Tag: tipping point

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

Nixon’s final act of treason revealed

The Atlantic has picked up an article from the BBC who released audio tapes of President Johnson regarding GOP candidate Richard Nixon’s sabotage of the October 1968 Peace talks in Paris regarding Johnson’s bid to end the US involvement in the Vietnam war.

Nixon Johnson
Johnson ordered FBI wiretaps on the GOP’s candidate that actually caught Nixon manipulating the South Vietnamese Government to boost his own Presidential aspirations in coming the November Presidential election.  Those wiretaps caught Nixon dispatching a GOP supporter Anna Chennault to meet with South Vietnamese President Thieu to promise Nixon would offer the South a better deal if he rejected Johnson’s invite to Paris.

The LBJ tapes were initially released in November 2008. History shows us (again) that Nixon was committing treason against the United States.  This release was even picked up by Slate’s Political Gabfest, but gained no real traction in the media.  Simply put – Nixon is dead.

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Robert Kennedy supported US atomic bombing in Laos

The Pentagon Papers include a memorandum with Robert Kennedy on April 29, 1961 regarding a yet-to-be-determined US military position regarding fighting the spread of communism in Laos.

Pentagon PapersRobert Kennedy as the just recently confirmed US Attorney General under his brother and President-elect was a participant to foreign policy planning.  The Kennedy Administration was roughly 90 days old when this memorandum [Part V. B. 4.] Justification of the War. Internal Documents. The Kennedy Administration. Book I (page 93) was recorded.

In attendance was Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense McNamara, General Curtis Le May, General David M. Shoup, Admiral Arleigh Burke and McGeorge Bundy among others.

This emerging view is similar to the policy supported during the Eisenhower Administration.  As conveyed in David Halberstam’s The Best and The Brightest, President-elect Kennedy was briefed by Eisenhower that US troops would be fighting communism in SouthEast Asia. The only surprise for John Kennedy (and for most Americans) was Eisenhower’s plans to invade and fight in Laos — not Vietnam.  The memorandum indicates the new administration had yet to decide how to best deal with the growing communist influence in SouthEast Asia:

The Attorney General asked where would be the best place to stand and fight, in Southeast Asia,where to draw the line.  Mr. McNamara said he thought we would take a stand in Thailand and South Viet-Nam. The Attorney General asked whether we would save any of Laos, but he major question was whether we would stand up and fight.

Mr. McNamara said that we would have to attack the DRV if we gave up Laos. Mr. McNamara repeated that the situation is now worse than it was five weeks ago. Mr. Steeves pointed out that the same problems existed in South Viet-Nam, but

Admiral Burke thought that South Viet-Nam could be more easily controlled. General Becker then suggested that troops be moved into Thailand and South Viet-Nam to see whether such action would not produce a cease-fire. Admiral Burke asked what happens if there is still no cease-fire. General Decker said then we would be ready to go ahead.  Mr. Kennedy said we would look sillier than we do now if we got troops in there and then backed down. He reiterated the question whether we are ready to go the distance.

It appears the new administration viewed a communist threat in Laos as more severe than Vietnam. Now the issue was containment of communist influence in Asia.  And an even more chilling statement emerged from this meeting regarding Laos:

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Eisenhower and the French war in Vietnam

Eisenhower and the French war in Vietnam outlined in the Pentagon Papers is proving to teach us some very interesting lessons. The Pentagon Papers now confirm actions under Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower that span 1945 – 1955. Even before the end of World War II France was demanding the Allied nations, namely the US and Britain to re-colonize Indo-China which they lost to the army of Japan.

Pentagon PapersThe Pentagon Papers reaffirm the US under Eisenhower financed the French Indo-China war beginning in late 1946.

Truman and Eisenhower preferred to send tens of millions of dollars in military assistance to France. They both held a position that the US would not stand in the way of France’s re-colonization in South Vietnam, permitting the US to keep an arm’s length from a growing communist war supported by Soviet arms and Chinese military advisors. The cold war was indeed beginning to heat up Asia.

The surprise for me in reading the Eisenhower volumes is how a cold war against communism was shaping up in Thailand, rather than Vietnam. David Halberstam reminds us in his book “The Best and the Brightest” that it was Eisenhower’s advise to President-elect Kennedy that he would inherit a war requiring US troop involvement — in Laos, not in Vietnam. But well before Kennedy’s defeat of Nixon, back in 1954 the siege of Dien Bien Phu would change France and America for generations.

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Education Globalization Reading

Opening The Vault On The Financial Crisis

Great Britain slipped into recession again this week. Its worth another view of how close we came to economic collapse:

The HBO movie was good.  The book was so much better….and rather shocking.

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Internet2 Network Technology

Internet2: Arthron – A Tool for Video Streaming Remote Management in Artistic Performances Experiences

Arthron was concept for experiences in the domain of Art and Technology. Arthron facilities include its simple user interface and the manipulation of different media sources. Users can remotely add, remove and configure the presentation format as well as schedule the media streaming during an artistic performance.
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Arthron is composed by six components described as follow. The Articulator is responsible for the remote management. This component concentrates a great part of the Arthron functionalities, such as stream scheduling (manual or automatic), network monitoring and measurement, remote configuration of other modules, access control, web page automatic generation for online publication, video effects, and communication tools. The Encoder is responsible for capturing and encoding (when necessary) of media source, which can be external (DV or HDV camera, DVD) or internal (a local file). The Decoder’s main functionality is to decode and display the media stream in a specific device (monitor, projector, etc). The Reflector is responsible for the replication and redistribution of media streaming over the network.

The VideoServer component is able to transcoding media streaming that will be published online. This component is also responsible for working with flv, ogg and h264 formats. The MapManager controls and displays the interactive map of Arthron components. MapManager offers to users an overview of the geographical distributed locations of Arthron components.