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buckybleeds · 5 years ago

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Supplementary Reading Materials for Chapter 2 of Nothing Fades Like The Light.

The first page is the one-page history of the US that Nick Fury gives to Steve the day after he wakes up.

The next two pages are from the 10th grade history book Steve is given to read.

All of these pages are technically-factually-true (except the last paragraph of “the cost of freedom” section of the history textbook where mutants and asgardians are discussed) but have a strong bias in their presentation.

Fury’s presentation of US history is VERY US-positive; the textbook is slightly less US positive but still much, much, much more biased than, say, Wikipedia.

Anyway, here’s the text of these pages:

This is the one-page history provided to Steve by Fury. Please note that it is technically factual but VERY biased in its presentation of American Contemporary History.

For release to Cpt. Steven G. Rogers

Per Director Nicholas J. Fury

4/25/2011

Vital points in US History from 3/5/1945 to Present

- April 12th 1945 Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of stroke, succeeded in office by VP Harry S. Truman.

- April 30th 1945 Adolph Hitler commits suicide, Germany surrenders 5/7/1945 Victory is declared in Europe.

- September 2nd 1945 Japan signs terms of surrender after Americans halted a possible invasion through the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

- June 24th 1948 Soviet Union blockades communist-controlled East Berlin, prompting American airdrops of food and fuel.

- June 27th 1950 American troops are sent to support South Korea against invading North Korean communists.

- September 24th 1957 Black/White school segregation is ended by presidential order

- August 2nd 1964 Vietnamese torpedo boats attack American Sailors

- November 22nd 1963 US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas,Tx.

- January-February 1968 North Vietnamese launch a coordinated offensive against American soldiers stationed in South Vietnam

- August 6th 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, to prevent racial discrimination from hindering democracy.

- July 20th 1969 American Astronauts become the first men to walk on the moon.

- May 3re 1970 US troops launch offensive in Cambodia to counter Vietnamese troops hiding past the Cambodian border.

- January 27th 1973 The US brokers a cease-fire with Vietnam and signs the cease-fire agreement in Paris.

- August 9th 1974 President Richard Nixon resigns and is succeeded and pardoned by VP Gerald Ford.

- April 25th 1980 American Servicemen are killed attempting to free US hostages in Iran

- January 20th 1981 President Ronald Regan is inaugurated and Iranian hostages freed.

- March 30th 1981 Failed assassination attempt on President Ronald Regan

- June 12th 1987 President Regan demands the Soviet Union tear down the Berlin Wall.

- November 9th 1989 Berlin Wall demolished.

- February 1st 1992 US President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin meet to sign an agreement declaring an end to the Cold War.

- June 26th 1993 President Bill Clinton launches an attack against Iraq after failed assassination of former President George Bush.

- September 11th 2001 Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center in New York by flying hijacked planes into the towers, killing over 3000 people

- January 29th 2002 President George W. Bush declares war on Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 terror attacks.

- June 28th 2004 the US returns sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government

- September 10th 2007 The US remains committed to training operations, counter-insurgency measures, and fighting terrorists in Iraq.

[Here’s the text of the Vietnam War page from the 10th-grade textbook given to Steve]

Perspective Shift – Photography

[included image of a US soldier burning a home during the My Lai Massacre]

In March of 1968 American Soldiers killed over 300 Vietnamese noncombatant civilians, including many women and children, in what became known as the My Lai massacre.

Testimony given by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. described ditches full of bodies, homes being burnt, and unarmed civilians being executed by American soldiers.

While there were eyewhitnesses and many credible reports of unsanctioned American violence it is largely due to the greater portability and durability

of cameras that the American public gave up support for the Vietnam War.

Famous photos of Nguyễn Văn Lém (“Saigon Execution” 1968), Phan Thị Kim Phúc (“Napalm Girl” 1972), and even the deaths of American students protesting the

bombing of Cambodia at Kent State University in Ohio (“Kent State University Massacre” 1970) made the reality of war more obvious to people reading newspapers at home and watching reports on television.

While mass media has always been a part of modern warfare there had never before been such a stream of violent, full-color images making their way off of the battlefield and into people’s living rooms.

Previous wars had sent newsreels showing successful battles and strong soldiers back to the home front, frequently as a tactic for promoting the sale of war bonds or increasing recruitment, but the visibility of the cost of war has become more and more apparent as it became easier to show what was happening on the ground.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: How does the internet and social media shift the way that American civilians experience war today? What do you think would be different about war today without cellphone videos or livestreaming?

US commanders were more grounded in offensive and aggressive warefare than defensive positions or missions. This, combined with the heretofore unusual challenge of fighting opponents who utilized guerilla techniques and could easily blend in with (or actually be) the civilian population made a unique challenge in terms of tactics and planning.

Additionally, after the initial surge US recruits were typically drafted and only recently trained and stationed overseas. They were unfamiliar with the local culture and languages, unfamiliar with the terrain and wildlife – even unfamiliar with the food. A recruit from Indianapolis would find himself in a very strange place standing on the bank of the Mekong river.

This led to engagements unlike any ever seen in American military campaigns – search and destroy operations were stymied on the ground by impenetrable jungles and the ability of the Viet Cong to disappear into the local population but bases were left poorly defended – the Viet Cong took advantage of these strategic inconsistencies and carefully provoked US offensive actions into Hill Fights in the Central Highlands as a diversonary tactic before launching the Tet Offensive.

The Tet Offensive (1/30/1968) was a major strategy launched at more than 100 cities, with focused attacks on government buildings, military installations, and the US Embassy in Saigon. During the first month of the offensive over 1,100 Americans and 14,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed.

The Tet Offensive marked the beginning of a collapse of morale among US soldiers and marked an end to majority support at home. Infantry units began to falsify or simply disobey orders or even turn around to attack their commanding officers, sometimes going so far as to kill those giving orders.

DEFINITION – FRAGGING

Fragging is the act of killing one’s own officer or teammates in war, named for fragmentation grenades because officers killed in grenade incidents were noted as accidental deaths. There were over 900 fragging incidents investigated in the later years of the war.

Questions were also being continually raised about the ethics and efficacy of US tactics. The use of Napalm was uncontroversial at the beginning of the campaign and justified as a way to protect US troops and eradicate cover for the Viet Cong, but after tens of thousands of civilians, many of them children, were killed or burned in napalm drops support for the war continued to drop as it became impossible to ignore that the American use of incendiaries on civilians was only causing increased support for the North Vietnamese forces.

Pathways Through American History: Chapter 21 – The Vietnam War

Hugh Thompson Junior, who is mentioned in the “perspective shift: photography” section of the history book Steve reads, is maybe the truest definition of an American hero - he was responsible for reporting and attempting to end the My Lai massacre, landing his helicopter between American soldiers and the Vietnamese civilians they were attempting to kill and evacuating survivors of the massacre. He faced tremendous criticism for his actions and was ostracized for testifying against American soldiers. He was eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary bravery in flight. He threw it away.

You can read more about him being just the biggest swinging dick in the northern hemisphere here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.

Additionally there was an opera written about his actions and dedicated to his bravery and to the survivors of the My Lai massacre, which includes music played on instruments made from artillery left in Vietnam after the war. You can see excerpts from that opera here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQu9lxaDsI8

[Here’s the text of a page from Steve’s history book - this one is about the Patriot Act]

Take Note

[includes image of a sign that says “The FBI has not been here – watch this sign carefully to see if that changes”]

Librarians strenuously objected to the USA PATRIOT act, specifically Section 215, which allows the FBI to request books, records, papers, and other documents that a suspected terrorist might have accessed, including what books had been checked out from a library. The American Library Association stated that library records are fundamentally different from ordinary business records and that the provision granting access to library records would have a chilling effect on free speech but discouraging the use of libraries or the free exploration of information therein.

The sign pictured in this section was posted in a library in 2005; while libraries were not permitted to announce that the FBI had requested records because of the gag order attached to the provision they were allowed to post a sign saying there had been no requests for information and then surreptitiously remove the signs if that changed.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Is checking a book out from a library free speech? Do you think you would search different websites if you knew your parents or school were monitoring where you went? Do you think it’s worth it to be careful about what you search if it means someone else doesn’t get bullied or hurt because of search filtering?

The Cost of Freedom

after 9/11 it became clear that our democracy was not prepared for the spectre of terrorism that had invaded our shores - but some of the responses have been criticized as worse than the cause.

The USA PATRIOT act continues to be controversial for many reasons, but most frequently cited are the normalization of mass state surveillance and erosion of personal privacy and the elimination of constitutional protections for certain classes of terrorist suspects.

Reauthorizations of the USA PATRIOT act have continually approved unwarranted wiretapping and gag orders on people (like librarians and internet service providers) who might otherwise warn people about data collection in the public interest. Some provisions have become more controversial as time has passed – for instance the “Lone Wolf” provision that allowed for the warrantless wire-tapping of individuals not connected to known terrorist groups has come under additional scrutiny as groups like the ACLU point out that the FBI’s definitions of “terrorist” are both expansive and opaque. Other sections are more and more accepted – nationwide service of search warrants for electronic evidence is wholly accepted now whereas the question of widening jurisdictions was seen as a threat to individual liberty when the act was signed into law in 2001.

Of greater concern are the changes made to criminal law in broadening the definitions of terrorism; it is now possible to be considered a terrorist for causing mass destruction as well as causing injury or death, and the definitions of “cyber terrorism” set down in 2001 might certainly give computer-users in 2008 some pause; accessing a ‘protected computer’ is a terrorist action, after all – or at least it can be.

The indefinite detention of non-US citizens is also of serious concern internationally, though American citizens are not subject to the indefinite holds that are possible for non-citizens. Constitutional scholars, civil liberties groups, and many activists contend that constitutional freedoms are guaranteed to all people on American soil, but that is a more and more difficult question to tackle when ‘aliens’ discussed in the law become literal Aliens, as the revealed Asgardians and their advanced technology prove. The protections that might be necessary for an accused immigrant don’t need to be enshrined the same way for beings we have no better description for than ‘demigod.’

Mutant activist groups have recently hopped into the fray in this conversation, as the USA PATRIOT act can also classify their genetic powers as terrorist weapons and the damage that is caused when an adolescent mutant matures into their talent has more than once been labeled a terrorist action.

A Different Perspective

President George W. Bush, who signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, has stood by his decision all this time and continues to insist that it is in the best interest of the American people.

The Department of Homeland Security, a new branch of the Department of Defense, was also formed under President Bush and has seen similar ups-and-downs. The most well-known face of the DHS is the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, who most of us know from long lines at the airport and taking off your shoes to get on a plane.

It’s true that these things are inconvenient, but security usually isn’t convenient - there have been no attempted shoe or liquid bombings on planes since the TSA changed their carry-on policies, so maybe the trade-off is worth the inconvenience.

Pathways Through American History: Chapter 28 – The War on Terror

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kansascityhappenings · 7 years ago

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Joe’s Weather Blog: Another big change on Thursday (MON-1/8)

Good morning…starting the day with a lot of black ice out there…which seems to be just the way this winter is rolling along. This has been a strange one…we started with way too warm air in December, keeping any snow threats at about 0. Then we flipped on the 22nd-23rd to a much colder pattern. Temperatures so cold and the air so dry that aside from some minor light events we couldn’t really get much snow…then as a cold air leaves just in time we get rain (and not a lot locally)…now black ice. Interesting yet snow frustrating (see what I did there). Last night I posted about whether or not you were happy or not about the lack of snow…about 60% wanted more snow. I’m in that category. Right now I’m not encouraged about the prospects.

Forecast:

Today: Sunny and cold this morning. Light winds. We should end the day in the 40s. How far in the 40s though we get will rely on a bit of a breeze to stir the air. We’ll see about that.

Tonight: Cold again with lows in the 20s

Tuesday: More clouds with highs in the 40s

Wednesday: This should still be the warmest day of the week with highs into the 50s but we will be fighting clouds and the winds will make it feel colder.

Discussion:

So let’s get back to a question I asked my FB peeps last night. In regards to this.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fjoe.lauria.10%2Fvideos%2F1734702213228704%2F&show_text=0&width=560

By the way…would love it if you would “like/follow” me on FB!

Anyway…it’s amazing to think about that we actually have less snow than last winter…a winter that essentially gave us little snow overall. Not only do we have less snow so far…we have HALF of what we had last winter through 1/7 at least. Come on! Snow frustrating ( I did it again).

I guess we don’t have to worry about doing something like this…

There's a new Mr. Plow in town! A Pennsylvania man was certainly thinking outside the box when it came to clearing his snow-covered driveway #ShareYourWeather pic.twitter.com/71yZtUPFdJ

— The Weather Network (@weathernetwork) January 7, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

and so it goes…there have been seasons with slower starts…lots of them. As a matter of fact..this is the 27th slowest start to the snow “season” in KC

Note that 5 of those season starts are since the year 2000. I’m not really sure we can include the #1 year (1889) because there is a lot missing data in that compilation.

Also of note…some interesting years…1980 (drought+extreme summer scorcher) and 1978 (so darn cold that winter) and 1989 (so darn cold that winter). There are also some dust bowl years in there too.

Look you folks know I enjoy my snow…I’d be happy if we could get a couple of 4-8″ snowstorms…maybe one 2-4″ storm…then let’s move on to spring. Cold to me is a waste if we don’t have snow…ice to me is a total waste because it does nothing for us whatsoever. I’m really looking for something to talk/write about for several days + leading up to something happening around these parts.

I guess I can talk more about the cold weather that will be coming back into the area after a few days of more comfortable weather.

The change comes Thursday morning. We may very well have some sort of midnight high on Sunday into the 40s before the leading edge of colder Canadian air moves into the region during the morning hours.

The map above is for 12AM Thursday morning…that cold front will mean business because the air behind it will be cold, to say the least.

Temperatures behind the front will be dropping into the teens and the cold air will RUSH into the area during the daybreak hours…and that sends temperatures tanking. Based on the current forecast speed of the front…look at the forecast temperatures around lunch time on Thursday…

Around 20°(!) and with 20 MPH winds (higher gusts)…the wind chills will be near 0° again during the day on Thursday.

Chilly weather is expected on Friday and then another arctic dump of cold weather comes in over the weekend…Sunday morning may tank to sub-zero levels from KC northwards…maybe 5-10 below towards far N MO…could be lower IF there is snow on the ground up there again.

What about the precipitation chances with this rather decent change in the temperatures. Well I’d suspect that we’ll get at least some moisture from this…perhaps a few rain showers ahead of the front…then some sort of wintry mix behind the front. The better accumulating snow chances with this may be more focused towards the I-80 corridor. For us…we may get some snow in the afternoon Thursday. Whatever happens…IF there’s moisture on the roads…we’ll need to watch for freezing during the day.

The system that will be moving our way will be undergoing a weird split right through the middle of the Plains with the better energy dropping and developing more through Texas…and another weakening piece going through the upper Midwest. It’s always something. IF that southern energy would streak towards the NE instead, curl up through southern and eastern MO…slow the forward progress of the front coming through the KC region…then we’d probably be in business for snow…at this point that outcome is highly doubtful.

This is the same storm that the national media will be talking about over the next couple of days…affecting the western part of the country.

Notice the water vapor loop showing the moisture stream up into CA.

This is going to be a big ticket storm for that part of the country. strongest they’ve seen in terms of rain/snow since last winter. That’s good right? Well for some areas…not so much.

Upgrade to HIGH RISK of excessive rainfall from @NWSWPC for portions of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles Counties near recent large burn scars. Heavy rain moves in later today and tonight. pic.twitter.com/DsWJGRBVV8

— Alex Lamers (@AlexJLamers) January 8, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

There is a lot of concern about the areas that were ravaged by flooding. Without any vegetation too keep the soil in place…debris flows and mud slides are very possible.

Updated explainer for the risk of flash flooding and debris flows in and downslope of burn scar regions as moderate and heavy rain develops during the next 24+ hours. pic.twitter.com/80OR8BCC0X

— Jan Null (@ggweather) January 8, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The forecast right now shows 2-6″ of moisture…some may get more in the Ocean facing mountains.

Here is a look at radar…

So it’s a good and bad thing out there…the water storage system though really could use it.

That’s it for today…

Our feature photo is of a nice eagle…they’re around some of the wetlands in MO now…a lot of them up towards Smithville into N MO! Courtesy Mary Jo Seever

Joe

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports http://fox4kc.com/2018/01/08/joes-weather-blog-another-big-change-on-thursday-mon-1-8/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/01/08/joes-weather-blog-another-big-change-on-thursday-mon-1-8/

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