Month: May 2021

Photos from the Winning Side

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Elders from North and South embrace, having lived to see Vietnam reunited and unoccupied by foreign powers
1975 – Photo by Vo Anh Khanh

The history of the Vietnam War is one that has been complicated by politics, and it is a history that is still being written and rewritten. The war involved a fratricidal conflict between the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the non-communist Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and extended to neighboring Laos and Cambodia; however, it was also a proxy war in a Cold War contest between the communist bloc and the western bloc…

Vietnam was a transformational event and became an international symbol for the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The war had a ripple effect that spread outwards from Vietnam to other countries and continents, an effect that was temporal as well as geographic, reaching not only the wartime generations but also the postwar generations…

The history of the war has been a partial one, underscored by the American dominance of the English-language historiography of the war and the focus on American policies and the American experience of the war, coupled with a mostly negative assessment of South Vietnam.

The so-called first ‘television war’, the Vietnam war was defined and shaped by cameras and the bold photographers behind them. The pictures collected in this article are part of the photographic book Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side and show the war from the Vietnamese perspective.

The collection is available from National Geographic Books / Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side.

You will also find used copies in good condition at Amazon.

215 bodies found buried at school for Indigenous children

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Canadian Press/Rex

A mass grave containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children has been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in the interior of southern British Columbia.

The grim discovery at the former school near the town of Kamloops was announced late on Thursday by the Tk’emlups te SecwĂ©pemc people after the site was examined by a team using ground-penetrating radar.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlĂșps te SecwĂ©pemc, in a statement…

The Kamloops Indian residential school was established in 1890 under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church, and closed in 1978.

Some of the remains belong to children as young as three years old, but the causes and timing of their deaths are not yet known. “At this time we have more questions than answers,” said Casimir.

The Kamloops Indian residential school was established in 1890 under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church, and closed in 1978.

I think we are the most corrupt, self-deluded species on this planet. Most of the others kill to survive. We kill for sport, we kill for holy wars. We kill for failure to obey some politician’s law. We kill foreigners, we kill based upon class, religion, kinship…and profit above all else.

We kill our children.

100 years ago, Tulsa’s thriving ‘Black Wall Street’ — Burned Down by a White Mob

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Almost 100 years ago, in a small town office building, a man named Dick Rowland tripped on his way into an elevator. The car hadn’t stopped properly, and Rowland hadn’t noticed, catching his foot on the uneven ledge. As he fell, he reached out, looking for something to stop him. That something turned out to be someone — Sarah Page, the young elevator operator, who naturally screamed as a man fell on top of her.

In another place, at another time, between anyone else, the incident may have gone unnoticed. But the place was Greenwood, Oklahoma — then known as “Black Wall Street.” The time was 1921. And Dick Rowland was a black man. To make matters worse, Sarah Page was a white woman.

The immediate response was typical of the time and place. The local newspaper called for Dick Rowland’s lynching. Local white citizens obliged…”as the most brutal and destructive race riot in history unfolded, in one of the most prominent black neighborhoods”.

Over the course of 12 hours, a white mob, joined by more rioters, collectively burned down almost all of Black Wall Street. They looted businesses, shot and attacked black residents, and left the town in ruins…

According to initial reports, more than 800 people were injured, and roughly 35 had died. More recently, in 2001, an investigation by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission claimed the death toll was closer to 300…

10,000 black residents had been left homeless, and over 6,000 were held by the National Guard, some for as long as eight days.

The racist history of America from slavery times to today is never a surprise to anyone of conscience and education. That leaves a lot of folks who might wish to take a step back from what they think they know of American history.

Please read this one.

Texas Deep Freeze disaster had a backup plan. It failed, as well.

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Thomas Ryan Allison/Bloomberg

Texas’ days-long power outages during last February’s deep freeze almost stretched into weeks or even months thanks to a string of failures at “black start” generators.

More than half of the state’s 28 black start generators, which are crucial for bringing a collapsed grid back to life, experienced outages themselves, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. Of the 13 primary generators, nine encountered trouble, as did six of 15 secondary generators acting as backups in case the primary backups failed. Some had trouble getting enough fuel to run, while others were damaged by the cold weather.

Every North American grid has black start generators, but there’s no nationwide standard regulating them. Each state or grid operator decides how to operate the generators. Some use a mix of fossil fuel generators and hydroelectric dams…

But Texas no longer has any hydroelectric black start facilities. All of its black start generators use natural gas as a primary fuel, and only 13 generators at six sites can use fuel oil as a backup. When natural gas supplies run short, generators without an alternate fuel source are unable to provide vital services to the grid. Plant operators are required to maintain a reserve supply of fuel, but it wasn’t clear during the February freeze that they were all fulfilling this obligation. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages most of the state’s electrical grid, is reportedly in the process of trying to recover some of the payments made to black start facilities that failed during the outage.

The Black Start facilities were getting regular payments to provide an emergency service. When this disaster struck, they were unable to provide that service. IMHO, they not only do not deserve payment for that immediate incident, they must be able to provide proof of previous readiness or refund payment for some or all of that previous period.

Republicans Are as Excited for Trump’s Upcoming Rallies as They Are for Their Next Colonoscopy

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Earlier this month we learned that Donald Trump is expected to bring back his campaign-style rallies this summer, and, like a reboot of a show that no one asked for or wants, few people are thrilled about the development. Democrats obviously are unenthused about the trio of events the guy who tried (and is still trying!) to overturn the election has planned, but apparently some Republicans are equally unhappy about Trump‘s return to the stump.

Politico reports that Republicans in Washington are “dreading” the 45th president’s upcoming rallies, fearful that the new platform—from which he’ll no doubt spew baseless election-fraud conspiracy theories, among other grievances—could derail their chances in the midterm elections, when they’re hoping to take back the Senate and House. “If we win the majority back in 17 months, it’s going to be in spite of Trump—not because of Trump,” one senior House Republican aide, who works for a lawmaker considered to be one of Trump’s top supporters, told Politico. “He will totally take credit if we win the House back—but it won’t be because of him. This guy is a disaster.”

Any victories won, of course, Trumpo will take credit. Even where obvious they are in spite of his presence. But, then, the Republican Party isn’t doing anything in the interim to differentiate themselves from this corrupt disaster. Neither Trump nor his butt-kissers-in-charge of the sinking ship are worth anything to the nation or to what remains of conservative politics outside of the brigade of racists and fools in charge of his party.