78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it."
[more inside]
posted by carter
on Jan 29, 2012 -
15 comments
"Where I come from, a little patience at the crosswalk usually rewards me with a stoplight-induced pause in traffic, but here things are different. One had to simply cross, stride forward into the asphalt gauntlet with no fear, just faith that two intersecting streams of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, would reconcile themselves. And they always did." Photographer
Rob Whitworth stitches together 10,000 images to bring you a very kinetic time-lapse video of
"Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam." [
via]
posted by bayani
on Jan 6, 2012 -
15 comments
Captured: A Look Back at the Vietnam War on the 35th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. (The following photo collection contains some graphic violence and depictions of dead bodies.)
posted by docgonzo
on Apr 21, 2011 -
18 comments
Interactive map of international adoptions, from the superlative Schuster Institute
for Investigative Journalism. The site contains an amazing amount of information about corruption in international adoption in countries like
Nepal and
Vietnam.
posted by the young rope-rider
on Apr 19, 2011 -
18 comments
1699 US Military personnel are still considered as POW or MIA from the Viet Nam conflict, but one is finally coming home.
The remains of James Moreland are being returned to the US, and Kathy Strong, who's worn his POW/MIA bracelet since she was 12, can now, 38 years later,
take it off.
posted by tomswift
on Mar 7, 2011 -
37 comments
“No, no. Academia is now part of the real world. Everything goes.” Just before dawn, on August 24, 1970, Dwight and Karl Armstrong, Leo Burt, and David Fine
parked a van outside Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin. The van was filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, and
when it blew, it killed
Robert Fassnacht, a young physicist working through the night. The Army Mathematics Research Center, the bombing's target, was untouched. The bombers, known as the "New Year's Gang," went underground, and enthusiasm for the radical movement in Madison was permanently dampened.
The University of Wisconsin collection of transcribed interviews about the Sterling Hall Bombing.
[more inside]
posted by escabeche
on Aug 21, 2010 -
32 comments
Asia Snapshots "is a blog that examines topics in Asia through the perspectives of interesting people interviewed by a group of bloggers in Mainland China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and more." Meet
Gao Qingrong and family, who along with seven other households are part of
an organic farm co-op in Anlong Village, Sichuan. Or there's
the tale of how one of the bloggers met Jun Jun, a male prostitute in Beijing; an encounter with
Silang Laji, a road maintenance worker in Kham, a Tibetan region of China; and
Gege, an enterprising journalist in Chengdu.
Via
posted by Abiezer
on Feb 28, 2010 -
4 comments
He was... "...the meanest, toughest, most ambitious S.O.B. I ever knew but he'll be a hell of a secretary of state." -- Richard Nixon
Alexander Meigs
Haig, Jr.,, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, who served US Presidents Nixon (as a military adviser, deputy assistant for national-security affairs, and chief of staff), Ford (chief of staff), and Reagan (secretary of state),
has died at the age of 85. Haig
commanded a batallion during the Vietnam War (where he was seriously wounded), managed the White House during the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, and was himself a former Presidential candidate.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 20, 2010 -
40 comments
Earlier today, the first Viet Nam veteran ever elected to congress, died.
John Murtha (as of this past Saturday, Pennsylvania’s longest serving congressman) was the 19 term representative of Pennsylvania’s 12th district, most notably the home of
Johnstown, and which for most of his service included
Shanksville. He was a hawkish, conservative Democrat, infamous for his involvement in the
Abscam controversy, and most recently
the FBI’s inquiry into the lobbying firm PMA. He could be said to have been very representative, and certainly
very supportive of his blue collar district—
Pro-gun,
anti-abortion, and at first
a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, but eventually
one of its greatest critics. But that criticism came at
a price.
John Murtha was 77.
[more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Feb 8, 2010 -
35 comments
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today that William Calley spoke to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. During his remarks he apologized for his role in the My Lai massacre.
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”
The Kiwanis gave him a standing ovation, the first time the club secretary recalls that happening. (
Previously)
posted by ob1quixote
on Aug 22, 2009 -
106 comments
In 1970, while burning captured enemy documents with no military intelligence value, Fred Whitehurst came across a tiny diary. Advised not to burn it by his translator, he kept it and took it with him to America when his tour was over. Thirty five years later,
the diary came back
home.
[more inside]
posted by LenaO
on Jun 25, 2009 -
5 comments
A photo returned... A short video of a man returning a photo to the daughter of the man he killed, and from whom he removed the photo, during the war in Viet Nam.
posted by HuronBob
on Jun 20, 2009 -
21 comments
The Wars of John McCain. "John McCain believes the Vietnam War was winnable. Now he argues that an Obama administration would accept defeat in Iraq, with grave costs to American honor and national security. Is McCain’s quest for victory a reflection of an antiquated pre-Vietnam mind-set? Or of a commitment to principles we abandon at our peril? Is there any war McCain thinks can’t be won?"
posted by homunculus
on Sep 26, 2008 -
93 comments
[NSFW]"The following program is in living color and has been rated X by the Vietnam academy of maggots. The purpose of this program is to bring vital news, information and hard acid rock to the first termers and non-re-enlistees in the Republic of Vietnam. Radio First Termer operates under no Air Force regulations or manuals. In the event of a vice squad raid this program will automatically self-destruct." Radio First Termer was a pirate radio show broadcast by "Dave Rabbit," an anonymous USAF sergeant, for 63 hours between January 1st and 21st, 1971, out of the back room of a brothel in Saigon, gracing the dial at 69 MHz and 690 AM.
Fearing reprisal from his superiors,
Dave Rabbit then shut
Radio First Termer down and, after returning to the States, went back to living a normal life. 34 years later, while helping his son on a homework assignment,
Dave came across old recordings of his show. He's since revived
his old persona via
podcast, and has also brought Radio First Termer back to the warzone--
to Baghdad, Iraq. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display
on Jun 11, 2008 -
11 comments
The Heartbreak Campaign. "Increasingly opposed to the Vietnam War, Robert F. Kennedy struggled over whether he should challenge his party’s incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, in 1968. His younger brother, Teddy, was against it. His wife, Ethel, urged him on. Many feared he would be assassinated, like the older brother he mourned."
[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha
on May 10, 2008 -
28 comments
The Boneyard.
I’ve come to bear witness to American folly, to rest my eyes on the flying machines that flattened the forests of Southeast Asia, poisoned its people, and changed my life. A personal essay about the long-reaching effects of Agent Orange.
[more inside]
posted by amyms
on Apr 5, 2008 -
14 comments
40 years ago tomorrow, more than 500 villagers were raped, tortured, and
slaughtered (disturbing images) by American soldiers in a hamlet nicknamed Pinkville.
Four Hours in My Lai tells the story. Part
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7.
[more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Mar 15, 2008 -
45 comments
Image of the Year. From the article: "If you want to go shallow for an Image of the Year, you can't do better than
Paris Hilton, seen through the window of a Los Angeles sheriff's car, weeping as she's being hauled back to prison to complete a probation-violation sentence. But when you first notice the credit on that now infamous picture, there's a double take. The image came from the camera of
Nick Ut, whose
picture of a little girl burned by napalm, naked and running directly toward the camera and into the conscience of the American people, became perhaps the most powerful and influential vision of the Vietnam War. Not only was the Paris Hilton image taken by one of this country's most celebrated war photographers, it was taken June 8, 35 years to the day after the devastating image of 9-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing her bombed-out village. Let's put these two pictures up on the wall together for one last, end-of-the-year look, and see if something emerges."
posted by kittens for breakfast
on Dec 30, 2007 -
52 comments
Vietnam Then/Now. The enormously talented photographer courtneyutt traveled to Vietnam with her father, who served in 1970-1971. courtneyutt turned his Vietnam photo album into a rephotography project, revisiting
pagodas,
roundabouts,
waterfalls, etc. etc. Ain't never been there, but I can tell you, Vietnam has really changed.
Nothing warlike here -- she says, "my father was mostly interested in buildings! which makes sense, because after he returned from vietnam he became an architect." (See previous rephotography projects on mefi
here and
here. Nothing as personal as courtneyutt's.)
posted by dbrown
on Sep 20, 2007 -
8 comments
It's the Vietnam War. Nixon has declared a state of emergency and allows for secret tribunals against anti-war protesters, draft dodgers, and others guilty of "hindering the war effort." They have two choices: spend 15 to 20 years in a federal penitentiary or spend 3 days in
Punishment Park, where they will have 3 days to trek 50 miles in the California desert without food and water while on pursuit by armed National Guard and police units.
Watch Peter Watkin's (
previously) "documentary" of Punishment Park
here (Google Video, with strong language ).
posted by champthom
on Aug 22, 2007 -
28 comments
