when it realized that the enormous reparations it desired from Germany could only be obtained if German industry was resurrected. France also fervently wanted to hold on to its empire, especially in North Africa and Indochina. To have any hope of success it would have to depend on the United States and would therefore be required to go along with the Marshall Plan.

Russia, however, was a very different case. Under no circumstances could the Soviet Union accept a reunified Germany reconstructed along the lines that had enabled its rise as a military power in the first place. Germany had also twice invaded Russian territory in one generation, with consequences far more extreme than for France. The USSR desperately needed aid, even more than the nations of western Europe, and at the final allied conference at Potsdam had asked Truman for a $10 billion loan, having previously been promised $6 billion by FDR. Stalin took measures to cooperate with the US, such as allowing non-communists to share rule in strategic Poland and Czechoslovakia, by withdrawing troops from Austria, Manchuria and Iran, and by refraining to support communist movements in China, Greece and elsewhere. Washington had continued to dangle the possibility of the loan to Moscow without making any concrete guarantees. It never did extend the money.

In 1948 the US offered Marshall Plan aid to Czechoslovakia which had fallen under Nazi rule during the war when its puppet government had allied with Hitler. Nevertheless, that nation was allowed by Stalin to have elections in which non-communists shared power. Czechoslovakia straddled east and west and sought good relations with both sides. But it was clear that acceptance of Marshall Plan aid would tie the small nation’s economy to the west and erode the cordon sanitaire that Soviet foreign policy saw as key to its national security. Rather than allow Czechoslovakia out of its orbit the Soviets ruthlessly toppled the non-communist government of Edward Benes and occupied the country. This was the first military foray conducted by the Soviets after World War II, and it occurred in a nation that had been an enemy, and had previously been occupied by the Red Army. This move against the Czechs hardly portended the global conquest that Washington’s propaganda insisted was the Soviet goal.

Had Italy at the time elected a communist government and showed signs of lining up with the USSR the United States would have overthrown that government (actually it would never have allowed any communists, elected or not, in the first place). Nevertheless, Washington seized upon the Czech overthrow as perfect evidence of its own propaganda. The Reds were relentlessly seeking world conquest and would have to be ‘contained’. The die was cast. The USSR would be denied reconstruction aid, it would be banned from the renewed global economic system and its proclaimed menace would be employed to justify rearmament in the US and Western Europe.

Critics of the European Recovery Plan in the US, like FDR’s former vice-president Henry Wallace, dubbed it the ‘Martial Plan’. Wallace, who was running for president in the 1948 election, argued strenuously that Truman’s policies were deliberately fostering mistrust, a dangerous arms race and potential future war. Like FDR he believed that mutual cooperation between Washington and Moscow could be worked out favorably to both nations, if only the US would take seriously Russia’s genuine security concerns. He and many others doubted Truman’s professed humanitarian motives for the plan, believing it was calculated primarily to profit large corporations, especially many war industries that had grown to gargantuan proportions as a result of wartime contracts with guaranteed profits. What would the workforce’s share be? If a new war should come who would do the dying?

In response to the dispute over the Marshall Plan big business established the Committee for the Marshall Plan. Massively funded by concerns like Chase Bank, General Motors, Westinghouse, Standard Oil and numerous Wall Street law firms and brokerage houses, the public was saturated with media ads touting the benefits the economy would reap. Simultaneously, critics were portrayed as communists or communist sympathizers. New epithets entered the political vocabulary. Opponents of the plan, or of Truman’s anti-communist policies in general, were now derided as ‘stalinoids’, ‘parlor pinkos’ and communist ‘fellow travelers’. The most conservative elements in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) were enlisted to line the unions up with corporate America. The Truman Administration also mandated the Federal Employee Loyalty Program requiring millions of federal employees to take a loyalty oath. This energized the extreme right wing in American politics since it more than implied that the administration had allowed itself to be infi ltrated by ‘subversives’ and fed the witch hunt against any critics of US foreign policy that followed. Wallace himself, whom FDR had trusted as he had never trusted Truman, was depicted in the popular press as Stalin’s ‘stooge’. The former Vice-President’s interest in eastern religions was ridiculed and condemned as a betrayal of America’s ‘Christian heritage’. The strongest political link to FDR’s New Deal, Wallace and his bid for the presidency, was derailed by such caricatures. An age of irrationality, intolerance, censorship and militarized anti-communism had dawned and would dominate American domestic politics almost for half a century.

HE FUTURE OF GERMANY FURTHER POLARIZES THE COLD WARThe years 1948–1950 were critical to the evolution of American Cold War policies and the future of American democracy. The crucial issue of Germany heated nearly to atomic warfare over the capital city of Berlin; the Chinese communists overthrew the regime the US had propped up against Japan; the Soviets exploded their fi rst atomic bomb; war in Korea broke out suddenly, and across the globe the colonies were in open revolt. Panic gripped the Truman Administration while its right-wing opponents mounted a hysterical condemnation of the government’s policies. Owing to its unpopularity, the draft laws of World War II had been allowed to lapse but on 24 June 1948 Congress instituted a new Selective Service Act that would conscript able-bodied males for compulsory military service, not to defend American shores but once again to be deployed thousands of miles from home.27 The militarization of the Cold War and the creation of the ‘permanent war economy’ was now becoming law. The National Security State, what President Dwight Eisenhower would later call the ‘military-industrial complex’, was now unremittingly fastened on to American life, adding new branches to the republican form of government, neither elected nor seemingly subordinate to the original three prescribed by the Constitution. (The Constitution prescribes a legislative branch, an executive and a judicial. The new National Security State involved the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council which effectively acted as new branches unelected by anyone.) Coupled with the rising power of the Central Intelligence Agency this ‘secret government’, operating behind the scenes and in the shadows of American political life, would maneuver ceaselessly to reduce government ‘by the people’ to political theater once and for all.The fate of Germany, split between the capitalist west and Soviet east, polarized the issues between the US and USSR. By 1948 it was clear that no compromise on Germany’s reunifi cation could be reached that satisfi ed either side. When the US announced that it had created a separate currency for West Germany the Soviets decided to close the border between their zone, East Germany, and the West, halting any progress toward reunifi cation. The American intent was to foster re-industrialization and economic stability in West Germany such that it could begin importing American and western European products. This fl atly rendered null the agreement made at Yalta for Russian reparations from the wealthier, industri

APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Atwood, P. L. (2010). War and Empire : The American Way of Life. Pluto Press.

[thedadadon]

History of BMW

The official founding date of the German motor vehicle manufacturer BMW is 7 March 1916, when an aircraft engine manufacturer called Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG was formed. This company was renamed to Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) in 1922. However the name BMW dates back to 1913, when the original company used the name BMW (which in German appears as Rapp Motorenwerke). BMW's first product was a straight-six aircraft engine called the BMW IIIa. Following the end of World War I, BMW remained in business by producing motorcycle engines, farm equipment, household items and railway brakes. The company produced its first motorcycle, the BMW R 32 in 1923.

BMW became an automobile manufacturer in 1928 when it purchased Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach, which, at the time, built Austin Sevens under licence under the Dixi marque.[1] The first car sold as a BMW was a rebadged Dixi called the BMW 3/15. Throughout the 1930s, BMW expanded its range into sports cars and larger luxury cars.

Aircraft engines, motorcycles, and automobiles would be BMW's main products until World War II. During the war, against the wishes of its director Franz Josef Popp, BMW concentrated on aircraft engine production, with motorcycles as a side line and automobile manufacture stopped altogether. BMW's factories were heavily bombed during the war and its remaining West German facilities were banned from producing motor vehicles or aircraft after the war. Again, the company survived by making pots, pans, and bicycles. In 1948, BMW restarted motorcycle production. BMW resumed car production in Bavaria in 1952 with the BMW 501 luxury saloon. The range of cars was expanded in 1955, through the production of the cheaper Isetta microcar under licence. Slow sales of luxury cars and small profit margins from microcars meant BMW was in serious financial trouble and in 1959 the company was nearly taken over by rival Daimler-Benz. A large investment in BMW by Herbert Quandt and Harald Quandt resulted in the company surviving as a separate entity. The BMW 700 was successful and assisted in the company's recovery.

The 1962 introduction of the BMW New Class compact sedans was the beginning of BMW's reputation as a leading manufacturer of sport-oriented cars. Throughout the 1960s, BMW expanded its range by adding coupe and luxury sedan models. The BMW 5 Series mid-size sedan range was introduced in 1972, followed by the BMW 3 Series compact sedans in 1975, the BMW 6 Series luxury coupes in 1976 and the BMW 7 Series large luxury sedans in 1978.

The BMW M division released its first road car, a mid-engine supercar, in 1978. This was followed by the BMW M5 in 1984 and the BMW M3 in 1986. Also in 1986, BMW introduced its first V12 engine in the 750i luxury sedan.

The company purchased the Rover Group in 1994, however the takeover was not successful and was causing BMW large financial losses. In 2000, BMW sold off most of the Rover brands, retaining only Mini and Rolls Royce.

The 1995 BMW Z3 expanded the line-up to include a mass-production two-seat roadster and the 1999 BMW X5 was the company's entry into the SUV market.

The first mass-produced turbocharged petrol engine was introduced in 2006, with most engines switching over to turbocharging over the following decade. The first hybrid BMW was the 2010 BMW ActiveHybrid 7, and BMW's first electric car was the BMW i3 city car, which was released in 2013. After many years of establishing a reputation for sporting rear-wheel drive cars, BMW's first front-wheel drive car was the 2014 BMW 2 Series Active Tourer multi-purpose vehicle (MPV).

Aircraft and industrial engines[edit]

1913–1918: World War I[

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1917

BMW IIIa

aircraft engine

1916 advertisement for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke

BMW's origins can be traced back to three separate German companies: Rapp Motorenwerke, Bayerische Flugzeugwerke and Automobilwerk Eisenach.

The history of the name itself begins with Rapp Motorenwerke, an aircraft engine manufacturer which was established in 1913 by Karl Rapp. A site near the Oberwiesenfeld was chosen because it was close to Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (then called Otto Flugmaschinenfabrik), with whom he had contracts to supply his four-cylinder aircraft engines.[2][2] Rapp was also sub-contracted by Austro-Daimler to manufacture their V12 aircraft engines, under the supervision of Franz Josef Popp who was delegated to Munich from Vienna.[2] Popp did not restrict himself to the role of observer, becoming actively involved in the overall management of the company.[3]

In April 1917, following founder Karl Rapp's departure, Rapp Motorenwerke was renamed Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW).[4](p11) BMW's first product was the BMW IIIa aircraft engine. The IIIa engine was known for good fuel economy and high-altitude performance.[5] The resulting orders for IIIa engines from the German military caused rapid expansion for BMW. The large orders received from the Reichswehr for the BMW IIIa engine were overwhelming for the small company, however government officials in the relevant ministries were able to give BMW extensive practical support for the rapid expansion[6] and funding to build a new factory near BMW's existing workshops. The German Empire did not, however, wish to go on supporting BMW with loans and guarantees, and therefore urged the flotation of a public limited company.[7]

The name-change to Bayerische Motoren Werke compelled management to devise a new logo for the company, therefore the famous BMW trademark is designed and patented at this time. However, they remained true to the imagery of the previous Rapp Motorenwerke emblem.[8] Thus, both the old and the new logo were built up in the same way: the company name was placed in a black circle, which was once again given a pictorial form by placing a symbol within it. By analogy with this, the blue and white panels of the Bavarian national flag were placed at the center of the BMW logo. Not until the late 1920s was the logo lent a new interpretation as representing a rotating propeller.[9]

[alexsmitposts]

The “Corruption” Narrative: Who’s Afraid of Isabel Dos Santos? And Why? The words they use to describe her are nasty, cliché, but all too familiar. They call her “Princess,” “Oligarch,” and accuse her of “embezzlement” “peddling influence” etc. The truth is that Isabel Dos Santos, the richest woman in Africa, has for decades been on the hit list of the most powerful people in the world.  In the first month of 2020, the international media has doubled down, taken aim, and decided to go for the kill. And who are the hitmen? The same folks who brought you the Panama Papers, the shady International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The outlet with ties to the Democracy Fund of the United Nations, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is repeating their same old mantra. They accuse independent leaders around the world, from Russia, China, Latin America, and Africa of being “corrupt.” They display in rather convenient “leaks,” as if it is somehow shocking, that the leaders of countries with massive populations and resources in-fact possess lots of wealth. The international audience is led to the conclusion that the targeted leader should be removed. Misuse of government funds and other malpractice is certainly a plague rampant in many developing countries. When nations are working to raise themselves out of poverty, shady practices often become a kind of way of life as the population learns to “take care of each other.” The result is often widespread inefficiency. But what is the obvious goal of these Soros, USAID backed ICIJ operations? To keep intact the corrupt, monopolistic global financial order that exists by selectively targeting those who challenge it. The deeply corrupt global order where Wall Street and London bankers rule the world, keeping it poor so they can stay rich, pushing policies of “de-regulation” and “free markets” that have failed over and over, never gets called into question. “Corruption” charges were used to oust Dilma Roussef, to imprison Lula Di Silva who would have won the 2018 election according to every poll, and install autocratic free market demagogue Jiar Bolsanaro in Brazil. “Corruption” allegations are constantly used to stir up opposition to the Putin government by forces who were quite satisfied with the free market looting during the Yeltsin-era, and dislike that Russia has been restored as an economic power and energy exporter. Leftist Vice President Christina Kirchner in Argentina was also hit with a series of “corruption” charges by supporters of the IMF and the free market policies, who attempted to undo her progressive reforms during the Mauricio Macri. Meanwhile, many politicians in the “free” western capitalist countries have offshore bank accounts, take care of their relatives and business associates, and otherwise engage in notably corrupt behavior. The President of the United States is pretty obviously tied to a chain of “Trump Hotels” around the world, and many questions have been raised about that since the 2016 elections. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son conveniently got a well paying job at a Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian Natural Gas corporation, at the very moment when the USA was backing the “EuroMaiden” events that toppled President Yanukovych. An Oil Rich Country, Kept Poor by Western Capitalism Angola is not a poor country. It has lots of oil. Its natural gas potential is just being realized. It has minerals and a vast population. However, poverty is widespread in this southern African nation. Until 1975, Angola was a colony of Portugal. The population lived as colonial slaves, worked to death, kept in poverty, as their resources were utilized to line the pockets of Portuguese businessmen. The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was formed in 1956 to throw off the colonial chains. The MPLA was a Marxist-Leninist political organization backed and armed by the Soviet Union. It waged a guerilla insurgency, fighting Portuguese troops, right up until the Carnation Revolution.  When the fascist government of Portugal fell in 1975, colonial territories were granted independence. The MPLA took power as the elected government of a newly free Angola. Immediately following independence, the apartheid government of South Africa invaded Angola. Over 65,000 Cuban soldiers were sent to support the MPLA in fighting off this and subsequent invasions by the apartheid regime. Cuba continued to maintain a military presence in Angola to support the MPLA. At the time of independence, the United States government had already been arming and training a group of terrorists and extremists called the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) that conducted assassinations and other acts of violence against the MPLA.  UNITA at first claimed to be Maoist Communists and had relations with China, but by the late 1970s they were Evangelical Christians and advocates of western capitalism. The United States was their primary supporter, and anti-communism was their rallying cry. The leader of the CIA trained and armed UNITA terrorists like  Jonas Savimbi. Savimbi murdered civilians, bombed schools and hospitals and committed horrendous atrocities. Savimbi was a practitioner of witchcraft and a literal cannibal, who ate the corpses of MPLA soldiers. The horrendous atrocities of Jonas Savimbi has been well documented, but this did not stop the Reagan White House and other US administrations from embracing them as freedom fighters. The goal of the MPLA was to peacefully develop Angola into a prosperous socialist country. This was not possible in a state of total civil war, as US-backed terrorists ravaged the country for 27 years. Even when peace was finally declared in 2002, the United Nations noted that Angola was littered with landmines, and most of its bridges and essential infrastructure had been destroyed. “Angola Starts Now!” In 2002, with peace declared, the MPLA declared “Angola Starts Now!” and began to eradicate poverty and economically develop the country. Their efforts were aided significantly by the highest oil prices in world history. The GDP increased at a staggeringly high average of 11.1% from 2001 to 2010. China worked with Angola to build new railways connecting previously isolated parts of the country. The capital city of Luanda became a prosperous business center. Millions of Angolans were lifted from poverty. Who was key in making all of this happen? Isabel Dos Santos. Isabel is the daughter of the country’s first elected President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. It is largely because of her efforts that Angola now has a state controlled mobile telecommunications corporation, Unitel. She also helped to set up Banco de Fomento Angola and Banco BIC, two private banks based in Angola. These are banks subsidized with state oil profits, that have provided loans allowing the domestic economy of Angola to flourish. Isabel Dos Santos has traveled around the world working to bring foreign investment into her homeland. In 2016 Isabel Dos Santos moved out of the private sector and was named as the director of Sonangol, the state-run oil company that remains at the center of the Angolan economy. Much like Putin did in Russia with Gazprom and Rosneft, Sonagol is a “national champion.” It is a state-controlled energy corporation utilized to create economic growth and stabilize the market. It was with Sonangol’s proceeds that the mining and agricultural sectors were stimulated. Nigeria is now the top oil exporting country in Africa. It has been a playground for Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Exxon-Mobile for years. Nigeria has a few billionaires, but the population is overwhelmingly poor and illiterate. While lots of oil is extracted and lots of profits made by western corporations, nothing like Angola’s economic boom of 2002-2014 has ever happened in Nigeria, despite decades and decades in the oil business. The successes of Angola cannot be blamed on high oil prices alone, but rather on state central planning, utilizing oil proceeds to eradicate poverty and construct. Isabel Dos Santos has spent very little time working in government. She prides herself on her success as a businesswoman in the private sector. Her dynamic leadership and strategic management of private companies, in coordination with state central planners, created all kinds of spectacular results. “There are thousands of people whom we gave their first job,” she told BBC. When a new President took office in 2017, the Wall Street Journal celebrated Isabel Dos Santos’ departure. It accused her of running “turgid bureaucracy.” American oil companies were angry that she “required that they buy supplies from select domestic firms.” Dos Santos enforced environmental laws, and would not privatize the newly discovered natural gas resources that “by law belongs to the government.” Immediately before  the ouster of Isabel Dos Santos from Sonangol, Total, BP, Haliburton, and Exxon-Mobile had terminated their relationship with the state-run firm. It appears that the big oil bankers almost demanded her ouster from the new administration of President Juan Lourenço and their wish was granted. A Failed Administration Scapegoating Its Predecessors Lourenço promised to usher in an “economic miracle” with his free market reforms once elected. The opposite has occurred. Unemployment has risen. Strikes and social unrest are also increasing. 28% of Angola’s population lives on less than $1.90 per day. Lourenço has signed on with the International Monetary Fund, known for pushing deregulation and Milton Friedman style economic reforms in exchange for “development loans.” Since he cannot fix the economy, Lourenço seems to be focused scapegoating his predecessors, who presided over huge economic achievements. President João Lourenço calls himself “the terminator,” and he has worked hard to single out members of the Dos Santos family and their allies for prosecution. 45 cases are currently in court, and Isabel Dos Santos is now among those facing charges, as is her younger brother. However, a BBC article published on January 16th seems to have revealed that the campaign against Santos isn’t simply about retaliation against the Dos Santos family. During  an interview, Isabel Dos Santos “declined four times to rule out” running for the Presidency. Later she told a Portuguese network “it’s possible” that she may intend run for head of state in 2022. And what else, she could very well win, despite massive huge efforts to besmirch her reputation with the convenient “Luanda Leaks” presented by the Soros, USAID tied outlet. To Angolans who have endured decades of civil war followed by miraculous amounts of growth, the name “Dos Santos” is associated with the legacy of the anti-colonial struggle, as well as a decade of exciting hope. The “Iron Lady” Southern Africa Needs? Indicating why she might consider a Presidential run, she told BBC “President Lourenço is fighting for absolute power. There’s a strong wish to neutralize any influence that [former] President Dos Santos might still have in the MPLA…. If a different candidate would appear [ahead of the 2022 presidential election] supported by former President Dos Santos or allies linked to him, that would really challenge [Mr Lourenço’s] position because his current track record is very, very poor.” In fact, Isabel Dos Santos could be the kind of leader that Southern Africa desperately needs. Her father was a guerilla fighter who fought the Portuguese and went into exile. Her mother was a Russian Communist. While the MPLA backed away from Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism in 1991, it remains a Democratic Socialist Party, and its members are dedicated to building a society where all Angolans have what they need. Already, from both the private sector and as the head of Sonangol, Dos Santos has put into practice a successful implementation of policies that could be called “petro-socialism” i.e. using state-run oil profits to centralize and build up an economy. On the northern end of the continent, Libya flourished under such policies. The Islamic Socialist government of Moammar Gaddafi built the world’s largest irrigation system, “the man-made river.” Libya had the highest life expectancy on the African continent until 2011 and had achieved universal housing and literacy. Libya worked hard to suppress Al-Qaida and terrorist groups and provided financial support to the Irish Republican Army, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and many other socialist and anti-imperialist forces around the world. In his final year, Gaddaffi openly spoke of establishing an African currency and an African bank, laying the basis for independence from western financial power. All of this culminated in the USA funding an uprising against him, and NATO bombing campaign that destroyed the country. During Gaddaffi’s leadership, Africans from across the continent piled into the Libya where the state provided them with employment. Now, in a war-torn, newly impoverished and destroyed post-Gaddafi, pro-western Libya, Africans are trying to get out on rafts, and drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. Russia and China were both deeply impoverished countries at the beginning of the 20th Century, but it was with state central planning, mobilizing the population and rationally organizing the economy that they became superpowers. Both countries have learned the lessons of the Soviet Union’s demise, and recognize the need for foreign investment and a private sector, which will  allow more entrepreneurialism. However, Russia and China continue to get stronger because they have not fallen into the trap of “profits in command” and the chaos of the market. All across the developing world, the absolute failure of Milton Friedman-style economics can be seen. Even the Bretton Woods institutions now admit that they have been “too Neoliberal.” All out “free trade” Adam Smith-style capitalism is not the answer, for Angola or any other country. If Isabel Dos Santos, a savvy businesswoman was elected, carrying with her a family name that is associated with better times, and resilient leadership, she could very well turn things around. As Russia becomes more involved in helping strengthen African countries, and  as China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank works to build infrastructure to help the development of independent economies, Isabel Dos Santos has great potential as a leader. With her strength and boldness, she could bring economic growth, financial independence, and hope to millions of people, not just in her own country, but throughout the region.

[seachranaidhe]

Seams McGrane jailed for 11.5 years on directing IRA activities charge.

A Republican leader convicted of directing the activities of a terrorist organisation which plotted an explosion during the State visit of Britain’s Prince Charles two years ago has been jailed for eleven and a half years. Seamus McGrane (63), of Little Road, Dromiskin, County Louth, was convicted in October by the non-jury Special Criminal Court of directing the activities of an unlawful…

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

A Forgotten Bomb From WWII Has Ripped a Enormous Crater in Central Germany

http://tinyurl.com/y5mth448 From the air, the huge crater resembles a pink virus floating towards a pool of inexperienced. However from the bottom, the destruction is obvious and devastating: A 33-foot (10 meter) huge, 13-foot (four meter) gouge into the earth that started within the 1940s with an Allied sortie and ended Sunday morning in a large blast in a barley area in central Germany.   Nobody was harm within the blast, the German information web site Hessenschau reported. The explosion was thundering and surprising, main some residents in Ahlbach farmland to take a position it was an earthquake. Explosive specialists combed the crater, and no bomb parts have been initially discovered, the close by metropolis of Limburg stated in a statement, prompting the idea that it was the work of an asteroid. Nonetheless, a re-assessment, with the assistance of drones, helped construct proof that has pointed to a probable wrongdoer – a 550-pound (250 kilograms) dud of a bomb dropped a long time in the past that remained buried and untouched till its detonation mechanism eroded with time. Between 1940 and 1945, Allied bombers dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe. About half of that ordnance fell on German targets, eradicating Nazi warfare infrastructure and killing greater than 400,000 German civilians. However about 10 % of bombs dropped over Germany did not explode, according to Smithsonian Journal, leaving lethal artifacts within the floor to be discovered by firefighters, engineers and building staff so typically it has turn out to be routine. The town of Limburg stated the bomb most likely had a chemical detonator that failed when the bomb was dropped.   Not all bombs explode on influence. Typically chemical elements have been used to delay explosions till a bomb may burrow into the bottom to create an even bigger crater and trigger extra harm. With such bombs utilized in World Struggle II, gravity helped. The elements relied on a north-south orientation after a bomb fell as designed – with an air-powered fin that spun because the bomb descended. That fin drove a steel rod right into a glass plate, releasing corrosive acetone that dissolves celluloid discs, in response to Smithsonian Journal. Totally different thicknesses of discs have been used – the thicker the disc, the longer the method took. The acetone ultimately dissolved them, triggering a spring that may thrust a firing pin right into a detonator. However typically bombs didn’t land accurately, coming to a relaxation both sideways or the wrong way up. In these circumstances, the response stalls and the acetone falls away from the discs, delaying the explosion for years or a long time because the elements decay into harmful instability. The crater in Ahlbach. (Armando Babani/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) Limburg’s railway depot and radio broadcast stations have been a major goal for Allied bombers close to the top of the warfare, the discharge stated. Roads round Ahlbach have been essential avenues for German troopers in retreat, Hessenschau reported. Unexploded bombs have created infinite and lethal work for German bomb technicians. On Monday, two World Struggle II-era bombs have been discovered outside Frankfurt, prompting an evacuation of two,500 individuals.   Eleven technicians have been killed within the line of obligation since 2000, Smithsonian Journal reported. Three of these deaths got here from a 2010 incident wherein they dug out from a Göttingen market a 1,000-pound bomb with a delayed fuse. A building employee died in Euskirchen in 2012 after he dug into an unexploded bomb. Germany is not the one nation coping with unexploded ordnance. In Laos, essentially the most heavily bombed country in historical past per capita, the US dropped 2 million tons of ordnance over 9 years ending in 1973 – equal to a full payload dropped each eight minutes for 24 hours a day, in response to the advocacy group Legacies of War. In Vietnam, a group of world nonprofit organizations, the Vietnamese authorities and US teams have targeted on eradicating cluster munition duds and different bombs which have killed 40,000 individuals. One Vietnamese official said it will take 300 years to take away each bomb. Meaning in Vietnam, and possibly in Germany, the final deaths from these wars haven’t but been recorded. 2019 © The Washington Put up This text was initially printed by The Washington Post.   Source link

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.23 (after 1950)

1952 – General Muhammad Naguib leads the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real power behind the coup) in overthrowing King Farouk of Egypt. 1961 – The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded in Nicaragua. 1962 – Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite. 1962 – The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is signed. 1962 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. 1967 – Detroit Riots: In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city. It ultimately kills 43 people, injures 342 and burns about 1,400 buildings. 1968 – Glenville shootout: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins and lasts for five days. 1968 – The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft takes place when a Boeing 707 carrying ten crew and 38 passengers is taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The aircraft was en route from Rome, to Lod, Israel. 1970 – Qaboos bin Said al Said becomes Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Said bin Taimur initiating massive reforms, modernization programs and end to a decade long civil war. 1972 – The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite. 1974 – The Greek military junta collapses, and former Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis is invited to lead the new government, beginning Greece's metapolitefsi era. 1980 – Phạm Tuân becomes the first Vietnamese citizen and the first Asian in space when he flies aboard the Soyuz 37 mission as an Intercosmos Research Cosmonaut. 1982 – Outside Santa Clarita, California, actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed when a helicopter crashes onto them while shooting a scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie. 1983 – Thirteen Sri Lanka Army soldiers are killed after a deadly ambush by the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. 1983 – Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba. 1988 – General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigns after pro-democracy protests. 1992 – A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, establishes that limiting certain rights of homosexual people and non-married couples is not equivalent to discrimination on grounds of race or gender. 1992 – Abkhazia declares independence from Georgia. 1993 – China Northwest Airlines Flight 2119 crashes during takeoff from Yinchuan Xihuayuan Airport in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, killing 55 people. 1995 – Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered; it becomes visible to the naked eye on Earth nearly a year later. 1997 – Digital Equipment Corporation files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel. 1999 – ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan by Yuji Nishizawa. 1999 – Space Shuttle Columbia launches on STS-93, with Eileen Collins becoming the first female space shuttle commander. The shuttle also carried and deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory. 2005 – Three bombs explode in the Naama Bay area of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people. 2010 – English-Irish boy band One Direction is formed by judge Simon Cowell on The X Factor (British series 7), later going on to finish at third place. It would go on to become one of the biggest boy bands in the world, and would be very influential on pop music of the 2010s. 2011 – A high-speed train rear-ends another on a viaduct on the Yongtaiwen railway line in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, resulting in 40 deaths. 2014 – TransAsia Airways Flight 222 crashes in Xixi village near Huxi, Penghu, during approach to Penghu Airport. Forty-eight of the 58 people on board are killed and five more people on the ground are injured. 2015 – NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by Kepler.

[itswingedcollectoranchorfan]

Debate I On Bullet Trains, Let’s Drop Jholawallah Options

  Debate I On Bullet Trains, Let’s Drop Jholawallah Options

Bullet trains will ease long-distance travel and might be accepted the way Delhi Metro has eased into our life.(Photo: iStock/ Altered by The Quint)

Vivian FernandesUpdated: 22.09.17

  (As India and Japan embark on an ambitious bullet train project worth Rs 1 lakh crore, The Quint debates whether the initiative would be economically viable. This is the View. You may like to read the Counterview by S Pushpavanam here.)

While inaugurating Bombardier’s metro rail coach factory at Savli in Vadodara in November 2008, Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat took a jibe at the Congress Party. Those who talk of vote bank politics talk of bomb, he said, hinting at the Congress Party’s affinity to a particular community. But for him it was development and Bombardier, a reference to the Canadian manufacturer of trains and airplanes.

Nine years later, the Congress is questioning the prime minister’s decision to invest in a bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. It faults his priorities and love for giant projects. The investment of over Rs 1 lakh cr could have been better spent in improving the speed and safety of the railway network, its spokespersons say, though they know that the Japanese loan which will finance 85 percent of the project is not replaceable; the money cannot be diverted.

Also Read: 10 Things Modi, Abe Said During Launch of India’s 1st Bullet Train

Another set of critics find the interests of the better-off sections privileged against those of the poor. The Delhi metro was also derided as a “suit-boot” piece of showmanship, and the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT or separate bus lanes) was proposed as an alternative that could do as much for less.

Well, Delhi has had to scrap the BRT while the Delhi metro is being patronised by the poor, who love to travel in temperature-regulated comfort, which is quite a change from their usual push-n-shove experience.

Activists like Claude Alvares did their best to stop the Konkan Railway line from Mumbai to Mangaluru on the western coast, saying it will destroy Goa’s wetlands and paddy fields. It has done nothing of the kind. Instead passengers from Mangaluru can now reach Delhi via the eastern coast in 33 hours instead of 56 hours.

The Delhi metro was also derided as a “suit-boot” piece of showmanship but was accepted later.

(Photo: iStock)

At the Savli event referred above, Metro Man E Sreedharan told me that India should have invested in high-speed railways (HSRs), instead of dedicated freight corridors, which only shift goods trains to a separate, fast lane. Moving people at speeds of over 300 km per hour requires technology and skills of a different magnitude, in civil engineering, signalling and telecommunications, locomotion and, above all, passenger safety.

The foundation stone laying ceremony for the bullet train on 14 September is a historic development. It is as momentous as India’s first train run in 1853, when three locomotives ─ Sultan, Sindh and Sahib ─ hauled 400 guests in 14 carriages between Bori Bunder in Mumbai and Thane on its outskirts.

The bullet train could do to India’s railways what Maruti has done to its car and auto ancillary industry.

A worker walks at a Maruti Suzuki stockyard on the outskirts of the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. 

(Photo: Reuters)

HSRs are no doubt expensive. Many, or perhaps most, are not financially profitable.

But the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line is unlikely to be loss-making. It should be able to draw about 15 million passengers a year, or about 50,000 people on each of 300 working days, willing to pay about Rs 2,500, the same as the air fare, writes Neelkanth Mishra, India Equity Strategist for Credit Suisse, an investment bank.

Also Read: Is India “Running” Slow? Bullet Trains in India vs the World

New infrastructure creates demand. For instance, I would never travel to Kharibaoli in old Delhi to buy groceries at wholesale prices, but metro connectivity has enabled me to do so.

HSRs should not be evaluated only on profitability. They have wider benefits for the economy. The bullet train might help decongest Mumbai.

People might prefer to stay, say in Surat, which will be an hour away, rather than paying a ransom for a flat in the city. Since HSRs flatter land values in cities where their stations are located, their operators should also get a share of the value they create.

HSRs have environmental benefits as well.

A 2011 European Commission white paper on transport said HSRs are 14 times less car­bon intensive than cars and 15 times less polluting than air planes.

A high-speed train will release 11 grams of carbon dioxide while moving a passenger between Va­lence and Marseille in southeast France, it said, against 151 grams by car and 164 grams by air.

HSRs can compete with airline over distances of 500 km to 700 km. Unlike airlines, the development of new planned townships between end points is possible because there can be stops, say, every 100 km. The extra cost of carrying an extra passenger on them is also negligible, which is not the case with planes.

In the 2010 budget, the railways had proposed to conduct studies to explore the profitability of the following six routes: (a) Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar (450 km); (b) Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad (650 km); (c) Hyderbad-Dornakal-Vijayawada-Chennai (664 km) (d) Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam (649 km); (e) Howrah-Haldia (135 km) and (f) Delhi-Agra-Luknow-Varanasi-Patna (991 km).

Passengers travel on an overcrowded train on the outskirts of New Delhi on February 26. Photo used for representational purpose.

(Photo: Reuters/Ahmad Masood)

For the Delhi-Amritsar corridor, Systra of France gave a report in 2015. Pre-feasiblity studies are now being conducted. For the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru stretch the Chinese are conducting feasibility studies. They have also done a planning study for the Delhi-Nagpur part of the Delhi-Chennai corridor.

The Japanese had said that an HSR between Delhi and Mumbai would be very expensive. Their 2012 study had estimated that the cost of converting the existing route to semi-high speed of 200 kmph and travel time of 12 hours to be about $7 billion while a 10-hour line would cost a little over $16 billion. It had recommended a line that could cover the distance in 12 hours.

Under former Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu a plan had been drawn to convert the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah lines for speeds of 160 kmph to 200 kmph. This would be made possible by the shift in much of the goods traffic to the dedicated freight corridors which are expected to be operational from 2019.

To enable, semi-high speed travel, the railways are proposing to construct stone masonry walls on either side of the track so that there is no trespassing by humans or animals. Crossings will be through underpasses and overbridges but if there are not enough of them, normal life in towns along the route will be disrupted.

In a study done about five years ago, the Ircon International had said that the Delhi-Patna high-speed track via Agra, Lucknow and Varanasi would cost Rs 4.73 lakh crore. It said the service would be profitable even in the worst-case demand scenario.

It expected 15 eight-car trains to carry 57,000 passengers daily at a maximum speed of 300 km an hour when operations commenced in 2020 going up to 44 sixteen-car trains by 2045. The fares would be pretty steep: Rs 7,000 for second class and Rs 9,100 (that is, 30 percent more) for first class. The spot airfare between Delhi and Patna now is about Rs 4,500 but tickets booked a month in advance cost less. Its projections seem to be rich.

China has 20,000 km of HSR lines and plans to add another 10,000 km by 2020. In the early years of this decade, students and migrant workers returning home for the Chinese New Year in January would prefer buses because high-speed train fares were very high. But with incomes rising they have become affordable.

India should go in for a mix of high and semi-high speed trains. Some of the routes may not make money, but there may be economic benefits. Despite higher than anticipated traffic, Delhi’s metro train service does not even cover the cost of operations. The central government is subsidising it; it bears the exchange risk.

The value of yen has risen from 29 paise in 1993-94 to 40 paise in 2002-03. In 2012-13, it touched a high of a little less than 66 paise. The yen is now trading at nearly 58 paise to the rupee. Any appreciation of the yen will raise the cost of loan repayment . But life in Delhi will be impossible without the Delhi Metro.

Without it, the city’s roads would be gridlocked and its air even more un-breathable. Someday even bullet trains might become as basic to life in Indian cities.

(Vivian Fernandes is the editor at www.smartindianagriculture.in. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

(#TalkingStalking: Have you ever been stalked? Share your experience with The Quint and inspire others to shatter the silence surrounding stalking. Send your stories to editor@thequint.com or WhatsApp @ +919999008335.)

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/local-global-security-firms-in-race-along-chinas-silk-road-reuters/

Local, global security firms in race along China's 'Silk Road' | Reuters

SHANGHAI/BEIJING Global security companies and their smaller Chinese rivals are jostling for business along Beijing’s modern-day “Silk Road”, the grandiose plan for land and sea routes connecting the world’s second largest economy with the rest of Asia and beyond.

Representing investments of hundreds of billions of dollars, the pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen boosting economic growth at home, and as positive for everything from steel prices to cement makers.

Security firms also expect to tap the rush, offering to protect thousands of Chinese workers – and the pipelines, roads, railways and power plants they build – as they fan out across the world under the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative.

It won’t be easy, however, with executives warning that state-owned enterprises running or planning projects from Africa to Vietnam sometimes prefer to deal with fellow Chinese, treat safety as an afterthought and try to keep costs to a minimum.

“OBOR is a lifetime (of work) for us,” said John Jiang, managing director of Chinese Overseas Security Group (COSG).

The small consortium of security providers was set up early last year and operates in six countries: Pakistan, Turkey, Mozambique, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand.

“In eight years’ time, we want to run a business that can cover 50-60 countries, which fits with the One Belt One Road coverage,” Jiang told Reuters.

Chinese personnel are essentially barred under Chinese law, and that of many host nations they work in, from carrying or using weapons.

Instead, COSG and its rivals usually work with and train local staff and focus on logistics and planning.

In Pakistan, for example, where attacks by militants and separatist insurgents are considered a serious threat, COSG has a joint venture with a local security firm with links to Pakistan’s navy.

The Pakistani army also plans to provide 14-15,000 armed personnel dedicated to guarding Chinese projects, according to local media reports.

The $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the largest single project under the OBOR banner, envisages roads, railways, pipelines and power lines that link China’s western reaches with the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.

CHINESE VERSUS INTERNATIONAL

Major international security operators hope their scale and experience can convince China’s price-conscious state-owned giants to pay for foreign expertise.

Firms like Control Risks and G4S (GFS.L) offer staff with military backgrounds and decades of experience in risky regions around the world.

G4S said it had seen an acceleration of interest in its services since OBOR began gaining traction.

Michael Humphreys, a Shanghai-based partner at Control Risks, said around a third of the security consultancy’s work in China was related to OBOR.

Hong Kong-based logistics firm Frontier Services Group (0500.HK), co-founded by Erik Prince who created the U.S. military security services business Blackwater, announced in December it was shifting strategy to capitalize on OBOR.

It plans to set up an office in the southwestern province of Yunnan, which adjoins Southeast Asia, and another base in Xinjiang in China’s west, the starting point for the CPEC project crossing Pakistan.

Smaller Chinese firms like COSG, Shanghai-based Weldon Security and Dewei Security, meanwhile, see their advantage over multinationals in state-owned enterprises’ preference for hiring Chinese to handle sensitive projects.

Only a handful of the estimated 5,800 Chinese security companies operate overseas, with the vast majority focusing on the domestic market.

“For Chinese firms, especially with security work, they (state companies) want to speak with another Chinese person. We can also one hundred percent reflect their thinking when we work,” said Dewei general manager Hao Gang.

NO EASY SELL

Security risks facing Chinese workers abroad are varied and often unpredictable.

Yu Xuezhao, a former soldier working in Kenya for Dewei, is helping to train hundreds of local guards to protect Chinese contractors operating there, including oil giant Sinopec (600028.SS) and China Road and Bridge.

Africa, where China invested long before OBOR was formally created, is considered a part of the initiative.

“The most common incidents we encounter are thefts and strikes,” 27-year-old Yu said, speaking from a training compound in the Kenyan capital Nairobi he has managed since 2015. “We train security guards to inspect cars and do ground patrols.”

Events can quickly escalate.

In 2015, for example, an attack on a hotel in Mali killed three workers at a Chinese state firm, leading to calls by Beijing for beefed up security.

Officials revealed then that 350 security incidents had occurred between 2010-2015 involving Chinese firms abroad.

Such concerns do not easily translate into lucrative contracts, however.

In some cases, security companies are called in to deal with an emergency rather than to coordinate a long-term strategy.

“For a lot of companies, they come to us when they’ve (already) got a problem,” said Humphreys of Control Risks.

“They’ve started the project and they can’t move it forward because they have a labor dispute or someone is throwing petrol bombs at their trucks.”

Hao and other Chinese security executives added that most state-owned enterprises were building their overseas security capabilities from a low base.

“A lot of the larger state-owned enterprises have only just started to go out in the last few years. As such, overseas security work remains a blank space for those firms who had not gone out before,” he said.Some Chinese experts said companies operating abroad were beginning to think more about the importance of safety.

“This is something Chinese companies need to study more,” said Lu Guiqing, general manager of private builder Zhongnan Group and former chief economist at China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

“When you ‘go out’ safety is the most important. What’s the point if you end up losing people?”

(Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell in BEIJING and George Ng’ang’a in NAIROBI; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

[placestoseein]

Places to see in ( Lleida - Spain ) Lleida is an ancient city in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region. La Seu Vella, a Gothic-Romanesque cathedral in a ruined hilltop fortress, towers over the city. Below the hill stretches the long, pedestrianized Eix Comercial de Lleida Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida. Lleida is one of the oldest towns in Catalonia, with recorded settlements dating back to the Bronze Age period. Until the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the area served as a settlement for an Iberian people, the Ilergetes. The town became a municipality, named Ilerda, under the reign of Augustus. Lleida served as a key defense point for Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, and fell to the Insurgents, whose air forces bombed it extensively, in 1937 and 1938. The November 2, 1937 Legion Condor attacks against Lleida became especially infamous since they were aimed to the school known as Liceu Escolar de Lleida. Lleida is served by the RENFE, Spanish state railway's Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail line, serving Barcelona, Zaragoza, Calatayud, Guadalajara, and Madrid. Lleida has a new airport opened in January 2010, and a minor airfield located in Alfès. Also, the town is the western terminus of the Eix Transversal Lleida-Girona, and a railway covering the same distance (Eix Transversal Ferroviari) is currently under planning. Lleida has depended long time on nearby airports and had no local air transit. Lleida-Alguaire airport opened in 2010. Alot to see in ( Lleida - Spain ) such as : Seu Vella, a cathedral built in a blend of Romanesque and Gothic styles over time, and made a military fortress in the 18th century. There is also an older, and mostly destroyed Palau de la Suda, built during Arab rule and later used as a royal residence by the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon. Both medieval buildings are situated over the so-called Turó de la Seu Seu Nova, the baroque cathedral, in use since Bourbon rule. It was burnt during the Spanish Civil War by the anarchists commanded by Durruti. Institut d'Estudis Ilerdencs, used to be a hospital (Antic Hospital de Santa Maria) built in Gothic style La Paeria, the city council and also a historical site with remains and artefacts from Roman times through to the Moorish rule, Mediaeval and Modern times, including old prison cells. Gardeny is a hill hosting a fortress built between the 12th and 13th centuries. The gardens known as Camps Elisis, already used by the Romans. The Mermaid Fountain is a nice piece. La Mitjana, a park at the edge of town with wilderness areas adjacent to an old dam on the river Segre. Les Basses d'Alpicat, a park. It is currently closed, awaiting reforms. Church of Sant Llorenç, a 12th-century Romanesque church with 15th-century Gothic additions. The interior is well preserved. The bishop of Lleida’s Palace on Rambla d'Aragó El Roser, a 13th-century convent built by the Dominican Order. It hosted a fine arts academy of the same name and has recently been controversially reformed and turned into a parador (a luxury hotel using a historical location). Lleida Public Library, on Rambla d'Aragó, in the building previously known as La Maternitat, a mid-19th century orphanage. Museum of Lleida, opened in 2008, and owned by the Diocese of Lleida focusing on the town's history. Some of the artefacts it contains, which come from areas historically belonging to the diocese but not currently part of the province of Lleida's territory and jurisdiction, have been the object of contention with the neighbouring dioceses and the government of the autonomous community of Aragon. Sala Cristòfol, a museum devoted to the works of the avant-garde sculptor Leandre Cristòfol. Sala Mercat del Pla, an art gallery. Museu d'Art Jaume Morera, an art museum displaying art from the 20th and 21st centuries in a modernist building. Centre d'Art de la Panera, a small contemporary art institution. Museu de l'Aigua, in the Parc de l'aigua. Auditori Enric Granados, Lleida's foremost concert hall. Next to its basement and on public display are some ancient ruins. La Llotja de Lleida, a concert hall, theatre, opera and congress hall opened in 2010. Parc de l'aigua, urban park in the southern neighborhoods. ( Lleida - Spain ) is well know as a tourist destination because of the variety of places you can enjoy while you are visiting the city of Lleida . Through a series of videos we will try to show you recommended places to visit in Lleida - Spain Join us for more : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLP2J3yzHO9rZDyzie5Y5Og http://ift.tt/2drFR54 http://ift.tt/2cZihu3 http://ift.tt/2drG48C https://twitter.com/Placestoseein1 http://ift.tt/2cZizAU http://ift.tt/2duaBPE

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.19

639 – Ashina Jiesheshuai and his tribesmen assaulted Emperor Taizong at Jiucheng Palace. 715 – Pope Gregory II is elected. 1051 – Henry I of France marries the Rus' princess, Anne of Kiev. 1445 – John II of Castile defeats the Infantes of Aragon at the First Battle of Olmedo. 1499 – Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12. 1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage). 1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest. 1542 – The Prome Kingdom falls to the Taungoo Dynasty in present-day Myanmar. 1568 – Queen Elizabeth I of England orders the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots. 1643 – Thirty Years' War: French forces under the duc d'Enghien decisively defeat Spanish forces at the Battle of Rocroi, marking the symbolic end of Spain as a dominant land power. 1649 – An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth is passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years. 1655 – The Invasion of Jamaica begins during the Anglo-Spanish War. 1743 – Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale. 1749 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Continental Army garrison surrenders in the Battle of The Cedars. 1780 – New England's Dark Day, an unusual darkening of the day sky, was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada. 1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte founds the Legion of Honour. 1828 – U.S. President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828 into law, protecting wool manufacturers in the United States. 1845 – Captain Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated Arctic expedition depart from Greenhithe, England. 1848 – Mexican–American War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million. 1911 – Parks Canada, the world's first national park service, is established as the Dominion Parks Branch under the Department of the Interior. 1917 – The Norwegian football club Rosenborg BK is founded. 1919 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk lands at Samsun on the Anatolian Black Sea coast, initiating what is later termed the Turkish War of Independence. 1921 – The United States Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration. 1922 – The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union is established. 1933 – Finnish cavalry general C. G. E. Mannerheim was appointed the field marshal. 1934 – Zveno and the Bulgarian Army engineer a coup d'état and install Kimon Georgiev as the new Prime Minister of Bulgaria. 1942 – World War II: In the aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Task Force 16 heads to Pearl Harbor. 1950 – A barge containing munitions destined for Pakistan explodes in the harbor at South Amboy, New Jersey, devastating the city. 1950 – Egypt announces that the Suez Canal is closed to Israeli ships and commerce. 1959 – The North Vietnamese Army establishes Group 559, whose responsibility is to determine how to maintain supply lines to South Vietnam; the resulting route is the Ho Chi Minh trail. 1961 – Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data). 1961 – At Silchar Railway Station, Assam, 11 Bengalis die when police open fire on protesters demanding state recognition of Bengali language in the Bengali Language Movement. 1962 – A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday". 1963 – The New York Post Sunday Magazine publishes Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. 1971 – Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union. 1986 – The Firearm Owners Protection Act is signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. 1991 – Croatians vote for independence in a referendum. 1993 – SAM Colombia Flight 501 crashes on approach to José María Córdova International Airport in Medellín, Colombia, killing 132. 1996 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on mission STS-77. 1997 – The Sierra Gorda biosphere, the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, is established as a result of grassroots efforts 2000 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-101 to resupply the International Space Station. 2007 – President of Romania Traian Băsescu survives an impeachment referendum and returns to office from suspension. 2010 – The Royal Thai Armed Forces concludes its crackdown on protests by forcing the surrender of United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship leaders. 2012 – Three gas cylinder bombs explode in front of a vocational school in the Italian city of Brindisi, killing one person and injuring five others. 2012 – A car bomb explodes near a military complex in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, killing nine people. 2015 – The Refugio oil spill deposited 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto an area in California considered one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the west coast. 2016 – EgyptAir Flight 804 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea while traveling from Paris to Cairo, killing all on board. 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is held at St George's Chapel, Windsor, with an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.8

870 – Treaty of Meerssen: King Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald partition the Middle Frankish Kingdom into two larger east and west divisions. 1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula. 1264 – Mudéjar revolt: Muslim rebel forces took the Alcázar of Jerez de la Frontera after defeating the Castilian garrison. 1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland. 1509 – Krishnadeva Raya is crowned Emperor of Vijayanagara at Chittoor. 1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven. 1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage. 1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines: The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England. 1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden. 1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill: English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces. 1648 – Mehmed IV (1648–1687) succeeds Ibrahim I (1640–1648) as Ottoman Emperor. 1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the king of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal. 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard. 1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska. 1831 – Four hundred Shawnee people agree to relinquish their lands in Ohio in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River in the Treaty of Wapakoneta. 1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). 1863 – American Civil War: Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt). 1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania. 1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph. 1903 – Black Saturday occurs, killing 12 in a stadium collapse in Philadelphia. 1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight. 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous Allied victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive). 1919 – The Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 is signed. It establishes peaceful relations between Afghanistan and the UK, and confirms the Durand line as the mutual border. In return, the UK is no longer obligated to subsidize the Afghan government. 1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight. 1940 – The "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel. 1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence. 1945 – The London Charter is signed by France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, establishing the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials. 1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world's first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the heaviest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft, with the longest wingspan of any military aircraft, and the first bomber with intercontinental range. 1963 – Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes. 1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the current ruling party of Zimbabwe, is formed by a split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union. 1967 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. 1969 – At a zebra crossing in London, photographer Iain Macmillan takes the iconic photo that becomes the cover image of the Beatles' album Abbey Road. 1973 – Kim Dae-jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped. 1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day. 1988 – The 8888 Uprising begins in Rangoon (Yangon), Burma (Myanmar). Led by students, hundreds of thousands join in nationwide protests against the one-party regime. On September 18, the demonstrations end in a military crackdown, killing thousands. 1988 – The first night baseball game in the history of Chicago's Wrigley Field (game was rained out in the fourth inning). 1988 – Rap group N.W.A release their debut studio album Straight Outta Compton. 1989 – Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission: Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission. 1990 – Iraq occupies Kuwait and the state is annexed to Iraq. This would lead to the Gulf War shortly afterward. 1991 – The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses. 1993 – The 7.8 Mw  Guam earthquake shakes the island with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), causing around $250 million in damage and injuring up to 71 people. 1998 – Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan is raided by Taliban leading to the deaths of ten Iranian diplomats and a journalist. 2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence. 2007 – An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889. 2008 – A EuroCity express train en route from Kraków, Poland to Prague, Czech Republic strikes a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the railroad track near Studénka railway station in the Czech Republic and derails, killing eight people and injuring 64 others. 2008 – The 29th modern summer Olympic Games took place in Beijing, China until August 24. 2010 – China Floods: A mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gansu, China, kills more than 1,400 people. 2013 – A suicide bombing at a funeral in the Pakistani city of Quetta kills at least 31 people. 2015 – Eight people are killed in a shooting in Harris County, Texas. 2016 – Terrorists attack a government hospital in Quetta, Pakistan with a suicide blast and shooting, killing between 70 and 94 people, and injuring around 130 others.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.19

461 – Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militum Ricimer. 636 – The Rashidun Caliphate defeats the Sasanian Empire at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in Iraq. 1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island called Borinquen he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed again Puerto Rico). 1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War. 1802 – The Garinagu arrive at British Honduras (present-day Belize). 1816 – Warsaw University is established. 1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railroad, is opened. 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine. 1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa solidifies the unification between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. 1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claims two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain. 1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army captures Bitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia. 1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures. 1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen. 1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor. 1942 – Mutesa II is crowned the 35th and last Kabaka (king) of Buganda, prior to the restoration of the kingdom in 1993. 1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt. 1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the sixth War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort. 1944 – World War II: Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden. 1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations. 1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe. 1952 – Greek Field Marshal Alexander Papagos becomes the 152nd Prime Minister of Greece. 1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe's oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III. 1955 – National Review publishes its first issue. 1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon. 1969 – Association football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal. 1977 – TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 131. 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran. 1984 – San Juanico disaster: A series of explosions at the Pemex petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people. 1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time. 1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty. 1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud. 1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia. 1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers. 1998 – Clinton–Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton. 1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft. 2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history. 2004 – The worst brawl in NBA history results in several players being suspended. Several players and fans are charged with assault. 2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand. Twenty-nine people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914. 2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.8

870 – Treaty of Meerssen: King Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald partition the Middle Frankish Kingdom into two larger east and west divisions. 1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula. 1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland. 1509 – Krishnadeva Raya is crowned Emperor of Vijayanagara at Chittoor. 1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven. 1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage. 1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines: The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England. 1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden. 1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill: English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces. 1648 – Mehmed IV (1648–1687) succeeds Ibrahim I (1640–1648) as Ottoman Emperor. 1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the king of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal. 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard. 1793 – The insurrection of Lyon occurs during the French Revolution. 1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska. 1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). 1863 – American Civil War: Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt). 1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania. 1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph. 1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight. 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous Allied victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive). 1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight. 1940 – The "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel. 1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence. 1945 – The London Charter is signed by France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, establishing the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials. 1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world's first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the heaviest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft, with the longest wingspan of any military aircraft, and the first bomber with intercontinental range. 1963 – Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes. 1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the current ruling party of Zimbabwe, is formed by a split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union. 1967 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. 1969 – At a zebra crossing in London, photographer Iain Macmillan takes the iconic photo that becomes the cover image of the Beatles' album Abbey Road. 1969 – The Manson Family commits the Tate murders. 1973 – Kim Dae-jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped. 1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day. 1989 – Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission: Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission. 1990 – Iraq occupies Kuwait and the state is annexed to Iraq. This would lead to the Gulf War shortly afterward. 1991 – The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses. 1993 – The 7.8 Mw Guam earthquake shakes the island with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), causing around $250 million in damage and injuring up to 71 people. 1998 – Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan is raided by Taliban leading to the deaths of ten Iranian diplomats and a journalist. 2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence. 2007 – An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889. 2008 – A EuroCity express train en route from Kraków, Poland to Prague, Czech Republic strikes a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the railroad track near Studénka railway station in the Czech Republic and derails, killing eight people and injuring 64 others. 2008 – The Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad were opened in Beijing, China. 2009 – A tour helicopter and a private Piper aircraft collide over the Hudson River near Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S; all 3 people on the helicopter and all 6 people aboard the Piper are killed, 40 blocks south of where US Airways Flight 1549 ditched after suffering multiple bird strikes just 7 months earlier. 2010 – China Floods: A mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gansu, China, kills more than 1,400 people. 2013 – A suicide bombing at a funeral in the Pakistani city of Quetta kills at least 31 people. 2015 – Eight people are killed in a shooting in Harris County, Texas. 2016 – Terrorists attack a government hospital in Quetta, Pakistan with a suicide blast and shooting, killing between 70 and 94 people, and injuring around 130 others.