For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee

The Price of Loyalty

The Torture Debate in America

The Culture of the New Capitalism

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1666 Samuel Pepys reported in his diary on the first blood transfusion (between dogs).

1746 Death of Georg Steller (b. 1709), German naturalist.

1831 Death of Georg Hegel, philosopher.

1832 Death of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (b. 1732), Declaration of Independence signatory, US Senator.

1844 Death of John Abercrombie, British physician.

1851 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, was published in the US by Harper & Brothers, New York, after having been published on October 18, 1851 by Richard Bentley, London.

"Harper and Brothers in New York publishes Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. The book flopped, and it was many years before the book was recognized as an American classic. Melville was born in New York City in 1819. A childhood bout of scarlet fever left him with weakened eyes. At age 19, he became a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool. He later sailed to the South Seas on a whaler, the Acushnet, which anchored in Polynesia. He took part in a mutiny, was thrown in jail in Tahiti, escaped, and wandered around the South Sea islands from 1841 to 1844. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, based on his Polynesian adventures. His second book, Omoo (1847), also dealt with the South Seas. The two novels became popular, although his third, Mardi (1849), more experimental in nature, failed to catch on with the public. Melville bought a farm near Nathaniel Hawthorne's house in Massachusetts, and the two became close friends, although they later drifted apart. Melville wrote for journals and continued to publish novels. Moby Dick was coolly received, but his short stories were highly acclaimed. Putnam's Monthly published Bartleby, the Scrivener in 1853 and Benito Cereno in 1855. In 1866, Melville won appointment as a customs inspector in New York, which brought him a stable income. He published several volumes of poetry. He continued to write until his death in 1891, and his last novel, Billy Budd, was not published until 1924."   Source

1862 American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln approved General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia which led to the Battle of Fredericksburg.

1887 The world's first streetcar went into action.

1889 Journalist 'Nellie Bly' (Elizabeth Jane Cochran; 1865 - 1922), set sail from New York in an attempt to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg of Jules Verne's best-selling book, Around the World in Eighty Days – to go around the world in less than 80 days. Nellie's trip took 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds. Born to Judge Michael Cochran and Mary Jane Kennedy Cochran, part of the large Cochran family of Apollo, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Cochrane revolutionized journalism for women.

In September, 1887, Bly talked her way into the office of John Cockerill, managing editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Cockerill hired the unknown journalist and gave Bly her first assignment – to be committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. Impersonating an insane woman, Nellie Bly came back from the asylum ten days later with stories of cruel beatings, ice cold baths and forced, rancid meals. This adventurous and daring stunt propelled Bly into the limelight of New York journalism, and, at only 23, Nellie Bly had become a pioneer of a proud tradition that was well known in the West until the early 21^st Century: investigative journalism.

On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly began her world-wide journey on the Hamburg-American Company liner Augusta Victoria from the Hoboken Pier at precisely 9:40:30 am.

More    And more    Shop Nellie Bly    Nellie Bly trading cards

1891 English author Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was in Sydney, Australia, departing on the 16^th. Later, in 'The Song of the Cities', he wrote:

'Sydney'

Greeting! My birth-stain have I turned to good;
Forcing strong wills perverse to steadfastness:
The first flush of the tropics in my blood,
And at my feet Success!

(See the accompanying illustration, by W Heath Robinson.)

"Kipling carried his earnestness into his work, for he must have everything right. Smoking one evening, he picked up some manuscript, and said:

"'Here's something I am working on, and it brings in your country. Just see if it's right, will you?'

"The verse in his hand was: 'The scent of the wattle at Lichtenberg, riding in the rain.' And the lines that troubled him were: 

My fruit-farm on Hunter's River
With the new vines joining hands.

"For some reason or another he was worried as to whether these lines were right

"I said that in Australia we would speak of an orchard, not of a fruit-farm; and that we called it Hunter River, and not Hunter's River. But why worry! He wasn't writing a geography or a gardener's guide. Even old Ouida, who was a best-seller in her day, once made one of her guardsman heroes, weighing thirteen stone, ride the same horse to victory in the Derby two years running -- and nobody murdered her.

"'They should have murdered her,' said Kipling. 'Writing things wrong is like singing out of tune. You don't sing, do you?'

"'No. But how could you tell?'

"'Nobody that has the ear for rhythm ever has the ear for music. When I sing, the dog gets up and goes out of the room.'

"This insistence on photographic accuracy, so unusual in a poet, may have been the one loose bearing in the otherwise perfect machinery of his mind; or it may have been that his training as a sub-editor had bitten so deeply into his system that he looked upon inaccuracy as the cardinal sin. There was no satisfaction for him in a majestic march of words if any of the words were out of step.

"I said to him:

"'You ought to be satisfied. You seem to get things pretty right, anyway. How did you come to get that little touch about the Australian trooper riding into Lichtenberg when the rain brought out the scent of the wattles? Inspiration?'

"'No,' he said. 'Observation. I used to poke about among the troops and ask all the silly questions I could think of. I saw this Australian trooper pull down a wattle-bough and smell it. So I rode alongside and asked him where he came from. He told me about himself, and added: "I didn't know they had our wattle over here. It smells like home." That gave me the general idea for the verses; then all I had to do was to sketch in the background in as few strokes as possible. And when you're only using a few strokes you must have 'em in the right place. That's why I asked you whether it was right to talk about the fruit-farm and Hunter's River.'

"All very well, but being somewhat in the verse line myself, I knew that only a master could have written those few little verses. Possibly only one man that ever lived could have done it -- Kipling himself."
Banjo Paterson, writing on his visit to Kipling in the UK

Kipling Society    More

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1896 In Britain, a new Highway Act superseded the law that had required a person with a red flag to walk ahead of motor vehicles, and raised the speed limit from 4 mph to 14 mph.

1900 The discovery of three different blood groups was announced by Dr Karl Landsteiner of the Vienna Pathological and Anatomical Institute.

1907 Death of Andrew Inglis Clark, Australian politician.

1913 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, was sentenced to 3 months' prison at Volksrust, South Africa.

1915 Death of Booker T Washington, African-American educator who was born a slave in 1856.

1916 Death of Saki (HH Munro; b. 1870), British writer.

1917 "'Night of Terror,' when suffragists were imprisoned and brutalized after picketing the White House, demanding the right to vote."   Source

1918 Czechoslovakia became a republic. Tomáš Masaryk (Tomas Masaryk) was elected first president.

1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began radio service in the United Kingdom.

1925 The first exhibition by the Surrealists opened at the Galerie Pierre in Paris.

1938 Jews were expelled from colleges in Germany.

1940 World War II: In England, the city of Coventry was destroyed by German Luftwaffe bombers. The Luftwaffe rained 503 tons of bombs and 881 incendiaries on the city; the medieval cathedral was almost completely destroyed.

1941 World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal was sunk due to torpedo damage from U 81 sustained on November 13.

1943 During World War II, President Franklin D Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and many of America's top military brass, narrowly escaped disaster aboard the US battleship Iowa, when a live torpedo was accidentally fired at them from a US destroyer.

"To demonstrate to the president and guests the defensive abilities of the Iowa, the battleship launches a series of weather balloons to use as anti-aircraft targets. Men on the nearby destroyer William D. Porter, under Captain Jesse Walker, are ordered to battle stations, and began shooting down the balloons that the Iowa had missed.

"Better yet, a simulated torpedo firing was ordered, and the torpedo room obliged. Unfortunately, torpedoer Lawton Dawson neglected to disarm torpedo tube #3, and an actual torpedo was fired at the Iowa.

"The Porter broke mandatory radio silence to inform the Iowa that the armed torpedo was speeding towards them. The Iowa rapidly began evasive maneuvers, as all guns were turned on the Porter.

"Meanwhile, on the bridge of the Iowa, word of the firing reached President Roosevelt, who asked that his wheelchair be moved to the ship's railing so that he could watch the torpedo's approach. Fortunately, the torpedo exploded behind the ship's massive wake.

"The Porter is ordered to return to Bermuda, and Captain Jesse Walker and the entire crew are arrested by a force of Marines upon docking.

"Torpedoman Lawton Dawson is subsequently court-martialed. The destroyer William D. Porter eventually reenters service, and is often hailed when she enters port or joins other naval ships with the greeting

'Don't shoot ! ! !
We're Republicans'"   Source

1952 Britain's first pop chart was published in the New Musical Express. Britain's first Number One was 'Here in My Heart', by Al Martino.

1963 Volcanic activity created Surtsey, a new island off the south coast of Iceland.

1965 Vietnam War: Battle of the Ia Drang began – the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.

1967 Abbie Hoffman, Yippie leader, was arrested during a demonstration at the NY Hilton Hotel where a speech was given by Secretary of State Dean Rusk before the 50^th anniversary dinner of the Foreign Policy Association. Hoffman listed his occupation as 'poet'.

1969 Apollo program: NASA launched Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon.

1971 Mariner program: Mariner 9 reached Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.

1972 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time.

1973 In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.

1975 Spain abandoned Western Sahara.

1979 Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issued Executive Order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States and US banks in response to the hostage crisis.

1983 King Khalid International Airport, the largest airport in the world, opened near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The airport covered 221 sq km of desert.

1988 The Palestinian National Council declared a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

1989 West Germany's chancellor, Helmut Kohl, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

1990 Germany and Poland signed a treaty confirming the border at the Oder-Neisse line.

1990 Aramoana massacre: Mentally disturbed gunperson, David Gray, killed 13 of approximately 50 inhabitants of Aramoana, New Zealand, before he was shot dead by police.

1990 The Who's Pete Townshend, author/musician, spoke of his bisexuality to Newsweek. Said Townshend: "I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man".

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    More Pete Townshend quotes at Wikiquote

1991 American and British authorities announced indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.

1991 Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returned to Phnom Penh after 13 years of exile.

1994 Bill Gates bought a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript.

"Bill Gates paid $30.8 million for a sixteenth-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript, which depicted the motion of water and the principles of the steam engine. Gates' bid tripled the existing price for similar items. Beating out Italian bidders who had pledged to bring the treasure back to its home in Italy, Gates promised to leave the manuscript on public display at least 50% of the time. The manuscript, last sold to the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, had fetched a mere $5.6 million in 1980."   Source

1995 A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress forced the federal government to close national parks and museums temporarily and run most government offices with skeleton staff.  

The big lie

UNSCOM weapons inspectors were not expelled from Iraq

1998 President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, after having ceased to comply with UN weapons inspectors on October 31, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan offering to facilitate the inspections. On December 16, Australian Richard Butler, head of the UN weapons inspection team (UNSCOM), withdrew the team from Iraq, to protect his staff from the air strikes that the US and UK governments were threatening. 

From that day on, it became de rigeur for media and politicians to falsely assert that Iraq "expelled the weapons inspectors", an important falsehood, as it is still used as a main pretext for the illegally invasion of the country – the other main one, of course, being the similarly egregious WMDs argument.

Within hours, Operation Desert Fox began: the US and UK began pre-emptively bombing Iraq – hundreds of cruise missiles raining down on the country, marking the start of strikes to punish the Baghdad government. An avalanche of US and British propaganda was published by a mostly unsuspecting world media, justifying the aggression and ignoring the destruction of Baghdad's utilities and the deaths of many innocent civilians and service people. On ABC's This Week (September 27, 2003), US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, publicly lied that the Clinton administration "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he [Butler] had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out."

Funeral services were held for 68 people who Iraqi officials say were killed in the raids. But Iraq's Ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, said: "I'm told that the casualties are in the thousands in terms of numbers of people who were killed or wounded".

US bombs food storage, schools, college, maternity centres

Several weeks after the strikes, the UN children's fund, UNICEF, made a first preliminary assessment of damage to civilian facilities. They reported the destruction of a rice warehouse in Tikrit in northern Iraq, damage to ten schools in the southern port city of Basra, and an agricultural college in Kirkuk in northern Iraq received a direct hit.

They said that in Baghdad medical and maternity centres, a water supply system and parts of the health and social affairs ministries were damaged.

Since Butler's forced withdrawal in the face of US-UK threats, many Western media and politicians have usually pretended to the public that Iraq "expelled" the team.

The events surrounding the withdrawal are recounted in Butler's book, Saddam Defiant (2000):

"I received a telephone call from US Ambassador Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission ... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be 'prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.' I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff from Iraq."

Oft-repeated error of fact 

The 'mistake' (that UNSCOM was ejected by Hussein in 1998) has been made not only by pro-war people such as George W Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address ('the axis of evil' speech), Dick Cheney, Alexander Rose, the Canadian right-wing Washington correspondent of the National Post, and the editorial writers of the Sunday Times. 

It has also been made by those who have shown concern for the humanitarian situation in Iraq, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, UK Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Menzies Campbell, and the usually trustworthy Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker. The BBC often makes the same incorrect assertion, although it usually acknowledges its error when it is pointed out to them.

Richard Butler became a fierce critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, strongly criticising Australian Prime Minister Howard (accusing him of misleading the Australian people) and marching with more than a quarter of a million others in the Sydney pro-peace march on February 16, 2003. On the morning of the peace march, he told ABC interviewer Terry Lane (The National Interest):

"I believe that there is a very real prospect now that the United States of America will attack Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council. That is contrary to international law, it should not happen, and I believe the consequences of such an action could be possibly catastrophic. I also finally believe that war is almost certain not to be the solution to any of the problems that are posed by Saddam Hussein, and they are real problems. The smaller reason, not so small for we Australians, is, I don't know how to put this as simply as possible ... Let me just say that I'm sick to death of the lies that we're being told about this by the Prime Minister of Australia. I heard him again this morning on a national television interview, and it was shocking, it was astonishing to hear him duck and weave, including by the way, say that in answer to a question about the possible deaths of Iraqi women and children, that something broadly like, 'Well, you know, that was unfortunate but it was their fault that Saddam Hussein was their president, and that's how it goes'. Astonishing, and I'm really deeply distressed by his position …

"International law is important here, and we mustn't commit the terrible mistake and folly in our pursuit of a criminal, by ourselves breaking the law. Because then it brings the whole system into disrepute and that is what I fear we face if the Americans go it alone here. We will trash 50 years of post World War II international law and replace it with the rule that might is right, and that's what we've been trying to get away from."   Source  

"The power of these lies was considerable. In a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sept. 25, 2001, 60 percent of Americans thought Osama bin Laden had been the culprit in the attacks of two weeks earlier, either alone or in league with unnamed 'others' or with the Taliban; only 6 percent thought bin Laden had collaborated with Saddam; and only 2 percent thought Saddam had been the sole instigator. By the time we invaded Iraq in 2003, however, CBS News found that 53 percent believed Saddam had been 'personally involved' in 9/11; other polls showed that a similar percentage of Americans had even convinced themselves that the hijackers were Iraqis."
Frank Rich, '"We Do Not Torture" and Other Funny Stories', NY Times, November 13, 2005

Myths of the 'War on Terrorism' & Iraq    Iraq crisis timeline    Chronology from UNSCOM site

US Uncovers Weapons of Mass Destruction, Not in Iraq But in Texas

Pictures of Destruction and Civilian Victims of the Anglo-American Aggression in Iraq 

2000 Netscape Navigator version 6.0 was launched following two years of open source development.

2001 Attack on Afghanistan: Northern Alliance fighters took over the capital, Kabul.

2002 Argentina defaulted on a US$805 million World Bank payment.

2002 The US House of Representatives voted not to create an independent commission to investigate the September 11 attacks.

2003 Discovery of 90377 Sedna.

Tomorrow: Marvell, poet and politician

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