01/27 Open Thread - The Official End of the Viet Nam War
~~ Kim Phuc Phan
Her name is Kim Phuc Phan. She survived, and after over a year in the hospital lived in continual pain and with limited mobility. The photo won a Pulitzer. It, and other photos and reporting helped to show the horrors of war, the reality of war, what it really was and was all about to that portion of the US populace that had the capacity to see and comprehend it. A lot of US civilians learned a lot and opposition to that war continued to grow.
The US government and the military also learned a lot. They learned to never let the US public see such scenes again. Not that such horrors would be prevented, they would continue to occur, but they would not be photographed or the photos would not be disseminated. Those of the press not reading press releases back home or back at base camp HQ would henceforth be "embedded". The only way such images would see the light of day is if somebody leaked gun camera images and the like to Wikileaks and paid a price steep enough to deter others from following suit. Any journalist receiving such photos would also pay a very heavy price if they published them. Accordingly, war's dirty little secrets will henceforth remain just that, secret.
Meanwhile, in the fullness of time, that war did come to something of an end and on this day in 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed, bringing it to a close. Of course those accords only applied to that installment of the ongoing endless war against all peoples, political parties, and governments who displease and/or disobey the exceptional, indispensable, self-appointed arbiter of what all mankind and all governments shall be permitted to do and think and have and be.
On this day in history:
1343 – Pope Clement VI issued the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences.
1785 – The first public university in the US, the University of Georgia, was founded, y'all.
1820 – A Russian expedition discovered the Antarctic continent
1825 – The U.S. Congress approved the "Indian Territory", paving the way for the "Trail of Tears".
1874 – Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov premiered
1880 – Thomas Edison received a patent for his incandescent lamp.
1944 – The 900-day Siege of Leningrad ended.
1945 – The Soviet 322nd Rifle Division liberated the remaining inmates of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
1951 – Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began
1967 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft
1967 – The USSR, the US, and the UK signed the Outer Space Treaty. Treaty, Heh
1973 – The Paris Peace Accords officially ended the Vietnam War.
1983 – The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, broke through.
2010 – Porfirio Lobo Sosa became the "official" President of Honduras after the 2009 coup d'etat .
2011 – The Yemeni Revolution began with over 16,000 protestors demonstrating in Sana'a.
2023 – Protests broke out across the U.S. after the release of videos of Memphis Police violently mistreating Tyre Nichols which resulted in his death.
Some people who were born on this day:
If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.
~~ Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
1621 – Thomas Willis, physician and anatomist
1756 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, pianist and composer
1775 – Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, philosopher and academic
1795 – Eli Whitney Blake, engineer, invented the Mortise lock
1803 – Eunice Hale Waite Cobb, writer, public speaker, and activist
1821 – John Chivington, colonel and pastor responsible for the Sand Creek Massacre
1832 – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, novelist, poet, logician, essayist, proto-existentialist, and mathematician.
1850 – John Collier, painter and author
1850 – Samuel Gompers, labor leader
1878 – Dorothy Scarborough, author
1885 – Jerome Kern, composer and songwriter
1885 – Seison Maeda, painter
1895 – Harry Ruby, composer and screenwriter; friend of Groucho
1908 – William Randolph Hearst, Jr., yellow journalist, propagandist, and publisher
1912 – Arne Næss, philosopher and environmentalist
1912 – Francis Rogallo, engineer and inventor
1918 – Skitch Henderson, pianist, composer, and conductor
1918 – Elmore James, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1924 – Harvey Shapiro, poet
1926 – Fritz Spiegl, flute player and journalist
1930 – Bobby "Blue" Bland, singer and songwriter
1941 – Beatrice Tinsley, astronomer and cosmologist
1944 – Nick Mason, drummer, songwriter, and producer
1946 – Nedra Talley, singer (Ronette)
1948 – Mikhail Baryshnikov, dancer, choreographer, and actor
1948 – Jean-Philippe Collard, pianist
1951 – Seth Justman, keyboard player and songwriter
1952 – G. E. Smith, guitarist and songwriter
1957 – Janick Gers, guitarist and songwriter
1959 – Keith Olbermann, journalist and author
Some people who died on this day:
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.
~~ Howard Zinn
1596 – Francis Drake, captain and explorer (b. 1540)
1731 – Bartolomeo Cristofori, instrument maker, invented the Piano
1851 – John James Audubon, ornithologist and painte
1860 – János Bolyai, mathematician and academic
1901 – Giuseppe Verdi, composer
1910 – Thomas Crapper, plumber
1922 – Nellie Bly, journalist and author
1967 - Roger B. Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White, astronauts
1972 – Mahalia Jackson, singer
2006 – Gene McFadden, singer. songwriter, and producer
2009 – John Updike, novelist, short story writer, and critic
2010 – J. D. Salinger, author
2010 – Howard Zinn, historian, author, academic, and activist
2014 – Pete Seeger, singer, songwriter, musician, and activist
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
International Holocaust Remembrance Day/Auschwitz Liberation Day
Vietnam Peace Day
International Port Wine Day
National Chocolate Cake Day
Today's Tunes
Mozart
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Jerome Kern
Harry Ruby
Skitch Henderson
Elmore James
Bobby "Blue" Bland
Nick Mason
Nedra Talley
Seth Justman
G.E. Smith
Mahlia Jackson
Gene McFadden
Pete Seeger
I won't be here when this posts
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
Open Thread, Vietnam, Auschwitz, Leningrad, Mozart, Lewis Carroll, Elmore James, Bobby Blue Bland, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Seeger, Howard Zinn
Comments
So it seemed to have ended
but it also seemed to begin the nightmare that never ends.
I read this in the NYtimes (yeah, I know) but I have tried to find out what happens in the rest of the world. Most of the non English speaking countries stopped having an English edition newspapers, so this was kind of interesting. With so many similar complaints it makes you wonder if there really is a march toward somebodies "new world order".
This https://archive.ph/vEpi3 I got from an newspaper archive app on firefox that allows you to read stories from some papers after a short period of time.
Of course it's an assembly of interviews that may be so selective as to steer you in only one direction, but it seems we here are not alone in our dissatisfaction, and have much more in common with the rest of the world, or at least Europe.
They started out in Viettnam by airing puff pieces
with programs to match. The "strategic hamlet" program was the project of Michigan State University, intended to modernize southern Vietnam while immunizing it against "Communism." It of course didn't work, as nobody asked southern Vietnam if it wanted to be modernized. The imperialists have alibis of course, one of which seems to have shown up in Wikipedia. It was infiltrators! Or so they say. One has to wonder at any rate why some obscure Vietnamese provincial leader from long ago gets such an enormous entry in the English-language Wikipedia. Can anyone here verify this stuff?
Later there was stuff in National Geographic magazine, February 1967 in the midst of the escalation, promoting the US "effort." I guess you can buy copies of this issue on eBay. When my Mom died I gave away all of my Geographics to a Prison Library Project, hoping that it was true that such magazines would be popular with prison populations and that the issues would reach the prisoners.
But of course you can't imagine any sort of in-depth journalism about, say, Ukraine, telling the world what fabulous things our proxy armies are doing there in battle with the evil Russians. If they did that they'd have to tell the truth. So instead they invented some fantasy world about Ukraine, and created cadres of professional liars about it so that when the stenographers of power interviewed the liars about what was going on, it would be reported as the solemn truth.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
VN was my intro to the antiwar movement...
I think ending the draft was instrumental in eliminating the antiwar movement.
Plus many of the antiwar boomers became insurances sales(wo)men and so on leaving behind the goal of peace and love for money and comfort. Others (like me) joined back to the land movement, but the momentum was lost.
What I didn't understand at the time is the control of the CIA, FBI, et al mafia permanent branch of the government. Perhaps the released JFK, RFK, MLK files will bring more awareness. To bad Trump didn't include the Paul Robeson and 911 files for more damning stories of the rotten core of our all powerful mafia branch.
RIP Howard Zinn. Thanks for the OT.
Saw this earlier which some may find interesting...
(20 min)
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
And we will
essentially never see another bunch of flag-draped coffins unloaded at Andrews, unless there is propaganda value in it (like after a barracks bombing or something similar). The banal, daily toll of the meatgrinder will be suppressed at all costs.
Not a fan.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
As the world observes Holocaust Day
The Zionist IDF butchers continue their
version with no moral contradiction.
And the US stands with them.
Shameful.
question everything
ICE raids
China develops powerful new weapon
the onion
As a counter to this new love wave
.
western powers are increasing spending on their
super-duper hate weapon dubbed 'Full Spectrum Evil'
When asked for a comment from the MSM acolytes,
Major General Bibi Zelensky at the Pentagram admitted
the threat is real and steps are bing taken to address this
new threat. "The sky is the limit" he was quoted as saying.
"Our hate knows no bounds". Appropriations are being rushed
thru congress with defense partners Lockheed Martin, RTX
(formerly Raytheon Technologies), Northrop Grumman, and Boeing
lobbyists drawing-up proposals.
question everything
Happy EL Vacation Day!
Hope your having a blast, friend!
I sort of have PTSD about all things Viet Nam War, including watching those helicopters fly away from Saigon rooftops with people hanging on to the landing skids.
I celebrated the end to it, had no real idea we would keep shit going over and over, anywhere and everywhere, with the same effect for our military, who suffer for the rest of their lives post-combat.
Thanks so much for the post, so well planned and executed, mister.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I feel the same way about the conflict
...and EL's OT. It brought back some memories, but fortunately I was too late for Vietnam deployment. I did however, have access to a lot of primary sources, and studies, on the war. I met some of the pows personally in the course of my assignments, etc.
I think one of the things that distressed me most came at a farewell party, when one of the pows told me something related to what later became known as Iran-contra. I can't remember what he said, I knew he was very well connected. What I recall was my inner reaction at the time. I thought, they're never going to stop doing this crap.
Loved these music selections too.
語必忠信 行必正直
The war was fought by my age group.
I toured Laos and Cambodia, spoke with people who's parents had helped the US, then were abandoned, left to be called traitors by their people.
We used them, abandoned them.
We used US farm boys, brought them home to let them die from Agent Orange.
Can't say how many probate cases I have taken for Agent Orange deaths of my peers.
Dammit, I went to high school with them.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981