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chroniclesofamber · 5 years

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THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER & History Lessons II

The first two books of Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber — Nine Princes in Amber and The Guns of Avalon — were written between 1967 and the early 1970s. The Vietnam War cast a long shadow from the 1960s into the first years of the next decade. In Nine Princes in Amber, for example, one of the most memorable episodes of action and conflict occurs in the seventh chapter:

“The sheets of light and heat flapped a steady, welling thunder as we ran, and the waves of warmth beat upon us, washed over us. Soon they were right there alongside us, and the trees blackened and the leaves flaked down, and some of the smaller trees began to sway. For as far ahead as we could see, our way was an alley of fires… We made it to the fork, though, beating out flames on our smoldering clothing, wiping ashes from our eyes… We ran through burning grasses… The interlocked branches of the trees overhead had become as the beams in a cathedral of fire…”

The Vietnam War was part of the nightly news back then. Stories and images of napalm and agent orange falling upon the jungles of Southeast Asia were current at the time and the quote above would have resonated in the American consciousness. But it was not just the horrors of war haunting America. There was also civil unrest and a rebellious younger generation ready to take up arms against the old guard who had nourished the conflicts and tensions leading to the strife stretching from the ’60s into the ’70s.

After the baptism of fire experienced by narrator and main character Corwin — which concludes with the provident arrival of riflemen trained and led by him to defend Amber and position him as the kingdom’s effective ruler — he finds himself at the top of a society struggling with an uneasy and temporary peace. Powerful foes have been unleashed upon the immortal city, and it looks like it may have been an inside job. In fact, it may even be that Corwin himself has provided unintended assistance to the enemy. This self-reflective attitude of examining one’s own role in the evils plaguing the world belonged very much to the troubling era which began with the assassination of President Kennedy and ended with the resignation of President Nixon.

SIGN OF THE UNICORN (1975)

History: The longest gap between the publication of any of the books of The Chronicles of Amber: three years. An air of defeat hangs over America, as well as over places beyond. The Club of Rome puts out its report “The Limits to Growth” and in 1974 the world population reaches four billion. The Apollo 13 failure of 1970 has left its mark, followed by a decline in support for the program dooming the final three missions to cancellation. Apollo 17 therefore sees the last men on the Moon in December of 1972, when one of the most popular photographs ever is taken — the iconic “Blue Marble” image of a nearly full Earth — and soon becomes an emblem of the environmental movement. In contrast to the “Blue Marble,” in the summer of ’72 the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Napalm girl” photograph makes headlines, and less than a year later the last U.S. soldier leaves Vietnam subsequent to the Paris Peace Accords. The war is over and the U.S. did not win it.

The war may be over, but deep problems remain — a description of the years during which Zelazny wrote Sign of the Unicorn, but also a description of the contents of the book itself. “The Troubles” — as the conflict in Northern Ireland comes to be called — of the United Kingdom undergo a rapid escalation: the British Army shoots dead 14 unarmed marchers on terrible Bloody Sunday; the British embassy in Dublin is burned down during rioting all over Ireland; bombs detonate in Whitehall and the Old Bailey; car bombs set by the Ulster Volunteer Force in Dublin and Monaghan kill 33 civilians and injure 300 others.

Meanwhile, a story just as big unfolds on the other side of the Atlantic: Five White House operatives are arrested for the burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Hotel. Nixon orders special prosecutor Archibald Cox to be fired over his subpoena of recordings of incriminating White House conversations, but is eventually compelled by the Supreme Court to release the tapes. Impeachment proceedings underway, the public and even members of the Republican Party against him, Nixon resigns in August of 1974 and the unelected Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes President. Likewise, Eric falls and Corwin steps in as the interim regent of an Amber reeling from war and internal strife, a state of affairs closely matching the condition of America as offered in Nixon’s resignation speech.

Lesson: Corwin finds himself the target of an attempt to frame him for the murder of Caine, his brother Gérard pummels him in a fight and dangles him over a cliff, he is nearly stabbed to death in his suite only hours after Brand is knifed in similar fashion, in the misty city of ghosts known as Tir-na Nog’th he is attacked and comes perilously close to plummeting to his death. In this context, the cautions of his sister Fiona regarding the dangers of wearing for too long the ultimate artifact of power, the Jewel of Judgment, take on new meaning. She warns it can kill him. The information possibly saves his life, as it persuades him to remove the Jewel when at the brink of death. The lesson is bigger than that, however. Corwin learns that power without knowledge or wisdom is dangerous and can be fatal, something which his brother Eric, as king, did not discover in time.

Journey: It all begins with Corwin’s discovery of a crime and a corpse, which leads straight to his learning of Random’s attempt to rescue Brand from his tower. And it ends with Corwin and Random, along with Ganelon, looking down upon the damaged Pattern (also the result of a crime, though they do not know that yet), just a day after Corwin’s meeting with a freshly rescued and recovered Brand. Crimes call out for investigation and from the first pages of the first book Corwin has played the detective. In the opening scene, Corwin has questions for Random and in the final scene he finally has some answers. Now he knows from his interview with Brand that there was a conspiracy by the red-haired faction to seize Amber’s throne, that Dara is descended from Chaos and intended for that throne, that a game has been in progress where he has been but a useful knight and where the broken Pattern before him is the board upon which it has been played.

Watergate, Painful Endings...

...and Perhaps Resurrections — the Mid-’70s

“The sun was that great orb of molten gold we had seen earlier. The sky was a deeper blue than that of Amber, and there were no clouds in it. That sea was a matching blue, unspecked by sail or island. I saw no birds, and I heard no sounds other than our own. An enormous silence lay upon this place, this day. In the bowl of my suddenly clear vision, the Pattern at last achieved its disposition upon the surface below. I thought at first that it was inscribed in the rock, but as we drew nearer I saw that it was contained within it—gold-pink swirls, like veining in an exotic marble, natural-seeming despite the obvious purpose to the design… A dark, rough-edged smudge had obliterated an area of the section immediately beneath us, running from its outer rim to the center.”

Dark times are depicted in Sign of the Unicorn amidst the darkest days of the Seventies. OPEC launches its oil embargo, soon doubling the price of crude, all just after the dollar has been devalued 10%. A recession affecting most of the world ensues, and the oil crisis does not wind down until 1974. Cults, destructive to themselves and often to others, appear in newspapers and on television. The Manson Family is sentenced, the Symbionese Liberation Army abducts and brainwashes heiress Patty Hearst, the Heaven’s Gate UFO cult is founded near San Diego.

Violent groups on the radical left, however, are increasingly foiled and contained: the Baader-Meinhof Red Army Faction is arrested; the Japanese Red Army, in decline after the Lod Airport attack, is defunct as an independent organization within a year of the attack; the Angry Brigade ends its run in a British courtroom.

At the same time, the political left makes gains: Labour’s Harold Wilson returns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Helmut Schmidt of the Social Democratic Party becomes Chancellor of West Germany after a spy scandal brings down his predecessor; centrist Valéry Giscard d’Estaing succeeds Pompidou as President of France; the Carnation Revolution overthrows Portugal’s dictatorship and restores democracy; the Democratic Party logs historic victories in the House, Senate and state Governorships. The Old Bailey sees the first woman serve as a judge, the U.S. Congress sends the ERA to the states for ratification, women are finally admitted to Dartmouth College, the FBI hires women as agents for the first time, equal pay for women is mandated in Australia — liberal politics enjoys a resurgence during this period.

Whether intentional or not, the revolutionary red-haired cabal of Amber mirrors the restless idealists of the times, violent and otherwise, hoping to institute change. The overreach by forces on the right, responsible for the deaths of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr., at last seems to come full circle with the resignation of Nixon and a national rejection of the authoritarian wielding of autocratic power. As already suggested, the hubris Eric demonstrates (like Nixon) in crowning himself king and regularly resorting to the most dramatic powers of the Jewel of Judgment brings him to his death on the slopes of Kolvir.

Eric has died, yet while Corwin and Brand both tread recklessly close to death they instead return bearing valuable new information — and, in one case, an enchanted mechanical arm — introducing the theme of resurrection and restoration. The Vietnam War at last is over, the crisis of the Nixon presidency has ended; the world is nowhere near out of the woods, but these events provide scope for respite and relief, and perhaps…hope? Vietnam and Watergate have together represented a perpetual storm cloud over America, a weight upon the world. The oil crisis has been harrowing, but soon leads directly to alternative energy R&D and long-needed improvements in automobiles. The world is still beset with sweeping, deep-seated problems, and the clouds have not truly cleared, but rays of hope are breaking through to shine on both beautiful inspirations and stark realities, much as the brilliant sun of the real Amber illuminates the broken Pattern in the final scene of Sign of the Unicorn.

“‘Then—looking for congruence—that would be about where our own Pattern lies,’ [Random said as we regarded the oval area of smooth, level rock].

‘Yes,’ I said again.

‘And that blotted area is to the south, from whence comes the black road.’

I nodded slowly as the understanding arrived and forged itself into a certainty.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked. ‘It seems to correspond to the true state of affairs, but beyond that I do not understand its significance. Why have we been brought here and shown this thing?’

‘It does not correspond to the true state of affairs,’ I said. ‘It is the true state of affairs.’”

[...to be continued in a future post...]

#chronicles of amber #roger zelazny #sign of the unicorn #the chronicles of amber #the seventies

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ljones41 · 6 years

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TIME MACHINE: Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)

TIME MACHINE: ASSASSINATION OF SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY (1925-1968) This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, in Los Angeles, California. Kennedy was fatally shot by a gun man, while walking through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel with his wife Ethel Kennedy, former FBI agent William Barry, Olympian athlete Rafer Johnson and former football player Rosey Grier.

Kennedy was the seventh child of former U.S. Ambassador to Britain and businessman Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Following the election of his older brother John F. Kennedy as the 35th U.S. President in 1960, Kennedy served as Attorney General for his brother's administration. In November 1968, Jack Kennedy was assassinated by a sniper in Dallas, Texas. Nine months following his brother's death, Robert Kennedy ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate, representing the State of New York and beat his opponent, Kenneth Keating. Kennedy spent his years in the Senate, Kennedy advocated gun control and the Johnson Administration's Great Society program for the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. He served on the Senate Labor Committee and supported the campaigns for better working conditions for laborers. And by 1968, Kennedy had shifted his opinion on American involvement in Vietnam by advocating the eventual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese soldiers from South Vietnam. While meeting with labor activist Cesar Chavez in Delano, California in February 1968, Kennedy decided to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic nomination for U.S. President. However, Johnson changed his mind about running for re-election following the Tet Offensive in Vietnam that occurred between late January and late March 1968. Kennedy officially announced his candidacy on March 16, 1968. His main opponents for the Democratic nomination were Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and later, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. Kennedy ran on a platform of racial and economic justice, non-aggression in foreign policy, decentralization of power, and social change. His policy objectives did not sit well with the business community, where he was viewed as something of a liability. Many businessmen also opposed Kennedy's support of tax increases to social programs. Kennedy learned of the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee; while visiting Indianapolis, Indiana. Riots broke out in many cities following King's death, with the exception of Indianapolis. There, Kennedy gave his famous "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" speech on April 5, 1968. Later, he attended King's funeral with his younger brother Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and his sister-in-law, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. He won the Indiana Democratic primary on May 7, 1968; and the Nebraska primary on May 14. But he lost the Oregon primary to Senator McCarthy on May 28. The Kennedy campaign hoped that the senator would beat McCarthy for the California primary, knocking the latter out of the race; and eventually face Vice-President Humphrey in Chicago, Illinois. The 1968 California presidential primary elections were held on Tuesday, June 4, 1968. Kennedy claimed victory over McCarthy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, four hours after the California polls closed. He spoke on the telephone with one of his major supporters, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Then around 12:10 a.m., Kennedy addressed his campaign supporters in the hotel's Embassy Room ballroom. He ended his speech with the following words: "My thanks to all of you; and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there!" Since presidential candidates were not entitled to Secret Service protection back in 1968, Kennedy's only official security was William Barry, a former F.B.I. agent. Both Rafer Johnson and Rosey Grier served as unofficial bodyguards. He had planned to meet another gathering of supporters in another part of the Ambassador Hotel by making his way through the Embassy Room ballroom. However, reporters wanted a second press conference and Kennedy's campaign aide, Fred Dutton, suggested to Barry that the senator should forgo the second gathering and instead head for the press area, via the hotel's kitchen and pantry area behind the ballroom. After his speech, Kennedy started to leave the ballroom, when Barry stopped him and suggested the alternate route through the kitchen corridor. Both Barry and Dutton tried to clear a path for Kennedy, but he was hemmed in by a crowd and followed maître d'hôtel Karl Uecker through a back exit. While Kennedy allowed Uecker to lead him through the hotel's kitchen area, he shook hands with people he encountered. As they started down a narrow passageway, Kennedy turned and shook hands with busboy Juan Romero. At that moment, Sirhan Sirhanstepped down from a low tray-stacker beside the ice machine, rushed past Uecker, and fired a .22 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver at Kennedy at least three times or more, before the latter fell to the floor. Romero cradled the wounded Kennedy's head, while sitting on the floor. Sirhan was subdued by Barry, Johnson, Grier, and writer George Plimpton, while he continued to shoot in random directions. Five other people were wounded: *William Weisel of ABC News *Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers union, *Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans *Ira Goldstein of the Continental News Service *Irwin Stroll, Kennedy campaign volunteer Ethel Kennedy, who was three months pregnant, stood outside the crush of people at the scene seeking help. Someone led her to her husband and she knelt beside him. Thirty minutes later, Kennedy was transferred to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. Surgery began at 3:12 a.m. and lasted three hours and forty minutes. Spokesman Frank Mankiewicz announced at 5:30 p.m. that Kennedy's doctors were concerned over his failure to show any improvement. Kennedy had been shot three times. Despite extensive neurosurgery to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain, he was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968; nearly 26 hours after being shot. Historians believed that Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab with Jordanian citizenship, had shot Kennedy in retaliation for the latter's support of Israel during the Six Day War. However, others have criticized this oversimplification of Sirhan's motives, pointing out that these historians have failed to take account of his psychological problems. Sirhan's lawyers attempted to use a defense of diminished responsibility during the trial, while he tried to confess to the crime and change his plea to guilty on several occasions. With Lynn Compton serving as prosecutor, Sirhan was eventually convicted of the murder of Robert F. Kennedy on April 17, 1969. He was sentenced to death six days later. However, the sentence was commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 1972; after the California Supreme Court invalidated all pending death sentences that were imposed prior to 1972. This was due to the California v. Anderson ruling. Since that time, Sirhan has been denied parole 15 times and is currently incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in southern San Diego County. Robert Kennedy's funeral was held on June 8, 1968 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. His brother, Ted Kennedy, gave the eulogy. Following the mass, Kennedy's body was transported by a slow-moving train to Washington, D.C., where he was buried near his older brother John, in Arlington National Cemetery. After the assassination, Congress altered the Secret Service's mandate to include protection for presidential candidates. Ethel gave birth to Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy in December 1968. Although he had a slight lead over Kennedy at the time of the latter's death, Vice-President Humphreys became the leading Democratic nominee for the 1968 Presidential election and won the nomination during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, later that summer. He eventually lost the election to the Republican candidate, former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, in November 1968.

#robert f. kennedy #ambassador hotel #robert f. kennedy assassination #rfk50 #rfk assassination

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jonjost · 4 years

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Cara Clarinha

The days now pass in a dense fog, one of mis- and dys-information, a tidal wave of news from around the world, of how many infected, how many dead. Each day the numbers leap, each day the social responses become harsher. Now it seems half the world is ordered to stay at home (if you have one). Highways are empty, hospitals are full. In Italy corpses line the corridors of some places. A plague is upon us. Not only that of this virus, but of our own ill behavior. One feels the sense of dread thickening in the air, the fear of change, drastic change, casting across the sky like a leaden cloud. While some suffocate literally, which is how one dies from the coronavirus, metaphorically we are all suffocating, choking on a blunt reminder of what we have actually done to our globe and ourselves. The skies clear. And somewhere deep inside some clarity begins to come into focus, and those suddenly not working 8 to 14 hours a day, frantically going to and from, buying things of habit, find time to think a moment. And other things become clear: that the frantic world in which your job, your life, your imagined future were all invested may just vanish. And it may.

Reading tea leaves is a nice mystical thing, like Tarot cards and astrology charts. Some like to do these things and some take them seriously. I instead read other things – hard, often unpleasant facts, social, political, and physical realities. I do not come to conclusions because I like them, but because that is what I see, piecing one thing and another together. For now many decades I saw this kind of conjunction of realities coming together to produce something like what is going on now; that at some point the stresses constructed into our society and our way of living – our “life-style” would become too great, and it would all quickly collapse. Not long ago there was a period when catastrophe theory was academically popular.

While I was long ago familiar with this theory, though I had hardly “studied” it, I had an interesting experience which took the theory out of the sterile world of academia, and put it right in front of me. Back in 1975 or so, I had driven all the way from Montana in a VW van, to San Diego and on all the way to the East Coast. It was for my first screening at the Museum of Modern Art. The van had no brakes, and it is a long, interesting story, but best told another time. At all events I went for a screening in New England, meeting for the first time Peter Hutton (who died 4 years ago, come June), and saw his wonderful films the first time. And he saw my Speaking Directly, which he liked and he wondered how I could like his films, so very different. Some people seem to think one can only like work that is the same as one’s own.

From Speaking Directly

Where he lived there was a Porsche garage, and since they are VW’s underneath, I traded them a lid of the world’s worst grass I’d grown in Montana, to fix my brakes. At the time the Tet offensive was going on in Vietnam – that was the last military action by the Vietcong against America – and they were moving into Saigon and American troops were fleeing, taking helicopters from the roof of the US Embassy. That was on the radio while the mechanic was taking the wheels off my van to fix the brakes. The wheel drums were rusted onto the spindle, and he explained rust was a crystalline structure and when the tool he was using applied enough pressure the structure would suddenly collapse, and the 30 kilo piece of steel would just pop off. He advised me to step back as I wouldn’t like that landing on my foot. A few days before the US government had assured the public that in Vietnam all was stable and not to be concerned. Standing in that garage I put the two together, the rusted corroded matter of my van, and the corrupted, corroded social/political matter in Vietnam. The same.

Peter Hutton and New York Portrait 1

And so today as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the world, it is quite similar. The economic system which we have built under the rubric “globalism” under “neo- liberal” ideology, which is really just capitalism unrestrained from its own tendencies and unchecked by regional forces, has, in combination with modern medical practices – meaning from the last 100 years – and other factors, including our methods of agriculture and manufacturing, all come together to make this rupture. It is an unsustainable system and finally the stresses on it have caused it to stumble, and fall, just as did the rusted structure on my van’s wheel, and Saigon, when there was enough stress to break the seemingly stable system.

Whether this virus will accomplish such a rupture or not in the long run, it has certainly in a very short period caused a great disruption in our “life as usual.” While there are now, of course, various conspiracy theories as to just how, who, what, why all this has happened (that the US did it, China did it, etc. etc.), my sense is that while it was not deliberate, it is a consequence of our cumulative actions and abuse of the natural world in which we live.

Philip Guston

I would hope this great break in what we thought of as “normal” would give us pause about resuming things as usual once this has passed. That we would, globally, and locally sit down and seriously think about what it is that we have done so terribly wrong – not just to produce this virus, but to produce the ultimately deeply damaging and unhappy world we have created. For this to actually happen I think this current crisis must last into the summer or autumn, enough of a shock to our sense of “normal” to settle in deep enough for us to stop and consider everything. So I hope. The hard-nosed observer of our cultures, though, has his doubts.

Matilde, in Portrait

The other day, my “other” Italian family, with Tilde being the messenger, sent me word that so far they are all OK (the older of them are in their 80’s so this is very risky for them, and they live in Lombardia where the virus has hit hardest to now). And she sent me photos of her grandchildren, writing she hope it would make me smile. Which it did, though also it brought tears to my eyes, thinking of the possible world they may grow up in. Unless, as I suggested above, we seriously and deeply change our societies, their values and behaviors.

Famiglia Rebosio

And as the world has indeed changed, so has the little modest and really not very important world of cinema. Festivals are cancelled around the world, including Cannes. Productions have come to a halt (a big animation feature my friend here in Portland, Mark, was working on has stopped for two weeks, for now, but I imagine it will be at least two months and perhaps more, or perhaps it will simply be stopped despite its Oscar winning director).

With the changed circumstances I have decided to post Pequenos Milagres on-line, for the moment for free. Aside from the last minutes of it, it is a joyous and beautiful work, so perhaps in these hard times around the globe it might make some joy for people to see it. I hope so. And for you. Preferably see on a good screen and with a good sound system or headphones. It is here.

From Pequenos Milagres

I assume you are, like many others, staying at home. I hope things go well for you, Tiago, and your friends. I am staying as best I can in, avoiding other people and trying as best I can to not contract the coronavirus. And if I do I hope my body can deal with it. I have no medical insurance so I don’t really know what would be done with me if I required hospitalization – though I would I think try to refuse it. We shall see.

Amo-te, Clarinha. Be safe and be well.

I love you

Teu pai,

jon

Uma Lettera para Clara: O Contágio 3 Cara Clarinha The days now pass in a dense fog, one of mis- and dys-information, a tidal wave of news from around the world, of how many infected, how many dead.

#Chicken Little #coronavirus #COVID-19 #Famiglia Rebosio #MoMA #Pequenos Milagres #Peter Hutton #Philip Guston #Speaking Directly

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yeskraim · 4 years

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China coronavirus outbreak: All the latest updates

China on Thursday removed the top political leadership in Hubei, the province at the centre of the escalating coroanvirus outbreak, shortly after health officials there reported 242 people died from the virus on Wednesday – more than twice the number of the previous day and the highest daily toll since the outbreak began.

The province and its capital Wuhan where the infection now known as COVID-19 is thought to have originated in late December also reported more than 14,800 new cases of the infection after adopting new clinical methods to diagnose the virus.

The number of infected across China rose to nearly 60,000.

In Hong Kong, new virus rekindles old animosities towards China

COVID-19: WHO renames deadly coronavirus

Weakest link: Global supply chains disrupted by coronavirus

At least 25 countries have confirmed cases and several nations have evacuated their citizens from Hubei. Two deaths have been recorded outside mainland China – one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the virus poses a “grave threat” to the world, with chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying the virus could have “more powerful consequences than any terrorist action”.

Here are the latest updates:

Thursday, February 13

Official media have reported that a commune of 10,000 residents northwest of the capital Hanoi was put in lockdown due to a cluster of cases there.

The online newspaper VN Express cited a senior official of Vinh Phuc province as reporting an increase in cases in Son Loi commune.

Vietnam has confirmed 16 case of the diseases, most of them in the province.

Researchers ramp up efforts to develop coronavirus vaccine

North Korea imposes quarantine measures on all foreign visitors

North Korea will impose a month-long quarantine on all foreign visitors and others suspected to have COVID-19, the official Korean Central News Agency said on Thursday.

The decision to extend the quarantine period to 30 days was based on research studies suggesting the incubation period of the virus could be as long as 24 days.

The report did not confirm the country’s previous quarantine period, but the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang said in a Facebook post earlier this month that North Korea was putting foreign visitors under a 15-day quarantine.

North Korea has yet to report a case of the virus, but state media reports have hinted that an uncertain number of people have been quarantined after showing symptoms.

China replaces head of its Hong Kong and Macau affairs office

China is replacing the head of its office that oversees matters in Hong Kong, the human resources ministry announced in Beijing on Thursday.

Xia Baolong, a 67-year-old vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), will replace Zhang Xiaoming.

Communist party chief in Wuhan replaced – state media

Ma Guoqiang, the party chief in Hubei’s capital Wuhan, has been fired, the state-run Global Times reported.

The paper said the removal of the provincial bosses amid complaints over their handling of the outbreak showed the central government was responding swiftly to the crisis.

Here is a significant sign of how swiftly China’s central govt responds to the #coronavirus outbreak: it took only about 2 months to see a major reshuffle of top officials in #coronavirus epicenter Hubei compared to 4 months during the 2003 #SARS outbreak. https://t.co/00N9bpNN69 https://t.co/gUyFBzZPQF pic.twitter.com/crRD2UMHso

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) February 13, 2020

Singapore official warns more coronavirus cases likely

An official in Singapore official said the number of infections in the city-state was likely to rise because the virus was clearly circulating within the population.

“We really cannot say whether it will get better, whether it will get worse, what sort of situation is going to unfold,” Lawrence Wong, a co-chairman of Singapore’s task force fighting the outbreak, said.

“We don’t know how successful we will be in all of these containment measures that we have put in place.”

Wong said additional measures could involve “social distancing in order to try and reduce the chance of the virus spreading further.”

Singapore has reported 50 confirmed cases. Eight people are in criticial condition, while 15 have fully recovered.

China’s Hubei province communist party chief relieved of duty – state media

Jiang Chaoliang, the head of the Communist Party in the Chinese province of Hubei, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, has been relieved of his duties, state media reported on Thursday.

Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong has been appointed as the new secretary of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, the report said, citing the party’s central committee

44 more coronavirus cases on Japan ship: health minister

A further 44 people on board a cruise ship moored off Japan’s coast have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the country’s health minister said on Thursday.

Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said the 44 new cases were detected from another 221 new tests. They raise the number of infections detected on the Diamond Princess to 218, in addition to a quarantine officer who also tested positive for the virus.

More people on board the quarantined Diamond Princess were diagnosed with COVID-19 on Thursday [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]

Tokyo, IOC officials reiterate that the Olympics are on

Tokyo Olympic organisers reiterated on Thursday at the start of two days of meetings with the International Olympic Committee: the Summer Games will not be waylaid by the coronavirus that is spreading from neighbouring China.

“I would like to make it clear again that we are not considering a cancellation or postponement of the games. Let me make that clear,” Yoshiro Mori, the president of the organising committee, said, speaking through an interpreter to dozens of top IOC officials gathered in Tokyo.

The Olympics open in just over five months, and the torch relay begins next month.

Numerous sporting events have already been postponed as a result of the virus.

Seriously ill pushed to margins as China battles coronavirus

Ruyi Wan was diagnosed with leukaemia last May and was hoping for a bone marrow transplant after chemotherapy failed.

But as medical resources are funnelled into fighting the coronavirus, the 20-year-old has been unable to get treatment in Wuhan and cannot go elsewhere because of the travel restrictions. With a serious illness she is also more vulnerable to the infection.

“I hope for a miracle because Ruyi is so young and has so many dreams,” her mother Juan Wan told Al Jazeera. “We can’t let her die.”

Read Shawn Yuan’s story on the people suffering from cancer, kidney disease and HIV now struggling to get the treatment they need in a system stretched to its limits.

US airlines extend China flight cancellations into late April

United Airlines said late on Wednesday it would extend cancellations of all US flights to China until late April because of the coronavirus, joining other US carriers that have suspended China routes.

Airlines say part of the reason is a dramatic drop-off in demand, but the US has also introduced strict restrictions on travellers to the United States who have visited China, barring nearly all non-US residents if they have been in China within the previous14 days.

The US is also limiting flights from China or other international flights with US passengers who have been to China within the previous 14 days to 11 major airports for enhanced screening. It also requires a quarantine of US citizens who have recently visited Hubei province in China.

As we continue to evaluate our operation between our U.S. hubs and Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai and Hong Kong, we have decided to extend the suspension of those flights until April 24. Learn more: https://t.co/3g6Lbe4xQZ pic.twitter.com/IabHFdcYmP

— United Airlines (@united) February 13, 2020

CDC confirms 14th US case of coronavirus in Wuhan evacuee

A second person evacuated from Wuhan to a US military base near San Diego has been diagnosed with the new coronavirus, raising the tally of confirmed cases in the United States to 14, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday.

The patient was among 232 people under quarantine at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar after being airlifted out of Wuhan earlier this month, CDC spokeswoman Ana Toro said.

Another evacuee was diagnosed with the virus earlier this week, but CDC officials said it appeared the two had been separately exposed to the virus in China before arriving in the United States.

They arrived on different planes and were housed in separate facilities.

“At this time there is no indication of person-to-person spread of this virus at the quarantine facility, but CDC will carry out a thorough contact investigation as part of its current response strategy to detect and contain any cases of infection with this virus,” Dr Christopher Braden, deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.

Cruise ship shunned over coronavirus fears arrives in Cambodia – ship tracker

A cruise ship which had spent two weeks at sea after being turned away by five countries over fears that someone on board might have the coronavirus arrived in Cambodia on Thursday, satellite-tracking data showed.

The MS Westerdam arrived in Sihanoukville, according to data published by the Marine Traffic website.

Although no passengers have fallen ill on board, the ship had been turned away by Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines and Thailand over fears that someone on the cruise could have the virus.

UK confirms new case, first in London

The UK has confirmed its ninth case of coronavirus, saying the latest patient – the first in London – had caught the virus while in China.

“One further patient in England has tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), bringing the total number of cases in the UK to nine,” Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England said in a statement.

“This virus was passed on in China and the patient has now been transferred to a specialist NHS centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in London.”

Read more about which countries have confirmed cases here.

Read the updates from Wednesday, February 12 here.

The post China coronavirus outbreak: All the latest updates appeared first on Gadgets To Make Life Easier.

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gta-5-cheats · 6 years

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America’s youth take to streets in ‘March for Our Lives’ protests

New Post has been published on http://secondcovers.com/americas-youth-take-to-streets-in-march-for-our-lives-protests/

America’s youth take to streets in ‘March for Our Lives’ protests

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Teenagers are taking America where adults won’t go.

Millions of demonstrators around the world Saturday in support of tougher gun control laws in what may be the biggest youth-led protest movement since the Vietnam War.

The main March for Our Lives rally in Washington, DC, was the day’s biggest, to demand new laws and an end to gun violence in the wake of .

Marchers packed 10 blocks on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the US Capitol and heard a program dominated by teenage speakers.

The 9-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr. told marchers at the Washington, DC, rally Saturday that she has a dream of her own.

“I have a dream that enough is enough,” Yolanda Renee King said, recalling her grandfather’s famous 1963 speech delivered from nearly the same place on the National Mall. “That this should be a gun-free world. Period.”

The clamoring crowd cheered the little girl on.

King finished by leading the crowd in a chant, saying, “Spread the word! Have you heard? All across the nation, we are going to be a great generation!”

In Parkland, Fla., more than 20,000 filled Pine Trails Park near Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, where a gunman killed 17 last month.

Students and supporters chanted “Enough is enough” and held up signs with slogans like “Our ballots will stop bullets.”

“I’m marching so no other parent has to hear, ‘Mom, I’ve been shot,’ ” read the sign carried by Ellen Mayor, the mother of a student who was shot in the knee in the Parkland attack and survived.

In Boston, 50,000 thronged Boston Common. A young boy stood atop a snowbank with a sign reading “13 years old and afraid. Not Okay.”

“I will always remember every single detail,” Leonor Muñoz, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, in Parkland told the Boston protesters. “My trauma isn’t going away.”

Rallies in Miami, Cincinnati, Houston, Minneapolis, and elsewhere also drew big crowds.

On the West Coast, 60,000 people marched on Los Angeles City Hall, according to police estimates.

Actress/singer Willow Smith, 17, praised the Parkland student activists for “connecting themselves through their passion and through their pain.”

In Sacramento, Calif., thousands chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go” at the state capitol. Rallies in San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego drew thousands.

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“We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today,” said White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters. “Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president’s.”

Survivors of the 1999 Columbine HS massacre were overjoyed by the big crowds Saturday at gun-control rallies across the country.

“I have been waiting so long for something like this to happen,” said Joanna Gates, who was 17 when she lived through the massacre in Colorado that left 13 dead — not counting the two shooters. “It’s time for change. It’s beyond time,” Gates told the Sunday Times of London while at the anti-gun march in Washington.

At a related protest in Denver, Coni Sanders, whose father was a Columbine teacher killed in the shooting, said, “We’ve been marching on these issues for 18 years. This is the first time that I’ve really felt any hope.”

And the protests weren’t limited to the US.

From Argentina to Iceland, from Ghana to New Zealand, young people and their supporters rallied across the world Saturday in support of American students fighting for stricter gun-control laws.

The March For Our Lives Web site listed over 40 “sister marches” in other countries.

The first of the day was in tiny Pohnpei, one of the islands of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Soon afterward, a few hundred people gathered in Sydney, Australia. With a poster featuring a shark, a crocodile, snakes and spiders, one protester made her point clear: “Of all the things that can kill you in Australia, a mass shooter isn’t one of them.”

Gun laws in Australia were tightened after a 1996 massacre in which 35 people were killed.

A large rally took place in Tokyo, and thousands marched to the US Consulate in Mumbai, India. Events in Europe stretched from Madrid to Lithuania. Hundreds dropped to the ground in a “die-in” near the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin and outside the new U.S. Embassy in London.

In Paris, about 100 demonstrators rallied near the Eiffel Tower.

In Denmark, Finnish exchange student Iida Keskinen told CNN the idea that mass shootings have become the norm “has really shook me.”

“I really wanted to make sure I had even a small impact in supporting this cause,” she said.

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did. – President Trump re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam. Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”1 Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.” As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this, of course, is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that. Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis. What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind: How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The Washington Post has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.”2 Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia? Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton.3 On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes. After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distant himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.”4 Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phony articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phony CIA documents, and much more. The Post recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The Post stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.”5 So … Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes. An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact”. It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly Russia Today), which can be seen in the US, the UK and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?) RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The US government recently forced RT America to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials. The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”6 Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.” So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us. … Ah yes, another headline in the Post (November 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit”. Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.” Was there ever a time when the Post would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars. In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was … * 1948: The Pittsburgh Press published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists”, published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments. * Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean:Q: What would happen to my insurance?A: It would go to the Communists.Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor. * 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools. * As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?” * Throughout the cold war, traffic in phony Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s U.S. News and World Report in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists.“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the Congressional Record in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin. * A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. … There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water. * Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night”, boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!” * 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism”, and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the US Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights. * 1955: A US Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist”, informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism”, “book-burning”, “colonialism”, “demagogy”, “witch hunt”, “reactionary”, “progressive”, and “exploitation”. Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet. * 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.” * 1960: US General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.” * 1966: The Boys Club of America is, of course, wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.” * 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan”, by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution * 1968: William Calley, US Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.” * 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.” * 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles. * The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. * 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said. * 1983: The US invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA”, symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.” * 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks. * 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the US and Russia, the president replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda”.) * 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism”. Russian film-maker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.” * 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears. * 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering. * 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.7 NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others. Al Franken Poor Al, who made us laugh for years on Saturday Night Live, is now disgraced as a woman molester – not one of the worst of the current pathetic crop, but he still looks bad. However, everything is relative, and it must be pointed out that the Senator is guilty of a worse moral transgression. The erstwhile comedian would like you to believe that he was against the war in Iraq since it began. But he went to that sad country at least four times to entertain American troops. Does that make sense? Why does the Defense Department bring entertainers to military bases? To lift the soldiers’ spirits, of course. And why does the military want to lift the soldiers’ spirits? Because a happier soldier does his job better. And what is the soldier’s job? For example, all the charming war crimes and human-rights violations in Iraq that have been documented in great detail for many years. Didn’t Franken know what American soldiers do for a living? Country singer Darryl Worley, who leans “a lot to the right,” as he puts it, said he was far from pleased that Franken was coming along on the tour to Iraq. “You know, I just don’t understand – why would somebody be on this tour if they’re not supportive of the war? If he decides to play politics, I’m not gonna put up with it.”8 A year after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Franken criticized the Bush administration because they “failed to send enough troops to do the job right.”9 What “job” did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation? The volunteer American troops in Iraq did not even have the defense of having been drafted against their wishes. Franken has been lifting soldiers’ spirits for a long time. In 2009 he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you’ll ever want to see. He called his USO experience “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”10 Franken has also spoken at West Point (2005), encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad? Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network: “Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken’s daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush’s version of the war, because that would undermine Air America’s laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry’s version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells.”11 While in Iraq to entertain the troops, Franken declared that the Bush administration “blew the diplomacy so we didn’t have a real coalition,” then failed to send enough troops to do the job right. “Out of sheer hubris, they have put the lives of these guys in jeopardy.”8 Franken was implying that if the United States had been more successful in bribing and threatening other countries to lend their name to the coalition fighting the war in Iraq the United States would have had a better chance of WINNING the war. Is this the sentiment of someone opposed to the war? Or in support of it? It is actually the mind of an American liberal in all its depressing mushiness. To be put on the tombstone of Western civilization On November 15, 2017, at Christie’s auction house in New York City, a painting was sold for $450,312,500. * Washington Post, November 12, 2017. * Washington Post, October 10, 2017. * Washington Post, November 15, 2017. * Reuters, November 12, 2017. * Washington Post, November 2, 2017. * Wikipedia entry for George Kennan * Sources for almost all of this section can be found in William Blum, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire” (2005), chapter 12; or the author can be queried at moc.loanull@6mulbb * Washington Post, February 16, 2004. * Ibid. * Star Tribune, Minneapolis, March 26, 2009. * Huffington Post, June 2005. http://clubof.info/

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myproudsacrifice · 7 years

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Five Poems in Response to Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s “The Vietnam War” Documentary

Pre-Viet-View

It was the most televised war in history, but I wonder if they’ll show that one photograph with all its bruising spread across TV screens like ink, like mud, like shrimp paste in rice, like the names they keep holding hostage one released POW at a time.

The photo I talk of bares a woman, some would say just a girl, with albacore-fleshy body, taut legs splayed, spindly arms flopped overhead, plastic draped over her torso: spat upon, laughed over, wearing a hole in her forehead, leaking black plasma.

In the middle of the road, men stand a few yards from her: soldiers, elders, brothers, cousins, passersby, grinning into their ciggies, telling the army photographer that there’s nothing like the smell of cold VC cunt.

If ever there were a way to get that smell out of my eyes, I’d kill my own father with a hand grenade, hugging him like the son he never knew.

Crouching in my own version of a foxhole, I ask myself whether I could, whether I would, stand there over that dead girl’s body and smirk and laugh because, hell, aren’t we all just a little bit curious?

Missing You

I hate you and I miss you, but war is all I know, and we all know it keeps its promises: the same slashed faces scarred over different names.

How hard is the rain gonna fall, you ask? Depends on how thick the soles on your boots are. Because the rain is not what should worry you.

It will be the mud. It will be how deep your feet sink down into it. It will be what you leave behind.

What is not readily visible will breathe the same air you do, its lungs taking in the same volume, at the same pace that you can run.

Our one fear is of being exposed after one too many anomalies appear in stories we tell children whose beds sink ever deeper into the cold comfort we heap on top of them.

Welcome Home

All your metal detectors can’t detect me. One day I’m aluminum, another day I’m polyester. There are containers that simply can’t contain me. My motorbike becomes a motorboat in the blink of an eye.

We all saw your arrival from many miles away. Our eyes do not betray us in this murkiness. Our feet have climbed boulders, Our shoulders carried mortars.

Yes, your land is your Land. But this land is our Land. Come and go as you please. You’re welcome to spend your cash here as you see fit.

But, this land belongs to us — These nights belong to us — These fields belong in our hands — This rice belongs in our bellies.

“The last day before I went to the Nam we were in a staging area in San Diego, and this staff sergeant came out in front of us with a rabbit, petting it. He said sometimes we might get separated from our units and need to forage for food. Suddenly he made a quick move and killed the rabbit. He pulled out a knife and started skinning it, then disemboweled it, throwing the guts and bones in our faces. Later in Vietnam I saw an American civilian adviser to an ARVN group do the same thing with a dead VC woman, disemboweled her. He peeled her skin off and left her there as a warning to the villagers.” Joe Bangert, Philadelphia, Pa., Sgt., 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, First Marine Division, 1968-1969, Confessions of ‘The Winter Soldiers,’ Life, v71, n2, 07/09/71

[Author’s Note: The following poem is based on an account I heard in the fourth episode of The Vietnam War documentary: A 12-year-old girl was raped for two days and then murdered by American soldiers in the village they tore into looking for insurgents.]

2 Days

Big Boots were looking for someone, something. They yelled, they pointed, they shot. I was getting ready to go to school when I heard the smashing of pots and bowls. First born screamed in his bed and then all the neighbor kids started screaming, “They're here! They're here!”

I looked around for my bag, for my mom, for my pencil, for something to hold onto. Big Boots threw something at the door, it smelled like rotten eggs. The door burned. Their eyes were huge. Their teeth were huge. I could only stare when they yelled at me and pointed to the floor.

Then they smiled. [I smiled back.]

I thought they were going to spare me. For two days Big Teeth and Big Legs took their time. I could smell our chickens and pigs being roasted. I could hear knives being plunged into softness out near uncle and aunt's house. Big Eyes came in again to see how I was doing. They'd take care of me, their soiled helmets seemed to be telling me.

They'd take care of me.

Never Did I Know

When did I become your baby they threw over the wrought iron fence to safety? How was I to know my shadow meant your defeat? When were you going to tell me I had become your sin?

There are not enough white hats in this rubber room to debrief me out of my secret that I was the first to be lifted into that airplane inside a bowling bag stuffed with gold fillings and the egg whites of my eyes.

A chorus of wails led me through a trench that bisected a field of bones and down into the cellar of the embassy where my tape recorder caught the Ambassador and the Colonel discussing the contents of their warm drinks just before they poured them out the window and onto the heads of the chauffeurs lined up in front to ferry both of them out to waiting helicopters that carried body bags with no bodies, just encrypted favors in exchange for an official White Christmas.

My baby book tells me that no one on that plane dared touch me for fear of caving in my skin like a bomb crater slowly ripening in a dense forest where tigers once swam across a wide river to sneak up on an elephant whose insatiable appetite would doom him.

Why is there no Why? Whose lock of hair am I holding? What tune should I be singing now?

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli. — Howard Zinn, 1922-2010 When the US, UK and their fellow destroyers of nations embarked in October last year on erasing Iraq’s ancient Mosul in order to save it, did they reflect on the enormity of the cost to humanity and history of their actions now and that of their genocidal, illegal invasion and fourteen year occupation – and counting? (Not forgetting the bombing of the country from 1991-2003.) There was a quasi pull-out in 2009, but a reported 16,000 mercenaries remained in the US Embassy compound. Mosul, situated on the Tigris River, was first mentioned in name by the Greek writer Xenophon in 401 BC, although the area was inhabited from probably the 25th century BC. As Fallujah, near destroyed by the US in 2004 was known as City of Mosques, Mosul has been known as City of Churches. The population however, has been richly diverse: Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens, Kurds, Yazidis, Shabakis, Mandeans, Kawliya, Circassians. Sunni Islam has been the largest religion, but Salafism, Christianity, Shia Islam, Sufism, Yezidism, Shabakism, Yarsan and Mandeanism all coexisted in and around this ancient, hauntingly beautiful city. Mosul, as so much of Iraq, has suffered unimaginably under ISIS – but it is hard to spot the difference from how Iraq suffered under the US and UK (and are again.) The US bombed the city during the 2003 invasion, murdered Saddam Hussein’s two sons and fifteen year old grandson there in July 2003 – no Judge or jury, just US/ISIS style summary executions – as across the nation. Robert Fisk wrote of US atrocities in Iraq as related to him by an American veteran. There is a US Army “Warrior creed” which: … allows no end to any conflict (but) total destruction of the ‘enemy.’ It allows no defeat… and does not allow one ever to stop fighting (lending itself to the idea of the ‘long war.’) It says nothing about following orders, it says nothing about obeying laws or showing restraint. It says nothing about dishonourable actions… Fisk writes (September, 2006): “From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo to Bagram, to the battlefields of Iraq and to the ‘black’ prisons of the CIA, humiliation and beatings, rape, anal rape and murder have now become so commonplace that each new outrage is creeping into the inside pages of our newspapers.” Note “inside pages”, as so “commonplace.” “Looser Rules of Engagement” In April this year, it was revealed that the US Air Force on a bomb-fest over Mosul – and indeed wider Iraq and Syria – were operating under “looser rules of engagement.” Moreover: Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to ten civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command … And this is “liberation” from ISIS? (Emphasis added.) Presumably the family of eight reported killed by a US bomb in late October, including three children, one just two years old, were one of the General’s “expected” kills. Air strikes in Iraq and Syria have: … destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians. Apocalyptic horror. Of course, US and UK presence in air and on the ground in Syria are entirely illegal. So the people of Mosul and Syria’s cities, towns and villages are hostage to ISIS/Daesh and other head chopping factions fighting with US weaponry. US forces on the ground are “advising” the Iraqi army – which has absorbed militias every bit as terrorizing as ISIS. US forces themselves have, of course, a gruesome history of terror and gathering body parts as “souvenirs.” In World War 11 it was skulls, ears, teeth; in Vietnam penises. In Afghanistan it was fingers “and other body parts”, and in Iraq it was reportedly fingers, with dead bodies being tied to US tanks in Fallujah and as Ross Caputi wrote:1: Some of my closest friends mutilated dead bodies, looted from the pockets of dead resistance fighters, destroyed homes, and killed civilians. Destruction – a “Partial” List And ponder further on the US “liberation” of Mosul. As Nicholas J. Davis has written earlier this year, Award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist, Mosul-born Souad Al-Azzawi2 compiled a partial list of air strikes on the city: * Many government buildings have been destroyed. U.S. officials told USA Today, attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings have of course been killed. * Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed. * Two large dairies were bombed, killing about one hundred civilians and wounding two more. * Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19th and 20th killed ninety two civilians and wounded one hundred and thirty five, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women’s dormitory and a faculty apartment building. (Note: Mosul University was one of the largest educational and research centres in the Middle East. Near unbelievably, the murderous ISIS primitives are thought to have destroyed over 8,000 books and 100,000 manuscripts – but the US destroyed near the entire faculty.) * 50 civilians were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on two apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa. * A mother and four children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district of East Mosul on April 20th, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged. * Twenty two civilians were killed in air strikes on houses in front of Mosul Medical College. * Twenty civilians were killed and seventy wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waqif building and nearby houses and shops. * U.S. air strikes on April 24th damaged the Rashidiya water treatment plant in West Mosul and the Yarmouk power station in East Mosul. * Banks and a bottling plant were bombed, more dead and maimed. * An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno with 150 casualties on 18th April. * Bombs have damaged a food warehouse, power stations and sub-stations in West Mosul, and flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops across Mosul. More US destruction and arguably war crimes are listed here. General Mattis’s “Annihilation Tactics” To further assess what a US “freed” Mosul might look like, here is a brief summary of what Fallujah’s 2004 “freedom” cost: The 1st Marine Division fired a total of 5,685 high-explosive 155mm artillery rounds during the battle. The 3rd Marine Air Wing (aviation assets only) expended 318 ‘precision’ bombs, 391 rockets and missiles, and 93,000 machine gun and cannon rounds. When the Iraqi army re-took the remains of the city from ISIS/ISIL, as ever advised by the US, The Telegraph headline said it all: “Fallujah in ruins after Iraqi forces retake ‘90%’ of the city from ISIL. On Sunday 28th May US Secretary of Defence James Mattis stated that the U.S. military is to use “annihilation tactics” to defeat ISIS fighters in Mosul telling CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.” Mattis knows a bit about “annihilation tactics”. He headed Camp Pendleton’s Ist Marine Division in Iraq which were integral to the massacres in Fallujah in April and November 2004. Speaking to a group of soldiers about how to behave in Iraq during a 2003 speech he ordered: Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet. Fallujah’s mass graves are silent witness to the diligent obedience to Mattis’s orders. “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight … It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you …”, he told a conference in San Diego, in 2005. When the US is not shooting and bombing Mosul’s families in the cursed name of liberation, it is displacing them. Figures to 19th May show in excess of 526,000 men, women and children fleeing their homes and all they own. In the month to 2nd December 2016 over one thousand civilians were killed. On May 26th one hundred and five civilians were killed. On 30th May in the Az Zanjili district of the city, at least two hundred people were reportedly killed in a bombing lasting several hours and dozens of homes “completely flattened.” (Al Araby, 30th May.) The figures in human cost, hour by hour, day after day, would surely fill volumes. On 27th May the US had dropped leaflets telling people to leave the Old City, Mosul’s ancient heart, a city referred to as Al Fayha (the Paradise) and the “Pearl of the North.” US forces, however, care as little as ISIS for life, limb or the Middle East’s haunting Pearls and Paradises. Mosul Will Be “Destroyed Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, has stated that Mosul, formerly home to two million souls, will be completely “destroyed” and “uninhabitable” by the time the terrorists have been driven out.3 Another ancient jewel destroyed in the name of “freedom.”. Behind the figures are people living the unimaginable. As this was being finished, a message came from a Mosul-born friend, who writes: The American Coalition are lying … Civilians in Mosul are getting killed by the bombing and Iraqi and coalition ground missiles. They keep bombing each area for one or two weeks killing hundred of civilians and when the area is empty from any snipers … Two of my mother’s cousins houses in Thawrah area were bombed three days ago. Fourteen family members died. Four women, eight children the oldest is ten, and two men. People reclaimed seven bodies and other seven still under rubble. They couldn’t save any survivor under the rubble because the bombings are still going on intensively on the area. Those are my relatives and I know very well that they have nothing to do with IS. This is the New US/(Prime Minister) Abadi strategy … In Hay al Refaiae, last week my other cousins moved into five houses with their families with also an eighty seven year old old mother to avoid the American Coalition bombing. All five houses were destroyed – with the whole surrounding area. Three of them were injured. “Why Do I Get So Angry?” Another letter was sent to a friend by his father, also used with permission and gratitude: People ask me: Why do I get so angry? Below is a scene today from Mosul, my home town. It is a scene repeated a thousand times over, all around Mosul. Yesterday the U.S. Air Force undertook 158 bombing missions over the city of Mosul. Every bridge across the Tigris in Mosul is now destroyed, the Sugar Factory has been bombed, a 5-Story medical centre has been demolished, the entire airport has become rubble, much of the city’s infra structure including water and electricity have ceased to function, the University of Mosul buildings have been levelled, thousands of homes have been rendered unlivable, and of course no one is counting the civilian dead and the refugees. And all for what? To destroy the Islamic State? Is this the same so-called Islamic State whose factions have been supported, financed, and trained by the CIA over the past five years in order to bring about regime change in Syria? Since 2003, the United States has bombed Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan … and presently it has its eye focused on Iran. And yet, we have the gall and temerity to talk about the savagery and barbarism of the Mongolian hordes of eight centuries ago. I really do wonder why people keep asking me: Why do I get so angry? Thinking the Unthinkable In the title I query the outcome of this criminal decimation and cite Hiroshima. Parts of Iraq already have higher cancer and birth defect statistics than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, linked to the depleted uranium weapons used by the US and UK from 1991 to now. Donald Trump has demonstrated his casual fecklessness with weapons of mass destruction by dropping the largest “conventional” weapon ever used on Afghanistan and fifty nine radioactive and chemically toxic Tomahawk Cruise missiles on Syria, neither country had been proved of doing anything but simply existing. On the Presidential campaign trail, Mark Halperin of Bloomberg asked Donald Trump, whether he would use nuclear weapons against ISIS. “Well, I’m never going to rule anything out”, replied Trump. When pushed by Chris Matthews of MSNBC on this issue, Trump said: “Somebody hits us within ISIS – you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” Iraq is near destroyed on the Blair and Bush lies that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Trump does and it seems, is prepared to think the unthinkable. Will the UN, the relevant world bodies, the “international community” wake up, before it is too late, before a swathe of Iraq and Syria’s people are vapourised, with twenty seven centuries of history? * Guardian, 13th March 2012 * Ph.D., Colorado School of Mines * Independent, 15 February 2017. http://clubof.info/

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