#1916 Signatory

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1858 – Birth of Irish revolutionary, Thomas Clarke, at Hurst Castle, Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire, England.

“I have lived to see the greatest hour in Irish history.” –Thomas Clarke As seemed often the case, Clarke’s father was in the British army. At a young age, Clarke took up the nationalist cause, joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). In 1883, he was sentenced to penal servitude for life for treason (planning bomb attacks in England.) He served fifteen years. Following his release in 1898…

[fatehbaz]

[I]n the period of eerie suspension before the explosion [...], those who registered the [...] uncanny [...] experience[d] a condition that [...] would become familiar to everyone living in a targeted city during the Cold War: the sense that the present survival and flourishing of the city were simultaneously underwritten and radically threatened by its identity as a nuclear target. [...] [I]nhabitants of Cold War cities [...] became accustomed to a more overt and permanent variant of the uncanny frisson [...]. Lobbing incendiaries and explosives through the roofs and windows […], the British gunners gutted portions of the Dublin city center; during the week of the Rising, 500 people died […]. The more frequent and extreme outbreaks of traumatic violence in everyday urban life […], in the early-twentieth-century imaginary, the city had begun to host new forms of sudden mass death and severe physical destruction.

Cities had, of course, been sites of mass death before 1916.

But the Easter Rising differed from nineteenth-century urban barricade fighting in the use, principally by British soldiers, of more precise and destructive weapons; fired from the ground, from rooftops, and from gunships in the Liffey, the new cannons, incendiaries, and machine guns rapidly reduced whole blocks of the city center to ruins. These emerging military technologies and strategies link the Rising to the Great War then raging in England and on the Continent, whose fields and cities had become proving grounds for new weaponry and modes of warfare. In Ireland and the Great War, [...] “Like the Western Front [the Easter Rising] became a war of attrition, and the lessons of the Western Front were taught again in the streets of Dublin.” […]

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Though the shelling of Dublin in 1916 reminded observers of Ypres, Louvain, and other European cities ruined in the Great War, it might as credibly have called to mind a different list: Canton, Kagoshima, and Alexandria. During the second half of the nineteenth century, British naval bombardments made rubble of these coastal cities […].

The naval bombardment of undefended cities and civilians, particularly those in colonial territories, paved the way for the first airplane bombardments, in which the imperial powers of Europe dropped bombs on nonwhite, non-European adversaries and anticolonial forces.

Italy pioneered airplane bombardment in 1911 by bombing Arab oases outside Tripoli; British planes bombed Pathans in India in 1915, Egyptian revolutionaries and the Sultan of Farfur in 1916, a Mashud uprising on the Indian-Afghanistan border in 1917, and Somaliland and the Afghan cities of Dacca, Jalalabad, and Kabul in 1919.

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Several years before the inhabitants of European cities experienced it, aerial bombardment had been established as a uniquely colonial nightmare. [...] [T]he initial use of airplane bombs against colonies was foreseen and even fed by a racist fantasy pervading early-twentieth-century European science fiction, a fantasy of bombing subject races either into submission or out of existence. The willingness of several signatory nations to ignore Article 25 when bombing nonwhite soldiers and civilians made colonial towns and cities the first civilian spaces secured by the implied threat of bombardment from above.

In the world war […] the brief tenure of aerial bombardment as an exclusively colonial technique ended when imperial powers launched the first bombing campaigns against the cities of other imperial powers, initiating a change that would later find its apogee in the nuclear condition: the reconfiguration of the major metropolis as target.

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All text above by: Paul K. Saint-Amour. “Bombing and the Symptom: Traumatic Earliness and the Nuclear Uncanny.” Diacritics Volume 30, Number 4, Winter 2000, pp. 59-82. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.27 (before 1950)

312 – Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross. 1275 – Traditional founding of the city of Amsterdam. 1524 – French troops lay siege to Pavia. 1553 – Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva. 1644 – Second Battle of Newbury in the English Civil War. 1674 – The French garrison in Grave surrenders the town to a Dutch army after a difficult siege. 1682 – Philadelphia is founded in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 1775 – King George III expands on his Proclamation of Rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies in his speech from the throne at the opening of Parliament. 1795 – The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, which establishes the boundaries between Spanish colonies and the U.S. 1806 – The French Army under Napoleon enters Berlin following the Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt. 1810 – United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida. 1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be killed. 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Marshal Bazaine surrenders to Prussian forces at the conclusion of the Siege of Metz along with 140,000 French soldiers. 1907 – Fifteen people are killed in Hungary when gendarmes opened fire on a crowd gathered at a church consecration. 1914 – World War I: The new British battleship HMS Audacious is sunk by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin. 1916 – Negus Mikael, marching on the Ethiopian capital in support of his son Emperor Iyasu V, is defeated by Fitawrari abte Giyorgis, securing the throne for Empress Zewditu I. 1919 – The Fourth Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents is held by the Makhnovshchina at Oleksandrivsk. 1922 – A referendum in Rhodesia rejects the country's annexation to the South African Union. 1924 – The Uzbek SSR is founded in the Soviet Union. 1930 – Ratifications exchanged in London for the first London Naval Treaty go into effect immediately, further limiting the expensive naval arms race among its five signatories. 1936 – Mrs. Wallis Simpson obtains her divorce, which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne. 1944 – World War II: German forces capture Banská Bystrica during Slovak National Uprising thus bringing it to an end. 1948 – Ecological disaster in Donora, Pennsylvania.

[thewaltoncollection]

Thomas MacDonagh 1916 Poster: Remembering a Shining Intellectual Light

Who was Thomas MacDonagh, the poet and revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in the Easter Rising of 1916? Born on February 1, 1878, in County Tipperary, he was not only a signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic but also the Commandant of the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. A dedicated educator and cultural advocate, MacDonagh’s commitment to Irish nationalism led to his execution on May 3, 1916, at the age of thirty-eight. To know more, read this blog and visit our website.

[arthist0rian]

I miei balli plastic

by Fortunato Depero

Oil on canvas, 1918

Among these experiments is the show by the artist Fortunato Depero entitled Balli plastici staged on April 14, 1918 in Rome at the Teatro dei Piccoli in Podrecca. The painted figures, in fact, recall the world of childhood and take on the appearance of toys.

My plastic dances dates back to 1918, an important date that marked the end of the First World War. After this date, in Europe and Italy, a trend referred to as Return to Order spread. The official culture thus banned the abstract experimentations of the historical avant-gardes and pushed the artists to re-propose figuration. In Italy, artists returned to be inspired by historical painting, especially from the pre-Renaissance era. The most representative reality that brought together the new proposals were the great exhibitions referred to as Novecento Italiano organized in the twenties by Margherita Sarfatti.

The composer Casella secured publicity for the show in his magazine entitled Ars Nova. The year after the release of the show, however, Casella himself wrote an editorial against Futurism. The composer in fact heavily criticized the aesthetics and vulgarity in propaganda actions. With this heavy criticism the possibility of experimenting with an Italian futurist musical current was lost.

The style of I miei balli plastici by Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero was an artist indicated by art historians as an important exponent of Italian Futurism. In addition, he was one of the promoters and signatories of the Manifesto of Futurist Aeropainting and protagonist of the Second Futurism. This later moment of Futurism was identified by the historian Enrico Crispolti in the late fifties of the twentieth century and later absorbed by convention by the History of Art.

The first Futurism is also called "Heroic Futurism", developed from 1909 to 1916 and founded by artists of anarcho-socialist orientation. The second Futurism instead spread after the First World War, conventionally following the death of Umberto Boccioni in 1918, Antonio Sant'Elia and Carlo Erba. Its adherents were mostly of fascist orientation. The second Futurism was inspired by the "Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe" by Balla and Depero. It was a true artistic and cultural program destined to condition the daily life of Italians.

Space

The complex representation of Fortunato Depero is distributed within an environment reminiscent of the stage of a theater. The scene is also the result of several interpenetrating spaces. The point of view in which the scene is proposed to the observer is higher.

Composition and framing

I miei balli plastici by Fortunato Depero is a square-shaped painting. The frame is wide and reproduces a theatrical scenography.

The compositional structure is ordered on an orthogonal grid within which the different groups of characters are placed. In addition, there are three main horizontal bands that have their own color. At the bottom is the widest green and blue zone. In the center then there is a thin band with warm colors. Finally, at the top is the gray and dark green area in which the puppets are observed.

[aoife700]

“Our demands most moderate are: we only want the Earth.” - James Connolly. Vice-President of the Provisional Government and Commandant-General in the Army of the Irish Republic, Nationalist, Socialist, Republican, signatory of an Poblacht na hÉireann, Husband to Lillie, Father to Mona, Nora, Aideen, Mollie, Moria Elizabeth, Fiona and Roderick James and One of the 16 executed rebels of the 1916 Easter Rising

[seachranaidhe]

'Sinn Féin leader lodges appeal against third phase of €500m Dublin city centre project'.

‘Sinn Féin leader lodges appeal against third phase of €500m Dublin city centre project’.

http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/07/sinn-fein-leader-lodges-appeal-against.html

[militant-holy-knight]

On a 500-acre campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Middle East scholar Raymond Ibrahim was finally allowed to give his speech before a packed, mostly civilian audience at the U.S. Army War College's Heritage and Education Center. Based on his book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, Ibrahim covered the 7th-century origins of Islam, its conflict with Christianity during the hundreds of years that followed, and revisionist attempts to deny Islam's history of violent warfare and supremacism.

Ibrahim, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow with the Middle East Forum, was on the receiving end of such an attempt in June 2019, when the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamists convinced the U.S. Army War College to disinvite Ibrahim from his original appearance, fallaciously accusing the son of Egyptian immigrants of being a "bigot" and "white nationalist."

However, Ibrahim wasn't alone. In its press release, CAIR ridiculed the War College as "an academic institution run on taxpayer funds" that was "poised to exacerbate longstanding problems such as racism and human rights violations that exist within the US military."

Ibrahim explained that CAIR is "well aware how important it is to dominate the historic narrative." He pointed to his reliance on primary source material and actual quotes from jihadist and Islamists to support his view that there is "a continuity between past and present; Muslim religious leaders and jihadists see Christianity as both antithetical to the Islamic world and inherently ripe for conquest or conversion."

It took a letter signed by ten congressmen to Army War College commandant Major General John S. Kem, as well as a National Association of Scholars letter to President Trump that included 5,000 signatories, to convince Army leaders to reinstate Ibrahim's invitation.

When CAIR learned that Ibrahim was set to return to the Carlisle campus, it responded by once again suggesting that the Army War College suffers from an "internal problem with white supremacists and white nationalists within its ranks," while claiming that Ibrahim's talk would "instigate hatred against Muslims."

Undeterred by his Islamist critics, Ibrahim began his presentation by saying that "since 9/11," it has "become popular" for media and academia to whitewash the Koran's objectionable passages. "They say Mohammad may have done bad things, but so did King David and Abraham," he said. The difference, Ibrahim noted, is that the Torah acknowledges the wayward path of these leaders and advises against following them, unlike the Koran.

For argument's sake, Ibrahim offered to "put aside what the Koran says" and "see what Islamists have done." Beginning with the Islamic conquests of the Middle East and North Africa, Ibrahim argued that Islamists' consistent goal has been Western submission to Islamic supremacy. This region, which is identified today as Muslim-majority, was home to more Christians than Europe in the 7th century. What remained after the Arab Muslim invasion became "the West." Ibrahim quoted historian Franco Cardini, who wrote, "Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries and again in the 14th and 18th centuries was a violent midwife to Europe."

Ibrahim referred to the late historian of Islam Bernard Lewis, who said, "We forget that for a thousand years since the advent of Islam from the 7th century to the siege of Vienna in 1683 Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam, the double threat of conquest and conversion violently wrested from Christendom." Ibrahim noted that modern historians often fail to acknowledge this simple truth.

He argued that Mohammad's guidance to spread Islam was the motivation behind the Islamic conquests. The only way peace could be achieved was through acceptance of Islam by conversion, enslavement, or paying the jizya — an enormous annual tribute that the caliphate levied on non-Muslims.

Short of these options, a non-believer's only recourse was to fight to the death. Ibrahim quoted what Islamist conqueror Khalid bin Walid said to a Byzantine general before the Battle of Yarmuk in 636 C.E.: "We Arabs are in the habit of drinking blood and we are told the Romans are the sweetest of its kind. Where you love life, we love death."

Unlike modern historians who identify the various inter-civilizational wars of this age as ethnic and nationalistic, Ibrahim emphasized that the primary sources clearly show that these ongoing battles were manifestations of jihad, inspired by Koranic scripture. He called this tendency "a historic fact that modern day historians censor."

Ibrahim showed that modern jihadists "belonging to groups such as ISIS are well-versed in Islamic historic military jurisprudence" and the Koran and point to historical precedents to justify their violence and brutality.

At the fall of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II motivated his jihadists with the same instructions invoked by modern-day ISIS: "Recall the promise of our Prophet regarding fallen warriors in the Koran; the man who falls in combat will be transported bodily to Paradise [and] will dine with Mohammed in the presence of women."

Next, Ibrahim recounted the American experience with the Islamic Barbary pirates in 1785 and 1786 that attacked U.S. merchant ships and enslaved American sailors. In an effort to ransom the slaves, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams entered negotiations with Abdul Rahman, Tripoli's ambassador to Britain. The American diplomats futilely explained that they "had done them no injury" and "consider all mankind our friends."

Abdul answered that "it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, written in the Koran that all nations not acknowledging their authority were sinners, that it is their religious right and duty to make slaves of non-believers, and all Muslims slain in battle were sure to go to paradise." America's conflict with Islam did not begin on 9/11. Rather, it dates back to the time of America's Founders.

To underscore this message, Ibrahim cited Theodore Roosevelt's 1916 book, Fear God and Take Your Part, where the former president pointed out, "If the peoples of Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries, and on up to and including the 17th century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated."

The great English statesman Winston Churchill also criticized Islam for institutionalizing slavery. "The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman is the absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

Ibrahim rhetorically asked, if the violent history of Islam is so well documented, "so ironclad," then "why don't we know about it?" Older historians who studied Islam unprejudiced by political correctness reached conclusions that no longer comport with what the public is told. Conversely, modern historians get away with academic malpractice by reducing previous Islamic studies scholarship to outdated myths.

This is all part and parcel of what Ibrahim referred to as "propaganda as a form of jihad," misinformation of which academics and groups such as CAIR are the most vociferous defenders.

Meanwhile, CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the nation's largest terrorism finance trial and an accused Hamas-supporter, engaged in "propaganda jihad "by working to suppress Ibrahim's historical review, a practice consistent with Islamist suppression of different religious beliefs.

In the end, Ibrahim gave Army service members and the community a coherent and fact-driven presentation of Islamic history that everyone in America should hear, one that dispels the many false, politically correct notions about the nature of Islam. It lays bare the inconvenient truth that Islamic ideology is what motivates Muslim jihadists to perpetrate acts of terrorism against non-believers, both domestically and abroad.

[burnitalldownism]

Sooooo our General Election is over. After 90yrs of a two-party back and forth of repeated failures we’ve broken the pattern. We now have three parties with a seat in the difference between each, the newcomers being the most left of the “old parties” truest to the politics of the executed 1916 signatories.

The centre-right party that destroyed the economy and the centrist party that oversaw the austerity that followed have suffered historically low results in the face of a left and green surge. And of course coz they’ve shared power for almost a century and so are capable of self-reflection or humility they’re utterly incapable of understanding why the electorate gave them the finger in the face of a housing/rental/healthcare/childcare/homeless/insurance crisis that they oversaw the worsening of.

The icing on the cake? Not one far-right candidate trying to cash in by regurgitating MAGA/UKIP rhetoric elected.

My constituency? I’m proud to be a citizen of the Socialist Republic of Dublin South-Central. Four parliament seats filled by leftist politicians, the only one in the country, not a single establishment party candidate put into power. Equal rights and access to public services for all...miniature Irish flags for others.

🇮🇪🚌🇮🇪🏥🇮🇪🏠🇮🇪

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1916 – Easter Rising | Pádraig Pearse’s Letter to his Mother.

My dear Mother, You will I know have been longing to hear from me. I do not know how much you have heard since the last note I sent you from the G.P.O. On Friday evening the Post Office was set on fire and we had to abandon it. We dashed into Moore Street and remained in the houses in Moore St. on Saturday evening? We then found that we were surrounded by troops and that we had practically no…

[today-in-wwi]

Wilson Meets With Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Henry Cabot Lodge, Senate Majority Leader and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from March 1919 (when the Republicans gained a majority in the chamber), pictured around 1916.

August 19 1919, Washington--After Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge quickly referred it to his Foreign Relations Committee, where he dragged out the consideration of the treaty as long as possible.  A quick vote on the Treaty, broadly popular with an overwhelming majority of Americans, was not in his best interests.  He spent two weeks reading the text of the treaty out loud, in full, to the committee. On July 31, he finally started hearings on the treaty in the Foreign Relations committee.  The next day, Lodge called for five “reservations” to the treaty, clarifications to how the treaty would apply to the United States, that would not require renegotiation with the other signatories (nor a two-thirds majority in the Senate):

Article 1 of the treaty allowed for any member to depart the League of Nations after two years’ notice provided “all its international obligations and all its obligations under this Covenant shall have been fulfilled at the time of its withdrawal;” Lodge wanted to specify that the United States would be the one to determine whether those obligations had been fulfilled, should the United States choose to withdraw from the League.

Article 10 called for the preservation of “the territorial integrity and existing political independence” of League members against “external aggression,” and the League Council “shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.”  Article 11 called for the League to “take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations,” in the event of “war or threat of war.”  Lodge wanted to clarify that only Congress could declare war and send troops abroad, and that the United States could not be drawn into a war by the League without Congressional approval.

Article 15 dealt with arbitration between League members, and stated that “if the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them, and is found by the Council, to arise out of a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction of that party, the Council shall so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement.”  Lodge wanted to go further, and say explicitly that if the United States considered a matter to be completely domestic, that it would not recognize League arbitration on that matter.

Article 21 explicitly stated that the League Covenant would not affect the Monroe Doctrine, but Lodge wanted a reservation regarding it anyway.

Debate continued for weeks, despite the fact that it was shaping up to a be a party-line vote in the committee.  The ranking Democrat asked that the treaty be sent out of committee.  Lodge, needing to appear to do something, instead asked Wilson to meet with the committee--an unprecedented move.

On August 19, Wilson met with all but one of the committee members in the East Room of the White House.  Most of the discussion centered on Article 10.  Wilson described any obligation to provide military force under Article 10, as “advised” by the League Council, as a moral obligation rather than a legal one.  Senator Warren G. Harding asked Wilson what good was a moral obligation by itself; every nation supposedly obligated could just choose not to participate.  Wilson spoke of the obligation as part of a “national good conscience:”

When I speak of a legal obligation, I mean one that specifically binds you to do a particular thing...Now a moral obligation is of course superior to a legal obligation and, if I may say so, has a greater binding force; only there always remains in the moral obligation the right to exercise one’s judgment.

Harding then asked a more specific question, “to clear my slow mind.”  If Greece or Yugoslavia attacked Italy and the League called for troops, would the United States be committed to do so?  Wilson said that “we would be our own judges.”  Senator Borah of Idaho asked a similar question regarding a German attack on France (which the United States would have a legal obligation to respond to if they ratified a separate treaty they had signed at Versailles with France and Britain), and Wilson gave much the same answer.  That latter treaty would die a quick death in committee, and indeed France would have no help from the United States in 1940.

Discussion then turned to the question of Shantung; America’s betrayal of China on this issue, solely to ensure that Japan would sign the treaty (without having to make concessions on Japanese immigration), was extremely unpopular in the United States, even within the Wilson administration.  Secretary of State Lansing had even told the Foreign Relations Committee that the awarding of the Shantung concession to Japan was not necessary to get them to sign the treaty.  When the members mentioned this to Wilson, he said that his own Secretary of State was mistaken, and that his discussions in the Council of Four had shown otherwise.  Conveniently, the minutes of the Council of Four were still in Paris and were too confidential to be shown to the Foreign Relations Committee.  Wilson assured them that Shantung would be returned to China soon; the Republicans were unconvinced.

The meeting was not a victory for Wilson.  Four days later, on August 23, the treaty suffered its first major defeat.  In a party-line vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for an amendment (not a reservation) to the Treaty, one that would restore Shantung to China.

Sources include: Patricia O’Toole, The Moralist; Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919.

[asiajanuary2020]

January 12, 2020

One of the best days ever! Today we did a Hanoi City tour with Backstreet Tours. In the morning we traveled in an old army Jeep around the city, and in the afternoon we each got on the back of an old army motorcycle and traveled through surrounding areas of Hanoi.

Our tour guide’s English translation of her name is Snow. She was so much fun to travel the streets of Hanoi with! She told us a bit about her background- she went to university and got her degree in banking, but decided she wanted to be a tour guide and is now studying to become a professional tour guide. We asked how she spoke English so well and she told us it was from watching Ellen! They learn written English in school, but most of the English teachers in Vietnam do not have good pronunciation, so they have to learn how to speak English another way. Snow was very enthusiastic and entertaining and knowledgeable. This all made for an excellent tour!

We started out by traveling to the real Hanoi area - the Black Market area. People used to sell goods here “under the table” out of their homes, but now the government has made it legal, so they sell EVERYTHING out of little stalls in front of their homes.

Then snow took us to Train Street, which is a very narrow street that the passenger train travels through and houses front onto the railroad tracks. There is just enough room for a narrow sidewalk on either side of the tracks. This area started becoming popular to visit, so many of the people living along the tracks opened little businesses on the ground floor of their homes.

Next we traveled to The President Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. It is a mausoleum which serves as the resting place of Vietnamese Revolutionary leader & President Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is a large building located in the center of Ba Dinh Square, where Ho, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Vietnam from 1951 until his death in 1969, read the Declaration of Independence on September 2, 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It is also known as Ba Đình Mausoleum. The embalmed body of President Ho Chi Minh is preserved in the cooler, central hall of the mausoleum, which is protected by a military honour guard. The body lies in a glass case with dim lights. The mausoleum is generally open to the public. Snow told us that they have to close the mausoleum in the hot summer months and move his body to a cooler spot in order to keep preserving it. We had no idea that they had preserved him so that the public could visit him.

Next we visited the Temple of Literature. Map

The Temple of Literature or Temple of Culture (Vietnamese: Văn Miếu, Hán-Nôm: 文廟[1][2])) is a Temple of Confucius in Hanoi, northern Vietnam. The temple hosts the Imperial Academy (Quốc Tử Giám, 國子監), Vietnam's first national university. The temple was built in 1070 at the time of Emperor Lý Thánh Tông. It is one of several temples in Vietnam which is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars. The temple is located to the south of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long. The various pavilions, halls, statues and stelae of doctors are places where offering ceremonies, study sessions and the strict exams of the Đại Việt took place. The temple is featured on the back of the 100,000 Vietnamese đồng banknote. Just before the Vietnamese New Year celebration Tết, calligraphists will assemble outside the temple and write wishes in Hán characters. The art works are given away as gifts or are used as home decorations for special occasions.

Next we drove through the French Quarter on our way to the “Hanoi Hilton” prison. Hỏa Lò Prison was a prison used by the French colonists in French Indochina for political prisoners, and later by North Vietnam for U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. During this later period it was known to American POWs as the Hanoi Hilton. The prison was demolished during the 1990s, although the gatehouse remains as a museum. The name Hỏa Lò, commonly translated as "fiery furnace" or even "Hell's hole", also means "stove". The name originated from the street name phố Hỏa Lò, due to the concentration of stores selling wood stoves and coal-fire stoves along the street in pre-colonial times.

The prison was built in Hanoi by the French, in dates ranging from 1886–1889 to 1898 to 1901, when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina. The French called the prison Maison Centrale, ‘Central House', which is still the designation of prisons for dangerous or long sentence detainees in France. It was located near Hanoi's French Quarter. It was intended to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners agitating for independence who were often subject to torture and execution. A 1913 renovation expanded its capacity from 460 inmates to 600. It was nevertheless often overcrowded, holding some 730 prisoners on a given day in 1916, a figure which rose to 895 in 1922 and 1,430 in 1933. By 1954 it held more than 2000 people; with its inmates held in subhuman conditions, it had become a symbol of colonialist exploitation and of the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French.

The central urban location of the prison also became part of its early character. During the 1910s through 1930s, street peddlers made an occupation of passing outside messages in through the jail's windows and tossing tobacco and opium over the walls; letters and packets would be thrown out to the street in the opposite direction. Within the prison itself, communication and ideas passed. Many of the future leading figures in Communist North Vietnam spent time in Maison Centrale during the 1930s and 1940s. Following the defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Accords the French left Hanoi and the prison came under the authority of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Thereafter the prison served as an education center for revolutionary doctrine and activity, and it was kept around after the French left to mark its historical significance to the North Vietnamese. During the Vietnam War, the first U.S. prisoner to be sent to Hỏa Lò was Lieutenant Junior Grade Everett Alvarez Jr., who was shot down on August 5, 1964. From the beginning, U.S. POWs endured miserable conditions, including poor food and unsanitary conditions. The prison complex was sarcastically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the American POWs, in reference to the well-known Hilton Hotel chain. There is some disagreement among the first group of POWs who coined the name but F8D pilot Bob Shumaker was the first to write it down, carving "Welcome to the Hanoi Hilton" on the handle of a pail to greet the arrival of Air Force Lieutenant Robert Peel.

Beginning in early 1967, a new area of the prison was opened for incoming American POWs; it was dubbed "Little Vegas", and its individual buildings and areas were named after Las Vegas Strip landmarks, such as "Golden Nugget", "Thunderbird", "Stardust", "Riviera", and the "Desert Inn". These names were chosen because many pilots had trained at Nellis Air Force Base, located in proximity to Las Vegas.[11] American pilots were frequently already in bad shape by the time they were captured, injured either during their ejection or in landing on the ground. The Hanoi Hilton was one site used by the North Vietnamese Army to house, torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which demanded "decent and humane treatment" of prisoners of war, severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners of war began to be released from this and other North Vietnamese prisons during the Johnson administration, their testimonies revealed widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners of war.

Regarding treatment at Hỏa Lò and other prisons, the North Vietnamese countered by stating that prisoners were treated well and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. During 1969, they broadcast a series of coerced statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion. The North Vietnamese also maintained that their prisons were no worse than prisons for POWs and political prisoners in South Vietnam, such as the one on Côn Sơn Island. Misstreatment of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners and South Vietnamese dissidents in South Vietnam's prisons was indeed frequent, as was North Vietnamese abuse of South Vietnamese prisoners and their own dissidents.

Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners at Hỏa Lò and other camps became less severe and generally more tolerable. Following the late 1970 attempted rescue operation at Sơn Tây prison camp, most of the POWs at the outlying camps were moved to Hỏa Lò, so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect. This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hỏa Lò, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale. After the implementation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, neither the United States nor its allies ever formally charged North Vietnam with the war crimes revealed to have been committed there. In the 2000s, the Vietnamese government has had the position that claims that prisoners were tortured at Hoa Lo and other sites during the war are fabricated, but that Vietnam wants to move past the issue as part of establishing better relations with the U.S. Tran Trong Duyet, a jailer at Hoa Lo beginning in 1968 and its commandant for the last three years of the war, maintained in 2008 that no prisoners were tortured. However, eyewitness accounts by American servicemen present a different account of their captivity.

After the war, Risner wrote the book Passing of the Night detailing his seven years at the Hanoi Hilton. A considerable amount of literature emerged from released POWs after repatriation, depicting Hoa Lo and the other prisons as places where such atrocities as murder, beatings, broken bones, teeth and eardrums, dislocated limbs, starvation, serving of food contaminated with human and animal feces, and medical neglect of infections and tropical disease occurred. These details are revealed in famous accounts by McCain (Faith of My Fathers), Denton, Alvarez, Day, Risner, Stockdale and dozens of others. In addition, the Hanoi Hilton was depicted in the 1987 Hollywood movie The Hanoi Hilton. The prison continued to be in use after the release of the American prisoners. Among the last inmates was dissident poet Nguyễn Chí Thiện, who was reimprisoned in 1979 after attempting to deliver his poems to the British Embassy, and spent the next six years in Hỏa Lò until 1985 when he was transferred to a more modern prison. He mentions the last years of the prison, partly in fictional form, in Hỏa Lò/Hanoi Hilton Stories (2007). Most of the prison was demolished in the mid-1990s and the site now contains two high-rise buildings, one of them the 25-story Somerset Grand Hanoi serviced apartment building. Other parts have been converted into a commercial complex retaining the original French colonial walls.

Only part of the prison exists today as a museum. The displays mainly show the prison during the French colonial period, including the guillotine room, still with original equipment, and the quarters for male and female Vietnamese political prisoners. Exhibits related to the American prisoners include the interrogation room where many newly captured Americans were questioned (notorious among former prisoners as the "blue room") is now made up to look like a very comfortable, if spartan, barracks-style room. Displays in the room claim that Americans were treated well and not harmed (and even cite the nickname "Hanoi Hilton" as proof that inmates found the accommodations comparable to a hotel's). Propaganda in the museum includes pictures of American POWs playing chess, shooting pool, gardening, raising chickens, and receiving large fish and eggs for food. The museum's claims are contested by former prisoners' published memoirs, and oral histories broadcast on C-SPAN identify the room (and other nearby locales) as the site of numerous acts of torture.

After the prison, we hopped on the back of the motorcycles and headed to lunch. This was a true authentic Vietnamese experience- driving through the very congested streets of Hanoi on the back of a motorcycle! This is the main mode of transportation and it is crazy because just about anything goes!!!! Signals and street signs and laws are just “guidelines” and pretty much ignored. But it all seems to work pretty seamlessly! What a blast!!!!

Snow took us to a restaurant for a delicious Vietnamese lunch. She took care of ordering for us with attention to everyone’s dietary wishes. It was a great lunch and a nice break in the day. Back onto the motorcycles where we started our way out of the City Center, traveling over the oldest bridge in Hanoi. Long Biên Bridge (Vietnamese: Cầu Long Biên) is a historic cantilever bridge across the Red River that connects two districts, Hoan Kiem and Long Bien of the city of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was originally called Paul Doumer Bridge. The bridge was built in 1899-1902 by the architects Daydé & Pillé of Paris, and opened in 1903.[1] Before North Vietnam's independence in 1954, it was called Paul-Doumer Bridge, named after Paul Doumer - The Governor-General of French Indochina and then French president. At 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) in length, it was, at that time, one of the longest bridges in Asia. For the French colonial government, the construction was of strategic importance in securing control of northern Vietnam. From 1899 to 1902, more than 3,000 Vietnamese took part in the construction.

It was heavily bombarded during Vietnam War due to its critical position (the only bridge at that time across the Red River connecting Hanoi to the main port of Haiphong). The first attack took place in 1967, and the center span of the bridge was felled by an attack by 20 USAF F-105 fighter-bombers. CIA reports noted that the severing of the bridge did not appear to have caused as much disruption as had been expected. The defence of Long Bien Bridge continues to play a large role in Hanoi’s self-image and is often extolled in poetry and song. It was rendered unusable for a year when, in May 1972, it fell victim to one of the first co-ordinated attacks using laser-guided "smart bombs". Some parts of the original structure remain intact, while large sections have been built later to repair the holes. Only half of the bridge retains its original shape. A project with support and loan from the French government is currently in progress to restore the bridge to its original appearance.

Today trains, mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians use the dilapidated bridge, while all other traffic is diverted to the nearby Chương Dương Bridge and some newly built bridges.

Under the bridge, poor families live in boats on the Red River, coming from many rural areas of Vietnam.

We then traveled through a large agricultural area, and then reached our destination of the Bat Trang Ceramics Village . It is a 14th century porcelain and pottery village near Hanoi, housing local artisans who combine both traditional and modern techniques to create beautiful porcelain artworks. Not only are you able to purchase some of the finest handmade ceramic products in Vietnam, you can also see them made right before your eyes during your visit.

 

Located next to the Red River within the Gia Lam District, Bat Trang Ceramics Village Hanoi holds an important place in history of the ceramics industry in Asia, as it’s close to trading ports Thang Long and Pho Hien. Today, visitors can explore its many ceramic stores and workshops to browse through a vast selection of vases, bowls, cups, and plates.

Snow took us all around the village where we visited with different artisans and saw different stages of making the ceramic pieces.

Then we headed back to the City Center to the Hidden Gem coffee shop for a final stop for refreshments. Some choose to try the famous egg coffee. I had a coconut coffee and Mike had hot chocolate. Then we got dropped off at our hotel where we said our goodbyes to Snow and the other drivers. It was by far one of the best tours we have ever experienced!

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 12.23 (before 1950)

484 – The Arian Vandal Kingdom ceases its persecution of Nicene Christianity. 558 – Chlothar I is crowned King of the Franks. 583 – Maya queen Yohl Ik'nal is crowned ruler of Palenque. 962 – The Sack of Aleppo as part of the Arab–Byzantine wars: Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops storm the city of Aleppo. 1598 – Arauco War: Governor of Chile Martín García Óñez de Loyola is killed in the Battle of Curalaba by Mapuches led by Pelantaru. 1688 – As part of the Glorious Revolution, King James II of England flees from England to Paris, France after being deposed in favor of his son-in-law and nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary. 1783 – George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland. 1793 – The Battle of Savenay: A decisive defeat of the royalist counter-revolutionaries in War in the Vendée during the French Revolution. 1815 – The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published. 1876 – First day of the Constantinople Conference which resulted in agreement for political reforms in the Balkans. 1893 – The opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed. 1905 – The Tampere conference, where Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin meet for the first time, is held in Tampere, Finland. 1913 – The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System. 1914 – World War I: Australian and New Zealand troops arrive in Cairo, Egypt. 1914 – World War I: During the Battle of Sarikamish, Ottoman forces mistook one another for Russian troops. The following friendly fire incident leaves 2,000 Ottomans dead and many more wounded. 1916 – World War I: Battle of Magdhaba: Allied forces defeat Turkish forces in the Sinai Peninsula. 1919 – Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 becomes law in the United Kingdom. 1936 – Colombia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1936 – Spanish Civil War: The Spanish Republic legalizes the Regional Defence Council of Aragon. 1941 – World War II: After 15 days of fighting, the Imperial Japanese Army occupies Wake Island. 1947 – The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. 1948 – Seven Japanese military and political leaders convicted of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are executed by Allied occupation authorities at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Japan.

[thewaltoncollection]

Padraig Pearse 1916 Poster: The Public Voice of the 1916 Rising 

Who was P.H. Pearse, the passionate nationalist and revolutionary leader whose legacy shaped Ireland's struggle for independence? Known as Padraig Pearse, he was a signatory of the Proclamation and a key figure in the 1916 Easter Rising, where he read the Proclamation outside the GPO. Executed alongside others, Pearse became a symbol of the rebellion, inspiring future generations with his powerful oratory. To know more, read this blog and visit our website.

[suffrageinstitchesnz]

Maker’s name: Mary Culver

Petition sheet number: 413

Person honouring: E. A. [Elizabeth Ann] Patching

Relationship to maker: Great-aunt

Elizabeth Ann Bovey was born in April 1866 in Nelson. She was the third child of Elizabeth Stud and John Bovey.

In 1887, she married Peter Henry Patching in Wellington; they had three girls. Peter was a brickmaker, and only 34 when he died in 1891.

Elizabeth was left to bring up three little girls by herself. It is thought that Elizabeth ran a boarding house and then married Thomas Driver. Thomas died in Levin in 1912, and Elizabeth married for a third time to John Daniels in 1916.

Elizabeth passed away in 1920 due to cancer and was buried in the Mako Mako Road cemetery in Levin.

Panel materials: In the spirit of recycling, I chose fabric with a stenciled red rose I had completed decades ago – after adding the photos and embroidery, I discovered that in Tennessee supporters of women's right to vote wore yellow roses and those against wore red – so I changed the colour of the rose. The tatted pieces represent Elizabeth's three marriages and three daughters, and the koru the new opportunities open to women since gaining the vote – albeit slow at times! The tatted pieces come from my husband's grandmother. The white knots represent camellia buds, the crosses the other 46 signatories on the same page. Vintage lace is added around the edge of the panel.

Unique ID number: VRS.2019.418