Sunday - June 10, 2007

Once upon a time

I remember, vividly, the evening of October 4, 1957.  It wasn’t a school night so I was able to stay up later than usual.

We were living near Versailles, close to Paris in an American housing area called Petite Beauregard.  All the adults were standing in front of the building, looking up into the night sky.  I looked up and all around.  Seeing nothing unusual, I asked an old lady, the mother/mother-in-law that lived with the couple on the top floor, what they were all looking at.  She just pointed her finger at the sky and said, “The Russians are up there.” Her tone of voice was one of fear and uncertainty.  I didn’t know what a big deal it was.  A year later, in the Russian pavilion at the Brussels Worlds Fair I saw an exact replica of what they were looking for in that dark sky, suspended by fine wires from the ceiling.  When I think back on that day I am still awed by the import of that event.

Now we have someone else to keep track of.  We should heed Moseley’s warning

Posted by The Navigator     on 06/10/2007 at 11:49 PM   
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   Friday - May 25, 2007

The war on military history

Rich Lowry has an interesting column on Townhall about the erasure of history from our places of higher learning.

The war on military history

America as we know it might not exist without the battles of Saratoga and Yorktown, without Gettysburg and Antietam. The world the United States shaped so decisively in the 20th century might have looked different if it weren’t for Normandy and Midway.

Battles are so important to history that their names alone—Vienna, Waterloo, Stalingrad—can evoke the beginning or end of epochs and empires. Violent conflict is one of the most persistent characteristics of human history, and warfare features the interplay of strategy, weaponry, chance, logistics, emotion and leadership. It is the occasion for folly and brutality, and—as we remember on Memorial Day—heroism and sacrifice.

It is for all these reasons that books and TV programming on warfare are so popular; their subject is both fascinating and important, history at its most consequential and dramatic. Nonetheless, military history has been all but banished from college campuses. In an article on this strange deficit in National Review, John J. Miller chalks it up to “an ossified tenure system, scholarly navel-gazing and ideological hostility to all things military.”

History departments are dominated by a post-Vietnam generation of professors for whom bottom-up “social history” is paramount, and the only areas of interest are race, sex and class. History focusing on great events and the “great men” central to them is retrograde—let alone military history that ipso facto smacks of militarism. Hence, the rout of military history from the academy that Miller catalogs.

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 05/25/2007 at 08:41 AM   
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   Monday - May 14, 2007

On This Day In History

Tel Aviv, Palestine, Saturday, May 15, 1948 (NY TIMES)

The Jewish state, the world’s newest sovereignty, to be known as the State of Israel, came into being in Palestine at midnight upon termination of the British mandate.

Recognition of the state by the United States, which had opposed its establishment at this time, came as a complete surprise to the people, who were tense and ready for the threatened invasion by Arab forces and appealed for help by the United Nations.

In one of the most hopeful periods of their troubled history the Jewish people here gave a sigh of relief and took a new hold on life when they learned that the greatest national power had accepted them into the international fraternity.

The declaration of the new state by David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the National Council and the first Premier of reborn Israel, was delivered during a simple and solemn ceremony at 4 P.M., and new life was instilled into his people, but from without there was the rumbling of guns, a flashback to other declarations of independence that had not been easily achieved.

The first action of the new Government was to revoke the Palestine White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration and land purchase. In the proclamation of the new state the Government appealed to the United Nations “to assist the Jewish people in the building of its state and to admit Israel into the family of nations.”

The proclamation added: “We offer peace and amity to all neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to “the peaceful progress and reconstruction of the Middle East.”

The statement appealed to Jews throughout the world to assist in the task of immigration and development and in the “struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations—the redemption of Israel.”

Plans for the ceremony had been laid with great secrecy. None but the hundred or more invited guests and journalists was aware of the meeting until it started, and even the guests learned of the site only ten minutes before. It was held in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a white, modern-design two-story building. Above it flew the Star of David, which is the state’s flag, and below, on the sidewalk, was a guard of honor of the Haganah, the army of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

As photographers’ bulbs flashed and movie cameras ground out reels of the scene, great crowds gathered and cheered the Ministers and other members of the Government as they entered the building. The security arrangements were perfect. Sten guns were brandished in every direction and even the roofs bristled with them.

The setting for the reading of the proclamation was a dropped gallery whose hall held paintings by prominent Jewish artists. Many of them depicted the sufferings and joys of the people of the Diaspora, the dispersal of the Jews.

The thirteen Ministers of the Government Council sat at a long dais beneath the photograph of Theodor Herzl, who in 1897 envisaged a Jewish state. Vertical pale blue and white flags of the state hung on both sides. To the left of the ministers and below them sat other members of the national administration. There are thirty-seven in all, but some were unable to get here from Jerusalem.

At 4 P.M. sharp the assemblage rose and sang the Hatikvah, the national anthem. The participants seemed to sing with unusual gusto and inspiration. The voices had hardly subsided when the squat, white-haired chairman, Mr. Ben-Gurion, started to read the proclamation, which in a few hours was to transform most of those present from persons without a country to proud nationals. Then he pronounced the words “We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel,” there was thunderous applause and not a few damp eyes.

After the proclamation had been read and the end of the White Paper and of its land laws pronounced, Mr. Ben-Gurion signed the document and was followed by all the other members of the administration, some by proxy. The last to sign was Moshe Shertok, the new Foreign Minister and the Jewish Agency’s delegate to the United Nations. He was roundly applauded and almost mobbed by photographers.

The ceremony ended with everyone standing silently while the orchestral strains of the Hatikvah filled the room. Outside, the fever of nationalism was spreading with fond embraces, warm handshakes and kisses. Street vendors were selling flags, crowds gathered to read posted bulletins, and newspapers were being sold everywhere.

As the Sabbath had started, there was not the degree of public rejoicing that there would have been any other day. The proclamation was to have been read at 11 P.M., but was advanced to 4 because of the Sabbath. Mr. Shertok explained that the proclamation had to be made yesterday because the mandate was to end at midnight and the Zionists did not want a split second to intervene between that time and the formal establishment of the state.

In the preamble to the declaration of independence the history of the Jewish people was traced briefly from its birth in the Land of Israel to this day. The preamble touched on the more modern highlights, including Herzl’s vision of a state, acknowledgment of the Jewish national homeland by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and its reaffirmation by the League of Nations mandate and by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of Nov. 29, 1947.

It asserted that this recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish an independent state could not be revoked and added that it was the “self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign state.”

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/14/2007 at 08:40 AM   
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   Monday - April 30, 2007

On This Day In History

April 30, 1975

Thirty-two years ago today, the Democratic Party in the United States watched as the their efforts to lose the Vietnam War and throw that country to the wolves finally reached fruition. Saigon fell ... and the purges and mass murders began. The violence spread to Cambodia and Laos and before long Southeast Asia became a bone yard filled with corpses and broken promises.

It was a Democratic President, Kennedy, who began the bloodbath by replacing advisors with troops on the ground. It was another Democratic President, Johnson, who ratcheted the war up to a point where over 50,000 American soldiers were killed. Finally, when a Republican President, Nixon, started to bring the war to a close and prop up the South Vietnamese government to allow them to continue the fight - the Democrat-controlled Congress cut him off at the knees, first with Watergate and subsequent distractions and finally by just flat-out denying any aid to South Vietnam.

After that final act of cowardice by the Democrats, the fall of South Vietnam was inevitable and as predicted, the “Killing Fields” were beginning. Shortly after the fail of Saigon, a Democrat was elected President and during his term our present crisis in the Middle East was triggered with the fall of the Shah in Iran and the establishment of a tyrannical, religious theocracy - as well as the rise to power of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Now, as we sit here thirty-two years after the fall of Saigon, we find that we haven’t learned a damn thing. We’re still allowing the Democratic Party to get us involved in foreign wars costing billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers’ lives - and then watch them turn their mess into a political weapon by blaming the Republicans. The conflict in Iraq didn’t begin with George W. Bush. It began with Jimmy Carter. It just took a few years to all come to a head.

So now we have come full circle. Bill Clinton sat on his ass and did little or nothing to avert the current crisis. Yet, Democrats have the audacity to blame Bush for Carter’s Folly? We are now seeing the same thing in the Middle East that happened in Southeast Asia. The Democrats are gearing up to declare surrender and run away from another mess they gave birth to.

The only question left in my mind is when the NY TIMES will have a front page story about the evacuation of the American Embassy in Baghdad as Iranian tanks roll into that city to begin the purge of the Sunni population. Will Iran annex Iraq or will they just set up a puppet regime in Baghdad? How will the Saudis react to a strong Shia neighbor on their borders? What about Israel? Iran will have nukes by then if their present course holds up? Will Armageddon begin?

It may not come to all this. I’m just projecting a worst-case scenario. The point is the hypocritical, cowardly, partisan, political hacks in the Democratic Party will have done it to us again and our international credibility will be gone with the wind. Unfortunately, we are a nation with a short memory so the Democrats will just blame Bush and wait for their next chance to further destroy America. In a few years, the Democrats’ perfidy will be forgotten and drowned out by constant repetition of “It was Bush’s war” by the Left.

No one today remembers January 16, 1979 and what began with a flight out of Teheran of a single airplane carrying a passenger who had been our ally for decades and who was refused asylum in the US by President Carter and who eventually died in Egypt. No one remembers the Fall Of Teheran and the domino effect that caused in the region. No one except Democrats, that is. On that day, the cycle began that would eventually bring us to another “Vietnam Moment” for the Party Of Treason.

If the Iraqi people would only look at what happened on this day in history thirty-two years ago, they might be inclined to work a little harder to get their act together before the Democrats in America stick a knife in their backs. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Over and over and over and ....

Saigon, South Vietnam (NY TIMES) - April 30, 1975 - Communist troops of North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam poured into Saigon today as a century of Western influences came to an end.

Scores of North Vietnamese tanks, armored vehicles and camouflaged Chinese built trucks rolled to the presidential palace.

The President of the former non-Communist Government of South Vietnam, Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had gone on radio and television to announce his administration’s surrender, was taken to a microphone later by North Vietnamese soldiers for another announcement. He appealed to all Saigon troops to lay down their arms and was taken by the North Vietnamese soldiers to an undisclosed destination.

[Soon after, the Saigon radio fell silent, normal telephone and telegraph communications ceased and The Associated Press said its sire link to the capital was lost at 7 P.M., Wednesday, Saigon time (7 A.M. Wednesday, New York time).

[In Paris, representatives of the Provisional Revolutionary Government announced that Saigon had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the late President of North Vietnam. Other representatives said in a broadcast monitored in Thailand that former Government forces in eight provinces south of the capital had not yet surrendered, but no fighting was mentioned.]

The transfer of power was symbolized by the raising of the flag of the National Liberation Front over the presidential palace at 12:15 P.M. today, about two hours after General Minh’s surrender broadcast.

Hundreds of Saigon residents cheered and applauded as North Vietnamese military vehicles moved to the palace grounds from which the war against the Communists had been directed by President Nguyen Van Thieu, who resigned April 21, and by President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was killed in a coup in 1963.

Broadcasting today in the early hours of the Communist take-over, the Provisional Revolutionary Government’s representatives said:

“We representatives of the liberation forces of Saigon formally proclaim that Saigon had been totally liberated. We accept the unconditional surrender of Gen. Duong Van Minh, President of the former Government.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/30/2007 at 09:13 AM   
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   Sunday - April 15, 2007

On This Day In History

Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued By Carpathia,
Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing
(NEW YORK TIMES) - April 15, 1912

CAPE RACE, N.F., April 15.—The White Star liner Olympic reports by wireless this evening that the Cunarder Carpathia reached, at daybreak this morning, the position from which wireless calls for help were sent out last night by the Titanic after her collision with an iceberg. The Carpathia found only the lifeboats and the wreckage of what had been the biggest steamship afloat.

The Titanic had foundered at about 2:20 A.M., in latitude 41:46 north and longitude 50:14 west. This is about 30 minutes of latitude, or about 34 miles, due south of the position at which she struck the iceberg. All her boats are accounted for and about 655 souls have been saved of the crew and passengers, most of the latter presumably women and children. There were about 1,200 persons aboard the Titanic.

The Leyland liner California is remaining and searching the position of the disaster, while the Carpathia is returning to New York with the survivors. It can be positively stated that up to 11 o’clock to-night nothing whatever had been received at or heard by the Marconi station here to the effect that the Parisian, Virginian or any other ships had picked up any survivors, other than those picked up by the Carpathia.

The first news of the disaster to the Titanic was received by the Marconi wireless station here at 10:25 o’clock last night (as told in yesterday’s New York Times.) The Titanic was first heard giving the distress signal “C. Q. D.,” which was answered by a number of ships, including the Carpathia, the Baltic and the Olympic. The Titanic said she had struck an iceberg and was in immediate need of assistance, giving her position as latitude 41:46 north and longitude 50:14 west.

At 10:55 o’clock the Titanic reported she was sinking by the head, and at 11:25 o’clock the station here established communication with the Allan liner Virginian, from Halifax to Liverpool, and notified her of the Titanic’s urgent need of assistance and gave her the Titanic’s position. The Virginian advised the Marconi station almost immediately that she was proceeding toward the scene of the disaster.

At 11:36 o’clock the Titanic informed the Olympic that they were putting the women off in boats and instructed the Olympic to have her boats read to transfer the passangers. The Titanic, during all this time, continued to give distress signals and to announce her position. The wireless operator seemed absolutely cool and clear-headed, his sending throughout being steady and perfectly formed, and the judgment used by him was of the best. The last signals heard from the Titanic were received at 12:27 A.M., when the Virginian reported having heard a few blurred signals which ended abruptly.

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/15/2007 at 11:51 AM   
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   Friday - March 30, 2007

On This Day In History

I don’t mean to alarm anyone or get the Bush-haters all excited but there seems to be something about Presidents and past history that everyone is overlooking ....

Washington, March 30, 1981 (NY TIMES) - President Reagan was shot in the chest today by a gunman, apparently acting alone, as Mr. Reagan walked to his limousine after addressing a labor meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel. The White House press secretary and two law-enforcement officers were also wounded by a burst of shots.

The President was reported in ‘’good’’ and ‘’stable’’ condition tonight at George Washington University Hospital after undergoing two hours of surgery. ‘’The prognosis is excellent,’’ said Dr. Dennis S. O’Leary, dean of clinical affairs at the university. ‘’He is alert and should be able to make decisions by tomorrow.’’

The hospital spokesman said surgeons removed a .22-caliber bullet that struck Mr. Reagan’s seventh rib, penetrating the left lung three inches and collapsing it.

A rapid series of five or six shots rang out at about 2:30 P.M. as Mr. Reagan left the hotel. A look of stunned disbelief swept across the President’s face when the shots were fired just after he raised his left arm to wave to the crowd. Nearby, his press secretary, James S. Brady, fell to the sidewalk, critically wounded.

Eyewitnesses said six shots were fired at the Presidential entourage from a distance of about 10 feet. The assailant had positioned himself among the television camera crews and reporters assembled outside a hotel exit.

The authorities arrested a 25-year-old Colorado man, John W. Hinckley Jr., at the scene of the attack. He was later booked on Federal charges of attempting to assassinate the President and assault on a Federal officer.

Within minutes, Americans were witnessing for the second time in a generation television pictures of a chief executive being struck by gunfire during what appeared to be a routine public appearance. For the second time in less than 20 years, too, they watched as the nation’s leaders scrambled to meet one of the sternest tests of the democratic system.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/30/2007 at 09:32 AM   
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   Thursday - March 22, 2007

300

I went and saw 300 last night.  Since I had read some reviews, I was expecting a bloodfest, and boy did I get it!  To be honest, I did not get the same emotional high as I did with movies like Braveheart, The Patriot and Gladiator, but it was a fun film nonetheless.  It was based on a comic book Graphic Novel after all.

Well, apparently there has been no small amount of the vapors because it is not historically accurate.  Did I mention it was based on a comic book Graphic Novel?

Victor Davis Hanson speaks to this in his latest article.

‘300’—Fact or Fiction?
Crowds are flocking to see the film “300” about the ancient Spartans’ last stand at the pass at Thermopylae against an invading Persian army. Yet many critics, in panning “300,” have alleged that the film is essentially historically inaccurate. Are they right?

Here are some answers. But first two qualifiers. I wrote an introduction to a book about the making of “300” after being shown a rough cut of the movie in October. And, second, remember that “300” does not claim to follow exactly ancient accounts of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Instead, it is an impressionistic take on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, intended to entertain and shock first, and instruct second.

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 03/22/2007 at 12:50 PM   
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   Monday - February 26, 2007

On This Day In History

The Clinton administration had eight years to determine who was trying to destroy the World Trade Center and forestall another attack. For eight full years US intelligence sat on its hands and did nothing while Al-Qaeda plotted and planned and Osama Bin Laden trained operatives and collected funds for the second attack that took place on September 11, 2001 ... an attack that destroyed the World Trade Center for good and cost the lives of 3,000 Americans. 

On 9/11, President George W. Bush had been in office only nine months yet several in the mainstream media and on the Left politically, blamed him for not preventing the attack. The same people are even now protesting the pre-emptive strike in Iraq to remove another madman from power and reduce the threat of further attacks from the Middle East.

How much warning do we need before we realize these people want to kill us? If we withdraw prematurely from Iraq and allow the Taliban to resume control of Afghanistan, as some would have us do, how many Americans will die in the next attack? All I can say is that if even one American dies, I will never forget the names of the liberals, peaceniks, leftist politicians and others who caused it. You can take that to the bank ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/26/2007 at 12:23 PM   
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   Sunday - January 28, 2007

On This Day

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/28/2007 at 02:02 AM   
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   Monday - January 22, 2007

On This Day In History

Roe v. Wade: High Court Rules Abortions Legal the First 3 Months
_{(NEW YORK TIMES) - January 22, 1973}

The Supreme Court overruled today all state laws that prohibit or restrict a woman’s right to obtain an abortion during her first three months of pregnancy. The vote was 7 to 2.

In a historic resolution of a fiercely controversial issue, the Court drafted a new set of national guidelines that will result in broadly liberalized anti-abortion laws in 46 states but will not abolish restrictions altogether.

Establishing an unusually detailed timetable for the relative legal rights of pregnant women and the states that would control their acts, the majority specified the following:

For the first three months of pregnancy the decision to have an abortion lies with the woman and her doctor; and the state’s interest in her welfare is not “compelling” enough to warrant any interference.

For the next six months of pregnancy a state may “regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health,” such as licensing and regulating the persons and facilities involved.

For the last 10 weeks of pregnancy, the period during which the fetus is judged to be capable of surviving if born, any state may prohibit abortions if it wishes, except where they may be necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

Today’s action will not affect existing laws in New York, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington, where abortions are now legally available in the early months of pregnancy. But it will require rewriting of statutes in every other state.

The basic Texas case decided by the Court today will invalidate strict anti-abortion laws in 31 states; a second decision involving Georgia will require considerable rewriting of more liberal statutes in 15 others.

Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote the majority opinion in which Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr., Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall and Lewis F. Powell Jr. joined. Dissenting were Justices Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist.

Justice White, calling the decision “an exercise of raw judicial power,” wrote that “the court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life which she carries.”

The Court’s decision was at odds with the expressed views of President Nixon. Last May, in a letter to Cardinal Cooke, he opposed “liberalized abortion policies” and spoke out for “the right to life of literally hundreds of thousands of unborn children.”

But three of the four Justices Mr. Nixon has appointed to the Supreme Court voted with the majority, with only Mr. Rehnquist dissenting. The majority rejected the idea that a fetus becomes a “person” upon conception and is thus entitled to the due process and equal protection guarantees of the Constitution. This view was pressed by opponents of liberalized abortion, including the Roman Catholic Church.

Justice Blackmun concluded that “the word ‘person,’ as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn,” although states may acquire, “at some point in time” of pregnancy, an interest in the “potential human life” that the fetus represents, to permit regulation.

It is that interest, the Court said, that permits states to prohibit abortion during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy, after the fetus has developed the capacity to survive.

In both cases decided today, the plaintiffs had based their protest on an assertion that state laws limiting the availability of abortion had circumscribed rights and freedoms guaranteed them by the Constitution: due process of law, equal protection of the laws, freedom of action and a particular privacy involving a personal and family matter.

In its decision on the challenge to the Georgia abortion law, the high court majority struck down several requirements that a woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy in that state would have to meet.

Both of today’s cases wound up with anonymous parties wining victories over state officials. In the Texas case, “Jane Roe,” an unmarried pregnant woman who was allowed to bring the case without further identity, was the only plaintiff after the Supreme Court disqualified a doctor and a childless couple who said that the wife’s health would be endangered by pregnancy.

In the Georgia case, the surviving plaintiff was “Mary Doe,” who, when she brought the action, was a 22-year-old married woman 11 weeks pregnant with her fourth child.

Today: The following graph is from: “Roe v. Wade: The divided states of America” (USA TODAY) - April 17, 2006

The procedure was recently banned in 2003 when the House and Senate passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (Public Law 108-105, HR 760, S 3) and was signed into law by President Bush.

In 2005, Norma McCorvey, who was the “Jane Roe” who challenged the Texas anti-abortion law in the famous case, appeared on “Hannity & Colmes” and described how she had become a born-again Christian and was working to pressure the Supreme Court to reverse its 1973 decision. In recent years, she has become a outspoken opponent of abortion, arguing that the procedure may harm women and goes against Christian teachings.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/22/2007 at 08:11 AM   
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   Saturday - January 20, 2007

On This Day In History

The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis lasting from November 4, 1979 until January 20, 1981. The situation involved members of the “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line,” student proxies of the new Iranian regime, holding 63 diplomats and 3 additional US citizens hostage inside the American Diplomatic mission in Tehran, Iran.

The captors released several captives, leaving 52 hostages at the conclusion of the crisis. During the crisis the United States attempted a rescue operation, Operation Eagle Claw. The operation failed and resulted in the deaths of eight US soldiers. Some historians argue that the crisis was one of the primary reasons for U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s loss in the US Presidential Election of 1980.

The crisis reached its conclusion with the signing of the Algiers Accords, and on January 20, 1981, twenty minutes after the newly elected President Reagan’s inaugural address, the hostages were formally released into U.S. custody after having spent 444 days in captivity.

The death of the Shah on July 27, 1980 and the invasion of Iran by Iraq in September 1980 made Iran more receptive to the idea of resolving the hostage crisis. In the U.S., Carter lost the November 1980 presidential election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan. Shortly after the election, but before the inauguration of President Reagan, the Carter administration, with the assistance of intermediaries such as Algerian diplomat Abdulkarim Ghuraib, opened fruitful, but demeaning, negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. This resulted in the “Algiers Accords” of January 19, 1981, which entailed Iran’s commitment to free the hostages immediately.

Point I of the accord: Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs was essential to the Algiers Accords, and was reportedly considered a non-negotiable requirement by Iran. The Carter Administration reluctantly conceded Point I, which read, “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”

Other provisions of the Algiers Accords were the unfreezing of $8 billion of Iranian assets and immunity from lawsuits Iran might have faced. On January 20, 1981, twenty minutes after President Reagan’s inaugural address, the hostages were formally released into U.S. custody, having spent 444 days in captivity. The hostages were flown to Algeria as a symbolic gesture for the help of that government in resolving the crisis, where former President Carter, acting as an emissary for the Reagan administration, received them. The flight continued to Rhein-Main Air Base in West Germany. After medical check-ups and debriefings, they took a second flight to Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, N.Y. and a bus ride to the United States Military Academy, receiving a hero’s welcome all along the route. Ten days after their release, the former hostages were given a ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in New York City.

The Washington Post reported that many Europeans and leaders around the world thought that Reagan was “a cowboy” and “scary.” Carter’s campaign implied that Reagan was “a trigger happy cowboy.” The Iranian hostage-takers in particular reported being unsure of what Reagan would do. Iranian uncertainty about Reagan’s plans may have been the main motivation behind the timing of the release of the hostages. Iranian anger at Carter’s support of the Shah likely also played a part. Such complex events usually have multiple causes and multiple players, so history may find any single motivation alone insufficient to explain the timing of the end of the crisis.

-- Wikipedia, “Iran Hostage Crisis”

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/20/2007 at 01:49 PM   
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   Monday - December 25, 2006

On This Day In History

December 25, 1991 - Moscow

Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns;
U.S. Recognizes Republics’ Independence

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the trailblazer of the Soviet Union’s retreat from the cold war and the spark for the democratic reforms that ended 70 years of Communist tyranny, told a weary, anxious nation tonight that he was resigning as President and closing out the union.

‘I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,’ declared the 60-year-old politician, the last leader of a totalitarian empire that was undone across the six years and nine months of his stewardship.

Mr. Gorbachev made no attempt in his brief, leanly worded television address to mask his bitter regret and concern at being forced from office by the creation of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, composed of 11 former republics of the collapsed Soviet empire under the informal lead of President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia. Within hours of Mr. Gorbachev’s resignation, Western and other nations began recognition of Russia and the other former republics.

‘We’re now living in a new world,’ Mr. Gorbachev declared in recognizing the rich history of his tenure. ‘An end has been put to the cold war and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes and morals. The threat of nuclear war has been removed.’

Mr. Gorbachev’s moment of farewell was stark. Kremlin guards were preparing to lower the red union flag for the last time. In minutes, Mr. Gorbachev would sign over the nuclear missile launching codes for safeguarding to Mr. Yeltsin, his rival and successor as the dominant politician of this agonized land.

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/25/2006 at 01:37 PM   
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   Sunday - December 17, 2006

TV Alert

Now that Dan Rather has been given the boot and Mike Wallace’s brain finally turned into peanut butter, it may be safe to watch 60 Minutes again. I don’t know for sure but I’ll watch it tonight and see for myself although I haven’t watched SEE-BS’s weekly news magazine in over twenty years.

I’m going to watch tonight (and maybe even record it) because of one particular segment that might prove to be interesting if for no other reason than the fact that it covers 50 million pages of meticulous documentation the Nazis kept on those they murdered in the Holocaust.

These documents have been sealed and inaccessible to the public for over 60 years. They are finally being made available for viewing at a most propitious occasion with Iran currently hosting it’s convention of Holocaust-deniers.

Not that President Ahmawhackjob will watch the show or ever look at any of the documents. He is too busy building nuclear weapons to be concerned with the facts of history ... especially those facts that prove the IslamoNazis’ goal of “wiping Israel off the face of the Earth” is nothing new.

The only difference is Hitler had to chase down the Jews, homosexuals and gypsies all across Europe while “Whacky” and his fellow travelers in the Religion Of Piss have the Jews bottled up in one tiny plot of land.

There is one other minor difference that the IslamoNazis need to keep in mind ... I’d bet a ton of money that this time the Jews won’t be led to the slaughter and if Israel is indeed destroyed they won’t go down without a fight.

I’d also bet that Teheran, Damascus, Medina, Mecca, Cairo, Amman, Tripoli and a few other cities might be reduced to smoking, melted sand that glows in the dark for centuries to come. Come to think of it, I’d be perfectly willing to push the button myself.

Never again ...

Revisiting The Horrors Of The Holocaust
Millions Of Nazi Documents Are Being Made Available To The Public

When: Sunday, December 17 - 7:00PM ET/PT (CBS)

One man holds his fate in his hands: a list of inmates — his name among them, but crossed off — who were sent to a notorious slave labor camp few ever emerged from. Another holds the very card he signed as a teenager upon his entry to a concentration camp.

A third sees a form the Nazis created to track the mail he never received in Buchenwald because the rest of his family had already been murdered at Auschwitz. All three Holocaust survivors are viewing for the first time the records the Nazis meticulously kept on them and 17 million other victims of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Their stories and other revelations from the secret archives previously closed for 60 years are part of correspondent Scott Pelley’s report, this Sunday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes.

Seized when Germany fell to the Allies in 1945, the documents were deposited in an archive in the German city of Bad Arolsen and have been tightly controlled for privacy reasons ever since. Sitting on 16 miles of shelving, they number 50 million pages covering 17.5 million victims, not only Jews but also millions of slave laborers, political prisoners, homosexuals and Roma. They reveal the horrible: For 90 minutes on Hitler’s birthday, a prisoner was shot every two minutes as a gift to the Führer. They tell the mundane: Lice on prisoners were counted and classified as small, medium and large.

They contain a few familiar names, Anne Frank, for one, and a famous list, the one belonging to factory owner Oskar Schindler, who put prisoners’ names on his list to save them from death. Both stories were immortalized in literature and film. But the records mainly hold the names of millions of unknown victims, some of whom survived to tell their stories, like Miki Schwartz, Walter Feiden and Jack Rosenthal. 60 Minutes was able to secure a private viewing of the records for these three men before they are made more accessible within a year.

The documents were quite a revelation, and Schwartz says he was glad he saw them. He also has a message for people who doubt the horrors he went through, especially the Holocaust deniers whose convention just ended in Iran. “Those people who said the Holocaust didn’t happen, like the president of Iran, if they have any questions about it, please come to Bad Arolsen and check it out for themselves,” says Schwartz.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/17/2006 at 12:35 PM   
Filed Under: • History •  
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   Thursday - December 07, 2006

Through The Looking Glass

“USS Arizona Memorial”
_{(Click image for larger 1600x1200 image in popup window)}

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/07/2006 at 05:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography • History •  
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