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40 years ago young Thai protesters massacred

2018-06-30T18:57:36Z

GastonForest514:

BANGKOK (AP) - EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press Photographer Neal Ulevich won the Pulitzer Prize for his [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] photos of the suppression of a left-wing student protest at Bangkok's Thammasat University on Oct. 6, 1976, and the brutal lynchings in its wake. Ulevich, then 30, arrived as a night of tension at the campus broke into a full-scale assault by paramilitary police on thousands of trapped and defenseless students. Even with experience covering the Vietnam War- he was on one of the last helicopters out when the American presence ended with the communist takeover in April 1975 - Ulevich was stunned by the scale of the violence. After winning the Pulitzer, he said his happiness "must be tempered with grim memories of the day. If there is any value in the pictures it is that they may have made some people pause and think about the wider issues such as hatred and violence." FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo blood streaming down his face, a leftist student, center, wounded and captured by police is helped to an ambulance at the Thammasat University campus in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich,File) Ulevich wrote this first-person account, which the AP published soon after the massacre. ___ In a real riot no one knows you're there. So as gunfire crackled over the campus of Bangkok's Thammasat University Wednesday morning, I pushed my way through an angry sea of rightists and found a hole in the high metal fence surrounding the campus. I paused momentarily while Boy Scouts pushed through the fence the body of a soldier with a chest wound. I jumped through. The police were on the attack and the rightists were cheering their support. Troops armed with M-16 rifles were spraying wild fire across a quadrangle, shattering classroom windows and nicking holes in the walls. With some Indochina combat coverage behind me, I could hear that more than 90 percent of the fire was going in one direction - toward the students. Occasionally it seemed a round came back. On the quadrangle, troopers worked their way toward classrooms. Some of the troopers tossed hand grenades through the windows. The "garrumph" of a grenade going off was followed by a puff of smoke and the tinkle of showering glass. Then the recoilless rifle crew moved up. It wasn't immediately clear why the border patrol police were there, or why they thought they needed an armor-piercing antitank weapon to conquer students. The two-man crew moved forward, followed by a shaggy right-winger carrying a box of ammunition. They blasted more classrooms. A few minutes later, about 9:30 a.m., the battle seemed over. Students began to pour out of campus buildings, some wounded. I began to move forward, 50 yards behind the soldiers. I began to feel apprehensive, just as I did in Vietnam when crossing open ground. And with good reason. The shooting began again. The students threw themselves to the ground - I did, too - as the Thai police emptied more thousands of rounds into the classrooms. The fire slackened and the students got up. I reached the nearest classroom building. At the door, students were running out, diving to their hands and knees and crawling past soldiers who told them to take off their shirts, and coeds their [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] blouses. Slow performance earned a kick. A grenade went off in a classroom above us, showering troops and their captives with glass and plaster. The students crawled toward the center of the quadrangle to lie in the hot sun. I was joined by a German reporter who speaks Thai, and we walked out through the gate. Then we were out on the street - close by the pleasant green trees that surround the Pramaine Ground site of Bangkok's colorful weekend fair. But then we saw the angry swarm of Thais around two of those trees and their anger was white hot. I saw the body of a dead student hanging from one tree. The scene was being repeated just a few feet away. I don't know how much earlier the students had been lynched - probably just a few minutes - but enraged rightists felt robbed by death and continued to batter the bodies. Other Thais who witnessed the 1973 student riots [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] here said the earlier uprising, which left 70 dead, never evoked the brutality or hatred of Wednesday's attack on the students. No one had seen me. I had wandered throughout and taken pictures unmolested. But I had seen enough, and left. FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo a member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok Oct. 6, 1976. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo, police stand guard over leftist Thai students on a soccer field at Thammasat University, in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Gary Mangkorn, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo leftist students who surrendered to police lie on the ground of the soccer field at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, awaiting orders from their captors. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct 6, 1976 file photo a policeman kicks a leftist student who surrendered moments before as police moved in on Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976, file photo, police fire a shell as they storm the walls of Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976, are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo a member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok Oct. 6, 1976. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to [http://Blogs.Realtown.com/search/?q=ghoulish%20lynchings ghoulish lynchings]. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) Advertisement

Sunday March 6

2018-06-30T13:21:54Z

GastonForest514:

Today is Sunday, March 6, the 66th day of 2016. There are 300 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1834 - The city of York in Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto. 1836 - Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, falls to Mexican army after 13-day siege in which Davy Crockett and 186 other defenders die. 1853 - Verdi's opera "La Traviata" premieres in Venice, Italy 1857 - In its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court. 1922 - United States prohibits export of arms to China. 1936 - The British Supermarine Spitfire MKI takes to the air. 1945 - German city of Cologne falls to U.S. First Army in World War II. 1946 - France recognizes Vietnam as free state within Indochina Federation. 1953 - G.M. Malenkov succeeds the late Joseph Stalin as Premier of Soviet Union. 1957 - Two former British colonies of Gold Coast and Togoland form independent West African nation of Ghana; Israeli troops hand over Gaza Strip to U.N. force. 1962 - United States pledges to defend Thailand against direct Communist aggression without waiting for action by Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. 1965 - U.S. Defense Department announces that 3,500 Marines are being sent to South Vietnam - the first U.S. ground combat troops committed to fighting against Communist guerrillas. 1970 - Alexander Dubcek, former Czech Communist Party boss, is suspended from party. 1975 - Arab terrorist raid on a Tel Aviv hotel leaves 14 dead. 1988 - Thousands of Tibetans demanding independence set fires throughout their capital city of Lhasa. 1991 - Iraqi troops appear to have crushed a rebellion in Basra and are reported to be moving on other southern cities in revolt. 1994 - Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid rejects a peace agreement reached by 12 other faction leaders in Cairo. 1995 - The dollar plummets to 92.70 yen, its lowest level against the yen anywhere in the world since modern exchange rates were established in the late 1940s. 1999 - Ta Mok, the last leader of the murderous Khmer Rouge, is captured by the Cambodian army and flown to the capital for trial. 2003 - An Algerian passenger jet crashes in the Sahara Desert shortly after takeoff, killing 116 people. 2006 - Several cats test positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in Austria and Poland reports its first outbreak of the disease, as the World Health Organization calls bird flu a greater global challenge than any previous infectious disease. 2008 - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announces that he is breaking relations with Colombia because of his opposition to the Colombian raid on a guerrilla base in Ecuador. 2010 - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the official version of the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks a "big lie" used by the U.S. [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] as an excuse for battling terror. 2011 - The two opposition parties that triumphed in Ireland's election, conservative Fine Gael and left-wing Labour, agree to form the country's next coalition government after compromising on repair of the debt-battered economy. 2012 - The United States, Europe and other world powers announce that bargaining will begin again with Iran over its fiercely disputed nuclear efforts. 2013 - Syria's [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] accelerating humanitarian crisis hits a grim milestone: the number of U.N.-registered refugees tops 1 million, half of them children. 2014 - U.S. President Barack Obama orders the West's first sanctions in response to Russia's military takeover of Crimea, EU more cautious. 2015 - An investigation into what prosecutors call the biggest corruption scandal ever uncovered in Brazil wins Supreme Court approval to expand to dozens of top politicians for alleged ties to a kickback scheme at the state-run energy company, Petrobras. Today's Birthdays: Michelangelo, Italian renaissance artist (1475-1564); Cyrano de Bergerac, French author-duellist (1620-1655); Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (1806-1861); Ed McMahon, U.S. host/announcer (1923--2009); Lorin Maazel, French-born conductor of the NY Philharmonic (1930--2014); Rob Reiner, U.S. director/actor (1947--); Shaquille O'Neal, U.S. basketball player (1972--); Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian novelist (1927--). Thought For Today: Le sens commun n'est pas si commun ([http://thesaurus.com/browse/Common%20sense Common sense] is not so common.) - Voltaire, French author and philosopher (1694-1778). Advertisement

Vietnam floating market struggles to stay above water

2018-06-28T09:15:57Z

GastonForest514:

A vendor prepares vegetables that she sold to a resident of a house boat in a canal off the Song Hau river in the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city of the Mekong Delta Fixing weighing scales used to be good business on Vietnam's floating Cai Rang market, but the last repairman on the river now makes just a few dollars a month as modernity pushes traders to land. Surrounded by dusty old scales on his cluttered houseboat, Nguyen Van Ut says vendors are giving up [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] their boats for better lives on terra firma where supermarkets draw the traders who once thronged the waterway. "I don't have many customers now. In the past, it was alright, but now many boats have left the floating market... people on vessels have switched to vehicles," the 71-year-old told AFP. He got into the repairs business 30 years ago on the Can Tho river to support his surviving children after his wife and two of his sons drowned in an accident. For a time life was good, but now he relies on handouts from his children -- three of them work in nearby Can Tho city. A resident of a house boat yawns as he swings on a hammock on the vessel in a canal off the Song Hau river at the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city in the Mekong Delta Once reportedly two kilometres long, the Cai Rang market is a shadow of its former self. There are about 300 boats on the water now, down from 550 in 2005, according to the local tourism office. It has fallen victim to the economic rise of the Mekong Delta, which has rapidly developed over the last decade. Industrial and construction sectors have created nearly 570,000 jobs, hauling many from poverty. But people like Ut have been left behind, unable to afford a life on shore. Even vendors making a decent wage from the tourists who flock to the market yearn for the perks of living on land: better housing, better jobs and modern amenities. Nguyen Thi Hong Tuoi started working on the water when she was a child, just like her mother and grandmother before her. Though she earns decent money, she doesn't expect her daughter to [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] carry on the family tradition. Boats lie anchored in a canal off the Song Hau river in the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city of the Mekong Delta "In the future, I will let my daughter live on land so she can study and have a proper job," the 34-year-old told AFP, as her elderly mother rested in a hammock surrounded by sacks of tapioca on their boat. It's a [http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=common%20aspiration&submit-go=Search+Y!+Answers common aspiration] for young people in Vietnam, where more than half the country's 93 million people are under the age of 30 and eager to move to fast-growing cities for work. - Supermarket squeeze - The origins of Cai Rang market reach back to when Vietnam and neighbouring Cambodia and Laos were occupied by the French, who readily exploited the natural resources of the colony previously called Indochina. The Mekong Delta's web of canals -- both natural and man-made -- were used to transport goods and people in the absence of a reliable road network. Kim Hui, 70, and her five-year-old granddaughter Nguyen Thi Ngoc Huyen sit inside a boat that they call home in a canal off the Song Hau river at the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city in the Mekong Delta There are about a dozen surviving markets in Vietnam's Mekong Delta today, though like Cai Rang, many have shrivelled. "The local government is trying to keep the floating markets alive to (preserve) the culture and attract more tourists," said Nguyen Thi Huynh Phuong, a lecturer at nearby Can Tho University who has [http://scp-knowledge.org/?s=researched researched] the market's history. It still functions as a wholesale market, with vendors waking each day before dawn to load boats with watermelons or radishes and advertising their products by spearing them to a bamboo pole on the bow of the ship. But its charm also draws millions of visitors each year who buy noodles, fruit and coffee from water traders, making it a well-established pit-stop on the Mekong tourist trail. Recognising the market as a tourism hotspot, the government designated Cai Rang as a national heritage site last year. For vendors like Ly Hung, who has lived on the water for 26 years, visitors have helped to maintain a traditional way of life. "Without tourism this floating market would disappear," he said. Advertisement

Prince Henrik husband of Danish monarch dies aged 83

2018-06-23T17:30:23Z

GastonForest514:

Prince Henrik, the French-born husband of Danish monarch Queen Margrethe, has died at the age of 83, Denmark�s palace has said. A statement on the royal house�s website said the prince died in his sleep late on Tuesday, with the queen at his side. Henrik, who publicly vented his frustration at not being the social equal of his wife or their son, was made prince consort when Margrethe acceded to the throne in 1972. The flag at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen flies at half-mast (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix/AP) The jovial prince was known for being frank and forthright. The palace said last week that his health had �seriously worsened� and that Olympic official Crown Prince Frederik was rushing home from the Winter Games in South Korea. He had been transferred earlier on Tuesday from a Copenhagen hospital to the family�s residence north of the capital, �where he wishes to spend his last moments,� the royal palace had said. A later statement said Henrik, who had been diagnosed with dementia last year, died in his sleep at 11.18pm and that his two sons were also at his side. In one of the world�s oldest kingdoms that prides itself on having a stable royal house with no scandals, Henrik caused one in August 2017 by announcing that when he died he did not want to be buried next to [http://Photobucket.com/images/Margrethe Margrethe] in the cathedral where the remains of Danish royals have gone for centuries. Denmark�s Prince Henrik pictured in 2011 (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File) The queen already had a specially designed sarcophagus waiting for the couple. Born on June 1 1934, in south-western France to parents with the noble titles [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm] of count and countess, Henri Marie Jean Andre de Laborde de Monpezat married Denmark�s future queen in 1967. Henri became Henrik and [http://Www.Britannica.com/search?query=converted converted] to Denmark�s state Lutheran Church. However, he found it difficult to fit in with Denmark�s egalitarian lifestyle. He was titled prince consort, the husband of a reigning queen but not a king, and he was not in the line of succession - his oldest son Frederik being the heir. In the mid-1980s, Henrik publicly said he wanted a pay cheque instead of relying on the queen, who gets annual allowances. The law was eventually changed to give him roughly 10% of the annual allocation Parliament makes to royals each year. In a 2002 interview, Henrik again stunned Danes by saying he felt he had been pushed aside in his own home, not only by his wife but [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] also by his son. This followed the annual royal new year�s reception for foreign diplomats, where Frederik had been host because his mother was unavailable due to a broken rib. �For many years I have been number two,� Henrik told Danish tabloid BT. �I have been satisfied with that role, but after so many years in Denmark I don�t suddenly want to become number three and become some kind of wearisome attachment.� Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark with Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh after the Danish couple�s arrival at Windsor Castle (PA) Henrik lived his first five years in French Indochina. He graduated from universities in Paris, learned Mandarin and Vietnamese and spent a year at the Hong Kong University from 1958-1959. After his move to Denmark, Henrik, a keen pianist, was active in different organisations and wrote poetry, memoirs and books, including a coffee table book on French gastronomy in 1999. Margrethe and Henrik also owned a chateau in south-western France where they retreated every summer. As a member of Denmark�s royal family, he held honorary ranks of general in the Danish army and air force, and was an admiral in the navy. In September 2017, the palace announced that Henrik had undergone tests at Copenhagen�s university hospital. The diagnosis was dementia [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] and �the extent of the cognitive failure is greater than expected,� the palace said. In January, he was admitted to a hospital with a lung infection. Henrik is survived by his wife, sons Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Joachim, and eight grandchildren. Advertisement

User:GastonForest514

2018-06-20T17:09:26Z

GastonForest514: Created page with "I'm a 50 years old, married and work at the college (Biological Sciences). In my spare time I try to teach myself Norwegian. I've been twicethere and look forward to return..."

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