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| Kennedy at Work in the Oval Office |
“On October 16th, 1962,
Kennedy saw aerial photographs proving that the Soviets had installed nuclear
missiles in Cuba capable of reaching much of the eastern U.S. seaboard. The
next 13 days were the most perilous in mankind's history. From the outset, the
Pentagon, the CIA and many of JFK's advisers urged airstrikes and a U.S.
invasion of the island that, as a Soviet military commander later revealed,
would have triggered a nuclear war with the Soviets. JFK opted for a blockade,
which Soviet ships respected. By October 26th, the standoff was de-escalating.
Then, on October 27th, the crisis reignited when Soviet forces shot down a U.S.
reconnaissance plane, killing its pilot, Maj. Rudolf Anderson. Almost
immediately, the brass demanded overwhelming retaliation to destroy the Soviet
missile sites. Meanwhile, Castro pushed the Kremlin military machine toward a
devastating first strike. In a secret meeting with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin,
my father (Robert Kennedy) told him, 'If the situation continues much
longer, the president is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and
seize power.' U.S. marshals appeared at our house to take us to government
bunkers in western Virginia. My brother Joe and I were anxious to go, if only
to see the setup. But my father, who'd spent the previous six nights at the
White House, called to say that we needed to be "good soldiers" and
show up for school in Washington. To disappear, he told us, would cause public
panic. That night, many people in our government went to sleep wondering if
they would wake up dead.
On Monday, October
29th, the world moved back from the brink. An artfully drafted letter my father
wrote with Ted Sorensen pledging that the U.S. would not invade Cuba – plus
JFK's secret agreement with Khrushchev to withdraw obsolete Jupiter missiles
from Turkey – persuaded the Kremlin to back down.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rolling Stone, November 20, 2013.
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| Ken Taylor received medal in 1981 from President Ronald Reagan |
Former Canadian
ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor, whom President Jimmy Carter heralded “the main
hero” of the successful covert operation, was stationed in Tehran for most of
the crisis. He died Thursday of colon cancer at age 81, his wife Pat told the
Associated Press.
When the U.S. embassy
in Tehran was stormed by Islamist students and militants, six American
diplomats escaped and found sanctuary in the homes of Taylor and his first
secretary John Sheardown. In addition to shielding the Americans from Iranian
capture, Taylor also played a crucial role in plotting their escape.
Working with CIA
officials and Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, Taylor obtained for the
Americans six Canadian passports containing forged Iranian visas that
ultimately allowed them to board a flight to Switzerland. He undertook all
these covert actions at a high personal risk, as he and his team would have
been taken hostage themselves in the case of discovery by the Islamist
militants.
“He did all sorts of
things for everyone without any expectation of something coming back,” Pat
said. “It’s why that incident in Iran happened. There was no second thought
about it.”
Yanan Wang, Washington Post, October16, 2015
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| Hugh Thompson |
Hugh Thompson, Who Saved Civilians at My Lai,
Dies
By Richard Goldstein, New York Times, Jan. 7, 2006
Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who rescued
Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his
superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at the inquiries
and received a commendation from the Army three decades later, died yesterday
in Alexandria, La. He was 62.
On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson
and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South
Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children
strewn over the landscape.
Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine
what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre was
taking place. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which a group
of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. Using hand
signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the Vietnamese to come out while ordering his
gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the
civilians. None did.
Mr. Thompson radioed for a helicopter gunship to
evacuate the group, and then his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, pulled a boy from
a nearby irrigation ditch, and their helicopter flew him to safety.
Mr. Thompson told of what he had seen when he
returned to his base.
"They said I was screaming quite loud," he
told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. "I threatened never to fly
again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war."
Mr. Thompson remained in combat, then returned to
the United States to train helicopter pilots. When the revelations about My Lai
surfaced, he testified before Congress, a military inquiry and the
court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the platoon leader at My Lai, who
was the only soldier to be convicted in the massacre.
November 9: The day the Berlin Wall came down
From its construction in August 1961 until its
demolition on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall did more than separate West
Germany from the East, also known as the DDR.
It symbolized a deep-rooted hatred, an
insurmountable division between people that directly led to the deaths of at
least 139 people who dared to try and cross it.
The wall wasn’t just a physical barrier – it was
there to intimidate people into submission.
After its momentous demolition on this day in 1989,
its ruins became a symbol of hope and a warning to people of the future.
As one of my top ten books of 2016, I wrote,
“Nina Willner has written a powerful, moving family
memoir spanning three generations divided by the Iron Curtain in Forty Autumns:
A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall. When
her mother, Hanna, escaped to Berlin's Western zone as a young woman in 1948,
she left behind her parents, siblings and the taint of suspicion that her
family carries for decades. Their separation widens after Hanna marries an
American army intelligence officer and moves to the United States. In describing
the life of her family in East Germany and their suffering under the Communists
– her grandfather was forced out of the teaching profession into impecunious
retirement and the isolation of internal exile – Willner delineates a grim
picture of an open-air prison. One of the most remarkable features of her
memoir is how Willner links her own family with the larger tableau of world
events to the extent that Gorbachev becomes the deux ex machina responsible for
tearing down the Wall and reuniting both sides of the family. What lingers are
the personal stories, especially exemplified by the author’s grandmother, Oma,
whose hopeful optimism and generous spirit determines a way to build a Family
Wall that offers the family sanctuary from the destructive forces of the
outside world, and the author’s aunt, Heidi, who subversively lives her life
with quiet dignity and integrity beneath the radar of the omniscient Stasi
secret police.”
"Rwanda will never end. Each night I take my
pills and try to sleep with the hope that I will not waken again amidst
roaring souls who shall wander the hills of Rwanda asking me to join
them."
―Roméo Dallaire, Waiting for First Light.
My review of a veteran who suffered PTSD can be found in The Evil Hours
October 1989 was a bad time to fall into a coma if
you lived in East Germany - and this is precisely what happens to Alex's
mother, an activist for social progress and the improvement of everyday life in
socialist East Germany. Alex has a big problem on his hands when she suddenly
awakens eight months later. Her heart is so weak that any shock might kill her.
And what could be more shocking than the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
triumph of capitalism in her beloved country? To save his mother, Alex
transforms the family apartment into an island of the past, a kind of socialist
museum where his mother is lovingly duped into believing that nothing has
changed. What begins as a little white lie gets more and more out of hand as
Alex's mother, who feels better every day, wants to watch TV and even leaves
her bed one day…
In a wonderful, touching and comic manner, Good Bye,
Lenin! tells the story of how a loving son tries to move mountains and create
miracles to restore his mother to health - and keep her in the belief that Lenin
really did win after all!
“Le Havre
(by Finnish Director, Ali Kaurismaki) is set…in the French port city where many
of the cargoes are human: illegal immigrants arriving from Africa. The police
find a container filled with them, and a young boy slips under their arms and
runs away. This is Idrissa from Gabon, solemn, shy, appealing. The cops
announce a manhunt. The film's hero, Marcel Marx, is fishing near a pier and
sees the boy standing waist-deep in the water, hiding, and mutely appealing to
him. He returns, leaves out some food and finds the food gone the next day. And
so, with no plan in mind, Marcel becomes in charge of protecting the boy from
arrest.
The movie's other characters are all proletarians
from a working-class neighborhood, and in Kaurismaki's somewhat sentimental
view, therefore in sympathy with the little underdog and not with the police.
We meet Marcel's wife, Arletty (Kati Outinen, long the director's favorite
actress), who joins her husband in his scheme. Their dog, Laika, is also a
great help. Marcel, probably in his 50s, is a hard-working shoeshine man who
knows everyone, including a snoop, a woman grocer; a fellow Vietnamese
shoeshiner, Inspector Monet, and a local rock singer named Little Bob, whose
act is unlike any you have ever seen.
Marcel and Arletty are long and happily in love.
They cherish each other. Childless, they care for the boy and enlist others in
the neighborhood to hide him from Inspector Monet, who perhaps is not looking
all that hard. The snoop is a throwback to informers during the Resistance.
Idrissa is resourceful and clever, and moves in and out of hiding places like a
figure in a French farce. The dog fully deserves its listing by name in the
film's credits.
Early in the conspiracy, Arletty falls ill and is
rushed to the hospital, concerned only that her sickness will make Marcel
worry. In a priceless scene, she meets Idrissa for the first time when Marcel
dispatches him to the hospital on a mission. Note her perfect acceptance of any
emissary from her husband, even an inexplicable young African boy. Note, too,
the precise sequence of events during which Marcel believes his wife has died
and discovers otherwise. Even Kaurismaki's miracles are deadpan.
This movie is as lovable as a silent comedy, which
it could have been. It takes place in a world that seems cruel and heartless,
but look at the lengths Marcel goes to find Idrissa's father in a refugee camp
and raise money to send the boy to join his mother in England. Le Havre has won
many festivals, including Chicago 2011, comes from a Finnish auteur, yet let me
suggest that smart children would especially like it. There is nothing cynical
or cheap about it, it tells a good story with clear eyes and a level gaze, and
it just plain makes you feel good.”
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